hope for the best, but know it won't happen...

I always thought I'd get a hi-fi music set-up - receiver, probably the Denon AVR-391, although it'd be nice if I had a large enough living space to include the Onkyo TX-8255, since I do mainly listen to my music in stereo.  The AVR-391 would be a comparable space saving solution since it can play hi-fi audio in stereo AND surround sound...I probably wouldn't use surround sound very often, but how can I know?  Aside from the local movie theater (which I have a bone to pick with for cranking the base so high on INCEPTION that I couldn't even hear the dialogue in some parts), I have no experience(s) with surround sound.  But just the concept - movies, which I hardly ever watch, and music DVDs, which are about as hard to come by as SACDs are, unless you're into the more mainstream stuff.  And speaking of SACDs being hard to come by, I don't think there's a single album that is available on SACD that I want to AND will buy.  Toto IV (1982) by Toto is a great album, but it's almost $100 to buy, which is absurd, IMO, and a few others have also come and gone and left outrageous price tags behind - Boston (1976) by Boston, Peter Gabriel's UP (2002)...

I just don't have much to work with financially as it is.
I still can't find any speakers that would go good with the TX8255 NOR the AVR391, although for the AVR391 the Yamaha HTIB speakers would probably be good enough for who knows how long...actually, I can't even find speakers with a low enough wattage to feel safe running the TX8255 at high(ish) volume(s).
 

So I thought the CS 325 by Onkyo would be a good solution, yeah it's a shelf system, but it's an extraordinarily good one, not those crumby $50-$100 ones you find at WalMart.  I had the EC55 by SONY (discontinued by about a year at least now...) & the base on it was just too friggin' high, with or without bass boost.  BASE IS A BACKGROUND INSTRUMENT!!!!  If Korn is all you listen to, tell SONY to make a Korn player.  Or just use the base boost function, will ya?  Anyway, I simply will have to wait at least another year for the CS 325 and I don't think I'm picky enough about sound as it is for me to shell out the extra money for a seperate receiver & speakers.  So I Just recently ordered the far more elegant and sophisticated looking CMTBX20i, made by SONY, which - if looks are at all indicative of the inside - should be a bit more mature when it comes to base/balance/etc.  It probably won't rock my world, and it's probably not worth saving up all my $ for, but I'm tired of feeling like I'm wasting my compact digital audio discs on TV speakers.  And I don't want to have to buy all my music on mp3 and not be able to tell my CDs apart w/o reading a bunch of generic looking labels that I have to take the time to make myself...
  So that leaves my 1940CI that I ordered about two years ago virtually useless.  But I can probably get enough back on it to buy a new (smaller) DVD player AND have $20++ left to myself for whatever (CDs?).  I just hope someone wants it bad enough to take it off my hands in the next week or so so I can ship it and use the funds from my old player to GET a new DVD player (see link above, also a SONY) and use that to watch GHOSTBUSTERS I & II and whatever I rent from the video store...I boxed up the 1940CI, to make sure I could fit it in there securely (fits like a glove!) and now it's sitting on my table behind my TV.  PLEASE TAKE IT!  Luckily I have GHOSTBUSTERS on VHS AND A VCR!!  I've been using my computer for music listening lately anyway, so that's of no consequence...
  I'm sorta counting on my sister to give me some/enough money to pay the majority of the $26 of the CMTBX20i's $128.04 price tag (it was actually $114, but I ordered a Squaretrade 3 year extended warranty with it) that I'm missing, although I actually have another $9.76, but it's on an AMEX gift card, which I can't just deposit in the bank, you see...my mom said this morning that she won't let me buy her a Walmart gift card and give me $9 cash in exchange for it, but she was half asleep when she said that and she got all angry when I acted surprised by her answer, so I'm HOPING all I'm missing is $17, 'cause even if my sister gives me a meager $15, I can get the other $2 from Hastings by selling some stuff....

MyPartyShirt.com Review

http://mypartyshirt.com/tshirts/movie-shirts/egon-spengler-shirt

Wow, a GHOSTBUSTERS t-shirt for only $14!??!  And the shipping ain't too shabby either (under $5).  I don't know why I can't find this shirt on Amazon, but most of the shirts on Amazon are sold by 3rd party merchants who have outrageous shipping costs tacked on to their already-inflated price(s).

This shirt is cool and I'm glad I find this website on my Swagbucks search engine (near the top of the results).

I'll be ordering from these guys soon, haven't done so yet 'cause I don't got no dough...well, not enough to buy a novelty shirt...

these are a few...

I got a $100 AMEX card from my grand father, who I'm sure will at some point want to know what I got w/ it.  So if no one else is reading this, at least I can look back on it for reference if need be...

1)  INVISIBLE TOUCH Genesis raglan shirt           not sure what raglan means, but it's a long sleeve shirt and it looks awesome!  It's very thin and doesn't quite fit me (yet?).  Hopefully my weight loss intent will become evident in the next few months and then maybe by the end of 2011 I can fit into it, have something to say for myself if the world actually does end in 2012...
  Amazon's "marketplace" seller, the well known OldGlory, will have you believe the shirt is worth $35, but I only paid $17.50 for it.  Go to BuyRockTshirts.com if you too wanna save some dough.

2)  a few CDS:  ANTICHRIST SUPERSTAR - Marilyn Manson.  NO JACKET REQUIRED by Phil Collins.  COMMENCEMENT - Deadsy.  PALE by Toad The Wet Sprocket.  (total: apprx $17)

3)  a nice outing with my mother to Panera (fka St. Louis Bread Co.)  (total: apprx $23)

4)  an introductory package to Columbia House DVD club ($6)

5)  THE LAST UNICORN VHS (the only DVD editions out there are censored and/or full-screen w/ low resolution picture) ($2.99)

6)  A gift for my sister since I spent my "actual" money on other things... ($20)

7)  an online movie rental that I never watched plus a virtual ownership of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM ($4)

8)  four mp3s at HotTopic.com that i haven't figured out how to download...apparently I need to call them but I don't even care.  The songs are available for free elsewhere, I just thought it'd be nice to own them.  I gotta borrow my mom's cell phone to call them since she decided we should have $30/mo instead of phone service..

9)  one and a half mp3s at Amazon.com (I already had $0.30 or so left from an Amazon gift card I got from an online promotion company called Swag Bucks).  (total - prior gift card = $1.40 apprx)

I still have $5.50 awaiting expiration, since the biznss charge your card IMMEDIATELY when u place an order; the credit card/debit card that one uses typically doesn't give that money to the bizniss right away, but rather freezes the funds that cover the purchase, then the retailer for whatever reason has to request from the CC co. that the money be granted to them  If the retailer or whatever business doesn't do that, in this case within seven days, then the money goes back to my card.

I'm gonna use the $5.50 to cover part of a $128.05 transaction on ABT.com for a SONY mini-hifi music system.

My grandmother got me a $25 Walmart gift card that I sold to my mother for cash and my uncle Eddie got me an undisclosed amount; he gave my mother $40 and my mom gave $25 + $10.  Make of that what you will...

WHAT THE HEKK!

Amazon is a day late on posting Avril Lavigne's upcoming CD GOODBYE LULLABY and their price is absurd.  You KNOW BestBuy and many other retailers will have it for sale for $9.99 or less the first week or more after the release date!  Amazon prolly will too + $2.98 S&H unless you order $15+ worth of stuff w/ it.

double shot of happy!

Well, I'm listening to INVISIBLE TOUCH mini-LP CD edition and I can't tell any difference in sound quality on my super-budget PC.  Not sure if I could tell any difference in a "real" stereo set-up, but it's not worth finding out...INVISIBLE TOUCH is the only CD I have and plan to keep that's from the pig-out days of the major labels, when indie records were thought to be junk just to take up space & payola was king.  So I imported it to my PC and will keep it on there...
  But for those who actually HAVE $1,000++ to spend on hi-fi audio, NO JACKET REQUIRED, Phil Collins' (lead singer of Genesis circa INVISIBLE TOUCH) biggest and bestest solo record, is being released on 24 Karat Gold CD.  FACE VALUE, remastered by the same person, was released on the same format about a month ago and supposedly doesn't sound any better.  But all the same...
  And for those who are just into no-frills music, Avril Lavigne FINALLY has a 4th CD coming out.  I'll admit, her music doesn't strike one as earthshatteringly original or artistic or whatever, but each of her CDs (thus far) has had a point of interest; her debut was kinda like Disney-emo, her 2nd was slick and sleek pop-punk, and her third was just a crazy pillow fight.  Supposedly her 4th album will be more mellow and deep, at least that's what the wikipedia said about a year ago or almost.  She may have changed her mind about all that...the first single is apparantly going to be a "He Wasn't" type song ("What The Hell" doesn't sound like the name of a ballad does it?).  If the album IS mellow overall, I guess I can look forward to about a month or more of people giving the album 1-3 star reviews on Amazon b/c they bought the album expecting more of what they heard on the radio...
  I bought WHAT SEPARATES ME FROM YOU by A Day To Remember, 'cause I had a bunch of stuff to sell to Hastings (GoHastings on the web) and got almost $13 in store credit and it was only $8.99 NEW.  Maybe years from now that won't seem like such a steal, but right now Amazon can't even beat that and the marketplace sellers don't want to...oh, and it sounds like krap on my TV/DVD-player set-up.  Had to import that to my computer to get any use out of it.
  

epitaph for a spider...

I had a couple books that I bought at Goodwill thinking maybe I could get some store credit or cash from my local media retailer (books movies music & games, both new and used) but my local media store (Hastings aka GoHastings dot com) wouldn't take a couple of 'em and only gave $0.50 total for the other two (I bought four (4)).  So I sold the other two to The Book Rack (used book store) thinking I would need to sell my store credit ($4.50) to someone (hopefully my mom...), but as it turns out I not only found a book that I can resell in itself (maybe even to Hastings! for a dollar at least, maybe $2+) but I had actually been interested in buying it for a couple months...the book, FYI, was called SPIDER by Patrick McGrath.
  There was this other book I tried/started reading like, idk, five years (?) ago, and had to return it to the library and couldn't for the life of me think of who wrote it!!!  Or even the name for that matter...the cover I remembered, and the little I read I remembered, that was all.  THAT book was titled EPITAPH, by James Siegel, who ALSO wrote a book that I ALSO tried to re-sell to Hastings from the Goodwill titled DERAILED, which I was only familiar with b/c it became a well publicized movie.  For some retarded reason, EPITAPH was criticized for being "too slow", which I kinda thought was the selling point...
  So I have two books I can read, and another to buy/read at a later time.  Yay!  that DERAILED book has been collecting dust for at least almost a month...

Oh, and I have no money now.  But i'm Ok.  That gift card my sister sent me for my b-day really paid off(!).

across five aprils...er, january/februarys...

wow.  this isn't that big of a deal to a lot (most?) audio connsuiers (sp??), but with a monthly budget of $674, the future seems rather long; this set-up, if it stays the same price it is now, would be apprx $500.  I do get an annual partial-refund on my rent, but last year it was only like $360.  I guess if I didn't have so many bills and responsibilities, I'd have enough in my monthly check to make up the other $140...but at least I can get a shelf system onnathese days, pretty soon actually...I should be getting (I hope) at least (?) $360 again in about a month and a half, so I can at least get a nice stereo bookshelf system.  Onkyo makes one for $280 - the typical $80+ Amazon competitiveness...(who'd wanna pay the list price if they have to wait for it in the mail??).  And thank goodness all the bullheads of the world haven't hogged up all the electricity so I can at least listen to most any music I want...yeah.  It could be A LOT worse...but it could be so much better...sigh...dreeeam...