Far Beyond Driven..

...to page 348 on SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY by Elliot Perlman; now on "part 5" out of 7.  Just read 22 pages of it today.  Hadn't picked up in gosh I don't know how long...probably a month?  At least...
Internet's been f'ing up since yesterday, per my personal observations.  My mom was experiencing problems the day before then as well as yesterday.  Hmm...
  Beautiful weather.  I took a walk to Hastings and found they have GEORGE WASHINGTON after all.  I guess it was rented out to someone else last time I looked for it.  I didn't care much for it.  Kinda meandering.  I figured I'd get THE JOY LUCK CLUB watched, I've checked it out from the library like 5 times...now I'm done with it - FIN-A-LLLLY!!!  I can return it w/ no late fees and no nagging in my conscience.  I'll return GEORGE WASHINGTON later today and get $0.50 store credit.  The reason I walked to Hastings was I had a Barnes & Noble $10 Gift Card that I "won" at MyPoints primarily for clicking on paid emails and taking/attempting to take surveys.  It took over a year to acquire enough points to get a gift card, but it finally happened.  I sold the B/N GC to a gift card exchange website called ABC Gift Cards for an $8.19 Amazon gift card b/c I don't trust BN and unless you have to have your merchandise in brandspankin'new condition, your dollar goes farther at Amazon; they have a bigger variety of offers on used merchandise and the prices are better.  There's a boatload of CDs and DVDs you can find for $0.01 + $3.99 S&H.  B&N's typical minimum used price is $1.99 + $2.99 S&H.  So anyway; with that $8.19 Amazon e-code, I had bought ECHOES: THE BEST OF PINK FLOYD for $5.96 w/ S&H.  I had bought it a month or so before then, b/c I had checked it out from the library several times and by the time it arrived in the mail I started noticing how pointless the whole compilation was; half of disc 1 are interludes and the songs themselves are droning and repetitive, especially the title track.  The classic-rock radio staple "Money" is typical anti-capitalist b.s., and there are several famous Pink Floyd cuts absent, mainly "Have A Cigar" and "The Dogs Of War".  I can't remember for sure if "Welcome To The Machine" was present or not...I don't think it was...but anyway...I had decided to sell it before it arrived and Hastings gave me $7+ for it.  So, this past week, I wasn't feeling any throbbing desire to own anything, but I knew I was at least going to want to rent THE CONJURING when it comes out October 22nd, and I figured I could get AT LEAST $4 cash if I sold Hastings another copy of ECHOES: TBSo'PinkFloyd, and if I chose to get store credit, they'd give me $5+.  So I bought it again, this time for $5.96, as I said - cheaper than the last copy I had bought - and sold it for the same amount they gave me last time (wowow!!).  Being myself in a biggyish ("midsize") town with the typical music offerings you'd expect people who don't know the world beyond radio to be fed, I couldn't find anything worth buying that I haven't already owned at least twice, except for things that were beyond the $7.49 mark..  Beats the helk out of me why the anthemic emo of Last Winter is so obscure.  But it is.  So Hastings doesn't have 'em.  They have the latest Joy Division and The Smiths best-of collections, but nothing else by those bands.  So, I was left with nothing to use my store credit on except the rental of GEORGE WASHINGTON.  So I wasted $1.79 on a Jones brand green apple - flavored soda.  I still have $5.17 or something like that left.  I'll have $1.25 left after I rent THE CONJURING, provided I don't get stupid and buy some dumb CD before THE CONJURING comes out over a month from now.

  My sister bought me a Payless gift card after I discovered they are one of the few if not the only chain stores with a decent selection of wide-width shoes w/ halfway decent price tags.  The last pair of $12 shoes I bought at WalMart lasted me apprx 5 months.  These L.A. Gear shoes I have were bought at Nearly Perfect Shoes, a shoe store for functional shoes that don't meet manufacturer standards.  They cost almost $30 w/ tax and are already half way broken down.  They were acquired in mid-late November.  They'd lasted I'd say about 6 months before starting the break down process, which they are still going through.  The cool thing about the Payless gift card is it's a $40 value, but she bought it at ABC Gift Cards, so it only cost'd her $31.60.  If it gets here by Sunday (the end of Saturday, whatever), I can apply it to my newly-created PayLess.com account and utilize a 20% coupon which takes two pairs of Champion shoes (during their BOGO 1/2off sale) and reduces their cost by a whopping $14.  I think both pairs of the Champion shoes should last about a year, maybe 1.5 years if I wear them until they can't be worn any longer, based on what I've read from customers who use them frequently.  But with the coupon and the GC discount, that means what once was a $25 pair of shoes (give or take a couple dollars...) becomes a $17 pair of shoes, which when compared to the ever-shrinking usability of the shoes I'd been been getting at WalMart, means I'm at least breaking even.

I had looked for PRIMER (indie styled sci-fi) at Hastings, Amazon doesn't even have a brand new copy of it.  Used ones last I checked about a week ago were $17++.  So someone probably took it from Hastings and sold it.  Idk...anyway; I managed to find a good time in the middle of the night while awake to watch it on Netflix via my mother's Wii.  It wasn't the greatness everyone had proclaimed it to be.  I tried watching UPSTREAM COLOR, too, and while more enjoyable and intelligible, still not together enough to keep my attention.  I found some other thing I'd been wanting to see on NetFlix, added it to my Q, 'cause it was so out of line with what I was looking for at that moment; I guess it was a horror film or something, idk...but I wasn't in the mood for it.  So I figured I'd come back for it sometime...not much telling when though.  I like that show NEW GIRL, Zooey is absolutely gorgeous and the show is mostly about her, and the guyz are funny too.  I don't really like the idea of stopping everything for a freakin' TV show.  The only alternative I have though is to buy season one for $22.99 @ Amazon.  I don't think I can even afford that though, not in October, I mean (definitely not right now).  Maybe in November...if I get some birthday $.  I think I need to buy a new DVD player, the one I have is starting to fall apart.  I listed it on Amazon, it's very old, still working, but when you can hear its wheels turning, that's not a good sign.  It makes noises while loading discs that are in less than perfect condition, the more horrid the condition of the disc is, the more noise it makes.  And then it fails to playback the disc in its entirety without error if it's scratched just so...plus the thing is almost 10 years old.  It's like a ticking time bomb...