The Royal Family is heading out to Capital Ex tomorrow for the celebration of the Duke Of Ginger’s recent ‘coming of age’. The Duke just turned thirteen… meaning he’s graduated to being a teenager now. It should be an absolute smashing time.
It was about one year ago that I was in the same situation as I am now. Yes, once again, the Royal XBox 360 is dead.
I was one of hundreds of thousands of poor saps who had purchased an XBox 360 that suffered the Red Ring Of Death and, just over a year ago, that console up and died a most inconvenient death. Luckily for me, Microsoft was supporting this failure with a free repair. Rather than repairing this particular console and sending it back to me, I was sent a refurbished console for my troubles.
This year, it’s another failure. Of course, it couldn’t be another RROD which would be covered by Microsoft. This year, I’ve got to deal with a disc drive that won’t read the disc. The bill for this failure is going to be footed completely, 100% by the taxpayers of the NJLE.
I’m sure this comes as a shock for most people as Microsoft always provides quality products and genuinely cares about their customers.
Enter: the XBox 360S, Microsoft’s newest offering to the gaming world. Supposedly, the heat and fan issues have been resolved with this newest console, making it quieter and increasing it’s life. Well, one could hope that it would be longer than a year, anyway.
I’ve been seriously considering going out and buying myself one of these new consoles, transferring my data to it and then sending my old white, matte box off to Microsoft for repair before donating it to the youth of the NJLE. That’s one of my current considerations, anyway.
What’s the other consideration?
The other thing that I’ve pondered is giving Bill Gates and his behemoth software empire a gigantic shove-off and buying a Sony Playstation 3. Some of my favourite titles are available on the PS3 and it’s also got a Blu-Ray player embedded within it. That’s basically putting gaming and HD movies into one package; a package that I don’t have yet. I don’t necessarily want to buy a separate Blu-Ray DVD player. It would be like killing two birds with one stone… or just killing Bill’s lame duck with a Sony slingshot.
I don’t know… I’ve got a few options, I guess. Really, I just want to start playing Modern Warfare 2 again as quickly as possible. That being said, I also don’t want to lose all of the progress I have built thus far on the XBox Live system. So who knows. There’s one thing that is for certain: I’m just pretty sick of funnelling money into the technological money-pit that is known as Microsoft.
Ok, I’ll admit… smoking cigars inside the palace wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I spent all day yesterday with the windows open and the internal circulation working overtime trying to air it out. The cigar smell is quite persistent but I think I’ve got most of the smell out… I’ll probably need to take a bit of a tour of duty with the Febreeze to get the last remnants of odorous resistance that are still lingering.
Bill Clinton Knows His Cigars
Oh, Bill.
I don’t have the same “Presidential” experience with cigars that a guy like Bill Clinton does. That being said, I did enjoy the second cigar I’d smoked which was the one I bought at the nearby 7-11 (there’s some irony in there, I think) as it was a far better smoke that the dried out stick I’d smoked earlier on in the evening. It was a Guantanamera Cristales cigar; a Cuban cigar, no doubt. Apparently this cigar is one geared towards novice smokers like myself. Hence why it’s available at the 7-11. Looking at some reviews online, cigar aficionados don’t think much of this cigar, with the opinion that it’s not going to give a novice smoker much enjoyment out of smoking in general.
The thing was $6.50 CDN and I’ve venture to argue it the other way; that spending any more than that on a cigar for someone who really isn’t going to be able to notice a significant difference anyway is a waste. It would be comparable to spending $100 on a bottle of wine for a first time wine drinker. I guess if it was an incremental increase, it wouldn’t be a big deal but I’m really not into it enough to start paying $25 a stogie.
Back To The Homeland
The remainder of the royal family should be returning tomorrow from their vacation to the west coast. I know they had a good time and my time here alone has been… well, less than noteworthy. I haven’t really done much other than work and drink. But, hey… what’s a guy to do in a time of boredom?
I’ve been trying to spend some time to get everything in order around here and make it presentable for when the rest of the crew arrives tomorrow night. Of course, there’s always more involved than you would originally think. I’ve been having allergy issues and trouble sleeping so I’m thinking that cleaning the fuck out of this place to try and make it a little easier for me to get some rest at night. Once I’m done, only time will tell.
Hopefully, the palace can be spic and span before the end of tomorrow night… as a surprise for the family.
Yeah... JeffLand/ManLand... it's all the same today.
The King is ‘holding the fort’ on his own this week. The rest of the royal family went on a bit of a road trip to the Canadian west coast to visit the Duchess in Vancouver; making this the first re-union since she migrated west from the NJLE.
I’d liked to have been able to go. However, in the past six months, all of those little things that go along with being King necessitated me taking an hour off here, a half a day there and before you know it… I’ve burned through all of my vacation time that I’d earned manning the helm of industry. What can I say? I’ve nickel and dimed myself out of a summer vacation.
Down the hatch...
So what am I to do for the next week? Judging from the picture to the left, I’m going to have a bevy or two. I’m going to relax. I’m going to lounge around in the royal chambers absolutely buck naked. I’m going to save my farts in a jar. You know, the kind of the things that all of the royals do when they are unsupervised.
To be truthful, I’ve got a few things that I’d like to get done around the kingdom over the next couple of days. Exactly what those things are, well… I’m not going to give it up here. In reality, there’s a lot depending on what the weather is going to be like; weather that has been nothing but infinitely sucktastic since the royal fam left yesterday morning.
I guess there is a lot that can go on in the next week in the New JeffLand Empire… I’ll have to post some updates to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
I briefly considered making this song the National Anthem for the New JeffLand Empire.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efojzMwLIK0&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Ok, so I missed marking the auspicious Canadian national holiday, Canada Day, with a post. And given that JeffLand’s roots are so intertwined with Canada’s, it was kind of a “my bad” sort of moment on my part. Soo… Happy Belated Canada Day!
Moving right along, today is the 4th of July; Independence Day in the United States of America.
Soundgarden – 4th Of July
[audio:http://newjefflandempire.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/fireworks1.jpgwp-content/uploads/2010/07/13-4th-Of-July.mp3|titles=Soundgarden – 4th Of July]
Quite the fireworks display!
I can’t help but think of this song every year that Independence Day rolls around. Feel free to click on the above audio player to listen to Soundgarden’s ‘4th Of July’ while reading the remainder of this post. And, yes, I do realize that the song references nuclear war (explaining the picture to the right) but I love how Chris Cornell juxtaposes American patriotism with nuclear warfare and with the name… I can’t avoid posting this.
Anyway, Canadians could really learn a few things from the Americans with regard to how to celebrate their national holiday. One thing that I know about American celebrations is that so many Americans enjoy setting off their own fireworks displays. This is something that doesn’t happen nearly enough in neither Canada nor the New JeffLand Empire. Really, we should be shooting off fireworks so often that one might realize that there’s a fine line between patriotism and pyromania!
I’m really expressing my fondness for explosions here and aligning myself with the philosophy that more explosions=better celebration. So, in honour of our American friends on their day of observance… here is a brilliant fireworks display that won’t send anyone to the hospital or burn off anyone’s hair.
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!