I’ve been a bit off the grid lately due to computer and holiday issues, but I think everything is running smoothly now. I have over 5,000 messages in my bloglines account, so I may have to mark them as read and pretend that nothing has happened in the world over the past two weeks.

I did try to get my hands on an Xbox 360, btw. Aside from touching a display model, I did not succeed. Originally, I was resigned to let the launch day come and go, exercise some patience and wait until the fury subsided.

But then I got the itch.

I scooted out the door on launch day at 7 AM and headed to Best Buy, the keeper of my gift cards. I arrived at 7:25 AM to find a line of 60 or so campers in front of the store. I spoke with the last person in line, a mother waiting to get her son’s Christmas present, and she told me that all the units were spoken for. A store rep had just finished collecting names prior to my arrival.

I thanked her for the info, spat on her shoe and ran to my car.

Now, there are three Best Buy stores in my vicinity, so I sped across town and found the same situation at a different location. At the third store, it was even worse. On the way back to town, I stopped at a Target and the local GameStop, and was denied on both accounts, the latter retailer doing so with a knowing sneer.

“Do you have any Xbox 360s left?”

Employee doesn’t look up when responding with the following: “Heh. No.”

“Oh, well I thought someone might have, you know, not picked one up or couldn’t come up with the cash or something.”

“Yeah. No.”

“When do you think you’ll get more in stock?”

Raising his head for a moment, he smiled and said, “Uh, maybe February.”

“FANTASTIC!” I yelled, and did three cartwheels out of the store.

Finally, I stopped by Wal-mart, the official retailer of NASCAR. Of course, they were also depleted of their supply.

I’ve never seen or been part of a Christmas craze. What surprised me the most were the number of adults waiting in line. Not adult gamers like myself, mind you, but adults wanting to pick up a gift for junior.

Even as an avid gamer, I have a hard time picturing myself waiting in line for a game console for Hayden. For a vaccination, sure, but not the latest craze. He’ll just have to wait a bit longer than spoiled little Allen down the street for his Elmo 360 or Tickle Me Xbox.

Last I heard, $399 Xbox 360s were going for $1000 and up on ebay, ensuring that all of the stupid people have theirs first. Waiting in line is one thing, but paying a premium for having it a few weeks early is truly foreign to me. I hope they like it.

I’m back from vacation physically, but my mind is still back in Maui, sitting on the beach and chomping on some shaved ice. I miss the 80 degree days and 70 degree nights, the touch of humidity and the sound of the ocean. While the part of the island on which we stayed was mostly condos, the particular spot we had was perfect for us. The flawless golf course grass guided us directly from our patio to the beach, and I walked Hayden down there every morning as the sun was rising over the Haleakala volcano.

As with any return home from vacation, I’m up to my freshly bronzed pecks in work of one kind or another, so this little update will have to suffice for now. I’m fairly certain the music video is done, but I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Aloha.

Technically, Floating Foam is on vacation this week, taking time out from the making of movies, the writing of stories, the fashioning of Web sites and the writing of blogs. But, here I am, here you are, just the two of us. Me, on the screen. You, looking in.

So last night I had this dream…

I’m listening to the radio in the car, and I hear a story about some renegade hippies who poisoned all the maple syrup in the land with highly concentrated LSD. Remembering the triple grand slam I just ate, complete with no less than one quart of maple syrup, I moved quickly into a panic.

Heidi was with me, had also had the pancakes with maple syrup. But she brushed off my concern, and not just because she’s used to brushing off my paranoia.

“Doooooooooooooode,” she said. “Just CHILL.”

“WTF!” I yelled. “How can I chill with a belly full of maple treason?!”

“Come on, now. Just be cool. We’ll ride this out… together.”

Her words offered little comfort to my burgeoning freak-out. I knew there was only one thing to be done, one solution to this Suduko of a conundrum. I needed to be logical.

“First,” I said. “We need to get some coloring books and crayons. Not those cheap, dollar-store, ghetto crayons either. Crayolas. The big box. Next, we need…”

“Hole up,” Heidi asked. Out of the bottomless pit of a purse she wore, Heidi whipped a giant spiral notebook and pen.

“Okay, crayons, check. Coloring books, check.”

“CRAYOLAS!”

“Sorry. Crayolas, check.”

“Tell me something, Hyde. Is that college or wide ruled paper?”

“Why, college of course.”

“Good. Good. Because this thing… This enterprise… It’s all about CAPACITY. And wide rule will just not do.”

“You think this is my first time?” she asked with a vibrating smile.

“Certainly not, my love. I’m just narrating my own nutrition, arguing my own intelligent design. It’s just important enough for reiteration, s’all.”
“What else do you need?” she asked, her hands wiggling to the same vibration as her smile.

“I suppose you’ve already written down the Hawaiian Punch and masking tape and dominoes, don’t forget the dominoes!”

“Punch, tape, bones. Is that it?”

“Pshaw! Are you serious? We’ve only just begun, my dear. We haven’t even gotten to the heavy items yet. Maybe we should go to Costco. Should we go to Costco?” I looked over at Heidi and she was shaking her head so rapidly that her eyes blurred into one, Cycloptic orb. There was a giant pink tear swelling just under the eye.

“Dammit! We’re too late. This is not acceptable! Not at all!”

Somewhere around this time I woke up in a shiver, the covers wedged between my legs like a Manga love pillow. Heidi and Hayden were sound asleep in the room that we are sharing while on said vacation.

I considered the dream and why the most important function of a near overdose of acid was “planning.” Immediately, I remembered a passage about modern life and death from the preface from The Undertakings by Thomas Lynch.

Then and now we age with the grace (in Cummings’ careful metaphor) of polar bears on rollerskates. Wary of being caught unawares, we planned our parenthood, committed to trial marriages with pre-nuptials, and pre-arranged our parents’ funerals—convinced we could pre-feel the feelings that we have heard attend new life, true love, and death.

Pre-feel. That’s the word on which I focused. Can you pre-plan for everything? Waive away the consequences of your actions by being truly pre-pared?

In this sense, I was attempting to pre-trip.

In case you didn’t know, the Merwin story I’ve been posting bits and pieces of recently is getting its own site and working title, Certainty.

The site is coming along nicely. I’ve got most of the WordPress coding done, so it will be an automated bad boy like Floating Foam. This will allow us to update it from anywhere without any heavy lifting.

The look is dark but extremely clean. I wanted as little clutter as possible on the site for those who will actually read from the screen. I find myself resizing windows in busier ad-heavy sites to focus in on the text I’m trying to read. I really detest sites that place Flash ads within the body of the text I’m trying to read, or use adlinks that display often unrelated content when you mouse over.

Once the site’s complete, we’ll start adding content. The goal is to re-release an edited version of the story on a regular basis. So rather than getting four full pages of text once every week, you’ll see smaller sections two or three times a week. These will be easier to web-digest and hopefully keep more readers reading.

I’ll let you know when everything’s a go.

So I’m planning on buying one of them Xbox 360s at some point, but apparantly not on the release date of November 22. Don’t get me wrong, I am certianly filled with a lusty want for the device, but I’m not in so much of a hurry that I’m going to stand in line at midnight trading Halo stories with 14 year olds or play some rock-ticket lottery in front of a store.

And since I’ve been saving Best Buy gift cards for over a year, I’m going to purchase the Xbox 360 from them even though they have somewhat limited my options. See, Best Buy decided not to allow pre-orders of the console, a move that can only be described as “Wha..?” When GameStop and EB Games and Amazon and Costco and everyone else who’s offering pre-orders is selling out $1000 bundles, why would Best Buy go this route?

In any case, I believe they had the same thought when they decided to offer pre-orders to Rewards Zone customers (that’s Best Buy’s little club to insure you remain a slave to their horrible customer service and lackluster sale prices). Being a servant to the Zone, I received an email letting me know I could pre-order a bundle today at 10:00 AM (central time).

‘Sweet,’ I thought as I flipped through my stash of gift cards.

But when I arrived at bestbuy.com at 9:15 AM (PST), a mere hour and fifteen minutes after the start of the offer, I found a busted site. Now it’s after noon, and the site is still down.

Is this some sort of cruel joke? Bragging rights and a pat on the back says they’re all sold out when the site goes live again.

UPDATE: D’oh! Best Buy dot com is back online and giving me the finger.