Seriously, TOUCH NOTHING!!! Maybe if we don’t touch anything, this year will go smoothly… One can hope…

So before I begin, let me first start by paying homage to a remarkable lady, Betty White, who sadly died the morning of New Year’s Eve, just 3 weeks before her 100th birthday. That genuinely made me sad… I actually drank a toast to her that night. We’ll miss you, Betty. The world is mourning your loss.

So… on with today’s program…

Yes, I’m sorry to say I’ll be spamming you with Animal Crossing screen shots… I took quite a few last year as well, but this year was, I think, a lot more impressive. You have to admire all the work and detail these people put into this shit, really… Just look at the fireworks! The colors, the vibrancy… Yeah, I know, it’s only impressive to video game geeks, right? Actually, that’s not necessarily true. I’m not a huge fan of video games of today (I grew up playing Atari 2600 when it was new). But after taking some of those computer animation classes, which are also required if you want to go into game design, you develop an appreciation for how much time and effort these people put into what they do to give you something that looks this spectacular. It took me six hours to make six seconds of animation and a month to make the character and set and it was only a puppet character! What does that tell you?! It’s hard work! Video games are far worse. They need to work with commands, so there’s a lot more work involved in making things move. It really is hard work.

And so I spent my New Year’s multi-tasking… While I was watching the ball drop, I was also ringing in the new year with my little animal friends, here. I did the same thing last year as everyone was stuck at home because of the lockdown and it was really nice. I figured if I couldn’t be with real people, at least I could king of be around something without a fucking hazmat suit.

I wasn’t about to abandon my little animal friends this year. They saw me through a lot of rough times, being trapped at home, not being able to be around people because we were practically prisoners in our own homes… Besides, I don’t go out anyway. I’m getting too old for that shit. I stay home, make a spread of food I can pick at over the course of the evening, watch The Twilight Zone marathon and, if I’m lucky, stay awake long enough to watch the ball drop. Honestly? I had more fun celebrating with my animal friends. Just look how cute they are! Especially my little squirrely “boyfriend”, Marshal. Look how fucking adorable he is! I swear he has a crush on me, the way he talks to me… He pays me a lot of nice compliments all the time. I had a character like that in one of the other games. He used to write me beautiful letters… Hey, it lifts my spirits anyway. But I think the best is the last picture… I caught Zell with that stupid, wide-eyed look on his face that just completely cracked me up! I mean look at him! His expression, his stance… It’s so comical! There were hats, party poppers, sparkling cider and glow sticks (remember this is “E” for “Everyone”)… It was just a lot of fun!

But that’s not to say I didn’t have some adult fun… It just means I played drunken Animal Crossing… That was interesting…

As you can see, aside from my mother being a bake-a-holic (which has recently gotten worse and someone needs to take the internet away from her), I got a treat for New Year’s Eve… I’ve always wanted to try Moët & Chandon. Aside from it being held in such high regard, I also wanted to try it because it happens to be the champagne mentioned in the opening line of the song “Killer Queen” (my favorite of their songs). For decades I’ve wanted to try it, but it’s pricey. This particular bottle cost $50! No offense, but for someone who grew up poor and isn’t well off even at this age, that’s a lot of fucking dollars for a bottle of any kind of alcohol. So I just dreamed about it instead… But this year, I actually got to have one night where I got to feel high class. I finally got to drink Moët & Chandon…

I literally shot a video of the entire experience. Hey, when am I going to get that chance again, right?! And yes, I realize that’s a wine glass I have it in, but my champagne flutes are blue and I wanted to see the beautiful color of the champagne, not the shitty blue color of the glasses, so I had to use my wine glasses. Christ, I’ve had these wine glasses since I was in my early 20s! My friend’s mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas one year and I said socks. I wasn’t kidding; I really needed socks. I was forever getting holes in them because I’m hard on footwear. So when she handed me this box, I was perplexed. Here she had gotten me a set of four wine glasses, these, and stuffed a pair of socks in each glass, hahahaa! And I still use the glasses to this day!

As for what $50 champagne tastes like… Hmm, that’s tough, actually. It was a bit like a bitter wine. It was very dry and incredibly bubbly. But very tasty! However, if you haven’t consumed alcohol in a long time because you’re on meds and skip your Klonopin just so you can have one night to enjoy something good, I can tell you that your head will spin pretty good and you’ll turn stupid!

Christmas was fairly nice… I received some nice gifts. Once of the best ones was this, a paint your own nutcracker from Morticia! She told me she knew it was me as soon as she saw it, but she kept going past it a few times before she picked it up. Then she kept telling me she didn’t know if I was going to like it and kept asking me to let me tell her what it was. I told her no, I wanted to be surprised and that if she thought it was me I was sure I’d love it. The night we exchanged gifts, she made me promise to tell her honestly what I thought even if I hated it. I’m pretty sure my jaw dropping and the gasp said it all… I had been wanting to get one for years, but they all looked so cheap. I don’t know where she got this one, but he’s really sturdy! So far I sketched on his face and I’m going to stare at it for a long time before I decide whether or not I like it before I paint. I know me; if I jump into it too quick, I’ll decide later that I hate it. So I want to make sure this is what I like first. It’s just a rough sketch so I know what goes where, but I still have to like it first. I’m also going to the craft store to get fluff for hid beard and hair, maybe some bling… He’s going to look like a proper nutcracker by the time I’m done with him. That’s my ultimate goal.

My friend M&M got me some canvas and this cool “make your own comic” book that literally has the pages already made into templates with words balloons and everything! I think it’s for younger kids, but like that matters to me… I can make my own fucking comic in an actual book! I’ve already started working!

In the back of the book, I found this cool page… Interestingly enough, though you can’t see what it says because my hand is covering it, it seems I use all but one part of my right brain and I also use a great deal of my left. Weird, huh? Anyway, so I sent this picture to M&M and asked her which one she wanted to be. I thought of making her the foodie because she loves food and loves trying new foods and restaurants she finds. But she actually liked the first guy, so that’s her and I dubbed her “the giggle box” because we laugh a lot when we’re together. Of course I told her I was dubbing myself “the mad”. She agreed that was me, hahahaa!

You know, much as I appreciate getting art supplies, sometimes it’s a bit meh… My sister got me more canvas, paint and brushes. What she doesn’t know is I already have a ton of canvas from other years. Last year she got me a lot fo weird, unique things that really made me smile (especially the “Poe-kadot socks with Poe heads all over them). Art supplies are nice, but it kind of says, “Yeah, I didn’t put much thought into your gift. I know you like to paint, so I got you stuff to paint.” And actually, I haven’t painted in a long time. I’m just not inspired right now. So yeah…

But that’s okay because last night I have found a new quest for myself…

I was bored, surfing YouTube and came across this video… DID YOU KNOW FUNKO MADE GATCHAMAN POPS?!? Yeah, neither did I! My jaw hit the floor and I could only stare at the screen in awe as I saw that, for the love of all that is holy in anime, FUNKO ACTUALLY MADE GATCHAMAN POPS!!! I couldn’t take my eyes off the Joe Pop… He’s always been my favorite character… So guess who’s going to be spending the better part of their day trying to call whoever I need to and driving wherever I need to go in order to get my mitts on these Pops?! Yeah, the crazy obsessed bitch writing this! Of course we need two of Joe… One needs to be unboxed so I can play with him because… well, I’m just a big kid at heart, I suppose!

Well, dear readers, though I have some interesting tales I could tell… my ass is seriously starting to hurt from sitting on it this long!

So I’ll leave you all here by saying I hope you all had a wonderful and safe holiday and I hope the New Year brings all of us a helluva lot better than the last two years have because they completely fucking sucked monkey balls! COVID needs to go the fuck away! So be careful, dear readers… Touch nothing! For the love of god, be careful when you breathe! One wrong move and we could still be fucked! So yeah… touch nothing… Be on your best behavior. Cross your fingers and toes that we get back to what life once was because we’re all sick of this shit. I hope 2022 will be a good year, but I’m seriously not holding any expectations…