Farmville: The Communist Conspiracy

As you may know, I've begun playing Farmville. After several years of deleting, and then finally blocking all Farmville-related notifications to my Facebook account, I learned that my friend Eric was a champion cyberfarmer, and I decided to try my plow at it, so to speak.

However, after playing this game for a few days, I've come to the conclusion that Farmville is really just another Obamaesque attempt to indoctrinate America's children with the values of red Communism. It began with that unprecedented and never-before-heard-of-speech to America's school children, and now it has spilled over into Facebook with the creation of Farmville.

How do I know that's what's going on here? Well, try your hand at the game, and you'll see right away.

For starters, as soon as you become a "farmer" in Farmville, you're immediately given a large amount of gold coins to spend buying the necessary seeds and tools to cultivate your crops and produce a harvest. You don't get to choose the amount of coins you're given--it's assigned. By the shadow government of Farmville. COMMUNIST.

Then you're given you're farm. It's the same for everyone. You get a square 10x10 inches long. And that's it. You can "earn" your way into a bigger farm. But even then, it will always be a square. And nothing else. COMMUNIST.

Once you begin farming, you're only allowed to choose certain crops to plan on your farm. These crops are selected based on your "level" in the game. So, if you're a level one farmer, you can grow strawberries, and that's pretty much it. Why? Because that's what the government of Farmville says. Never mind if all you want to do is grow potatoes or corn. No. Until you reach the required level, Farmville says you'll grow what they want you to, or you just won't play. COMMUNIST.

And when it's time to sell your crops, you're in luck. There's ALWAYS a market for whatever you're selling--and it's ALWAYS worth the same amount. So, if you and I are both selling strawberries (because at level one, that's all we can handle), and your strawberries are rotting and mine aren't, Farmville says they're all worth the same amount. Sounds to me like...COMMUNISM.

Oh, and look at the "free" gifts that you can "give" your neighboring comrades, I mean, farmers. There's a red bale of straw, a red flag, a pile of red leaves, a red Maple tree, a red crystal ball...get the hint? It's all red. JUST LIKE THE COMMIES. (Who has ever heard of red straw, anyway?).

And, if that's not enough, you can only move up in this game if you do enough to "help" your neighbors. You can rake leaves, pull weeds, chase away foxes, crows and groundhogs, or send them gifts. But you have to do something to help them out. Because life is better on the farm when we work together, right? Wrong. Communist.

But maybe we shouldn't be so surprised. Animal Farm, after all, was written about life on a farm.

So I say let's block those Farmville applications! Keep our children safe! Protect America! FUCK YEA!

Happy No More Pete Day!

Happy No More Pete Day!

So, as you might know, I've been catsitting for Pete (that's my sister Meredith's cat). It's been TERRIBLE. No, that's an understatement. MISERABLE. DISASTROUS. DANGEROUS. FRUSTRATING. (You can insert your own tragic adjective here). In a word, though, it was a nightmare.

The plan was for Pete to stay in the cat hotel. But, that's $40 a night. $40 a night, by the way, is the same price as a night at the Motel 6. Spending that much to house a cat is insane. (5x$40=$200). As I'm told, though, at the cat hotel, they will send Pete a cracker with tuna on top. Nice.

At any rate, I volunteered to keep Pete, since I thought spending $200 for a cat hotel was a bit ridiculous. Well, after spending five nights with the mountain lion that looks like a housecat, I see why they charge so much.

I picked Pete up from my parent's house (where Meredith was staying) on Tuesday night. It is a three or four minute drive (one exit down the interstate) between my house and my parent's house. In those four minutes, Pete peed all over himself. You see, Meredith says he gets "stressed out" and "confused" and this is his way of dealing with it. Whatever. It's just gross.

So we get to my house, and I set up his litter box and food and water. Pee'd-on Pete promptly gives himself a bath and then goes the guest bedroom to sleep off his stress. The rest of the night, he would hiss at me overtime I walked in the room. Since the laundry room is a closet in the guest room and I was doing laundry that day, it was difficult to get things done.

That night, while I was asleep, just to show me who was in charge, Pete threw up on my rug.

The next few days, Pete gradually warmed up to me. And when I say gradually warmed up to me, what I mean of course, is that he stopped lunging at me every time I walked in the room. Instead, he would hiss and spit at me only if I tried to touch him. He even started to sleep on my bed--as long as I wasn't there.

On Wednesday night, Meredith and Mary Elizabeth came over to visit Pete. He was in a horrible mood, even towards Meredith. He was scratching and yowling and generally being lion-like. Meredith decided that his litter box was too full, and that was why he was acting so ugly. Sure enough, he had peed all over the floor next to it, Once we changed it and cleaned up, Pete peed in the litter box. Twice. And then he was nice again.

Meredith informed me that Pete wasn't used to going to so long without changing his litter (I guess two days is a long time?). So on Saturday afternoon, I changed Pete's litter again. And I guess there wasn't enough in the box, because he refused to use it.

I called Meredith, who was asleep, and asked her what I should do. She told me I was "anidiot" and should be able to catsit without all the complications. Ah, but see, Pete has to have a certain kind of litter. The kind that comes in a tub with handles. The kind that comes in a bag will make him sick. Like I'm supposed to know that.

Meredith brings more of the right kind of litter over, calling me "anidiot" the whole time. We change his litter (he had peed on the floor again).

So this morning, Meredith shows up at 7:00am to give Pete his sedative so he will sleep on the way home. She lives, and Pete throws up. And then he pees all over my kitchen again.

But today, at 8:30am, Meredith picked him up for their journey back to Florida. AND I AM DONE WITH PETE!

It's Christmas Time.

We decorated the Christmas tree at my parent's house today. This is the first year that we've ever had an artificial tree. My mom was tired of having pine needles all over the house, and EVERY year, and I mean EVERY year, our tree has fallen over, and knocked ornaments and needles all over the house.

This year, though, the hope is that won't happen.

Here's my favorite ornament from our tree. Can you guess why?

It's not a very clear picture, but that's Cracker Barrel. Next to Bojangle's, there's no better place in the world to eat.

SHUT UP, FARMVILLE!

Now that I've started playing Farmville (and doing quite well--in two days I have an incredible harvest of artichokes coming in), my computer makes this really obnoxious noises. Every few minutes, a pig oinks, a cow moos or a duck quacks.

This needs to stop, Farmville.

It's driving Pete the Cat crazy.

THE DEVIN'S ADVOCATE: WHY BREAKING DAWN MUST BE MADE INTO A MOVIE

With New Moon likely to make yet another metric fuckload of money this weekend we need to find the bright side to the entire Twilight mania. There must be something good that comes from this awful Mormon fantasy that seems to have invaded our culture on every front. That something is the eventual movie version of Breaking Dawn.

Even though New Moon has made a bazillion dollars and even though the third Twilight book, Eclipse, is already filming, Summit has declined to announce the fourth and final Twilight book as a movie. There's a good reason for this: Breaking Dawn is completely fucking insane, and it is probably totally unfilmable. But if they do film it... man, we are in for a treat.

Breaking Dawn opens with Bella Swan, the lacteal heroine of the series, finally getting married to Edward Cullen, the mopey vampire hero. They go off to honeymoon on Isle Esme, a Brazilian island the Cullen clan owns (this is already ridiculous beyond belief. Imagine a vampire going snorkeling; it basically happens in this book), and Edward is afraid to fuck his new bride. The reason: he's super strong and she's just a human - Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex type of situation here. But Bella wears him down and Edward throws it in her - and knocks her the fuck out, leaving her badly bruised.

Read the rest of this HYSTERICAL article here.

Black Friday.

Last night, my family and I went to Concord Mills Mall. It opened at midnight. About 11:00, we drove over from our house. We stopped at Steak-N-Shake along the way (I had a milkshake and a cheeseburger; this is why I'm skinny), and then we found a place to park.

Even at 11:30, we were only able to find a place on the very last row of spaces. It was that slammed. By midnight, there was no more parking, anywhere. And, the exit ramp on I-85 for the mall was clogged with traffic. It was INSANE.

Inside, there were more people than I've ever seen there before. You could hardly move between stores because of all the people!

But, I did get a shirt, thanks to my mom. I also picked out some underwear for my stocking this year. That's exciting, too.

We finally left about 1:30, and as we were leaving, THREE cars began to battle over our space. Do you know what's hard to maneuver around? Three cars trying to get into one parking space at the mall.

Bowling.

Last Monday, since it was the last day of classes, I went out with a few of my friends from school. We took the lite rail to Tavern on the Tracks for dinner, and then we went over to Strike City at the Epicenter to bowl and hang out.

It was a lot of fun, and I did surprisingly well.

We did not, by the way, have bumpers on our lanes. I was just that good.

Except that immediately after I sent this text to Chris, I began to suck. Badly. As in, didn't knock over anymore pins the rest of that game suck. Sigh.