My Meebas

Keith has been asking for a My Meebas for the past few weeks. Well, he's been asking for a lot of things over the past few weeks; Moon Sand, Bendaroos, that remote controlled Dinosaur, anything hot wheels, you get the idea. Gotta love endless advertising during Spongebob.

He's had a cold for the past few days, and I was trying to keep him indoors to recuperate. Of course he was bored out of his mind and making me crazy, so I decided to get him one. I figured it would keep him busy while I got my weekly cleaning and cooking done. We dropped off some stuff for work and headed out to Target for a My Meebas.

Now, I know My Meebas is directed at Girls. I'm fully aware of this, but I had no problem getting my kid a "girly" toy. He picked out a Purple Tube, and started playing right away. The premise is that if you "love" and "Nurture" the ameoba enough, it will "evolve" and grow. Grow it enough, and the Tube opens up to reveal that the ameoba is "real" and you get a stuffed critter. Okay, fine. It's a virtual pet with a definative end. I kind of liked this idea.

However, the "Meeba's" can't die. Remember the virtual pets; you HAD to feed them and play with them, else they would electronically perish and you would have to start over. The idea of the game was to make them live as long as possible. "My Meebas" don't die. There is "food" in the game, but it's not required. When you play a game to earn "hearts" required for evolution, and you fail the game, you don't lose any of your existing hearts. Things go on as normal. You can't Devolve.

I was kind of annoyed by this. It wasn't a challenge. Is this the kind of shit being peddled to girls? Weird pseudo sciencey crap, sure. But weird pseudo sciencey crap coupled with non-challenging warm-fuzzy pseudo games? Thank god I have a boy.

And of course, I was the one who got the critter to Evolve to the point where we could get the stuffed critter out of the tube. When I hit the final level, the tube didn't "pop open" as promised, so our dramatic moment of truth was devolved into me prying it open with a kitchen knife and Keith asking, "mommy, why didn't you save the destructions?"

"Well, Keith, since I was the one who played with it the most, don't you think we should share Meeba?"
Keith thinks about this for a moment. "Yeah, we can share."
"Can I take Meeba to work with me?"
He thinks harder about this one. "Only on Mondays."

So, Meeba is here with me. He wants another one. A pink one. Go figure. I'm tempted to start stitching my own Meebas to save myself $15.00 a pop and three hours of pointless gameage.

I did my Chicken Trick this weekend, so I have roast chicken in the fridge and about a gallon of stock to use for Thanksgiving. I can't believe that it's next week! FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!

This weekend I met Anne and one of her friends out at Cesar's for a big margarita, and we discussed the staff cuts at several lighting companies. I said that the oversaturated Chicago market was going to be competing for a smaller pool of business, and that I was anxious to see who made it through to the next economic upswing. Anne said she might not wait and move to Vegas. *sigh*

January will be tough.

Snow flurries all week this week, perfect nights for popcorn and hot chocolate. Whoot!