My videogame review of the locally flavored Stubbs the Zombie is posted over at yonder austin360.com site.

Also, I'm talking smack about Dancing with the Stars over on Digital Savant.

Blogger just gave me an awesome idea. Next time I'm feeling lazy at work, I'm going to set up an automatic e-mail that responds, "Omar is planning a two-hour outage from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. CST today. This is to complete some personal maintenance I've been performing over the last several weeks."

Blogger is having a "Scheduled outage" at 5:30 p.m., so I'm sort of trying to beat the clock here.

For the first time in many years, I was able to take a real vacation around Christmas.

I didn't write or pay attention to the Web or really watch any TV (there wasn't much on) for most of that week. Instead, we drove down to South Texas and I spent a lot of time reading and just hanging out with family. Whenever we go to the Valley, time always seems to slow down and that week was no exception.

It was also the first time in a long while that I didn't work my usual long Tuesday shift and that threw my whole week into an unstructured free fall of bliss. We watched March of the Penguins which should have been subtitled, "Morgan Freeman finds 100 different ways to say how fucking cold it is in Antarctica" and Crash which should have been called, "White people really don't get brown people, do they? Especially not the ones who make movies."

I read Wendy's book, which I quite enjoyed. She inspired me.

I read Still Holding by Bruce Wagner which was totally not worth it.

We went to Mexico to hang out with some of Rebecca's family, who were travling across with us, and to bring back some liquor bottles. We ate at a restaurant in Nuevo Progresso that's on the top floor of a strange shopping complex. It's like one giant ballroom with people coming in and out and live music playing. We had weak margaritas and just had a lot of fun joking around. Her family has as many cut-ups and jokesters as mine does and they're a fun bunch to hang around. The night before, there was a karaoke party and holiday feast. Whenever her side of the family parties, there always seem to be fireworks involved, too.

Everywhere we went in Nuevo Progresso, people were selling knockoff UT Longhorns hats and T-shirts. Also popular? Anything reggaeton. Four CDs for $20.

In Mexico, we were standing in line to walk back across the bridge when we saw this very old woman just dancing by herself in a little courtyard area. She shimmied and mosies and two-stepped all by herself. The underage partiers yelled and hooted in encouragement and every time it looked like she was going to sit down, a new song would play on the restaurant's loudspeaker and she'd go right back to shaking her stuff.

We had a very quiet New Year's Eve. We didn't really want to drive anywhere this year, so that kept our options pretty limited. We got it into our head that it would be very wild and fun to go a party at the New Braunfels Civic Center. On the marquee we drove past, it said they were having a "Formal Semi Big Band" performance. We didn't know if that meant that the band was semi-big or that it was a transposed indication of semi-formal wear.

We swung by there that night and Rebecca was greeted with suspicion by the security guard, as if we were there to rip off a bunch of old people or bring our crazy rock 'n roll to the affair. It turned out to be formal after all: people were wearing tuxedos and ball gowns. The music was indeed a form of big band and when the guard told Rebecca that she was too young to be at this shindig, we got the hint and went home. Never forget: old people do not want you to party. They want to dry hump and snort all the coke themselves.

At home, Dick Clark made us sad (damn you, old people! What do you want from us!?) and then that was that. We ushered in a new year in 75 degree heat and wished it was last year when we went to a wedding and the Rose Bowl, making it our Best New Year's Ever.

There's been a weird electricity in the air for me since the new year began. I always feel this hum in my head when something new is about to happen. This hum usually precedes the start of new site or some sort of fun project that's set to begin. Maybe it's nothing, just more busywork, but after suffering the flu recently and going through a year where I felt a bit less forward momentum than usual, I guess it's my brain and body just saying they're ready for whatever.

I think I'm ready for whatever.

I hope it's something good.

The Space Monkeys! are back with a new strip to recognize Christmas. In January.

What?

The New York Times attempts high Hollywood comedy. This is what it sounds like, though: "Thud!"

Your house gets bought by Reese from Malcolm in the Middle. That's some rough stuff, right there.

Three other quick things. I got a satellite radio, which seriously, folks, kicks much ass. I wrote a bit about it over at Digital Savant.

Also, we're posting up a storm at Videogamey, so check that out.

Glark started up a word-association site called Who In The What Now? that's a lot of fun. Go there every day.

I swear I would have told you about it if I hadn't been so sick last week, but the Latino Comedy Project did a show in South Texas on Saturday (two shows, in fact), which were great except that pretty much every one of us was sick and Karinna was losing her voice as the show went on, so that by the end, she was all Smeagol and shit.

Not as many family members showed up as I expected, but it was still a pretty packed house for both shows. As Mical said, it was a good weekend to eat everything in taco form and except for the exhaustion of driving there and back, it was a pretty good time.

The local paper did a story about it and they forgot to interview anyone about it except me.

Lucky for them I'm very quotable.

Yes, there will definitely be a Best 'o 2005 Terribly Happy mix CD extravaganza. It's just taking a little longer than I expected even though I've been thinking about it since last year.

I'm going to work on it this weekend and hopefully have something to post on it by Monday. The hardest part is not producing the thing, it's deciding what to put on it and unlike last year I have way more songs than I can use this time. So I'll be narrowing my choices down and trying to get a good selection of stuff you hopefully haven't already heard to death.

Get your $1s ready!

I wanted to explain why I haven't written anything here in quite a long while except to pop in and say, "Go to this link over here" or "Hey, what an interesting ad there is there on the right."

And confronting that has forced me to have to admit something.

I forgot how.

I forgot how to write.

I'm not kidding. I forgot what it was I was supposed to be doing around here and when I tried to jog my memory by giving it a running start ("Okay, no sweat, I'll just blog about... uh... the... thing." or "All right, brain, it's time to blog about that crazy... that... thing that happened when... uh... oh, FUCK!"), nothing seemed to work. I lost that blogging feeling.

I took a week-and-a-half vacation from work, which took me out of the rhythm of staring at a computer screen and sneaking in entries here and there.

Then I came back to work and had to promply duck out after only a few hours because I contracted Awful Flu. Awful Flu is just like regular flu except it's when you haven't had the flu in so long that you convince yourself that it's Captain Trips-level flu and that you will die with achy joints and a throat full of yellow stuff. You think to yourself, "This is ... just... awful! How do sickly people put up with this all the time?"

Then you feel bad for always thinking people with the flu should just suck it up and take some Theremin or Jiggaflu, or whatever that medicine is that's supposed to knock that shit right out.

Then you conk out in a blackened haze.

I awoke three days later, no clearer on how this blogging/writing thing is supposed to work than before the illness hit.

But it was sort of nice, too, not thinking about writing or being online or having Things to Say, which never really stopped me before in the writing department. I felt like this online outsider, just not plugged in any more and disconnected from my own voice.

It was scary, but also freeing. No more words. No more thoughts to share. No need to put the words that might come to mind out there.

This period lasted just long enough for me to miss it. And to really try hard to give it another go.

And then, here I am writing and it looks like I've remembered.

But you have to believe that I really am embarrassed about this whole thing.