Anyone get anything good?

Santa got me a nice wr and some other kart related things.

Hopefully the fun continues into next year!

One of the things I got for Christmas this morning was a Super Famicom controller. I never realized that the Japanese controller's cord is much shorter than the cord for the American controller! The cord isn't long enough to reach from the SNES to the place where I sit. Luckily they make controller cord extenders, and I ordered one off eBay for under $4.

Apparently they made U.S. controller cords longer because our arrangements are more spread out, since we have so much more space in America. Whereas in Japan, cities and homes alike are arranged more compactly-- most of the bedrooms there are probably like half the size of mine (and mine's pretty small, by American standards). Go to Texas some time, the homes there are absolutely cavernous.  

P.S. I also got Celine Dion's album S'il Suffisait d'Aimer for Christmas. I've had time to listen to the first half so far; while it certainly isn't a bad album (and neither is D'eux), I feel that her English albums are so much better. I can just tell that a lot more work was put into producing the English albums, and they're also larger in scale-- 12 songs each on D'eux and Suffisait versus Falling Into You with 14 songs, Let's Talk About Love with 15 (and clocking in at over 71 minutes), and a whopping 16 on These Are Special Times. The English albums feel much more ambitious while the French ones kinda feel toned down with their shorter running time and middle-of-the-road arrangements.
Mind you, there are a few songs that shine on the French albums, including "Regarde Moi" and "J'irai Où Tu Iras" on D'eux and "Terre" on Suffisait, but the songs are generally more ballads and acoustic soft-rock songs while the English albums cover a wider variety of genres and feature some very ambitious production (witness the 7½ minute opening track "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" on Falling Into You, written and produced by the same guy who brought you Meat Loaf's epic rockers; neither French album has any songs that even reach 5½ minutes, I don't think, while the English albums have several.)

Please do get Céline's French albums especially if you're a diehard fan, but do realize that most of her greatest work is in good ol' English. The sales figures don't lie-- S'il Suffisait d'Aimer barely sold 100,000 copies in America, while Falling Into You and Let's Talk About Love both topped 10 million (Diamond), I believe. While D'eux and Suffisait are the top two best-selling French-language albums of all time, I'm not sure if they outsold Falling and Let's Talk even in France.