The first, essential step was to restore my leather jacket status, which was done over the Christmas holidays. I now have a black leather jacket, like before. This was a very important step - I literally felt the levels of half-badness rise once I put it on for the first time!
The second and probably biggest step to increased half-bad-boydom was when I acquired my electric guitar, a new Ibanez RG-350 SP1. You can see a picture of it here to the left. I have to say, this is a pretty sweet guitar. It takes me about 15 minutes to get the thing into tune, but once it is in tune it stays in tune quite well even with the Edge III Tremolo on the bridge - and you can bet that I use that sucker. I am the king of the dive-bomb!
You also gotta love the sharktooth inlays on the neck. The neck is nice and fast, the guitar is not too heavy, and very versatile. It has a great sound for all kinds of music.
If you are going to have an electric guitar, you also need an amplifier, so I got one as well. The Line6 Spider III series amps are, in my opinion, great amps for the money. I picked up this little 15 watt practice amp for $100. That's a pretty good price for a brand new amp that offers reverb, tremolo and chorus along with the distortion. Four programmable presets make it real easy to find the right sound for a song quickly.
Sorry, this reads like an ad, but I really love this stuff. I can't really play very well, but I am very good at making lots of really awesome loud noises. Sometimes, all you really need to do is make some loud noises to get in touch with your half bad self.
Another good way to do that is by playing Guitar Hero II, which I bought for my XBox 360. Finding this game was no easy feat. I visited several stores before I was able to find it at a nearby K-Mart. (Good advice for the future - if you can't find something at a mainstream store, try picking it up at K-Mart, where nobody shops unless they absolutely HAVE TO.) This game deludes me into thinking that I really can play the guitar, until I move over to my real guitar and jump back into reality. Guitar Hero II - a good time in a $90 box.
All combining to make me more half bad than I used to be. When you combine this with the job switch, things are definitely looking up!
