Hemlock and a Straw, Please

My bookshelf is populated mainly by volumes I’ve read at least once.  Every now and again I realize that I’m missing some prized volume, either given away or lent permanently; conversely, on rare occasions I find something I’ve never managed to read that has been patiently waiting years for my attention.  Yesterday I discovered that have and have never read Phaedo.  Given the topic of discussion, I’ve made a mental note to return to this volume in the days before my own death, should I be so forewarned.

Lately I’ve been giving myself over to small pleasures.  [Is this behavior philosophical?  Depends upon your school.]  Today’s was the first cool morning of the season, and I relished taking the hot coffee tumbler in my cold hands.  Disgusted at long last by both AM and FM talk, I’ve tuned my car radio to a place it’s never before been, the Jazz station.  [Excepting this announcement I'm keeping that to myself; like sports and television, Jazz grows harder to like the more I hear others gush about it.  (Come think of it, the Internet probably killed TV for me.)]  Tomorrow I plant to visit the zoo for the first time in a long while.  (With any luck, I’ll catch the tortoises at feeding time; watching them sprint for lettuce never gets old.)

I’m leaning against buying the new Super Mario Bros. You can’t go back, and the same money buys me a copy of BattleTech: 25 Years.  If I’m going to spend money on something I won’t have time for, it should at least look impressive on my bookshelf.

No, Wii Cain’t

The Atlantic chimes in on the collapse of Nintendo’s numbers.  I lean toward the theory that Apple and not Sony or Microsoft is to blame.  The caterwauling of self-described “hard-core gamers” is starting to sound a bit like the grumbles from model railroaders that self-assembled plastic trains ruined everything for the scratch-builders to my ears.

Not a Hoax?

A LEGO Rock Band is in the works.  I suppose now’s as good a time as any to admit that I don’t “get” Rock Band/Guitar Hero.  Why use a simulation when an actual electric guitar is so easy to learn to play than any the knuckle-scraping simian can manage it?  (Well, not The Monkees, perhaps.)  They ought at least have picked an instrument that’s hard to play, like the contrabassoon or pipe-organ.  That way I could re-create the scene in The Commitments where they play “Whiter Shade of Pale” in the church.  Fun!

Killing Time, Monsters

At the moment I’m hacking my way through Castlevania 2 (NES).  It’s a bit embarrassing to discover how slow my reflexes are; my younger self would laugh.  I wonder why they stopped making console games that balanced puzzle-solving with fighting.  Perhaps the programmers realized that they were mainly making games for the other half of the Bell Curve and lost interest in all but the technical aspects of design.

One of many disappointing things about Zelda: Twilight Princess was the ease of combat; killing a room full of slavering monsters was more chore than challenge.   I wonder if games like Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 hadn’t been so poorly received whether design might have gone into more fruitful directions; rather than embracing open-ended exploration and new modes of combat, buyers demanded re-treads of the originals (and got them).  Sure it sells well, but it means I have to content myself with WiiFit.

Bigger than…

I’m sure that next week’s release of Oasis Rock Band will sell twice as many copies.

What I Did This Summer

Same thing I did twenty-some years ago: played Kid Icarus and Metroid–the last week of it, at any rate.  I never noticed until now that the Eggplant Wizard was a Golliwogg.  The name alone should have tipped me off.

vNES

You’re not doing anything important this month, right?  Try Virtual NES.

(Cool, I never finished Rush’n Attack.)

Azeroth’s Newspaper of Record

The Times is taking a break from WoW to cover the Warhammer beat.  I can’t think of a joke to go with this that tops the story itself.

Evolution Strikes Back!

Gould's Hopeful Monster

The forces of Evolution struck a significant blow today to Creationism’s rearguard with the release of Spore, a computer game.  (New York Times).