Smash.

It's been a pretty good week here in Labville*, despite (or because of) checking curtain patterns that match the sofa and all that other stuff I never thought I'd have to do. I got my prep list from Adventure Canada yesterday, which details all the things I'll need to bring with me on my cruise to Nunavut in September. You know the drill: boots, two pairs of gloves, emergency evacuation insurance, etc. Still, it's nice to know that the date of departure is quickly approaching.

It's also been a good week because I dropped about twenty-four hours into No More Heroes and finally wrapped it up. Wow. The main character, Travis Touchdown, decapitates his foes with a "beam katana", pulverises them with German Suplexes (which he learned in Calgary!), and is frequently on the toilet -- in fact, that's how you save your game. Everything's so relentlessly over the top that you can't possibly take it seriously. Instead, you take it as a video game (just like the characters do!), which is why I've been having a blast with it. It's not for everyone, but it's perfect for anyone who gets a kick out of seeing Uma Thurman mow down eighty-eight gangsters in black-and-white using a dance routine. If No More Heroes was a toy, it'd be a "Star Wars" gun that made pew-pew-pew noises and shot sparks and foam darts. Which is to say, quite perfect indeed.

Also perfect for me is a game on the other side of the spectrum: Super Smash Brothers Brawl. There's no blood in this one: you pummel your enemies until they go flying across the screen, which scores you one (1) point. Repeat. It's a simple game mechanic which is easy to learn, but you can play this game forever. Items appear randomly which have random effects, random characters appear mid-battle and disappear, random things can happen on the stage, and there are 35 different characters, each with their own qualities. No fight goes the same way twice. But the really interesting thing is that the entire game is basically a shrine to video games. The characters are all from different games of their own, so you have Mario and Zelda fighting Pokémon in a giant battle royale, in arenas based on other games. It's imagination gone wild. If Smash Brothers was a toy, it'd be a giant inflatable castle full of plastic balls. Even better than No More Heroes, but for entirely different reasons.

Regardless, I'm going to be camping in the lineup at ten o'clock tomorrow morning to get my copy. My apologies if I'm hard to contact over the next few days. I'll be swimming in an ocean of glee.

Talk to you later.

*Labville was the loosely-connected string of e-mails I used to send out to all my friends, before I decided to try this blog. True, sometimes I forget to update for a week, but Labvilles could be spaced up to five months apart. It all evens out, methinks.