It ties the room together.

Many men wince slightly at the mention of interior decorating, but why is that? For me, it's because it's an unfamiliar rulebook. I don't want the wrong secondary colour accenting my cabinets, but I don't have enough of a colour vocabulary to know the difference between "spiced pumpkin" and "autumn flight". Hesitant to make the wrong choice, I instead stick with the primary colours.

That's exactly why I was dreading the move so much -- new carpets, new curtains, new couch, new cabinets. How was I going to fit my choices into the framework?

The answer? Find a vocabulary you understand. I picked out some curtains that didn't look too bad, and the salesperson complimented its rustic charm.

Rustic? I can do rustic.

And just like that, things fell together. That couch there, with the fish and canoe pattern? That's rustic. I'll take it. The end table, the deck chairs? Wood is rustic -- give me wood. The wall decorations? Let's put some aboriginal carvings up there. That's not just rustic, that's rusterrific.

It was like that for pretty much the entire weekend. Finally, though, I hit a problem: the entertainment stand. The electronics were all sleek and black. The only place the TV would fit was above the fireplace. Rustic, yes, but the fireplace was also white, as was the moulding around it. The problem, then, was that everything was spiralling towards sleek, not rustic. I'd already stained a pine shelving unit to hold everything, but the contrast was still off. It was just too much black... but then, I put my Wii next to the DVD player, and something clicked. It wasn't enough, though. I still needed something else. Something white... something electronic... something rustic. Something charming both despite and because of its years, something still practical, if no longer ideal...

And then it hit me: I still had my old Dreamcast.

And so, I learned that Interior decorating's actually a breeze -- you just need to have the right vocabulary.

That, and a decent games library. If you know anyone willing to sell their copy of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, send them my way, would you?

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.

About the dry spell...

It seems like my updates have gotten a bit more sporadic lately. At least, I feel like I should be updating more often than I normally do. Sorry about that.

Please, feel free to use any excuse besides "Denton bought the new Pokémon game last week", and apply it as you see necessary.

Ow.

Apparently, I went with the "weep softly" option.

The funny thing about the human body is that the more it heals, the worse it looks. Right now the injury looks and feels awful, but I choose to focus on the promise of progression. Actually, it's not that bad -- and besides, if I complain too much (i.e., at all), it's inevitable that someone will pop up and profess that since I've never lost 10% of my skin in a gas fire, I don't know what pain really is.

Sorry. Bedrest is making me bitter.

On the bright side, I've had an excuse to stay on the couch all weekend and play Hotel Dusk Room 215. The picture doesn't lie: it honestly is a hard-boiled noir mystery story dressed up like A-Ha's video for "Take On Me". Sadly enough, that video is still one of the top ten applications of comics in film... where was I? Ah, yes. The perfect past-time for a recuperative weekend.

I did make one foray out into the world yesterday, though: I picked up some brand-new boots and bindings for my snowboard. They even lace automatically! Just pull a single string, then clip it to the side of your boot. What a great toy innovation! Now, I just need to be able to look at them without shrieking in horror.

It's all part of the healing process.

Agents Are Go!

Looking back on previous posts, you'd almost think I didn't play video games. Either that, or I was trying to be polite by not mentioning them. Regardless, the time has come for me to swoon over Elite Beat Agents.
Here's the lowdown: There's a secret organisation tasked to help people in their time of need. When they see someone so despondent that they break down and lose faith in themselves, the Elite Beat Agents appear on the scene to set things right. But they don't simply fix the problem. Oh, no. They break out the tunes, and dance until the person is able to overcome their doubts, and prevail!

The overweight son of a ninja clan/auto manufacturer is sent to recover the stolen plans for his family's next vehicle. As he maneuvers the laser tripwires, the agents break out the Jamiroquai.

A sea captain is mutinied, but he knows where the treasure is buried. While he presses on to find the sunken galleon, the agents dance to The Village People.

Earth has been invaded by music-hating aliens! Just when things look the bleakest, the enslaved population hears the opening chords of Jumping Jack Flash...

The game is Dance Dance Revolution with a storyline... and it's essentially how Denton's brain works on the inside. Secret agents with style, offering tactical support in the form of funky background music -- you can keep your guardian angels and totem animals, thank you very much. These are the guys I want in my corner when the chips are down.

I think it's a phenomenon we've all experienced: When the right song is playing, we know just what to do and just how to do it. We just move with the music, and it's impossible to do wrong. It's like we get the rare opportunity to be the heroes of our own story. It's not so much the music as it is the mindset, and it only takes the right riff to put you there.

Oddly enough, this segués perfectly into the latest comic series I've been reading, but I'll have to talk about that tomorrow. Until then -- Party on, dudes.

Good-bye, wordcount. I'll miss you.

Saturday, I was obviously in a bad mood. Sunday was better though... sure, I waited in line for three hours for a store to open, but it's kind of like Star Wars... the communal experience is what makes it special. And unlike Star Wars, I actually bought a ticket this time! To absolutely no one's surprise, I bought a brand-new Wii yesterday. Here's the quick review: 100% Happy Happy Joy Joy. But I want to talk about something else right now.

Check out that handsome devil! Right from the start, you can fiddle around with the "Mii Channel" and create your own likeness (and many others). Then, he appears in Nintendo's games as your default character. When I load up Wii Boxing, there he is, bare-chested and wearing purple shorts. When I start Wii Baseball, he's wearing a jersey and pinstriped pants. On top of that, I can send copies of him to other people's accounts, so that when they start boxing, they have the option to pummel my face into its consituent pixels.

It's funny how technology continually takes us around in a circle. In the pre-WWW days, you could play games on a BBS, where you'd compete against other players. Of course, since you could rarely find a BBS with more than two phone lines, you'd actually just compete against the other player's statistics. The next time he logged in, he'd find out who he fought, and what happened.

Now, 13 years after Doom, we're back to the same idea -- sure, there's still head-to-head competition, but now you can also play against people who aren't online. And it's great! I bought an XBox Live account so that I could play with my friend in Regina while we chatted over the headset. Go ahead, take a wild guess how many times that happened. Here's a hint: one of us has home renovations, parents-in-law, and a life. The other one gave up and bought a Wii.

Another nifty feature is that you can't communicate with anyone unless you contact them outside of the Wii and exchange System Codes. At first, it sounds like a useless layer of paperwork that cripples gaming efficiency. But that's kind of the point. After all, would you invite the Internet over for tea and cookies?

So, if you have a Wii, and you want to try this out, my System Code is 5919 7004 2166 0472. E-mail me with yours, and we'll be able to send cartoon people back and forth like carrier pigeons.

Whee!