I should have been a pair of ragged claws

I played my first game of Go tonight against Bessie. I work for a game company and have spent (or wasted) a great portion of my life playing all sorts of games, but I was uniquely awed by the subtlety and beauty of this Chinese masterpiece. Simple rules. Timeless asthetics. Fathomless depth. When I spend my money and time filling my life with typical video and board games, I sometimes question how selfish and empty gaming is. Games can be a more viceral fantasy reality than any type of fiction because they're first person experiences. Games can be about making someone feel smarter, more talented, stronger, and/or more powerful for some fleeting moment before they return to their less exceptional reality. Besides a small (mostly synthetic) ego boost, games don't really add people's lives; they rarely enlighten the player about themselves or the confusing real world. For some reason, Go was different. Maybe the sharp contrast of quality makes me think Go is more

I hate the Yankees and I'm glad they lost. I'm not sure who the winning team was, it may have been the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Cincinnati Bengals - I don't really care. It's good to stick it to `roid-raging Roger Clemens , their goon-like coaching staff, and of course, the man .

Capcom has tendency to make one amazingly great game every decade, sometimes even define an entire genre, then spend the next 10 years demolishing their accomplishment by flooding the market with cheap, quick follow-ups. Mega Man was Capcom's claim to fame in the eighties. Street Fighter 2 reinvented arcades in the 90s. Both games spawned dozens of sequels, and their brilliance dimmed with each ever-diminishing, apathy-inspiring release. And from about two hours of play time, I predict there will no fewer than three thousand Viewtiful Joe games by the year 2010. At the end of the decade will the gaming public be bored with Joe's immaculate art direction and fluid kung-fu battles against robot dudes? Who knows, but it's really fun to play right now. It is surprising to me how mature Joe is as a play experience. The game's controls are introduced in sandbox tutorials that allow the player to test out their abilities on a endless set of enemies without fear of dyi

In case ya missed it, here's the full story .

Had some friends over on Saturday night, cooked them dinner, and played a game of Bohnanza . While I've played the popular bean trading game dozens of times, often enough to be completely tired of it, I always have a great time playing it. Just rubbing shoulders with people, yammering about how you'll give TWO blue beans for one of their stink beans is worth playing the game for. Who cares if there's no real strategy in the game. . .

My wife's youngest sister has a blog as well as almost everyone under the age of 22. I am way behind the times. Here's our im conversation: Tracy says: how did u find my [blog]? DeathMonkey says: searched for "weird pirate asian freak" DeathMonkey says: it was the first link Tracy says: did not Tracy says: ! Tracy says: let me see Tracy wants to be a pirate, as all middle school-aged asian girls do. For my wedding, she presented my wife (her sister) with a trophy of a pirate's head with the inscription "Arrr. ..I'm a teenage mutant ninja pirate chipmunk!" I need to get a photograph of this trophy; it has to be seen to be believed. Where do you find a pirate head in a trophy shop anyway?

My wife's LITTLE SISTER has a blog too, and has had one for a year. She's an undergrad at UGA, so she's not THAT young. I never claimed to be hip or cool, but goodness, I feel old. Oh, this week she won tickets to an REM concert playing the ultimate schoolyard game: Four Square. If this sounds bizarre, that's because it is. I'm so jealous.

This blog stuff is amazing. Technology: it IS the future.

In its first hour of existence, my blog has already spawned an imitator . Er, well, more of a detractor. I told my brother about my blog and he immediately created one of his own, mocking my self-aggrandizement. We'll see if he ever makes a third post.

Yeah, this is my blog. This is the most vain thing I've done by my recollection. Like everyone on the internet, I have an opinion. In my case, I usually pontificate on games, movies, books, sometimes music and sports and other things. Following a google search, I found only a few billion web pages covering these topics, and only a few million of those are blogs covering games. It is good to be a pioneer. I'm currently listening to an episode of This American Life covering ordinary people MacGyvering solutions to various problems.