Woo, I'm a Tennis God!

I made it to Pro level on Tennis! Surely now buxom babes will throw themselves at my feet, salivating over my rugged physique! Except...my body is round and tapered! And my hands float in mid air with no arms to hold them, and my legs are skinny and weird! Argh!

Considering I don't play Wii Sports very often, I'm quite pleased I made to Pro. It took several games and much swearing. What's interesting is that I had my sound system set to play music, and the game was still fully playable due to the sound effects coming out of the Wiimote. I think it was the rather intense music pounding away that got me through the tennis games.

The music in question? 'Vater Unser' by E Nomine. Think electronica dance music with an angry German chanting the Lord's Prayer with some kind of choir thing going on as well. It's a fairly odd track, really good, even though the religious aspect of it is totally irrelevant to me. It'll be a good track to freak out my colleague in work, who always listens to godawful slushy romantic crap so my aggressive German music tends to upset him. Read what you like into my dislike of romantic love songs, but the fact is I just don't like them.

I overslept today for the first time in years. When resetting the time yesterday on the Psion PDA I use as an alarm clock, I somehow managed to persuade it that it was 12 hours in the past. So my alarm didn't go off. I was in the middle of a weird dream where I was trying to find my Discovery in a car park which had somehow become a luxury hotel. I had just found it parked next to an ornamental fountain and realised I was on a train when I woke up feeling that something wasn't right. It was 8:00am. For some reason, I spent the rest of the day in an bizarrely cheerful mood. The slightest thing seemed to be full of joy. Finding that nobody in work had thought to inform me of a new starter, having to resurrect a dead laptop, forgetting my toolkit when I had to install a CDRW drive. None of them phased me at all. Weird indeed.

Even finding that the Discovery (pic is not of mine) has developed a distinct lean to the right didn't bother me. Before anyone says I'm a fat bastard and broken the suspension, I've lost quite a bit of weight since December. However the garage has said it does need new springs all round and front shocks, which will cost £240. Oh well. I suppose it's a good thing I never did that 6x6 conversion I was thinking about... The new springs are blue and stiffer, which will hopefully make it less boat like, though it'll never handle like a sports car. Also the bodywork has survived quite well and it'll only need a very small amount of welding for the MOT in May which really cheered me up as I was worried it was a festering mass of rusty holes underneath. Not sure when I'll get the springs fitted yet as it's not too bad at the moment.

Why is there never anything cool like this for sale in the UK? I love Rickenbacker basses, and this would be so cool to rebuild: Stripped 70's Rickenbacker 4001

Some guy I used to work with appeared on MSN and wanted to buy stuff off me. For some reason, when selling things, I get really paranoid and guilty. It's very odd. I don't know why it is. It's like I'm scared that they'll find something wrong with it and attack me. Even when I sold my old car on Ebay and said very specifically it was a piece of shit in many ways, when the guy came to pick it up, I was really paranoid about it. However I regarded this guy wanting my old laptops as the first step in 'The Purge' and so hopefully he'll buy them off me.

Wii wouldn't want it any other way

The Wii is possibly the greatest thing ever made. Yeah, you know the story, it's got people into games who wouldn't normally play, it's accessible, friendly, blah blah blah. But if you've never played on a Wii, then you can't understand the joy of holding the remote and watching it respond to your every movement. Yeah, some of the original launch titles had issues, the sword fighting in Red Steel was dreadful for example. But the DS had a bad few months after launch, and just look at the games catalogue now, there are some absolutely stunning games out for it. Given that the Wii is selling like...something incredibly popular, I'm sure we'll see some amazing games coming out for it.

What prompted this Wii love fest? Well, today was a very decent day. Walked the dog first thing, and then went round to a mate's house to spend the day watching rugby and playing Wii. I'm not massively fussed about rugby, but I'll watch it happily enough. It's quite possibly the most complicated game ever though, so I usually have no idea what's going on. This was followed by a long session of Wario Ware and Wii Sports. As I was the only one not drinking, you'd have thought I'd have had a distinct advantage - to a certain degree, maybe. Oh well, we played until we couldn't stand up any more and finished the day with a calm round of golf.

This is the latest I've been up for a while. Very tired now. Must sleep...

Those damned monkeys in balls

I hate Super Monkey Ball. I hated the GameCube games, because they were the kind of game that made you feel crap when you failed. Also the levels were so well designed that you felt compelled to carry on, despite near constant failure.

The Wii version, Banana Blitz is just the same. It's a bit of a shock using the Wiimote at first, but then it becomes second nature. The tilt sensitive controller is what Monkey Ball has been crying out for. However, this game is just the same as the others. As you watch the ball plummet into the depths for the 50th time, you can scream and shout as much as you want, and you know it's your fault. Not the game, or the controller.

I am half way through the Volcanic Pools level of Banana Blitz and it's driving me crazy. I HATE THIS GAME and yet I can't stop playing it. I won't let it beat me.

I took the greyhound out for a walk in the biting cold wind, which was reasonably fun. At one point though, I met a couple who had a pair of sheepdogs, and they had NO control over either of them and were stupid enough to let one of them off the lead. Note: if you have an uncontrollable dog, keep it on the lead. That way it won't run away down someone's private road while you stand there shouting ineffectually. Also hitting them doesn't work either. I hate situations like this, last time I met someone like this, we were attacked by their enormous shaggy black dog, which was completely out of control.

A house down the road was on the market about a year ago for 600,000 pounds which is just insane. Clearly they failed to sell it as it's now up for rent. At 1500 pounds a MONTH. Unbelievable.

I feel there was something else I was going to mention, but I can't remember what it was. Very tired now, so that's probably why.