Comic relief

I'm going to start doing something I've been threatening to do for a while now and actually use this blog to provide updates about the comic, Screamerz and Doorknobz.

That's, uh... that's pretty much it, really.

Watch this space, blah blah blah.

Gnashville

Thundercat and I took an impromptu trip to Nashville last week. Why? Why not?

As she worked in the day, I spent most of the time holed up in the hotel room, doing pretty much whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to. Nice. When she returned in the evening, we'd go to the mall and get something to eat.

Opryland Mills Mall is... well, it's unquestionably big, but I can't say I enjoyed it much. For starters, a mall jammed with stores is wasted on someone who frequents only the same two or three places anytime he goes to a mall, and whose idea of "shopping" is to "go in, get what you want, pay for it, leave and be done with it", not "go in, look at stuff, look at more stuff, keep looking at stuff, leave, go to a different store that has the same stuff, lather, rinse, repeat." No, the big problem I had with this mall was the kiosks. Every mall has kiosks, to be sure, but these kiosks were staffed with the pushiest salespeople I've met in this country. The experienced forced a flashback to Cozumel, a port of call on our honeymoon, where every crappy trinket store -- all selling the exact same crappy trinkets, mind -- had barkers standing out front, urging you to enter and purchase their wares. Those guys were irritating. The mall's salespeople were flat-out obnoxious, to the point where, if you refused to stop and look at their stuff, it became an invitation to calumny. I'm pretty sure I got cursed out in Hindi by a girl who seemed deeply concerned about the health of my cuticles; I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, as my back was turned when I heard... whatever it was I heard.

The Opryland Mills mall has the world's worst Macaroni Grill, where part of my lasagna -- I'm not kidding -- was burnt to an inedible lump of carbon.

Oh, and they also have an oxygen bar. If you don't know what an oxygen bar is, I encourage you to look it up. Suffice it to say that it is one of the most bizarre concepts you'll ever try to wrap your brain around.

The summer of our discontent

It's summer, that ridiculously long season of heat stroke, insect infestations and crap movie sequels. What better way to spend Satan's season than indoors?

The past two months have been devoted to the pursuit of Pokémon. My Dex is filling up nicely and Thundercat is about to start her Pokémon journey in the weeks to follow. If any of you out there are into Diamond and Pearl, wish to trade Pokémon, and aren't total buttholes, let me know. I'll post my friend code in the near future.

When not catching 'em all, I've been catching up on the long and great history of Spider-Man by perusing back issues bound in wonderful collections called the Essentials. They're some of the most poorly-bound books you'll ever read -- they literally fall apart in your hands -- but it's worth it for the cheap price and the abundance of Spidey-related goodness.

But on to more important matters. Summer gaming, as most people know, tends to be the pits, with few interesting releases between now and the start of the Fall Glut. I've been hanging on to Final Fantasy XII with the express purpose of using it to save myself from summer boredom, but summer is also the time to either clear out your backlog of unfinished games or go back and revisit your old favorites. Astonishingly, I have only a handful of unfinished games and no real intention to go through any of them right now, mood swings permitting, so this summer will be devoted to playing the games I love.

Here's what I'm planning to play through as of the time of this post:

Super Mario Sunshine (a summer tradition!)
Final Fantasy III (the DS game, not the Super NES game)
Phoenix Wright (actually in the backlog)
Banjo-Tooie
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Metroid Prime 2

Bearing in mind that we're talking about a three-month period here, and that there will still be a new game or two every now and then, what else should I revisit? I'm open to any and all suggestions, unless your suggestions happen to be stupid, at which point I will probably have to call you out on that.