i successfully convinced myself using very specious reasoning that half an hour playing wii sports each morning could be considered part of my exercise regime and thus have achieved pro status in all five events. wii sports remains the only actual wii game (more on that in a paragraph or three) that we own, but we've been lucky enough to have wii-owning friends and family lend us a handful of other games.

Super Paper Mario is the clear victor of the notional bar brawl among the games we've tried so far. we played it to the end and, despite the expected terrible writing, it's probably the best game in the entire Mario franchise.

No More Heroes was a disappointment. every review i've seen touts it's writing and ironic humour. but if there was any irony there it was on a level that i am too simplistic to comprehend. what it seemed like instead was a painfully earnest quentin tarantino script as penned by a pheromone addled fourteen year old. so, i guess i'm saying it was like a tarantino script.

seriously, the plot and writing was skipped whenever possible and heavily cringed at when not. unfortunately, underneath the slimy veneer it was just a crappy GTA3 knockoff with a less interesting sandbox.

Boom Blox is perfect for it's pick up and play multiplayer modes, unfortunately it's single player modes vacillate between frustrating and tedious. I'm glad rhooke lent it to us, and i understand why he was happy to do so.

and now, we've just started into Super Mario Galaxy, which is fantastic so far. unfortunately we're about a quarter of the way through the game and it's already pushing the very limits of our extremely vestigial 3d platformer chops. i suspect it will prove too much for us soon enough.

the games that we're playing most of all though are not wii games at all. i missed pretty much the entire gamecube iteration of Nintendo's legacy and games like Mariokart Double Dash, Alien Hominid and Pikmin 2 are experiencing their golden age in our living room as we speak.

i've been playing a lot of poker recently. i've always been interested in the game and always known that, not only is it a skill game, but that, like chess, raw talent alone can never compete with extensive study. despite knowing this, i have spent most of my life playing poker and just counting on my natural genius to win the day.

unsurprisingly, i've been a breakeven or slightly losing player most of my life.

since living in philadelphia, however, i've had time to actually start reading and studying and slowly build up my theoretical and practical understanding of the game. i've been playing in several home games and making occasional trips to atlantic city and since january i've been keeping a spreadsheet of all my losses and winnings. i'm doing well enough thus far that it is statistically almost certain that i have become a winning player. i'll need a bigger sample size before i can say just how winning of a player i am.

oh, and Attention American Infidels: your country has crossed the line. e and i were fingerprinted and mugshotted upon our return to the states. our current visa extends until august 2009 and, in no small part due to this absurdity, we will not be renewing it. way to keep america safe from valuable foreign skilled labour.

as i've hinted at before, i've been having chronic stomach and chest pain for nearly a month now. when it first appeared, i went to the ER (which those who know me will understand is a sign that i was convinced i was dying). when it turned out that i wasn't having a heart attack, i left the hospital without waiting the six hours to see an actual doctor.

through change of diet and the use of over the counter drugs i have managed to bring the pain down to a bearable level, but it's still worrying.

i go to see a doctor this afternoon and hopefully he will tell me that it's just acid reflux and not stomach cancer or gall bladder failure.

oh, and Attention American Infidels: your health care system is an embarrassment to the First World.

and now, i go to play my first game of tennis in two years against some random from craigslist. his self assessed skill level seems to be about the same as my self assesses skill level.

hopefully neither of us will find the experience humiliating.... or should i hope that he will find the experience humiliating?