[Insert forced Wii pun here] [r]

The Wiil deal, Wiimendous fun, I dream of Wiinie. And so forth.

Impressions:
This weekend was a pre-Thanksgiving with the roomies and friends. So the wiimote changed hands many a-time, and I've gotten to play about ninety minutes of Zelda. Alas.

But everyone had a good time, even the girls. It wasn't the intense, violent, Mario Kart battle royale good time that the Cube afforded us. Wii Sports is simple, but that made it easy for everyone to get into.

The software has yet to catch up to the hardware, and that's my biggest worry. Zelda was written for the Cube, so its motion control features are fairly shallow. I hope this won't be the case for new games and cross-platform games. In the case of Wii Sports, you're able to swing your club, throw a punch, etc. either using the real-life motion, or a flick of the wrist.


This leaves the control a bit too sensitive at times. Hopefully future games will have a setting for people who actually want to use the motion control features and a setting for lazy asses.

Outlook:
Wii sold out. In the good way. So did PS3 and x36. But there were a lot more Nintendo units to sell. Does this mean Nintendo has stolen market share from its pricier competitors? Does this mean Wii has established itself as the real deal for the new-gen console war (a.k.a. holiday sales)?

Let's hope so. Not because it might do damage to Sony and MS; the three-front console war has done great things. Let's hope so because if Nintendo sells big, developers will take advantage of the motion-control technology.

The hardware works. And it's the future. It makes pc gamers' precious mouselook seem sluggish and unwieldy. And it has the potential to solve the camera angle problem that has plagued nearly every post-Mario 64 game. I recall hearing rave reviews about the technology from Hideo Kojima - the greatest camera angle perpetrator of all time.

Throwing and ducking punches is very entertaining, and my arms are just a little bit sore.

People who wear socks to bed are evil [h]

You heard me.

Don't vote for the incumbent [a]

1. Our astronomical incumbency rate makes us look like idiots. For as much as you've complained about the government, you sure aren't voting like you want change.

2. They count on your complacence. No more, "see ya next year, Orrin."

3. All politicians deceive. Two things are required to be a leader on the state level and above. Money. Compromised integrity. Those are the oft-mentioned rules of the game. So you get to choose between the liar and the liar who's lied in public office.

4. The fraternal ruling class will dilute. The college of professional politicians will blur - just a little bit - into a government of the people.

5. Lobby groups and corporate puppeteers won't know who to buy. And with single-term bureaucrats, their money won't go quite so far.

6. Anyone can do it. The mechanics of the State are at the hands of trained professionals. The people you vote for just decide which professionals to listen to. Case in point: California's uneducated governor has been controversial at worst. His well-qualified predecessor was recalled.

7. More candidates and less corporate influence means a more diverse choice of leaders and policies. Our State is inbred. Ideas and people are recycled ad nauseum (hence, complacence).

Dubya has made me a conservative [a]

In fact, I think he's far too liberal. Okay here's the touch of grey; conservative ideology is as such:
-Strong states rights/passive federal government
-Sanctified civil liberties
-Conservative moral values

This dates back to Thomas Jefferson, who believed Congress should only make laws necessary to uphold the Constitution. His perennial antagonist, Alexander Hamilton, believed in a strong central government - a 'liberal' view of the passage of the Constitution describing Congressional duties. Of course, this is all eighth grade course material, but somehow not common knowledge.

I'll stay away from the issue of moral values. It's messy, the rest is clean-cut.

With regard to the first two criteria, Bush has been extremely Hamiltonian. FDR had the New Deal, Bush has the war, the Patriot Act, the DHS, NSA wiretapping, or stem cell research bans. The federal government has grown in manpower, economic need, and legal authority. States have lost power. The American people have relinquished their privacy rights to obtain a sense of security. I do not present this as good nor bad, but a simple fact you can see every time you take a trip to the airport.

However you feel about any social issue, just keep in mind the incongruity of being a Republican/conservative and Democrat/liberal. If you're concerned that research science is threatening morality and human decency, consider yourself liberal. If you believe in the ACLU's zealous fight for personal freedoms, you can start telling everyone you're a conservative. If you hear someone using those words as synonyms, go upside their head.