Take a look at my Wii

This is the question that Nintendo asked video game addicts this winter, and apparently lots and lots of people shelled out the $250 asking price. This came as a huge surprise to Sony, whose Playstation 3 (at $600) took a sound beating (for various reasons outlined in this International Hearld Tribune article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/31/business/games.php).

In the article, Matt Nichtel suggests that the reason the Wii (call me infantile, but it still makes me giggle a little) has had such success is that now coach potatoes are looking to get off their butts and move a little. I find that hard to believe. Okay, maybe it's that I'm a relatively active person. Maybe it's that after locking myself in my room with Super Mario Brothers until I could beat it without dying once, I realized that I was a loser. I mean, I was a winner - at Super Mario Brothers. I could go to a friend's house and absolutely dominate at that game. Whoever played Luigi wouldn't even get a turn before I won the heart of the princess.

Clearly, I suspected that my skills at virtual princess-winning would lead to success in actual princess-winning. This I believe is the basis for Nichtel's opinion: he thinks that couch potatoes everywhere believe that playing this even-more virtual tennis will allow them to take Anna Kournikova in straight sets (or maybe just show her their Wii). But seriously, which skills can you develop in the virtual world tha will really make a difference in the real world? Which skills will change you from virtual-world winner to real-world winner?

Writing a blog that no one will read ...

I suppose that I've always fancied myself a writer, and I probably ought to be one by now, considering all of the "higher" education I've received to become an English teacher; but the fact of the matter is that aside from a column for UNC's The Mirror my freshman and sophomore years and an occasional letter to the editor, this is my first "published" work.

The man-in-charge of my favorite blog (http://coloradogaws.blogspot.com/) would suggest that "writing a blog that no one will read just to make yourself laugh is sort of intellectual masturbation," and he's probably right. But since I've given up the other, I suppose I'd better get my fill of the intellectual anyway. Apparently it's as addictive a pasttime, and probably not without some of the socially alienating consequences, but - hopefully - it is not so emotionally destructive.