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When Nintendo claimed that the Wii would appeal to a broad audience of consumers, they were not kidding around.  While the Nintendo Wii plays a favorite among little kids and grandmas, it has much love from the gay community.  Gay people like to stay fit and games like Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and WiiFit allow them to keep in shape so they can look sexy in hopes of scoring with a handsome hunk.  Now while gay people like to stay in shape, they are not exactly the most masculine and muscular people in the world.  Most gay people wouldn’t choose an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 because it is too heavy for them to carry around.  A gay person’s body is not built to carry around large, heavy consoles.  The Wii is small, light, white, and sleek.  Now, even though gay people might not like the Wii’s design and color as much as the GameCube’s purple purse design, it still looks nice to place in a home without worrying about it looking bad.

We did multiple polls on message boards such as Gamespot, 1UP, and IGN, asking if they were straight, gay, or bisexual.  The results were astounding.  The poll results showed that there were more gay owners who own the Wii more than any other console.  After completely the study, we asked them why they like the Wii over the 360/Playstation 3.  They told us they didn’t like how 360/PS3 games had so many dark games with brown/black/grey color palettes.  Usually straight men like games with darker colors because it makes them feel more manly and adult.  While we noticed that gay people tend to enjoy brighter color palettes such as red, yellow, orange, etc in games such as Super Mario Galaxy.  I once knew someone who was gay and he always talked about the colors and art styles of videogames.  The more stylish and artistic, the more gay people are more willing to play that game.  While another friend of mine who was straight, cared more if the visuals were realistic and looked like real life.  Straight people like graphics to look more like real life and less cartoonish.  Straight tend to enjoy games involving killing people or sports, while gay people tend to enjoy games about running around in a colorful fantasy world full of talking animals, colorful creatures, and magic.  Now, this doesn’t mean all people who enjoy games like that gay.  But I believe most of them are.

Gay people love to make great gourmet food and the Wii allows them to do that in a videogame such as Cooking Mama.  Cooking Mama is a great game for homosexuals because it allows you to be a great chef and create excellent meals.  And best of all, there is a lot of pink in the game’s visuals which is another reason gays will feel right at home with this game.

Another game that the gay community will love in Animal Crossing: City Folk.  This game is a gay person’s dream come.  You can be a fashion designer without worrying about people calling you a derogatory names.  Just the opposite.  The animals condone you to make the best fashion around.  Want to be an interior decorator and design wallpaper and decorate the inside of your home?  This game has it.  And not only that, the better you design the interior of your house, the better scores you will get.  Another thing that gay people will love is the ability to invite their friends into the town they created, and have a voice chat session using Wii Speak technology to talk about all the cute guys at the mall, and talk about the tightness of the new pair of leather pants that they bought.

If these games do not suit you, there is one game called Cho Aniki that will make the blood of any homosexual man get horny.  This game is called Cho Aniki for the Turbo Graphix 16 system.  You can buy it on the Wii’s Virtual Console.  I could describe what the game is about, but why should I when it only needs one picture to persuade the gay community to buy a Wii for this game.

If you need any more reason that the Wii is the most gay friendly system, Nintendo is one of the few companies to make a gay character.  His name is Tingle and he likes to skip and hop around in a tight green costume and giggle when young boys ask him for advice about their quests and adventures.

When Nintendo claimed that the Wii would appeal to a broad audience of consumers, they were not kidding around.  While the Nintendo Wii plays a favorite among little kids and grandmas, it has much love from the gay community.  Gay people like to stay fit and games like Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and WiiFit allow them to keep in shape so they can look sexy in hopes of scoring with a handsome hunk.  Now while gay people like to stay in shape, they are not exactly the most masculine and muscular people in the world.  Most gay people wouldn’t choose an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 because it is too heavy for them to carry around.  A gay person’s body is not built to carry around large, heavy consoles.  The Wii is small, light, white, and sleek.  Now, even though gay people might not like the Wii’s design and color as much as the GameCube’s purple purse design, it still looks nice to place in a home without worrying about it looking bad.

We did multiple polls on message boards such as Gamespot, 1UP, and IGN, asking if they were straight, gay, or bisexual.  The results were astounding.  The poll results showed that there were more gay owners who own the Wii more than any other console.  After completely the study, we asked them why they like the Wii over the 360/Playstation 3.  They told us they didn’t like how 360/PS3 games had so many dark games with brown/black/grey color palettes.  Usually straight men like games with darker colors because it makes them feel more manly and adult.  While we noticed that gay people tend to enjoy brighter color palettes such as red, yellow, orange, etc in games such as Super Mario Galaxy.  I once knew someone who was gay and he always talked about the colors and art styles of videogames.  The more stylish and artistic, the more gay people are more willing to play that game.  While another friend of mine who was straight, cared more if the visuals were realistic and looked like real life.  Straight people like graphics to look more like real life and less cartoonish.  Straight tend to enjoy games involving killing people or sports, while gay people tend to enjoy games about running around in a colorful fantasy world full of talking animals, colorful creatures, and magic.  Now, this doesn’t mean all people who enjoy games like that gay.  But I believe most of them are.

Gay people love to make great gourmet food and the Wii allows them to do that in a videogame such as Cooking Mama.  Cooking Mama is a great game for homosexuals because it allows you to be a great chef and create excellent meals.  And best of all, there is a lot of pink in the game’s visuals which is another reason gays will feel right at home with this game.

Another game that the gay community will love in Animal Crossing: City Folk.  This game is a gay person’s dream come.  You can be a fashion designer without worrying about people calling you a derogatory names.  Just the opposite.  The animals condone you to make the best fashion around.  Want to be an interior decorator and design wallpaper and decorate the inside of your home?  This game has it.  And not only that, the better you design the interior of your house, the better scores you will get.  Another thing that gay people will love is the ability to invite their friends into the town they created, and have a voice chat session using Wii Speak technology to talk about all the cute guys at the mall, and talk about the tightness of the new pair of leather pants that they bought.

If these games do not suit you, there is one game called Cho Aniki that will make the blood of any homosexual man get horny.  This game is called Cho Aniki for the Turbo Graphix 16 system.  You can buy it on the Wii’s Virtual Console.  I could describe what the game is about, but why should I when it only needs one picture to persuade the gay community to buy a Wii for this game.

If you need any more reason that the Wii is the most gay friendly system, Nintendo is one of the few companies to make a gay character.  His name is Tingle and he likes to skip and hop around in a tight green costume and giggle when young boys ask him for advice about their quests and adventures.

I’ve known since I was a kid that I liked music.  But it was only recently that I realized I am truly a music dork.  You, too, might be a music dork if:

1. You know how to play more than five instruments.
2. You take every music theory quiz around, hoping to prove that you are the smartest of all your musical friends.
3. You knew you would marry your date when he pointed out the composer (John Williams) of the movie score (The Lost World) at the same time as you.
4. You loved going to church just so that you could harmonize, and your absolute favourite church songs had the alto (or whatever you sing) lead.
5. You know all the intervals by song, your favourite being the minor seventh, “There’s a Place for us” from West Side Story.
6. You own this shirt: http://www.zazzle.ca/music_dork_shirt-235093160855329110
7. When you refer to deceased musical geniuses, you say that they are decomposing.
8. You spent a good portion of your childhood harmonizing with your Nintendo.
9. You are now extremely proud of your son for his ability to harmonize with his Wii.
10. You’re mentally (and proudly) making your own list to add to mine.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve known since I was a kid that I liked music.  But it was only recently that I realized I am truly a music dork.  You, too, might be a music dork if:

1. You know how to play more than five instruments.
2. You take every music theory quiz around, hoping to prove that you are the smartest of all your musical friends.
3. You knew you would marry your date when he pointed out the composer (John Williams) of the movie score (The Lost World) at the same time as you.
4. You loved going to church just so that you could harmonize, and your absolute favourite church songs had the alto (or whatever you sing) lead.
5. You know all the intervals by song, your favourite being the minor seventh, “There’s a Place for us” from West Side Story.
6. You own this shirt: http://www.zazzle.ca/music_dork_shirt-235093160855329110
7. When you refer to deceased musical geniuses, you say that they are decomposing.
8. You spent a good portion of your childhood harmonizing with your Nintendo.
9. You are now extremely proud of your son for his ability to harmonize with his Wii.
10. You’re mentally (and proudly) making your own list to add to mine.

Image via Wikipedia

'Blah Girls' on CBS (Ashton Kutcher's celeb skewering animated web series launches on TV as one-minute segments during "Insider." Plus, TV remains the most effective medium for reaching youth and to introduce brands) (Variety) (MediaPost, Reg.... Read the rest of this post

So, if I had to give last week a title, it would've been A Series of Unfortunate Events. It started with the whole running out of home heating oil and Monday, continued with my car breaking down only minutes before we were supposed to meet with a potential wedding caterer on Wednesday, and culminated in Joe's car breaking down the very next day - with a whole lot of messy family drama and minor-league trauma in between (nothing I want to go into - but suffice it to say, it was a VERY bad, bad week).

Here's an example: Thursday night, Joe and I baked our traditional Valentine's Day red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. The cupcake part was fine - they came out REALLY red and tasted divine. But when we went to do the frosting, we realized we'd left the cream cheese out too long and it somehow got rancid in our 67 degree house. We were also planning on using leftover white chocolate chips, instead of buying bars, for the frosting, but chips have a stabilizer in them that don't let them melt the way bars or chunks do. So we wasted 3 cups of powdered sugar trying to turn rancid cream cheese and unmelty chips into frosting. Which meant that Joe had to run out to the grocery store after midnight to buy replacement cream cheese, chocolate bars, and powdered sugar. This after two earlier stops at the store for ingredients we neglected to stock ahead of time.

(The sweat equity was worth it, though. The cupcakes are always a huge hit, and this year when I was frosting them I had the brilliant idea of skipping swirls and instead piping a white chocolate heart on top. It was beyond precious.)

So then Saturday was Valentine's Day, and the icky turned into de lovely. We started the morning by topping some Trader Joe's whole grain french toast with bruleed bananas, then groomed the dog and took him over to PetCo (where the pets go) for a $6 family portrait. After that, Joe and I got haircuts (one of those quick, cheapy places over by Shoprite) and then hit up GameStop, where Joe proceeded to convince me that we needed several games for the Wii. This after $1,100 in home heating oil and car repairs. I relented, though, because he got a nice little bonus at work and the week before was putting in 14-hour days trying to make headway on some projects. One of the things he picked up was actually my Valentine's Day gift - My Fitness Coach for the Wii. I'd had the Xbox version when I was staying with my parents, saving up for the house, and really loved it. We also put a $5 pre-order depost on EA Sports Active, which looks so freaking cool that I can hardly stand it.

Afterward, we grabbed our Scrabble board and headed to Panera, where we snagged - and I still can't believe our luck - the two leather club chairs in front of the fireplace. We spent the next two hours playing Scrabble in front of the fire, sipping hot Chai and soliciting tons of "awws" from people who walked by or sat near us. It was so cozy, and so romantic, and so very us.

Back at home, we started to prep the very elaborate Valentine's Day feast we'd planned. The first course was to be Ina Garten's shrimp bisque. The recipe calls for seafood stock, but since I couldn't find that, I went with Better Than Bullion's Lobster Base. Oh. My. GOD. It was a disaster. The bullion was super salty, and I made the rookie mistake of NOT TASTING IT before adding the two teaspoons of salt the recipe called for. (In my head, I could hear Tom Collichio chastizing me for not tasting my food.) We tried everything we could to rescue the bisque - adding more tomato paste, adding more cayenne, adding more roux-thickened half and half ... finally we realized we were going to have to pick up more shrimp and add more leeks to make it palatable, and put the soup away for the next day. Then Joe started having stomach cramps, so we decided to postpone the entire romantical feast for Sunday.

The next day, I made us blueberry-and-Greek-yogurt smoothies before we hit the gym. Then it was off to Shoprite to pick up more shrimp. We came home to an odd-looking poop from the dog. There was a thing sticking out of it that resembled a giant earthworm. We scooped the sample and put it in a bag, put the bag in a Tupperware container, and put the container in another bag before popping it into the fridge. Then we spent the next hour Googling intestinal parasites to see if we could identify what it was that came out Skitty's body. Joe was so creeped out he didn't even want the dog kissing him. It was ... yeah, not good.

After we recovered from the "ew" factor, we headed into the kitchen. We sauteed an extra leek and the new pound of shrimp before pureeing it and adding it to the super-salty bisque. It tamed the flavor some, but not enough so that I could enjoy it. I had a very small portion before deciding my tummy still couldn't handle it. Such a disappointment! Expensive ingredients + lots of labor should = yumminess, right? I was afeared that our Weekend of Loveliness was morphing into A Series of Unfortunate Events, Take II.

But then Joe saved the day by making Alton Brown's chocolate mousse - my absolute favorite dessert - and it was AMAZERFUL.

Soup + mousse = full tummies, so we postponed the Valentine's Day Feast yet again. Which meant that Monday morning's breakfast consisted of a petite filet mignon (that we butchered ourselves, I might add), accompanied by sauteed mushrooms and topped with a homemade blue cheese chive sauce and a fried egg. I could only get through half of my filet, but even so, it was ... decadent.

A quick trip to the vet revealed that Scouty's foreign object was not, in fact, a giant mutant Earthworm, but something resembling waxed paper. Suddenly it dawned on us that while we were out on Saturday, a spurned Scout most likely raided a trash can, fished out a cupcake wrapper, and promptly swallowed it. Even though I was annoyed at the dog for trash munching, just knowing that he was okay and not infested with mutant worms brought such a sense of relief. The rest of the day was spent catching up on work and chores, and after I taught my final creative writing class of this session at the Y, I came home to help Joe finish off this totally scrumptious Curry Cauliflower Soup and a batch of Lavendar Blueberry Muffins for breakfast the next day. The latter recipe came from Recipes for Life After Weight-Loss Surgery, which my mom got me for Christmas, and they, too, were super yummy. You make them with oat flour, yogurt, and unsweetened applesauce, so not only do they taste awesome, but they're also really good for you. We used plain Greek yogurt instead of the traditional kind, so the muffins pack even more protein.

After we cleaned up the kitchen for the upteenth time, we took the dog out and ruminated on how much we'd actually cooked in the past five days. Out of everything, we only had one unmitigated disaster (the first batch of cupcake frosting) and one minor one (the too-salty shrimp bisque). Which isn't bad, considering everything that came out perfectly, including our home-butchered filet.

And now I just realized that I've written a novel here, AND that it's already 9:15 a.m., so I better wrap up.

Hope everyone had a loverly long weekend and a happy kicky sticky sweet V-Day!

I have been riding an incredible high, the result of making excellent grocery purchases and turning them into seriously good eats, since last Thursday. For the past year, I've been doing the majority of our menu planning based on A) what we've got in the house and B) what's on sale at Shoprite each week. I also try to use coupons whenever possible, and I'm lucky in that my mom will clip ones from the paper for us. Plus, I also discovered that even though the coupons for BJ's Warehouse have expiration dates on them, they're like Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupons in that they don't ever actually expire. By doing these things, and making sure Joe and I pack our lunches, we've been able to cut down quite extensively on our grocery bills. Even so, I'm always looking for more bargains, better bargains, and a way to buy the food I want to cook without sending us to the poor house.

One day while flipping through sale ads, I saw an insert for the Newark Farmer's Market, which sits right across the street from our gym. Joe and I had gone there once last winter and at the time I was excited by the variety of produce offered. Things I can't get readily anywhere else, like Japanese eggplant and every kind of chili pepper imaginable. They have a large selection of speciality items for Asian and Mexican cooking, too. But for some reason, after that first trip we never went back. Anyway, this sale insert I saw advertised a pint of fresh blueberries for 99 cents. At Shoprite, that will easily cost you $3. And they had bananas for 29 cents/lb. At Shoprite, it's at least 20 cents more. Etc.

So, last Thursday after class, I headed to the Newark Farmer's Market with my shopping list. An hour later, I walked out $35 poorer but loaded up with so much amazing stuff that I felt like a kid at Christmas. Pickling lime for $1? A pint of gorgeous grape tomatoes for 99 cents? A huge box of lavender green tea - 50 bags for $2.99? Ooh, baby. My biggest score was the fresh thyme. See, I know fresh herbs taste way better than dried ones, but it's not usually cost effective for me to purchase them. Even Trader Joe's charges $1.99 for a small package. But at the NFM, I found this enormous package of fresh thyme with very few bruised leaves. I needed the fresh for a recipe I was making over the weekend (more on that in a bit), but not nearly as much in the package. However, we recently ran out of dried thyme, too. And I thought, well, what about the dehydrator? I'd bought Joe one for his birthday two years ago, so we could play around with making our own beef jerky. But then I thought, what if we dried the leftover fresh thyme and ground it up in the old coffee bean grinder we use for spices? That's got to be fresher than the dried thyme you buy at any store, even Whole Foods (which, sadly, we don't have yet in DE anyway). Cost of the fresh thyme? $2.50. Cost of a tiny jar of dried thyme at Shoprite? $5.49.

Then, on Friday, I made my weekly pilgrimmage to Shoprite. I was especially excited because they had whole beef tenderloin on sale for $3.99/lb (marked down from $5.99). I dug through the bin and managed to find a little 4 lb. tenderloin - which means I got about four dinners' worth of potential filet mignon for $16 (and, if you read my list of 33 things I want to accomplish in my 33rd year, fabricating my own whole beef tenderloin was item #10). I picked up 5 lbs. of bone-in chicken thighs, 3 lbs. of sweet Italian sausage, 2.5 lbs. of hot Italian sausage - all of which were on sale as well - plus half and half, heavy cream, cream cheese, shredded cheese, a new 9x13 cake pan, and a cart full of other things for a whopping $70. Since the previous week I was able to pick up some top round London broil for $1.99/lb, and next week I can pick up boneless pork loin for $.99/lb and bottom round roast for $1.99/lb., I will have effectively stocked our freezer with enough meat to feed us roughly four to six months - and all for about $100.

Can I get a woot-woot?

On Saturday, I made Rachael Ray's recipe for portobello pizzas, which she intended as an appetizer but seeing as how one small mushroom cap was a Lara-sized dinner portion, we made a meal out of them. (Yay for the cheap but delicious grape tomatoes I scored at the Newark Farmer's Market, not to mention the reasonably priced portobellos!) Then, on Sunday, Joe and I made this recipe for eggplant lasagna that I saw on RESCUE CHEF - the sauce for which we also made from scratch. Okay, first of all? The sauce is amazing, and the recipe yields enough not only for the lasagna but extra for freezing. But also: how freaking ingenious is it to create a lasagna using roasted eggplant slices in place of noodles? I mean, I adore traditional meat-and-cheese lasagna, but oh. My. GOD. Between the homemade marinara and the sweetness of the roasted eggplant and the intense punch of the fresh herbs ... this was like a big ol' pan of love. And with the exception of calling for whole milk ricotta, instead of part-skim or fat-free, there is absolutey NOTHING unhealthy about this dish. Plus, it makes enough for eight normal-people servings, and since I get two full meals out of one normal-people portion, there are leftovers galore.

This is the thing that Joe and I realized over the weekend: as long as we stay excited about food and leave time for home cooking, we eat really healthfully. When we first moved in together, we were spending probably three times what we do now on food, and most of it was going to heart-attack friendly take out - a constant rotation of pizza, cheese steaks, jalapeno poppers and chicken fingers. Nowadays, creative and healthy eating is like this bonding ritual for us. We watch cooking shows together, go shopping for ingredients together, make delicious meals together, eat those delicious meals together, and even do the dishes together. It's nice. I like it. And I honestly don't miss BK bacon double cheeseburgers, not even for one second.

Other good things: our Wii arrived on Saturday, so we finally got our Wii Fit on! Ohmigod, it was so much fun. So. Much. FUN! It doesn't replace a gym workout - not by any stretch - but holy cow, were we laughing ourselves silly. Plus, by Sunday, the two of us were experiencing soreness in muscles that apparently don't get used much at the gym, so I think it will round out the weekly routine quite nicely. And because we're such dorks? Saturday night, we created an Alton Brown Mii, so now we get to work out along side our favorite Food Network chef.

Do you know how every now and then you feel so enormously happy that you think your skin might explode, because it can't possible contain all of that happiness? I've spent the better part of four days feeling like that, save for several hours on Saturday where every single thing that could've gone wrong did (including me losing my temper at a particularly snotty customer service rep from Citibank, and then bursting into tears because I really don't like losing my temper at anyone, no matter how snotty they are). Yes, money is tight, and yes, wedding planning still sucks (though we are making progress with a great caterer). Yes, I have 125 unanswered e-mails again, and yes, I'm behind on several deadlines at the moment. But so freaking what? Joe is amazing. Our dog is adorable. Life is really, really good. And I am really, really lucky.

Yeah.

MTV vamps it up (advertising a new online vampire series called "Valemont" within "The Hills." Plus check out NewTeeVee's review of "Anyone But Me," a coming of age story about young lesbians. The Pope now has his own YouTube channel. And more... Read the rest of this post

'Wimpy Kid' makes a strong impression (on the New York Times with an article on the buzz surrounding the series and a profile of the man behind the kid. Also a new teen series from Random House will be promoted in the virtual world There.com) (New... Read the rest of this post

We've mentioned the new Pew study on teens and gaming a couple of times on Ypulse this week — it is a must-read and is choc full of interesting stats. To me the biggest trend is how gaming has become much more social for teens, defying... Read the rest of this post

Little Library Got Wii

“I had a fabulous time in at the ‘Gaming in Libraries’’ session of the Midwest Library Technology Conference, where they not only talked about games, they let us play. It’s more than a Field of Dreams approach, just tossing games into a room; I have worked with, read about, and heard from those clever librarians who design activities, resources that do what librarians do so well, put information in context for us.

This is not even meant as a post to ponder the implications, more of an observation I had a few weeks ago when I stopped by the Isabelle Hunt Memorial Public Library in Pine, Arizona — the closest town (3 miles) with a gas station (actually 2) and a market (1) to where I live. The population of Pine is likely a bit over 2000, and the library is a real gem….

And darned if on my last visit there, they had re-arranged the checkout racks of DVDs to make room for a single Wii station!

Yep, this little library has got Wii.” [CogDogBlog, Thanks, Liz D.]

Emphasis above is mine, because I love Alan Levine’s description. Although we’re not related, great Levine minds think alike.

What I really love about this, though, is that it shows how even small libraries can implement gaming on some level, as opposed to other initiatives that require huge increases in staffing or budget lines.

How's this for a weird and yet wonderful competition:

SPACE SQUID, the Sci-Fi Humour magazine, in associated with GamecockMedia.com and RevolutionSF.com, have announced a competition.

THE MUSHROOM MEN FICTION CONTEST.

A free writing contest where the first prize is a free Wii game console and a copy of the new Wii video game Mushroom Men!

Other prizes include Les Claypool Mushroom Men rock posters, Mushroom Men baseball caps, trading cards with sweepstakes codes, Mushroom Men squeezy toys, and copies of Mushroom Men for the Wii and for the Nintendo DS. Runner-up stories will appear on the fiction page of RevolutionSF.com and in a special supplementary issue that will be seen by hundreds of people at gaming events like the Penny Arcade Expo.

The first-prize story will appear in the supplementary issue, RevolutionSF.com, Space Squid issue #6, and may appear as promotional material for the game elsewhere. Now that is some prize!

The closing date is August 1st, 2008 and your story should be between 500 & 1500 words. More details can be found at the Space Squid site.

Amazon.com Widgets

“Report.”

“Satellite communications probe launched, Commander. Operation complete. Gamepowa Store Upgrade now broadcasting on all LadyStar pages.”

“Hi Acey-san! That’s a neat new banner we got! Do you really have all those games in your store?”

“Z-bot! What’s up? Let’s break it down for the people.”

“Standing by.”

“See, Z-bot and me got an understanding.”

*giggle*

I apologize to our loyal Buzz readers for being absent the last couple of weeks. I was on deadline for my GHOST HUNTRESS book and I had a death in the family that sent me out of town. Sorry to be so behind.

But, during that time, I finally experienced one of the hottest items on the market and had the coolest time with it.

Yes...I have Wii'd.



OMG. What fun it was!!!

And it's not just for kids. Anyone can play it. It's soooooooo much fun and so easy.

You know how funerals turn into impromptu family reunions? Well, when I was in Baltimore last weekend, we ended up in a very rowdy, competitive Wii tournament. There was ping pong and doubles tennis and -- the one I excelled at -- bowling. Once I got the rhythm of letting go of the button once I went into my bowling wind up, I bowled several strikes in a row!!! Wow...it was as thrilling as if I were at the bowling alley.

I loved how the characters had no legs or feet! LOL!



Who knew you could get exercise out of it? I worked up a sweat and was even a little sore the next day! I loved it! Why don't I have one of these? Why doesn't everywhere I go have one of these? It's phenomenal and has changed my life!

I vow to be Wii-ing from now on!

Have you Wii'd? What's your favorite game? What do you recommend?



Hugs,
Marley = )

SORORITY 101: Zeta or Omega? (May 2008, Puffin Books)
SORORITY 101: The New Sisters (May 2008, Puffin Books)
GHOST HUNTRESS SERIES (May 2009, Houghton Mifflin)

If you’re a regular online, you probably know or know of Blake Carver. Even if you’ve never met him, you know his work. He’s been running and maintaining the incredible LISNews hub since 1999. This contribution alone is why many of us admire him for his dedication and vision.

In 2002, Blake started LISHost, an affordable website hosting service for libraries and libraries. On the very rare occasion the LISHost server goes down, you can tell something’s amiss because half the known LIS world must house their sites there. I do, as does Michael Stephens, and we can both tell you from first-hand experience that Blake does a superhuman job of maintaining the server (especially security) and providing technical support.

I can’t think of a time when Blake hasn’t responded immediately when there was a problem, when he said no to a request to add software just for me, or when he didn’t come up with a creative solution to a problem no one else would have wanted to deal with. And for all of his hard work (truly, the man must not sleep), he charges next to nothing for the services you get.

So to thank him for all of his efforts, both on our behalf and for the profession, Michael and I are raffling off a Nintendo Wii to help show our appreciation in the form of a fundraiser. Please note that neither LISHost nor LISNews is in financial trouble, and this is not a call to “save” them. This is simply a way for us to acknowledge Blake’s efforts and thank him for everything he does.

So here’s how it works. Everyone who donates $10 or more to LISHost by 11:59 p.m. on March 14, 2008, will be eligible to win the Wii. We’ll pull a name out of the digital hat, so-to-speak, and send you the Wii if you’re the lucky winner. To enter/donate, click on the button below. Your donation is your entry, as we’ll have a full list of names from Paypal.

…might just be based on the Nintendo Wii?

Check out Johnny Chung Lee’s Wii Projects and count how many times you find yourself saying “wow.” And if you own a Wii, see if you don’t want to try to doing all of these things yourself. I know I do.

Unintended consequences are often the most interesting ones. As I watched these videos, I found myself thinking about Allan Kleiman’s work at the Old Bridge Public Library, using the Wii to introduce seniors to technology, wondering if this type of setup would work better for those folks who have trouble using a computer mouse.

The head tracking video is really interesting, too, as it might be a precursor to a home version of The Cave. Imagine being able to walk into a book on your videogame console (Hotel Dusk for the Wii, anyone?). 3D gaming - and the literacies that would come with it - might be much closer than we think.

I really want some time to play with this stuff! [Thanks, Clare!]

“We’re really super happy today ’cause we gots a big announcement. Acey-san and Z-bot helped us a lot when those mean Halloween monsters attacked, and so we decided that Gamepowa should be part of our site all official and stuff!”

“And so I said that Acey and Z-bot should have their own character pages like us so Talitha made one for them! It’s Acey and Z-bot of the Starship Hana!“

“Welcome to the Goofy Bird show, Space girl! Good to have you guys orbiting the planet checking out all the coolest game tech, even if I can’t understand what Z-bot is talking about half the time.”

“Heh.”

“We’re honored to be a part of the best site on the web, game fans! Z-bot and I will do our best to make the Gamepowa category rock! A big salute from the crew of the Hana!”

“Check out the Gamepowa Store too. That’s where Acey and Z-bot put all of the great games they review. They’ve got over 300 games in the store now.”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Sugoi sugoi sugoi!”

“Our store has all the best games too!”

“Yay for Gamepowa! Go read all their neat articles, minna-san! All of Acey-san and Z-bot’s articles are in the Gamepowa Category that Talitha-chan set up. Have fun!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what about the most important thing?”

“Oh yeah! Girls play video games too!”

“Booya! OUT!”