Old shoes and new raquets.

The following news is highly classified, and should be repeated as many times as possible, because there is no point in it being classified. Pictures will accompany this post shortly.

1. I am now trading English lessons for ping pong lessons with a teacher at my school--yesterday was my first lesson. My teacher told me that his English name is Federer. I am training to play the principal again next week. I have developed something of a fierce forehand,I think.

2. I am going to thanksgiving dinner tonight! I was up last night at 1 AM making mashed potatoes. I'll rush home to make the stuffing today. It's going to be at the apartment of my new friend Mitsuru. We're running friends, as of this week. I know you were sad that I wasn't planning on celebrating, Mom, and apparently someone got the psychic message and invited me.

3. I made an apple pie last night, to give to the people at work...share the Thanksgivin'. It's a comforting feeling to be able to bake here...even though it took a heck of a lot of time getting the ingredients together for the first time. It's not that they're hard to find, really...although spices are challenging. It's more that everything is packaged differently, and in a different place than it normally is.

And now for the video game thought of the bleedin' day:

Who remembers Super Metroid? Who played it over and over again, with a fervent passion, besides me and my 12-year-old friends? Who can name what makes it so special? Is it the atmosphere? At this point, I'm inclined to think so. That's because I recently invested in an XBox 360 to play a game that was supposedly inspired by it. It's called Shadow Complex. See the resemblance in gameplay?

I won't lie--Shadow Complex was most of the reason I bought the XBox. Quality platformers are so few and far between these days--and I was psyched to support a guy who clearly had his dogmatic video-game-loving head on straight. But as I played it, I was non-plussed. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was fun to play. But it lacked something. That something, I think, is atmosphere. Super Metroid establishes a kind of "alone in space" feeling very well, and achieves with a minimal story line what Shadow complex only manages to bungle by trying to be contemporary and political. It's unfortunate, because the visual design elements in Shadow Complex clearly were on par with Super Metroid, even considering that it's coming out 20 years later.

Ah, le sigh.

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Mandarin Character of the Friggin' Day:

肉 = Meat.

Add 肉 onto any animal, and it means the meat that the animal gives. So goat meat is 羊肉. Chicken (the animal) is 鸡. But the meat of the chicken is 鸡肉. Get it?