Nintendo’s Wiiware was just released, and the launch includes some cool games. Lost Winds look particularly fun!

A fun little anime clip I found from The Scooter Scoop:

Appetizer

When someone smiles at you, do you smile back?

Yes

Soup

Describe the flooring in your home.  Do you have carpet, hardwood, vinyl, a mix?

Dark, soft, wide, textured, hardwood floors for livingroom and kitchen downstairs, plus carpet in the TV room. Mexican tiles in sunroom and utility room. Upstairs is all carpet, except for linoleum in the bathrooms.

Salad

Write a sentence with only 5 words, but all of the words have to start with the first letter of your first name.

Big beef burritos bust bellies.

Main Course

Do you know anyone whose life has been touched by adoption?

A coworker of mine has a wonderful adopted daughter.

Dessert

Name 2 blue things.

Tommy Lasorda’s blood and the urinal cakes in my office bldg bathroom.

We got Mario Kart for the Wii a few days ago and have been having a blast playing. It’s so much fun. The online portion is the best part of the game for me. It’s cool to be racing against people from all over the world. I’d still learning how to race better, but it’s still a blast even when I lose. We’ve been using the special wheel to control the cars and motorcycles, but I did use the old Wavebird when we had a 4-person multiplayer race going. It seemed a bit easier, but you don’t get the cool (at least I think it’s cool) wheel icon next to your screen name if you don’t use the wheel.

Mario Kart Wii has a lot of different vehicles to choose from. There are carts, souped up racers, dirt bikes, sport bikes, scooters, choppers, even stroller-cars! It’s so fun to race using different cars. The animations are really neat too. For instance, when you throw an item out of the stroller-car, the top canopy opens up and the shell flies out. Also, when you do a mid-air trick while on the bike, he does a moto-x style move. I tend to use the motorcycles more than the cars because the drifting animation is awesome-looking. Especially the Sugar Scooter, which looks like a modified Vespa. It’s very cool. And the racing outfits of the motorbike riders are really neat. I mean, look how cool Peach looks in racing leathers in the graphic above!

Mariko was telling me a couple neat things about Mario games that I didn’t know before. First, the name “Luigi” is the same as the Japanese word “ruiji” which means “similar”, which is a nice pun since he is similar to Mario. And secondly, by combining the name “Mario” and the Japanese word for bad, “warui”, the character Wario was born.

Mario Kart is really a great game, especially playing against others either online or multi-player. I definitely recommend this if you have a Wii. If anyone wants to exchange Mario Kart or Wii friend codes, just drop me a line! (barron @ the url of this site)

Mariko sent me a link to a fantastic article by Chris Kohler about the opening of a Go Go Curry restaurant in NYC. It’s got me craving Japanese curry so badly! His description of J-curry is right on the money, and I was so glad he mentioned the practice of topping the curry with cheese. It’s my preferred method of eating kare-raisu (curry rice).

“Go Go Curry Brings Japan’s Authentic Comfort Food to NYC”

An excerpt of my conversation with Koa (4) this morning on the way to daycare:

Koa: I want old McDonald’s.

Me: Mom’s cheeseburgers are much better. She makes them with love.

Koa: No, french fries!

Me: Oh yeah, and french fries.

Koa: And poop!

My brother sent me a link to this Awareness Test video. It’s something to think about!

I love my 4yr old, Koa, very much. But he’s got a voice that it tuned specifially to drive my ears nuts when we’re in the car. Just something about the angle and proximity I guess. Sometimes when he gets excited, I have to plug my right ear with my finger. It’s really that bad. What I really need is a cone of silence a la Get Smart! for either Koa, or myself. They can’t be that expensive, can they? It may be a good DIY project…

Check out my muxtape at barron.muxtape.com! Hopefully muxtape will survive for a while before the legal eagles swoop in.