yarn.

Sorry, guys. I've been trying to make this a weekly diddy, but I haven't really had much to talk about. Let's see what I can do.

Didn't you hear? The phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong" was trademarked by Nintendo. So now we oughta say, "It's on like Donkey Kong®", however you'd say that...



My first day as a GameStop employee was yesterday. My official position title is a Game Adviser. That's an extremely fancy way of saying "answer customer's questions." It started out rough: I walked up to people and asked if they had any questions, they would keep looking around and say "No, just browsing." That's perfectly fine with me. We've all been there. But it got awkward. What do you do when everyone in the store is just browsing? Eventually, I was browsing, too. Then the Asst. Manager hooked me up with some games to put away, and I got busy with those, occasionally asking new browsers if they needed help. That was pretty much it for an hour.

And then 2 old ladies came in. They told me that their son wanted the latest baseball game for the XBox, and that they didn't know anything else. Thanks for hitting me with an EXTREMELY GENERIC GAME TITLE. So I was frantically searching for MLB 2K10 or 2K11, whichever one was out. All I could come up with was MLB Manager's Seat, which the old ladies suspected was a game where the player simply sitting around buying and selling teams. They wanted an "actual baseball game". I wasn't even going to try to explain; I was in too much of a hurry to find 2K10 or something like it. Nothing could be found, and after 10 minutes of searching, I felt like an idiot, and they left.

Luckily, Everything after that got better. More people came in with actual questions. A young couple came in looking to buy another console alongside the Wii they already had for their young family. The husband already knew a few very good points about the PS3, and I only added to the good points. I helped him realize that a PS3 was 10x of a better system than a 360. They didn't buy anything, but they looked pretty sold on a PS3. I felt good. I will never let anyone get a 360 if they had a choice between that or a PS3.

A teenager came in with his grandpa (aka THE BANK) and had a lot on his mind to purchase and trade. I helped him get a good deal on a used Classic Controller for his Wii since his Gamecube controller was weird with Virtual Console games, and we had a pleasant conversation about Sonic games.

One guy came in after a ragequit. He bought a cable online that would transfer memory from one 360 to another, but it didn't work. Granted, the cable was $5 and came from some random guy online, so he should have expected it not to work. He picked up the real packaged deal and asked me, "Will this do what it says it'll do?" And I said that if his other cable came from the Internet, this cable will probably be loads better. So he bought it.

Closing time. Well, 10 minutes before. Another couple came in to get early Christmas presents for their kids. I helped them save on getting a Need for Speed game, along with a Wii racing wheel, for their older son. And for their younger son? A nice copy of Starfy. I hope those kids are happy with their games.

It makes me feel good to help people get good titles. Granted, Need for Speed and MLB games aren't good titles, but I can't control what the kid asked for. Another nice bonus working for GameStop is that I can rent any game for 4 days. And guess what I walked out with at the end of the day?

If you have a soul and a special little child in your heart that spreads his small arms towards you every day, then you must MUST MUST try out some Kirby's Epic Yarn. I have not seen a game as cute and adorable as this eyecandy-masterpiece in anyone's library of games. The animations are smooth, the controls are simple, and yet the game is challenging enough for anyone novice or veteran. The music only added. Small orchestras and lots of dainty piano gives everything a soft vibe, and remixes of recurring melodies like King Dedede's Theme and Butter Building add to the overall Kirby experience. Yeah. Guess that's my squeegasm for the day.

There you go. I said something. Now say something back.