Seeing the new Two Towers trailer has reminded me just how freaking cool the middle of Lord of the Rings is. Two Towers contains my two favorite bits: the fall of Isengard and the taming of Gollum.

Saruman and Gollum are my two favorite characters; I seem to have a thing for fallen/corrupted figures. When Gandalf is standing at the base of Orthanc, shouting "Will you not come down?" ...and proud Saruman takes the opportunity to insult Theoden... well, I love that scene. Plus, Isengard follows directly out of the Entmoot, which is a great sidebar event.

And Gollum! Ever since those riddles in the dark, I wanted more and more genuine dialogue with the sneaky little monster. His surprise team-up with Frodo and Sam makes for some of the most tension filled portions of the book. And some of the funniest. I expect the movie will do an excellent job of combining the CG Gollum with the actors. Sure, that balrog looked fantastic, but he didn't really have to interact with anybody... Gollum and Treebeard will need to be more convincing, more human.

Check out Canadian Man Tries to Bungee on to Ship - Misses. The headline to this article should be "Canadian Man Tries to Re-enact Solid Snake's Bungee Leap from Bridge to Ship as Seen in the Opening Movie from the Hit PS2 Game 'Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty' - Misses."

I've been trying to build a heightened sense of civic pride in Adamsvil. I've decided that I should enact a dress code policy. My goal is to walk around Adamsvil and see all the villagers wearing the same shirt.

I've chosen the Noble Shirt as the official uniform of Adamsvil, and orders are being placed with Nook so I can have enough to dress everyone. I suppose I can't expect complete and instant compliance. I sent one to Boots the Alligator and he has made no mention of it yet. Dissention will be dealt with. Weber the Duck immediately donned the Noble Shirt, and lost it a day later when it was raining. Idiot!

The PlayStation2 Network Adaptor has been out for a while now, and I still don't have one. This seems to break precedent, I know. I mean, I'm *prepared* for it. First I hired a staff of architects to plan out how I could get ethernet strung throughout all three floors of our townhouse. Then I brought in a team of IT professionals to diagram a wireless network for 3 computers, 2 consoles, and 1 of those digital picture frame thingys. And on this episode of Designers' Challenge, the wireless team won.

So, eventually, I plan to set up Linksys EtherFast Wireless AP + Cable/DSL Router w/4-Port Switch. Perhaps a couple of them. It just hasn't happened yet, because my only motivation for getting my PS2 online is a bunch of so-so titles. Sure, SOCOM looks cool, but it's just another FPS, and I can do without that.

(LIVE) Right now we're in a massive antique store in New Oxford, PA. It's one of those deals where any old local yokel can rent a particular corner of the shop and sell their junk. So the pricing on any given object seems pretty random. Although I'm certainly no antique expert; maybe there's some encyclopedia somewhere that lists the acceptable price spread.

It comes to mind that maybe some people don't actually intend to *sell* their stuff... Just rent out space to *display* it. When I see a ceramic devil sitting on the edge of a ceramic chamberpot priced at $126, it just seems more like "Look at my collection" than "Please buy this Potty Devil."

Our two-day spree of antique stores comes to an end with these pics from various shops in the Easton, Maryland area. Incidentally, all of these tiny little pics are coming to you through my Hiptop, currently available through T-Mobile. More on that later.

There's definite disappointment here. Not crushing disappointment or utter disappointment, but some kind of lower-level disappointment that is haunting my soul.

We've been anticipating Kingdom Hearts for quite a long time, and after about 10 hours in, it's not shaping up to the Fun Quotient I had created in my mind. Or the Fun-to-Watch Quotient Rhonda was expecting.

I don't like RPGs. I rarely play hardcore RPGs. I'm going to assume that's my problem. But I do like story, and generally that's a huge component of RPGs. I suckled on the Kingdom Hearts hype teat purely for the Disney elements... and all criticism aside, this is the coolest Disney video game ever. The Kingdom Hearts story - a unified front of classic Disney Villains assisting an entropic force of evil in dominating the known universes - is undeniably cool. And when you do get a full-blown cutscene, the effect of Disney style seen through a video game lens is awesome.

This is what happens what I pass out on the couch and leave Rhonda alone with Animal Crossing... a house full of fish! Approximately 10 Barred Knifejaws, 12 Red Snappers and 2 Ceolocanths. And that's just since Nook closed for the night.

I'm pleased to report that the Adamsvil Dress Code is going well. Almost half the town is wearing the chosen garb, the Noble Shirt. From those who have fallen into line, response has been great. Louie the Ape was heard to say "Thanks for sending me this cool shirt, JoeForever!" I even witnessed Freckles the Duck clone his shirt and give the copy to Anicotti the Mouse, and they both walked away happy and whistling.

When you think of "games," you tend to think of winning. In most games, that's the only goal. Like Chess. There's no allowance for wanting to make a pretty pattern with your chessmen... or bonus points for resurrecting captured pieces by fully advancing some pawns. If you're not playing towards the goal of winning - capturing the enemy king - you're going to lose and thus the game will end. Or Football. The sole point is to move up the field and score touchdowns. (Although I suppose it could be argued that individual players are working towards the separate but compatible goals of improving their statistics.)

I'm just past the Monstro level - which feels to me like a halfway point - and I'm proud to say I'm feeling better about the game.

As I mentioned before, Kingdom Hearts wasn't exactly measuring up. I'm still bummed about the intermittant lack of voice acting, but the game is proving itself worthy in other ways. There's an easy equation here: as the number of Disney characters increase, the fun increases. My Summons so far are Genie, Simba, Bambi and Dumbo. I haven't had a chance to pull Dumbo out of my hat, but I have made use of the other three... and they all perfectly spotlight what's So Right about Kingdom Hearts. It's just awesome to be running around in real-time bashing nameless blank-eyed baddies with Bambi. Friggin' Bambi.

Let's be honest here. No matter who you are or what you do, eventually all of these great shenanigans will come to an end and you will be stiffer and colder than all those folks who were part of Perry's expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Seriously, from what I've read those guys brought horses or mules or some other poorly equipped mammal to handle the trek across Antarctica. Big surprise they died, isn't it? And guess what? The only people who care about them now are historians who laugh at their comic demise. Just like historians are going to laugh someday at us. But don't fear! Turn those laughs into the smiles of a well adjusted non-caring adult. How do you ask? Well, do you have the courage to read on? Well do you?

It's pure social grandstanding. Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and KB Toys have all announced they will not sell BMX XXX.

Here's the background. BMX XXX is an adults-only bike stunt game, kind of like Tony Hawk with strippers. The girls get nude, and there's other shock-jock style comedy... like dwarf clowns. Check out this screenshot. Panties. So yeah, it's intended for adults only.

I think this is pretty cool. IGN is letting registered users create a listing of all the games they personally own. It's currently part of their free service, but prior experience tells me that could change at any time... so hurry up and browse my collection before the Earth crashes into friendly poppa Sol.

Although I now owe Nook well over 700,000 Bells, my house is finally the biggest and best home in Adamsvil. If only I could relocate it to a more fitting acre. As it sits, it towers over the other three empty homes in the Nook Projects.

I now have a very spacious first floor, a similarly large basement, and a reasonably sized second floor. The basement is basically a storage area for furniture and other items that I'm not 100% on keeping or tossing. The first floor is the main living area, with some basic storage, a corner of Western-themed objects, and 4 NES games. The second floor is serving as an area for quiet contemplation, sparsley decorated with some shrine lanterns, ferns, and a softly moaning gyroid. It is from this room that I formulate the plans for Adamsvil's future.

Since relocating to homespun Adamsvil, I've found precious little of the big city amusements I used to enjoy. But one country folk activity has gripped me: coelocanth fishing.

Although the rest of the world has a ban on catching coelocanths, Adamsvil has no such conservation efforts. But this is the same town whose Museum devotes an entire wing to crickets and cockroaches, so you can't expect much. Coelocanths are ugly, gigantic prehistoric 80-pound fish-beasts. They greatly resemble every toothy aquatic fish baddie in every underwater video game ever, except these monsters are real.

I'm probably coming from an unusual perspective on the Danger Hiptop (or T-Mobile Sidekick, depending on your branding preference.) I've never owned a PDA of any type; I've never used calendar software on any platform. Heck, I've never even owned a cell phone. But when I first heard about the Hiptop, I knew it was the gadget I've been holding out for. The Hiptop broke my PDA cherry, you could say.

Everything I read says that it's being marketed towards young folk... which I find odd since I've seen zero advertising from T-Mobile for it, for teens or otherwise. It's not a PocketPC. It's not a high-end all-in-one PDA from the gods by any means. It's a PocketPC that's been whittled down to a very clean, very usable trinket. And it's extremely affordable. *That's* it's main draw. If this thing cost $600, there's no way I'd have one. But at $200, it's wonderful.

Ah, the mascot platformer. There's so many of them out there that it's hard to expect new things from them. They all tend to blur together into an endless array of wacky levels, item collecting and lead characters with attitude. Sly Cooper (and his titular Thievius Raccoonus) doesn't float too far from the bleak surface of the contemporary platform cliches, but it is far enough to score a big thumbs-up.

Sly Cooper comes from a family of trained thieves, and the Thievious Raccoonus is his predecessors' legacy: a book of lessons and tricks in thieving. But it's been stolen by the Fearsome Five, a loose alliance of villains. Sly must track down all the missing pages of the TR, beat all five criminal bosses, and learn some new thiefy skills along the way. Sly's backup consists of Computer Geek Stereotype #1 and Fat Oaf Stereotype #1. Their names are Bentley and Murray, and that alone should be enough to suggest their roles and dialogue.

[LIVE from Northgate Plaza parking lot] My car returned from its inspection with a gift: a tape deck. I can thank my sister's old car for donating it and my father for installing it.

My "new" radio, the view from the parking lot, and the T-Mobile store across the street where I bought the First Hiptop Sold in York County.

So far, my experience with the Hiptop has been pretty glowing. But it definitely has room for improvement. Hell, I'm on the first public release of hardware/software, so you have to expect some weird little bugs. Thankfully, I haven't had anything that stops service or breaks the thing, like some users at dangerinfo.com are reporting.

There's some sound trouble. Whenever you do anything that trips the speaker, it makes lots of little electronic non-sounds... pops and squeals and other electronic burbles. I've had some interesting connection disruptions, but you can lay those at the feet of spotty wireless service. And I worry about the flip screen. I feel like every time I flip it, I'm counting one flip off the thing's Count of Flips Per Lifetime, eventually leading towards that final flip that won't flip back.

Last night I had the coolest experience yet in Kingdom Hearts. Donald, Goofy and I have stumbled into the Heartless-ified Riku boss fight. By this point in the game, Donald and Goofy are pretty friggin' awesome fighters, so I like letting them distract the enemies while I fool around with magic. In a three-on-one boss fight like this, it's especially to my advantage.

So the three of us beat on Riku for a bit, and then I decide to summon Genie to really soften Riku up. Genie fires off a couple of Showtime attacks on Riku while I keep my distance. When Genie's time runs out, I realize I'm almost out of MP, so I summon Bambi. Bambi and I keep away from Riku while Bambi drops a bunch of MP-up balls for me, so soon I'm fully charged again. I dismiss Bambi and summon Tinker Bell. Tink is a terrific summon, because she doesn't forcibly eject Donald and Goofy like the other summons... so D&G return and the four of us do the Riku Stomp.