The first day with a new WarioWare is always a humbling one. Nothing makes any sense, you can barely string together 10 wins in a row. It takes dedication to achieve that WarioWare harmony where you can recognize a mini-game in those initial escalating seconds and respond with the correct button-pressing to Eat! or Deliver! or Avoid! or whatever.

Twisted is the fourth WarioWare game and the second one this calendar year. I can still vividly recall the world before WarioWare, so being up to a quartet of games (for three different systems) seems absurd. Just as Touched was a demo suite for the DS, Twisted has a gimmick of its own: a gyroscope. Most of the games are played with no button input whatsoever, just a quick tilting of the entire GBA. For example, there's a hacky-sack game where you have to tilt the GBA to the right to get the right leg to connect and kick the ball back up... ditto for the left leg. So to properly bounce the ball between legs, you're actively leaning the GBA in either direction.

Planet GameCube (which is probably already contemplating their new domain name) has another news article I'm going to dupe and comment on. This one is about Iwata's latest comments on the Nintendo Revolution, DS and Wi-Fi.

Today Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that Nintendo will operate one thousand wireless access points in Japan to encourage the growth of its online Nintendo DS games. Iwata also confirmed strong third party support for Nintendo's online strategy, with "25 software makers" pledging their support for the online gaming service.

Obviously the key detail there is "in Japan" but it is still a great idea, particularly for kids and those from less-tech-savvy households. Imagine if every Toys R Us or GameSpot had a little wireless network for DSs (and PSPs) to latch onto for free downloads and local matchmaking. The reality is that most people don't have wireless networks at home, and they aren't likely to set one up anytime soon. Which leads into Nintendo's next bullet point:

Three years ago a close friend found out she was pregnant. Joe and I had been trying for 6 months at this point and I was certain we too would find out very soon that we were expecting. But as her belly grew, my hopes shrunk. And while she was going into labor, we were beginning a long series of infertility testing and treatment. What made the disappointment worse was attending all three of her baby showers. I couldn’t even go near the baby section of the store without having a meltdown so I found myself giving books and other “safe” gifts. It is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there how you can be so happy for them and so sad for yourself, but that was exactly how I felt as I watched her open gifts.

Fast forward to last month. It is finally our turn to be the couple expecting. We have the most beautiful little boy waiting in Korea to be our son. We first saw his picture on May 12th and every day I wake up and look at his photo and smile. We have waited so long and worked so hard to be this little boy’s parents.

All the second issues of the four pre-Infinite Crisis miniseries are out. Which world-shattering event will lead into Infinite Crisis? I'll be surprised if it's just one. It seems silly to imagine that three of them will wrap up nice and tight while the fourth blows the DCU wide open.

Rann-Thanagar War #2. I find this one the least interesting, despite including the Green Lantern Corps. (And hey, isn't that one of Kilowog's race on the cover? I thought Kilowog was the last of his kind!) See, I'm not a big fan of when the characters all head off into outer space and junk... especially when guys like Batman get thrown out there. Although I respect the cosmic background of the Lanterns, my favorite GL eras have always been the earthbound ones. I think I get weary of the outlandish scope of it all... because there is always ridiculous amounts of Muppet-esque, homogenous alien cliches. Since I prefer character-driven storylines, the big epic space battles with copy/pasted alien cultures just fail to impress me.

Whenever I see one of those logic puzzles, I think of Grandma. The kind where they give you a couple clues - Jimmy ordered the steak dinner and wants to sit beside Sarah, The person who had dessert was in chair #5, etc - and you have to figure out the order around the table. She always had puzzle books like that around to keep her mind sharp, and we would do those together when I was elementary school age.

Whenever I think of DisneyWorld, I think of Grandma. She lived in Orlando when I was very young, and we spent the spring/summer of TMI with her in Florida. After she moved back to PA, my family took her with us on several vacation pilgrimmages back to DisneyWorld, the last time being the week that Disney/MGM Studios opened. She loved the Carousel of Progress attraction, and I would poke fun at her for that. Grandma also had The Disney Channel back when it was a pay channel, and that was always a special part of our visits to her house.

It is interesting to me that, historically, it's always the Republicans who go after PBS. Given that PBS is supposed to focus on family-friendly educational and informational programming, you'd think it would be exactly what they espouse. The ugly truth is probably that PBS also dips into nasty liberal waters - with shows that question the GOP's central agenda of religious dominance - and that's why Republicans consistently get tired of spending federal money on the arts.

PBS supposedly gets only 15% of funding from the government, which is a number I don't believe. The rest comes from "viewers like you," or, more accurately, "local corporations looking for easy ways to score points on their community service charter." Ideally, PBS shouldn't receive any funds from the government, thereby abolishing any shred of influence they could exert over programming. No one in this country would trust a newspaper published by the White House (although most media is instead run by bright-eyed young morons fresh out of journalism school)... so why have a state-run television station.

At last year's Origins, I bought some advance packs of WizKids latest, Pirates of the Spanish Main. You build little 3D pirate ships and send them after treasure sitting on wild islands, confronting enemy ships with cannon and boarding. It fits much of the criteria I enjoy in my tabletop games: there's lots of tiny physical pieces and it presents a lovely visual landscape when the ships and islands and such are all out on the playing field. Plus, it's collectible, a la Magic/Pokemon/everything else.

Chris and I both glommed onto it last year, Mike and the rest less so, but still willing to play it. And after the convention ended, none of us ever played it again.

Until I, more or less randomly, brought it into work last week. Now I'm feeling re-Piratized. In the year since it debuted, WizKids has released two additional sets, Of the Crimson Coast and Of the Revolution. And I was happy to note that all three sets had been revised to include a much clarified rulebook. This weekend I picked up a handful of new packs, mixed them with my original Origins 2004 set (that promo ship they gave away is awful!) and now I have a 30-point fleet for each nation. Except America, for some reason I have been unable to pull a single American ship. Shrug.

Today's unbelievable news: we got Clark's travel call today, meaning he is ready to come home!

Now, this is about a month ahead of when we expected to get the call. Which is about a month ahead of when parents are told to expect the call. So the whole system must have accelerated like crazy lately for us to get Clark before he turns four months old.

So we're a little unprepared. The nursery is more or less fine; we finished his room last weekend. The work world is another story. Both of us figured we'd have another month to set up contingencies and training for our subs... and now we're both bailing out on FMLA with nary a meeting. As happy as we'll be bonding with our new baby, I don't imagine our offices will be as contented.

Total long distance weblog coming at you from a hotel PC in Seoul.

Today is day three of our trip, or day two depending on your time zone, I suppose. We're already acclimated to Korea time, which was neatly accomplished by not sleeping much on the flight, then getting a massive energy boost when the third plane flight for the night was cancelled. Back on EDT, I'd guess we were up for a day and a half total.

So. Our son.

The agency's office is right along a busy main Seoul street, and it was teeming with people when we arrived. Before we arrived, I was envisioning a white hospital-like building, but it felt more like a reconditioned high school. Lots of little side rooms and warm colors. It is super humid in Seoul right now - Monsoon season! - and the lobby was insanely hot. There were other families also meeting/picking up their children, from all over the world... some right there in the lobby. Plus nurses bustling about, a reunion tour group hugging and laughing. And then us just sort of standing and not knowing who to talk to. One of the nurses said "baby meeting?" and ushered us up the staircase to meet the social worker, Mrs. Lee, our son, and our son's foster mother.

It's 5:30am Friday local time... we've been up for hours already, thanks to another weird sleep pattern day.

After the last weblog entry, we met up with another couple and took a shuttle northward to Ilsan, where Holt Children's Services operates a live-in community for the disabled. Our tour guide was a Korean-American adoptee from Michigan who is volunteering at Ilsan Holt Town for six weeks. She took us around the property and told us about the work they do there to care for the 300 residents, all with varying degrees of mental illness and physical disability. This is also where the Holts themselves are buried, so we got to visit the gravesite of the American couple whose post-Korean War efforts to help the Ameriasian war orphans blossomed into the wonderful public service organization that has allowed Rhonda and I to form a family. When you're standing there, you can't help but imagine the ripple effects their lives have had. Amazing.