Tonight I saw Redd's tent for the first time. (It seems like every day you get one of the wanderers... so far I've had Lyle, Shrunk, Redd... and Blanca three times, more about her in a bit.) Redd's joint is now members only, so you have to figure out his password from one your villagers, which is a pain. Inside he had a desk lamp, a fire hydrant, and a famous painting... the one that looks like the Mona Lisa. I bought them all for about 1500, 2500 and 3500 bells. I don't know which, if any, are Redd exclusives, because I'm trying to avoid online spoilers and strategy guides for as long as I can. (Took about two months on the GameCube version. Frowny.)

So I'm kinda excited about the painting, because that's the first one I've seen and I'd like to donate it to the museum. But when I take it down to Blathers, he informs me that it is a fraud! Like, Shroud of Turin fraud! He refuses the donation. And now the painting's title in my inventory comes up "forged painting" instead of "famous painting." I decided to display the contraband in my house - the knuckleheads who live in Adamsvil won't know it's a fake - but I wonder if Nook would spot that it is phony and deny me any good money for selling it. I went back to Redd to bitch, but he wouldn't talk about it, the lying thief.

Speaking of money, I went to visit Biff in Megaton tonight and his tailor shop had a crown on sale for 1000000 bells. A million bells! Now that's status.

Somewhat relatedly, I'm making sure I talk to Sable every day, so I can crack her surly shell. In GCAC, she would eventually get to like you after weeks of brushing you off. Then she would talk about how her and Mabel's parents died and how tough they had it growing up. Maybe we'll get a similar soliloquy in ACWW.

Now, about Blanca. Instead of meeting her randomly on the train, Blanca now just shows up, presumably as randomly as Wendell, Redd and the rest. What's cool is that she always has a new face designed by somebody out there in the Wild World (unless the game is completely misleading me.) The faces I've seen certainly look like silly handmade work, anyway. Plus, she always names the person and town who made it, and it's names I've never heard before (and not obvious Nintendo-planted names like on the default patterns at the tailor shop.) She also recites a word that was given to her by that person. I've had her three times now, and each time I've sent her back off into the internet with a red and green Dred head icon and the word "www.fourhman.com" in her vocabulary. I'd love to know where that ends up.

And speaking of viral marketing, ACWW has a new form of mail called bottle mail. It is special mail that you jam into a bottle and set adrift into the sea on the south end of town. So I've been writing letters that say "To Some Stranger: www.fourhman.com <-- my ACWW diary and more! Email me when you receive this bottle! (MM/DD/YY) Joe@fourhman.com" I've done this a bunch of times as well. I'm not sure if the bottle transfers to anywhere across the planet like I think Blanca does, or if it only goes to players you meet during travelling or while in tag mode. I'd also like to know if opened bottle mail can be tossed back out, so that anybody who gets my bottle could read it and then send it on again. And I've made my letter signature "Joe@fourhman.com" so the animals I write will have my email on any letters they show to other players. However it all works, it would be fun to get RL email from strangers who have seen my website/address from inside Animal Crossing.