The past two weeks, I bought:

• Viva Pinata: Trouble In Paradise: $20 @ amazon
• Fable II: $30 @ amazon
• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts: $18 @ amazon
• 120 GB HDD: $70 @ sears
• Rock Band 2 Double-cymbal pack: $13 @ amazon

All new in box.  Gotta love hunting!!!!

I'm not a fan of these big conferences, because it gives developers a free excuse to hold onto all of their big news until it comes around.  I'd rather them dole out information on projects evenly throughout the year.

As a corollary to the above, the other problem I have with E3 is that we hear about projects that won't be done for a long time.

My buddy came into town on Friday with a mission.  "We are going to see Fast & Furious today."

You bet your ass we are, budday!

By now, you know if you're the type of person who likes the Fast and Furious series.  If you're not a fan of the street racing subculture, and don't know your NOS from your Sparco (or have no idea what I just said), then play it safe and stay the hell home.  There's nothing for you here.

But I gotta say, I love F&F.  I love it ironically - I'm laughing AT you, not with you - but I'll still watch any of those movies if they're on.  Fast & Furious (aka 4) is certainly better than Tokyo Drift.  Really, that doesn't say much; cleaning my toilet is better than Tokyo Drift.  But F&F was really, really boring.  I don't know if the director forgot that the whole point of these movies is speed and awesome cars, or what, but after the kick-ass opening scene there was surprisingly little racing going on.  2 Fast 2 Furious had a horrible plot, but I actually enjoyed it more than F&F4, because at least that one had a bunch of cool chase scenes.  And the first one spent pretty much all of its time around awesome cars.  But F&F4 spent most of its time with a bunch of guys in a circle, acting all grumpy.  There was a lot of Furious, but not enough Fast.

Rent this one; there's not enough action to make it worth seeing on the big screen.

I find that most used games at Gamestop still cost more than I'd want to spend, and they never come close to giving me enough credit for any game that I'd take in.  That's why I trade for/buy games that I want via Craigslist and Gametz.com (or even CheapAssGamer to some degree).  It's more of a pain in the ass to do it that way, but I can dictate the terms of the deal.

Because Bethesda lowered the price on all of their Oblivion DLC (except for horse armor which now costs double), I thought I'd have another go at it.  Due to some idiocy on my part, and stupidity on MS's, I lost my old saved games trying to transfer it between my HDD and MU, so I figured that it's time to make another uber-badass to scar the lands with her powerful magicks.

So I went ahead and popped the Oblivion GOTY disc back into my 360.  The game that was the impetus for me to get a 360 in the first place (well, that and Guitar Hero III).  The game that I spent over 120 hours on already.  The game that I created a custom character planning sheet for.  The game that I ran home to play on my lunch breaks.  The game that I talked to the one chick at work I can't stand about, because she plays it, too.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?  $10 says I pick up Fallout 3 again when Broken Steel comes out.