Today, I had what would could be referred to as a G-day, not a gangster day, but a gamer day, a day totally set aside to playing games.  
It was not something that I really had planned in advance, it was more just something that gradually unfolded, and manifested itself into a G-day at around 1700, where I realized that I had just spend 6 hours playing FO:New Vegas (I'M ADDICTED! Somebody get me off these chems!).  
I use these days to pull the plug, kick back and bake, chill out or to put it in simple language, to relieve the stress of every day life and enjoy an activity which really gives me something. I do not play games for financial gain, for social mobility or to improve my health (Besides the relaxing factor in playing games, for me at least), I do it because it is a kind of sanctuary in the every day life where school must be attended, work done and life can be hectic for many people.  
The gamer culture has evolved in a fantastic way, given birth to a million online communities that are full of advice, information and opportunities for competition, and has connected humans around a central hub consisting of the fondness for playing games. GB.com is a direct result of this evolution, and maintains itself on the basis of all the members and listeners of the podcast that find the gaming community an attractive space.  
I guess this culture has had the kind of impact on me, which allows me, and has me wanting a few of these gaming days, where the plug is pulled, and the world narrows in on the computer entirely.  
 
It is awsome.  
Spending around 8 hours with FO:NV made me realize how much I actually treasure having the time to do these things. It is not critically important to the world that people play games (if one ignores that the gaming industry actually has an impact on the world's economy), however maybe it is something  that is needed by certain people, like some others need a space to meditate, or be alone. Sure when it comes to gaming, not everyone experiences the calming effect of it, just try to recall the last time a bullet pierced your skull in de_dust! However, is it not right, that one can find a small little world in the realm of games that just provides that kind of fun which is so easy to obtain and can come in so many varied ways.?  
 
The day basically ran like this: 
 
1200 pm - Booted FO:NV 
1300 pm - GOT THE PASS FOR THE STRIP! Hello Mr. House  
1400 pm - Killing legionaries, fiends, spores etc. IT'S ALL FUN! 
1700 pm - All ranger bases got their radio codes delivered, died 10 times trying to scale a hill infested with flying bugs. 
Then I realized I could take the road around and on the way discover Jacobstown.  
  
1900 pm - Puppy got a new brain. 
2000 pm - My *ss hurts, computer is shut down. 
 
 And what else did I do today? 
I cooked eggs - Check 
Fed the dog - Check 
Made a contribution to the world, or engaged in valuable activity - No.... 
But I walked the dog! - Check 
 
Sweet lord it was a great Saturday. Hope some of you guys are also having a great G-day!

The trip to GameStop today was a mixed experience. The employee who I had talked to about S.Scribblenauts (I will find you!) explained to me that a newly hired kid had accidentally switched the original Scribblenauts disc with the S.Scribblenauts, and had sold of the new version 50% of what the store actually charged, and now they were left with only one copy, the original, totally unwanted, I-do-not-care-if-you-exist version. So some lucky guy paying for a decent game ended up with a really great game, that's luck :D!  
 
Anyways, the trip to GameStop was for me a try to get a new game for my revived interest in the Nintendo DS, and the game which I chose, getting to it, took almost an hour to for me to decide to pick up... Apparently the DS can turn you into a 12-year old girl, deciding which Barbie suits the new Barbie Porsche the best. It horrible, completely horrible. I repeatedly walked from the pre-owned section to the new, pre-owned, new, pre-owned!! And it struck me, just as I had finished the 10th lap or so, that the DS suffers from the same problem as its big brother Wii, there are a gazzilion games for this platform that nobody buys, at least not if you do not suffer from organic brain damage... Pilates, for the DS? I do pilates with 20 other people, in a gym, provided that I have not stared at a pair of teen breasts in a way too tight t-shirt for a few weeks... I WILL NOT DO PILATES IN MY HOME, from my DS. 
I literally dug my way through a basket of DS games, and I kinda got the same feeling you get when you find a ten-pack of kittens left by the road in some cardboard (Aaaaaalmost... DS games are not that ''adorable''), there are so many games coming out, by so many different developers that do not all have the same set of quality expectation, skill-level-to-acquire-such etc. These games had been dumped in a basket, thrown away because even five-year olds have so much common sense that a game about a 17-year old wizard, which fared bad on all other consoles, properly would not improve that significantly on a handheld device. 
And yet... It seemed that even in the deepest pits of this world, treasures can be found for those who have patience, or a shovel to dig through twenty kilo of plastic containers. 
 
THIS WAS MY FINDING!  
 

4 years ago, during late Winter I found myself going on a vacation to the super exotic, Brit crammed Mallorca, with my parents and brother (and therefore missing out on that party of one's high school years, that at the time made the world). It was what one could call a stereotypical vacation with one's family; a run-of-the-mill hotel, (inhabited by such a variety of local animal life as the rarely seen cockroach, the dogus strayous and a few mildly annoying, seemingly immortal mosquitos) restaurants serving only the best ''local food'' (By this, they must have meant local food imported from the States, as my meals consistently varied between burgers, pizzas and a burrito) and the always welcoming indigenous population, selling off cheap counterfeit products while trying to dodge the crackdowns of the local police force.  
It was in this small paradise that I would spend a week sleeping next to my brother in a small, smelly bed in a room lacking air-condition, and being forced to walk around on the island to see, well whatever it is that you go to see on Mallorca.  
 
My dear mom, who has always gone out of her way to find a wide selection of books for her only son willing to read, had in this case brought a selection of Stephen King novels, including the Twillight Zone (which is interesting), along with a few early versions of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and other Scandinavian crime fiction. So I was rather set for spending hours in the sun, reading until my eyes would start to bleed and then going out for the specialities of Don Pedro at the local food joint (which often ended in a storm to the toilet, due to at the time undiagnosed celiac disease.), and this pattern was followed strictly for the first 3 days of our little family vacation.  
However, both my brother and I are quite devoted to entertainment delivered in the form of some electronic device, and having championed all of the various games on our phones, we had quickly concluded that we needed new ways of keeping boredom at bay.  
The solution came one night, after having finished dinner, and a visit to the John a time or two (SPLAT! PAAAAIN!). Walking down the main street of the town we lived in  (Tapas, or something) our little family crossed yet another small store, filled with all sorts of electronic equipment that mainland retailers simply could not trick Japanese tourists to buy. I had at the time considered buying a DS, and had tried out my brother's a few times, mainly Nintendo Dogs and a version of Pokémon which I cannot recall - but did not find the games compelling enough for me to absolutely own one. I was never introduced to a lot of the core games of Nintendo like Mario, Zelda etc. and I was maybe slightly more interested in the 360 at the time, and with the limited funds of any normal young teenager I spend money on what I knew would be good, not what could potentially be, but also potentially suck, hard. Of course, I had owned a GameBoy before, and had liked playing especially Pokémon and Kirby. The DS however had taken a drastic turn from its older brothers, in the sense that it had evolved into something entirely new, that I could not link to my past with the GameBoys. Though the concept of a portable game platform persisted, the DS had ditched it's GameBoy ancestry and adopted a new concept of its own, along with a new form of interactivity and form of gameplay. The DS was not just a console intended for passing time on the bus, plane or in the back of a car, but could demand the same investment of time as its larger, more bulky competitors, the PS and Xbox.  
 
Still however, I seemed to completely miss this fact, and that night I bought my own, black DS (Slim?) for the sole reason that I wanted to play the popular Advance Wars series, in this case the Dual Strike edition. And while DS is a great game, I mainly played it to enjoy those small cutscenes where units attack each other and the anime sequences play to cover the fighting... And I once watched a full play through of MOH: Underground, instead of playing it myself! It is strange! 
So 4 years later I still boot my DS, rarely though, and with only two games I have a very limited frame of reference to the console. 
However, I will not sit back and let pass all the great games of the DS that have been developed over the span of my time as a DS owner! I decided a week ago to try and collect some of the games that I found to sound very interesting, and I started with Super Scribblenauts, a game I have had my eyes on for some time now.  
 
I had a vague idea of seeing the case in a dark corner in the local EB Games, and this Friday morning I got on my bike and raced into town, I was gonna buy myself some chaw for the DS! I found the game right at the front section of the DS game, AND NOT IN A DARK CORNER, or at the bottom of some bottomless pit! I was psyched! Psyched beyond comparison! I handed over the case to the employee behind the desk, and had almost swiped my credit card through the scanner as the employee turned his back on me to collect the game and put it in the case. ''Gimme, gimme, gimme!''. The world could had celebrated final peace in the Middle East, Putin could have launched nuclear armageddon, I did not care, I was getting that game. And I WAS getting the game, I DiD NOT get the game. The employee turned around, the face of a surgeon who have just lost a patient and said to me; '' I'm sorry, it seems that we don't have SUPER Scribblenauts, but I can see from the information on the computer that there is a Scribblenauts laying around somewhere, you're welcome to go have a look''.... 
 
Go have a look?  
Somewhere? 
Scribbl.... Scribblenauts? 
 I could have punched his eyes out.... 
But I did not.  
 
Somewhere, the Universe, God or some evil, evil 13-year-old kid was laughing, laughing till he or she wet him/herself over my agony, 'cause I was not getting my game, I was not given the joy... 
I was banished, driven off to beg the last entity in this world that could possibly have my game....  
Amazon... 
F*cking Amazon. 
 
Friday might become my new favorite day to hate... I am not kidding.