Hello! Welcome to La La Bleep Bleep, the result of Dtoid's relentlessly guilting randomly
generated messages goading me into creating a clog. (...) I am not an important person,
IRL or on the internets; I just like talking about vidya gamz. While I game frequently on
multiple platforms, I consider myself a casual gamer. I do play lots from the puzzle genre,
but I really got started with fighters and JRPGs (though I'm not especially masterful at any
of the above). I play any given game for as long as my tiny attention span can take, and
stop whenever I'm not having fun. Simple as that.

My memories of gaming go back to mashing E. Honda and Chun-Li in Street Fighter 2 at my
cousins' house to getting my Vectrex console to feeling truly hardcore by blasting through
Lunar: TSS, my first RPG. Nowadays, I'm working on Disgaea and Lumines II for the PSP
and Phoenix Wright 3 : Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations: 3 Semicolons Too Many for
the DS.

Okay, enough of the intro! Today's internet find is old for many, new for Kim. As an even
tinier kinder than what I am today, I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials like I
read so many others, imagining my own realizations of each character in my mind. The
exception, however, was Mrs. Coulter, the protagonist's cunning and gorgeous mother, an
ice queen I could only see as Nicole Kidman. Of course I made little fangirl puddles after
seeing her in this holiday season's Token Fantasy Movie, and she was fantastic despite the
weak material she was given (the screenplay, please do not be mistaking for the books
themselves oh God). However, my favorite Kidman role of 2007 may actually be her stint
as a DS Player.



By far, Europe wins the celebrity endorsement game. Utada Hikaru is all cute and nice, and
Jessica Alba buying her crew DSes was pretty sweet. Kidman's a package of class,
elegance, and cute, and she definitely implies the same for the DS.

Though really, I never got on the Brain Age bandwagon. It was fun to play against others in
competitive mode, but I could never motivate myself to buy a copy. It feels like less of a
game, and more like flat out edutainment. The challenges I played were, indeed,
challenges, but the accomplishments still feel too simplistic. I'm young and still in school,
stretching my mind in different ways that probably compensate for lack of Brain Age.
Maybe I'll try Brain Age 5000 when I'm 30 or something. How many teenagers and
twentysomethings play these games, really? Not to write it off—I'm genuinely curious.

EDIT
Oh look, Colette just posted about Brain Age! I am "relevant" and "with the times" after all! I'm always skeptical towards such golden promises of keeping your brain healthy through the mystical power of video games, but not totally. All video games require an interactivity that stimulates the brain to some extent, and I totally appreciate whatever gets the gears turning a bit. (Except science. I leave that to those who do what they must because they can.) The emphasis on improved thinking is a gimmick, one easily recognizable to those who regularly game, but not so much to the crowds who have yet to justify the existence of video games to themselves. "Hey, maybe it's educational!" Or not, as the case may be, but if it breaks down accessibility barriers for non-gamers, whatever, right?