So Harlan hasn't played video games in awhile.  How long?  Well, when I was playing in front of him today, he asked me what a certain item did.  I said it restored MP.  He then asked me what MP does.

Wooooooow.  Hard to believe this fucker used to play video games as much as I do.

Out of everything I'm studying for French the verbs are annoying me the most, mainly because of the large effort I'm putting into it for naught.  Let me explain.  For anyone who's taken a Romance language (or many other Indo-European languages), a verb is conjugated in six different ways: all persons singular and plural.  Let's take the Spanish verb "to drive," or conducir.  It would be conjugated I conduzco, you conduces, he/she/it conduce, we conducimos, you guys conducís, and they conducen.  The way you know the person and number is by looking at the ending: -o, -es, -e, -imos, -ís, and -en.

Being a romance language, French does the same thing.  Let's look at it in French: I conduis, you conduis, he/she/it conduit, we conduisons, you guys conduisez, they conduisent.  Seems pretty simple, right?  But here's the difference between French and Spanish, which is what's pissing me off: French doesn't pronounce the endings except for the first and second person plural.  Literally it's I / you / he/she/it condui, we conduison, you guys conduise and they condui.  I'm spending all this time memorizing endings and irregularities when it's not reflected in the pronunciation at all.  For instance, "you close" in French is tu clos and "he closes" is il clôt.  Why the fuck is the circumflex suddenly added?  I have no idea because that doesn't really change shit; they're both pronounced clo.  I'm shitting my pants because I can't remember everything even though there's no point to it!

SMUT.

Stop looking at smut, mister!

So I've been playing this game a lot.  It's a fun little simulation game, but there is something I've noticed: The music in it kinda sucks.  And you know what?  I've noticed that with American games in general.  Without a doubt, Japan is superior when it comes to something to listen to as you play the game.  Every now and then in Viva Piñata some classical music plays for a minute before just petering off.  If you go to the menu, it's complete silence.  And honesty, I can't think of many American games off the top of my head which were much better.  That's not to say all American games have shitty music.  The battle themes for Total Annihilation were fucking amazing (a game only I played).  I liked the battle music for Rise of Nations as well.  God of War was awesome too (I don't care what those little shits who say Linkin Park music would've been better; they're just plain wrong).  And I enjoyed a couple of tracks from some Blizzard games.  But honestly, that's not a lot when you compare to the amount of Japanese games which make you think, "Yeah, I wouldn't mind listening to this on its own.  It's pretty fucking hot."

Because I preordered the two newest Harvest Moon games, I received these complimentary plushies.  When I first got them, they were sealed inside plastic bags.  Ate Neneng told me not to open them at all because then the dust won't get on them.

Seriously, I don't understand people like that.  It's like those who have plastic all over their couches.  I mean, yeah, it's nice for something to be easy to clean, but what the point of having it if it's encased in plastic?  What the hell am I going to do with a plushie that's sealed in a bag?  If you're obsessed with cleaning, you may as well leave everything in plastic by that point.  Put the bed in plastic.  The monitor for your computer.  Each book in the house.  It reduces the functionality, but it's easy to clean, right?

I can't figure which one is cuter!  The pig or the duck?