I wasn’t going to blog today, the reason being that I bought an Xbox arcade game last night and subsequently planned to be very busy for the rest of the week.

But then I reconsidered.

Gaming is a poor reason for not blogging, I thought. I cannot let my readers down, my poor deluded mind said, for they patiently await the next installment of What Did Sheylara Eat/Do/See/Drop on the Floor This Time? and would be very disappointed if they didn’t get to read about how I had a tasty ham sandwich for lunch.

Mind you, my decision to blog has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I feel rather dizzy after two hours of playing Space Channel 5: Part 2, and need to look at something else for a moment.

Yes. Updating my blog today was a purely altruistic decision. That’s the kind of person I am.

 

 

The game is about 11 years old so I am not going to do a review. I first played Part 1 on the Dreamcast in 2001, shortly after which I broke up with the boyfriend who owned the Dreamcast. And then shortly after that, Dreamcast went kaput so I thought that was the end of the game for me, pity, cos I really enjoyed it.

It’s a music and rhythm game, involving jitterbugging space aliens who go, “Chu, chu, chu, hey, chu!”

Piers was very, very disturbed by the game. He said it was a crazy, crazy game. But he could be forgiven for thinking that because he only watched two minutes of it and those two minutes just happened to occur at a stage where my avatar was captured by a space alien monster flower with tentacles, one of which seemed all too ready to probe me for secrets.

And I had to try to shoot at the monster and dodge deadly flying petals while bound spreadeagle by tentacles.

And while all that was happening, the alien was going, “Left, right, left, right, chu, chu, chu!”

 

 

Sure, I can see how that might have looked slightly oddball to someone who hadn’t seen the beginning of the game and understood how important it was to save the planet from aliens, not all of whom had tentacles, it was just that flower monster, mind you.

Earlier this afternoon, Piers thought it prudent to dispense some more boyfriendly wisdom. We were chatting on MSN when he said, “Your stupid new game finished yet?”

I said, “What are you talking about? I just bought it last night. And it’s not stupid!”

“It will f*** up your mind,” he said.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“You fight strange creatures,” was his conclusion.

That was very fine for him to say. I didn’t say a word when, two years ago, he was obssessed with catapulting funny-shaped birds at hapless green pigs.

 

 

Anyway, I discovered last night that Space Channel 5: Part 2 was available on Xbox LIVE Arcade so I bought it immediately. While I was playing my new game on his Xbox, Piers was busy playing a fighter jet simulation game on my PC so he wasn’t free to look at my game.

Nevertheless, I said to him, “Hey, we can play co-op on this game. Would you like to play with me?”

His eyes still glued on the PC screen, he said, “Okay, honey, in a minute.” (Meaning: Okay, right after I’m done with pretending to be a fighter pilot, which could be any time between four hours and four years.)

But he did say okay, didn’t he?

Still, his first experience of my game was the tentacles, so I’m suspecting that he has maybe changed his mind since. I can’t imagine why, though. Most guys I know get excited when they see tentacles. I didn’t get a chance to persuade him anymore last night to play my game because we had to watch South Park.

We’ll have to see, tonight. And, for the record, my mind is still very sane and intact, thank you.