I’ve needed to unwind for a while. Two jobs, four improv shows and fourteen days of antibiotics will do that to anyone. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in the mood to read or even watch the ever-growing lineup of animation that is sitting on Tivo (notable exceptions: Bleach and Naruto). What’s a poor queek to do? I broke out the ancient GameCube. Remember those? Why do I get the feeling that I’m getting the kind of stares that mentioning 8-Track or Reel-To-Reel invoke?

I discovered three games that I had never finished. One is called Chibi-Robo. You start the game at a birthday party where you discover that you are to play Chibi-Robo — a little robot who becomes a personal indentured servant and is so small he barely come up to the human’s ankles. Yet you have to make everyone happy by getting around the house on your own and — get this — by cleaning. You actually get happy points for picking up trash and scrubbing dirt off the floors. In the meantime, you have to deal with toys that come to life and the most dysfunctional family in video game history. The father is a lazy slob who won’t get a job (I had to help him make burgers for the family last night).

The mother is passive-aggressive and deals with the family problems by locking herself in the bedroom most of the game. And the daughter… where to start? She dresses up as a frog and will only say “ribit”.

And I’m totally addicted. Losing track of time Tuesday night, I got off the couch to discover that it is two in the morning. I’m a little task oriented. Waking up in the morning in a sleep-deprived stupor, I walked into the living room to find the couch surrounded by a beer bottle, three cans of Pepsi, a bottle of that new red-flavored Mountain Dew, a used container that had had chopped fruit, a plate full of crumbs from toast and a Pop Tart wrapper.

That’s right, I had just spent six hours solving the Sandersons’ problems and cleaning up their damn house by picking up trash and scouring their floor with a tiny little toothbrush; however, clean up my own mess? Hahahahahaha! You make me laugh. Actually, the irony did strike me hard enough to feel enough guilt to pick up my decadence that morning.

Now I’m back to playing and so far I’ve had to hook up a princess and a mummy, cure a teddy bear of his nectar addiction, help a blue jay grow strong enough to fly away, grow a family for one of those dancing flowers you get at novelty stores, find blocks for a redneck Lego T-Rex, help a bunch of eggs who think they are in the military to overpower the family dog, call aliens to help find the family’s old robot and chat with a dog toy about her love of a superhero action figure who doesn’t know she’s alive. No, I’m not high, but I think the Japanese game developers were.

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Listening to: “You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful And You’re Mine)” - Ringo Starr