At my mother's suggestion I got a few of these new Häagen-Dazs five flavors. They're one of the purest ice creams around. They get their name from having just five ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and whatever the flavor is. The coffee is one of the best coffee ice creams I've had, and the ginger is really fantastic. I can't wait to get into the brown sugar still sitting in my freezer, and next time there's a sale I plan to get the mint ice cream. They really are a must-try if you like your ice cream.

After doing the first few levels of Halo on Heroic difficulty, I've dropped it down to Normal. I can't imagine what Legendary difficulty is like, given how tough Heroic is. I could swing Heroic, but I really just want to speed through and learn whatever backstory there is. Without achievements or even just being a newer game that I just want to say I did on a tougher difficulty, there's little upside to playing past Normal. I'm just about to rescue a Captain held aboard a Covenant ship. The enemies really impress, with grenade dodging ability that's very impressive (and, hence, a tad annoying). Anyway, there's clearly fewer enemies now, as I had to restart to level I was on so I can easily compare, so I can hopefully race through the game now. But the Warthog? Dear, God, what awful handling!

I also added two titles to Hasbro Family Game Night: Yahtzee and Sorry! Sliders. Everyone knows what tabletop Yahtzee plays like, so little explanation is needed except that they add some new modes like randomly wildcard dice and a mode where filling a category blocks it out for your opponent(s). Sorry! Sliders takes shuffleboard and adds elements of Sorry! to it, and it's the only one of the group of titles demanding any manual dexterity. Sadly, the control is very tough, with very little leeway between leaving a pawn on your ramp or flinging it to the far end of the scoring area. It really takes advantage of the possiblities being computerized offers, with modes with a spinning scoring area and/or boxes that give your pawns power-ups like being held in place once on the board or sending out a shockwave after it comes to rest. Win or lose, it's always been very fun.

That's all for today. Enjoy the 4th of July weekend, everybody!

I wrapped up The Darkness over the weekend. It was a pretty good game, and the darkness powers were very fun to use, but 8.5 may be a little high of a rating. I got screwed out of the achivement for playing on hard difficulty (which only after I finished I learned were wonky) and one side quest to get a collectable was broken, refusing to restart when I came back to try it later (and according to lots of posts, some couldn't even get it to start a first time). I also did a little multiplayer, but there's hardly anyone there and there's lots of glitch/jumpiness. Still, I scraped together a few online achievements in the half-hour I played. Now I'm on to Halo. Not still the #2 most-popular online game Halo 3, not sequel Halo 2, but the very original. I didn't have original XBox, so I've never played any of them. So anyone seeing my status as "XBox Backward Compatability", that's what I'm playing.

The Doctor Who X-Mas special "The Next Doctor" was also a treat this weekend. Nice story, though if they could find a way to show it here closer to Christmas, instead of the end of June, that would be even nicer. We also got the date for the next special, "Planet of the Dead", airing July 26th. And Torchwood's "Children of Earth" miniseries starts July 20th, which they are also saying is the long-delayed launch of BBC America HD (it was originally supposed to go HD in early 200, so that will really be nice.

In less happy news, my basement VCR has gobbled up my Step Reebok tape, and it's hopelessly wedged and sounds as though the actual tape part is forever wound around the gizmos inside. Whichever one caused the initial foul-up is moot since they're never coming apart. I still had another VCR sitting unused in my guest bedroom, so I hooked up that downstairs, but it'll be up to eBay to provide me a replacement tape.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, everybody!

Farrah Fawcett sure got the royal screw-job yesterday. First she dies, which is already a pretty bad day. ABC and NBC briefly sparred over her carcass, hastily planning competing specials for 10:00 (which I'm sure had been ready to air at a moment's notice for weeks). And in the blink of an eye it became, 'Farrah who? Go away, Michael Jackson's dead. No one's interested in you anymore.' Toss in the Jeff Goldblum rumor and Farrah didn't stand a chance.

So the Oscars have decided to make their show even less auspicious by expanding the Best Picture category to ten nominees. That's just what we need—twice the DVD ads crowing how the film is a Best Picture nominee. Of course it's to drive ratings, the feeling being if more people's favorite movie is a contender, more will watch. Of course, for many like me, it's more that I can't be bothered to stay up to 11:30 or later to find out. Some are saying, 'but with ten, maybe The Dark Knight would have been nominated.' To which I say, the day a comicbook hero movie is allowed to be nominated for Best Picture is the day AMPAS can pack it up. There's a reason for The People's Choice Awards—so that popular, but less artistic fare, get their due. Hey, here's an idea; let's expand it to 20 nominees. I wouldn't want Transformers 2 to be shut out of the running. You want people to watch? Cut the garbage and treacly homages and musical numbers—opening monologue, awards, dead person montage, more awards, done by 10:00!

The Darkness, once you start getting your powers, is a neat twist on the FPS genre. Even taking into consideration I'm playing on Hard difficulty, the opening tutorial sequence was punishingly difficult with just a pair of pistols. Now that I can call a few types of darklings and have access to my first power, things are settling down for me. The soundtrack is a bit loud, but gets the heart going during tense shootouts. The collectables are a bit odd, as you have to find it, then call a phone number in the game and hear a generally humorous message to actually 'register' it. I used my noggin and some patience to get my Romantic achivement for spending some quality time with girlfriend Jenny. I'm looking forward to really seeing what this game has to offer over the weekend.

That's all for today. Have a great weekend, everybody!