Thank you all who helped my "Wicked Annoyed At Wicket" Blog make it to the home page! Believe it or not, this is the first time in at least a month since that has happened! I don't think the quality of my blogs has been un-home-page-worthy, but I have been trying very hard to post my blogs at odd times - weekends, evenings... On purpose? Yeah, most of the time. But you know, when inspiration strikes you can't control it! You can't plan it. You have to go with the flow.

This next paragraph presented by the Shameless Commerce Division: This blog marks blog #99! Woo hoo! Of course I will try my best to have a 100th blog spectacular, but I am not much of a party-animal. I have boring parties, I don't dance, I don't wear dresses, this could get ugly. Stay tuned anyway for the next blog...

On to the real blog!

Jawa Lava you ask?

Yeah, the ewok question my son asked me the other day was definitely a random question, asked at a random hour, in a random situation. But the question he asked me yesterday afternoon is truly baffling AND I know why he asked it: because little kids are smart, they are observant, and nothing (I mean NOTHING!) gets past them when it comes to details. Ok, details they care about, but details nonetheless.

My son & I settled in for a few levels of LEGO SW II yesterday afternoon before I had to teach my one & only piano lesson of the day. He wanted to play "Through the Jundland Wastes" which is not one of my favorite levels, but at least the characters get to be outside, enjoying some fresh air. We entered the Jawa Sandcrawler, smacked some Jawas around, blew up some of their stuff, then crawled through to the secret area where there normally is a mini-kit canister (I finished the game 100% on Tuesday so obviously this canister is no longer there), and my son hits "pause" and says, "Mom? Why is there lava inside the jawas' sandcrawler?"

........................?


hmm


[silence]

"I don't know honey, I never thought about it," is my response. But of course, I am a semi-obsessive personality (stop laughing DV!) so I couldn't stop thinking about this minor detail of the game.

We puttzed around in that area for a minute or so and Padawan-Wan then says, "I don't know how they got the lava in there and why it's not burning up the sandcrawler!" Now I am laughing. Good point, kid! "Why do they need to take lava everywhere?" Stop kid, I'm dyin' here!!!

But the question remains, "Why is there lava inside the jawa sandcrawler?" I know I know 'it's just a game' but I don't care. Who are these programmers & writers that thought "OOh! A Lava Room would be so cool inside the sandcrawler!"

Or maybe, the jawas are running a super-secret black market lava sales business. Maybe lava selling has been banned on Tatooine yet the jawas got their hands on some quality stuff & use the stolen robot business as their cover. You need lava? You call the jawas. They've got the best stuff on the planet. No one knows where they get if from, but we've heard Jabba is hooked up.

__________________________

To know me as a gamer, is to know that my brother & I compiled a "Most Cheating" list when we were in high school. What is this? A list of things that ALWAYS CHEAT in a video game. Stuff you can't kill, you can't avoid, and for some reason action buttons don't work as well when you're near them. We made this list, as a joke, back in 1990 when we were still playing SuperNES, but the wisdom of our list holds up 16 years later. Even Hubby-Wan agrees that our list holds some truth.

The game systems I have owned: Pong, Texas Instrument, Commodore 64, Atari, NES, Super NES, N64, PS2. If you haven't played a video game with me in my 30 years of experience, then you need to be made aware of this list so you won't be surprised when I start to whine like Luke doing chores on a Saturday morning.

Top 5 "Most Cheating" Video Game Features:
1. Bats
2. Birds
3. Snakes
4. Ghosts
5. Lava

Happy gaming!!