I'm incredibly excited. Nintendo has decided to dedicate August to all things Metroid. (Eat it, IGN.) This single game is so important, because it is the first major release from Nintendo for the Wii that didn't start as a GameCube product. It is also very important to me, because it is the latest game in the series that got me into hand-held gaming, got me into console gaming and made me want a Wii. The Metroid series gave me many gaming firsts. I had been a fan of gaming, but I was never allowed to own a system, so I cherished the times I got to go play Super Mario All-Stars at a friends house or Mortal Kombat 3 at my cousin's. (P.S. It's rated Mature, though I didn't know that at the time as I was seven or eight. And I'm not scared for life! Who woulda thought?) ...

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I was at Chapters today flipping through a magazine when it occurred to me how many advertisements were in it. After looking in a couple others, even big name ones, there were still a huge number of ads. Let's do the math, here. The first magazine I was looking at was only a short thing, 55 pages or so. I counted it up and there were around 20 full page ads, plus some extra pages covered with smaller ads, plus a couple of 'side bar' ads. That's insane. So, an already overpriced $6.50 CND magazine is at least 35% advertisements, along with some extra added in ads and a few articles with one of those graphic things covering one and a half pages that leaves only half of a page of text. Clearly this would need to have some really amazing articles to make it worth buying. Of course, this is and has always been a trend with the magazine industry. People like their articles all jazzed up with images and little drawings and such. And, as they say, money doesn't grow on trees. Making a mag is a costly investment, and it takes a lot of these ads to keep costs down. Still, it isn't hard to believe that sometimes publishers decide to put in more than necessary to make a few extra bucks. Now, though, with blogs, RSS feeds and sites like Digg gaining in popularity every day, the internet may be cutting into magazine's profits more than you think.

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So as you may or may not know, I live only about 20 min. away from the apparent "Greatest Indoor Show on Earth," in other words, the West Edmonton Mall. It is one of the biggest malls in the world, having over 600 stores, a waterpark, an amusement park, two minigolf spots and two foodcourts, a movie theater with Imax screens and a mini-Chinatown. Yeah. Pretty sweet. You'd think it would be awesome to have such a place so close, and it is, but sometimes it sucks, too. For example, when I went today, I came back with $110 CND worth of stuff, and most of it I don't want. At HMV I went looking for Boy Kill Boy's album, but I only found a single. Right near it was Bloc Party - Silent Alarm Remix. I have Silent Alarm and love the album, so I decided to buy the ...

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