This post is about Pokemon

So the story goes that earlier this week I bought a Nintendo DS and a few games: Zelda, which I have not started, Professor Layton, which I have finished, and Pokemon Diamond, which I have become completely obsessed with in the past 10 minutes.

I never used to be a Pokemon fan. Perpetually last in line for anything trendy, I haven't played a Pokemon game until, well, yesterday. Aside from finding some of the characters adorable and learning to play the card game when I was in college, it was blizzarding, and I found a free CD-ROM I had received in the mail, I didn't understand how this little animal game became so big. Now I get it, and it's all I can think about right now, so you get to hear all about my experience and I SAW THAT, DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE WITHOUT READING THIS WHOLE THING!!!

Let me start out by saying I'm absolutely shit at this game--this game that is designed for 8-year-olds. It was neat at first walking around the town filled with characters that all have the same hobby and talk about that hobby and where every television is tuned to the same station that also talks about that hobby, which is enslaving wild animals and throwing them into a giant, global cockfight. And then I left the town and caught a few animals and knocked some bats out of the sky. It was great! I had a little group of Pokemon that I gave little names and started to love.

But all of a sudden, the system went PSYCHO on me and pitted me up against my first "Gym Leader," where I was expected to take out a 25-foot snake made of rocks with a pigeon and a hamster. I realized I had perhaps rushed into things.

After a humiliating defeat, I went back and got some more animals, but I still can't beat that Gym Leader. It's ok, though, I'll get there. I have total faith in my little pets, and we grow closer and more powerful every hour.

My favorite is my fire monkey because he is strong and will apparently "evolve" into a Flaming Ape or something pretty soon. I also have an electric cat thing that I named Minx before I realized it was a boy, so he's my gay Pokemon. He's blue and shows promise as a warrior.

My struggling underdog is the hamster. She's actually a "bidoof" since nothing in the game can have a normal, mundane name, but she's essentially a hamster. I named her Eunice. Eunice the Bidoof. She gets her ass kicked pretty regularly, at which point I usually call out "This bidoof has ceased to be! It is an ex-bidoof!" But no matter how many times she's knocked down, she gets right back up again. She always fights and never gives up and is therefore a true inspiration to me.... y'know, because we both suck at stuff.

Other than the pigeon (Pidgin), a glamorous-looking cicada/bug thing (Velma), and a bat (Bat), I caught a couple fish. The first one I named, but then I realized that the fish have no moves and can do fuck all but flop around and "splash", so I filleted the thing and caught another so I could name it Sarah Palin.

That's my Pokemon family so far. Last night I played for like an hour and lost the the Gym Leader again, so turned it off. "Feh." But today I got to talking about it with Kevin and started getting excited, and he's going to give me a water Pokemon that doesn't suck like Sarah Palin because rock is weak to water and I'm going to use him and the rest of my army to erode that rock snake that looks like anal beads, and I'm going to catch more animals and make them fight and find out their strengths and weaknesses and become the BEST POKEMON TRAINER IN ALL THE WORLD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHOMGOMGOSFIS&DO%*(#$&*$(!@N