Ignominious is a Fun Word

You exit the building and see the car you were told about.  You approach the vehicle slowly and feel your stomach begin to lurch.  You sense something innately wrong with the inhabitants of this car.  As you near the driver's side door, the window rolls down.  Billowing smoke roils out from the open window.  While trying to manage your own breathing, a chilling sound alarms you: tiny coughs from the backseat.

These ignominious parents were smoking in a car with a baby with the windows rolled up.  These aberrations of the gene pool could be on a competitive level with your nemesis, Negligent Mother.  Will you confront these ne'er-do-wells or simply perform the business you were sent for?

 In case you couldn't tell yet, I get irritated at parents who don't care about their kids.  I noticed things before Kennedy was born, but now these poor decisions are marked with a huge neon sign proclaiming, "MORON."  As the DM said, these people could've given Negligent Mother a run for her food stamps.  The poor little girl was strapped in her car seat while the parents puffed away and there wasn't a thing she could to but cough and cry.

The recent snow we received was certainly a nice change of scenery.  We took Kennedy outside for just a couple of minutes so she could see and feel it.

I don't believe she quite knew what to think about the whole situation.  Maybe there will be snow next year as well and she can do some sledding.

After several grueling sessions, I managed to finish the main segment of Super Meat Boy on Xbox 360.  The game is a throwback to 80's and early 90's style platformers.  In other words: infuriatingly difficult.  As Meat Boy, your quest is to save Bandage Girl from the evil (or possibly misunderstood) Dr. Fetus.  Scattered throughout the worlds are bandages to collect and Warp Zones to find.

Collecting bandages will unlock new playable characters to use in the game.  Certain Warp Zones will also grant you a new playable character, but only after completing the zone.  Other Warp Zones are in the style of Atari, Game Boy, or early NES or Master System games.  These zones remind you of how far gaming has come in the past twenty-five years, as well as how far it has fallen.  Too many games today boast gorgeous processor-intensive graphics, while the story and gameplay suffer.  Final Fantasy XIII, I'm looking at you.

Super Meat Boy has been an enjoyable trip through memory lane, and I'm not quite ready to turn it off yet.  Each of the main worlds also has a dark side, with modified and even more difficult versions of the light-world levels.   These are the levels that make me think of the internet cult-hit, I Wanna Be the Guy, know for its sadistic difficulty.  I would recommend both games in a heartbeat.