For those of you who asked, no, the bad workout in my last post didn't kill me. Apparently, in this case, it is indeed true that what does not kill me makes me stronger. I am perilously close to developing visible quadriceps definition. I cannot tell you how much this amuses me.

So, yeah, not dead. Just verrry verrry busy. More on that later.

Friday evening, at the conclusion of a very exhausting week, Daniel and I hit Best Buy in search of some Playstation 2 games. I picked up two: We Love Katamari, and In The Groove.

We Love Katamari is, of course, the sequel to the delightful, surreal, and totally addictive Katamari Damacy. There's not much here in the way of startlingly new game play, and the soundtrack lacks the charm of that of the first game - it mostly consists of weird "remixes" of the songs from the first game. (Although the one that consists of all the major tunes from the first game, performed by barking dogs, meowing cats, grunting pigs, and other weird animal noises is...unique.)

On the other hand, the level that is set on a Formula 1 race track (where you cannot stop or slow the katamari - it just rockets around at top speed, and you have to try to control it), and the level on which you can roll up the Eiffel Tower, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, and the Great Wall of China are worth the price of the game all by themselves. Wheee!

In the Groove bills itself as the "Next Generation" of dancing game, in the genre pioneered by Dance Dance Revolution. (And its makers are currently getting their butts sued off by the makers of Dance Dance Revolution, but that's neither here nor there.) I've just played my first couple of rounds of it, so it's really too early to tell whether any of the new features they've introduced really represent compelling reasons to prefer it over DDR. I do like their "Fitness Mode", which allows you to set a goal in either calories burned or time played, and then just keep playing until you reach the goal. (DDR's Fitness Mode tracks your calories burned and time played, but otherwise it operates just like the ordinary 3-songs-per-round dance mode.)

The music in In The Groove is just as weird as that in DDR. A particular gem is a track called "Lemmings on the Run". As far as I can make out the lyrics, they are fairly typical We-want-to-be-young-and-free-Why-don't-adults-understand-that-we-just-want-to-dance kind of stuff, and then there is the chorus, which is a bunch of "Doo doo da dee da" stuff, winding up with "We are the lemmings on the run!" Which...I mean...really. Lemmings? Have you ever seen lemmings on the run? Do you think the songwriter has ever seen lemmings on the run? Do you think she really means to convey that she feels kinship with chubby rodents who are popularly believed to throw themselves off of cliffs?

It's hard to get your dance steps right when you're snickering.