The beautiful Irish weather continues unabated even as I seethe. Instead of sitting in my basement, mastering my Dead Rising zombie disembowelments, decapitations, defenestrations, gelatinations, I'm forced to go outside and stroll in the sun, muttering obscenities under my breath. I resent every second in the sun, every molecule of darkened melanin bronzing my godlike skin.

The other day, I was walking in the park, when a small child skipping jump rope absent-mindedly accidentally hit me with his loop of rope.

"Sorry, mister!" he said with an innocent, earnest smile.

I twitched dangerously, "What did you say to me, you LITTLE FRICKIN' PUNK?" I gradually elevated the volume and shrillness of my voice with every phoneme until by the last word, I was screaming. A few hours later, local Gardai found his jump rope flossed through him and being used to dangle him squirming from a tree. In retrospect, I may have overreacted.

Such is my ill humor over the summer's insidious attempt to thwart my gaming. But the other day, something occurred to me: I have a DS Lite, hello! So I'll spend the weekend sitting in the cursed sun, playing Tetris DS and Metroid Prime: Hunters. On the former title, I need to get 200 lines to unlock Korobieniki... I got 199 lines last night, lost, and went on a Jack the Ripper style rampage in Temple Bar. On the latter: those of you who suggested that I really needed to use the thumb pad were dad right, and the helpful people at GAME on Dawson Street were able to supply me with one for free (it never did come with my DS Lite, apparently). So it's all good, although still cramps my hand fairly quickly; another criticism is the music really doesn't feel like Metroid.

Enough jabbering. What will you be playing this weekend? Florian Eckhardt