Well, well, well. This has been an interesting weekend to say the least. Some of it good, some of it bad, but, thankfully, more good than bad.

As most of you may know by this entry, I am now the proud owner of a PS2 and the game Grand Theft Auto III. I've yet to lose the hours of sleep that I've been virtually guaranteed by various reviews and such of the game, but I'm workin' on it. That's the old news. Now for some new news.

The wife decided a day or so ago, that we need to bathe the cats again. If you remember this entry then you know we've already done that once, fairly recently, with pretty interesting results. Oh, this time it was much better. We swing by the pet store and get a bottle of Adams shampoo. This is the good stuff. And I mean good. It costs upwards of $15 a bottle...and it's not a big bottle. Anyway, yesterday, she starts in on the rats. Yes, rats. We have 3 lovely little rodents, Harriett (a hairless), Dora (another hairless) and Persephone (a berkshire...I think). Anyway, she's got them all bathed and calls me in to dry them off. Not a problem. We head into the animal room to decide where to put them while she cleans their cage out. Problem. During the time we were in there, like a whole 5 minutes, Icebear Jr. has made his way into the bathroom. Can you see where this is going yet? No? Well, ok. As I head back out to the living room and my paused GTA III game, I pass the bathroom and see Jr. in there, hands in the toilet. Of course, I'm walking fairly quickly so I don't actually see his hands, I just see him in the toilet. I yell for him to get out of the toilet and then return to my game. The wife makes her way back into the bathroom and then all hell breaks loose. "Son of a muther fuckin' bitch!! Mother fucker!!" Of course, I immediately think, "Shit, what'd I do?" When the wife comes storming out of the bathroom, however, I realize that it's not me she's after but Jr. Why? In the few minutes that he was in the bathroom, he took the entire bottle of Adams shampoo and poured it into the bathtub. The entire bottle! $15 down the drain, literally. But, the wife is a fuckin' MacGuyverin' bitch and she, sort of, saves the day.

Thinking quickly, she puts the drain plug in the tub to keep the remaining shampoo from oozing down the drain. Then she looks at me and says, not asks, but says "Grab the cats." Oh goody. I snag two, she snags two and MonkeyBoy snags/chases the last one into the bathroom. She slams the door with me, her and all 5 cats inside and I realize that the cats aren't the only ones with their tails between their legs. They know what's coming and all of them are hunkered down on the floor, facing the door, just waiting for their chance to run. Sadly, though, one by one, they are grabbed, shoved bodily under the tap, rubbed up and down the surface of the tub like a mewling, fighting, fur-covered rag and then sat on the floor to shiver, shake and basically just be miserable. The wife did each one in turn. She'd grab one, shove it under the faucet, carefully though, and then proceed to drag them gently up and down the length of the tub to get as much of the shampoo off the tub and onto them. The shampoo has to sit on the animal for at least 5 minutes, so she'd deposit a rather unhappy kitty on the floor and go after another one. When all 5 were done, she uncovered the drain and washed the rest of the shampoo, of which there was surprisingly very little, down the drain and we waited. And the cats shivered and meowed. And we waited. Then, again, one by one, we'd grab a soggy, shaky kitty and rinse them off. This part actually wasn't too bad. I think they were ready to get the shampoo off so they gave in and took it like a...well, a cat. After we got them all rinsed and dried, we let them all out to go and hide in their respective places, dry off and contemplate how best to pay us back.

Afterwards, I wandered back to my game and the wife spent the rest of the morning cleaning all the cages out and taking care of the other animals.

Today was ok as well. We were both woken up earlier than we wanted by the kids, but oh well. That's parenthood. After the wife got ready and went to work, I, of course, plugged myself back into the PS2 and proceeded to re-enact my own version of Gone in 60 Seconds by stealing various cars on a list provided on the side of a Dockside Garage and turning them in for money. I also ripped off Liberty City by stealing a firetruck, ambulance and police car and taking them all to the dock and selling them for $1500 a pop. I made up for it later, however.

Around 1:30 I threw the kids into the stroller (because MonkeyBoy said his foot was hurting) and we headed over to the in-laws for the race. Turns out that it was rain delayed. I could have played GTA III longer, dammit. Oh well. Pops (my father-in-law) had the pool filled up so after gobbin' the kids with sunblock, we sent them out to splash and play and secretly try to drown each other while we hung out inside, gabbed and drank beer. The race finally started about 2 hours late and was extremely depressing. Jeff Fuckin' Gordon ended up winning, which for me, is the equivalent of getting kicked in the balls by a steel-toed, spike-tipped jackboot worn by The Big Show. I didn't like it basically. After rounding up the fam, we all headed home because I wanted to get in some more GTA III before I had to work. This is where I did my good deeds for the day.

GTA III has what are called "vehicle missions". If you take a certain vehicle in Liberty City, then you can go on a mission based on the vehicle type. For example, I took a firetruck, so I went on a firefighter mission. What this consists of is you getting a message that there is a vehicle on fire in a certain part of the city and you have to haul ass there and put out the fire in the time alloted. When you first start out, it's kind of hairy because you don't have much time. However, when you get to the car and extinguish it, you get a time bonus. If you make good time to the next few cars, you find yourself with a nice little bank of time. So, instead of having around 35 seconds to get from Chinatown all the way across the island to Harwood, you have over a minute and a half. Plus, some of the vehicles that are on fire are rare vehicles, or ones you won't just find driving around the streets normally. This is a good way to fill a stolen car list, which is why I was doing it. You also have the ability to "save" a car at your hideout. Basically, you steal a car and if you really like it, you take it back to your hideout and put it in the garage there. Then, when you save the game, you also save the car. I found a rare car in the Harwood dealership called a Banshee. It's basically a convertible Dodge Viper, but it's a fuckin' wonderful car. It's really fast and handles great, plus, you have the ability to stop on a dime, which comes in handy when stupid hookers, pimps and gangbangers jump out in front of you going 90 mph.

It's actually kind of interesting. There are a lot of cars in the game that you can recognize, that they've modeled off of real-life cars. But, I guess they can't use these car names so they use similar ones. Like, there's a car in the game that looks a lot like a 1970's Mustang, but is called a Stallion. The car I have, a Banshee, looks a lot like a Viper, or maybe an older Jaguar (like Austin Power's car). They have a Hummer look alike called a Patriot, and a Dodge Ram clone called a Bobcat. While doing my firefighter mission, I came across a couple of cars called a Yakuza Stinger, which looked a lot like a Porsche. They also have 3 different types of passenger vans, 4 different types of trucks (Mule, Yankee, Flatbed and Linerunner) and various other models. I think that's one of the very many things I like about this game. Their attention to detail is amazing and there's enough variety that it doesn't get stale, but there's also not so much that you can't keep track.

The game is also full of sexual inuendos. One of the crime bosses that you can take jobs for is named El Burro or The Donkey because of his...ahem...endowments. In fact, the final mission you run for him is called "big 'n veiny" and consists of you nabbing a van and chasing down another van that is trailing El Burro's stolen porno mags. While you're in a car, you have can listen to different radio stations (I think there are like 9). One of them is Head Radio, another is Lips 106. The DJ for Head radio is named Michael Hunt (just say Mike Hunt 3 times fast). There's also a type of vehicle, the Securicar (an armored car) that you can take and it's emblazoned with the logo of GRUPPE Sechs (Group Sex??). There's probably a lot more hidden around, I've just been too busy to spot them. Of course, there's also the totally blatant. Like XXXMags in the redlight district, which is close to the Sex Club 7. You even have a mission called The Fuzz Ball, where you have to run all over Portland (one of the 3 Liberty City islands) and pick up hookers to take to the Policeman's ball. Get it, Fuzz Ball. Anyway, the game is a fuckin' trip. I can't wait to play further on. If I survive that is. I've got all of Chinatown after me at the moment. The Triads are really pissed at me. I think it has something to do with that mission I did for El Burro where I went into Chinatown armed with a flame thrower and roasted like 25 of their members. Ever since then they've seemed a bit...I don't know...touchy. Every time I drive through Chinatown, they're shooting at my car and if I slow down, they run up and try to drag me out. Good thing I've got my trusty Uzi. I just look out the side of my car, and start poppin' caps. Of course, there are also cops on the sidewalks so that tends to get the cops on my bad side as well. Everyone takes everything so personal. Sheesh.

Well, I've got to go and crash. I'm really fuckin' tired and the wife has to work tomorrow, which means I'm all alone with MonkeyBoy and Icebear Jr. Fun fun fun. Well, till then. Take care, cubbies.

Da 'Bear

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