Parenting, parenting..oh where did it go?

You may remember that a while back the kids had a sale of their toys/books/assorted junk outside our corner shop. Well they raised enough to buy the bits and pieces to allow us - I mean them - to play gamecube games on the Wii machine.

The past couple of days they've been playing the gamecube game Super Smash Bros Melee. It's basically a beat-each-other-up game with nintendo characters who have all sorts of little beating-each-other up tricks. Yes, you can tell I have three children... gone are the days when I thought having toy guns in the house (and shoes that were put on un-measured feet) were the worst parenting crime ever.

Anyway, I'm waiting my turn on the game. Cos actually it looks fun. And us parents never get to do the fun things do we? Except everytime I ask 'how did you do that' they come up with this sort of complicated 'well you hold this down while pressing b and moving like this...and if you do this then you can morph into xxx and then you can suck him up while doing a power kick'. Um..yeah. Can I have that in English please?

After several days of the kids' intensive gaming I have set one proviso for playing the game: I've told them that if I hear them yelling 'DIE YOU LOSER!' one more time then I'm switching the game off...I do like to keep the faint illusion that I'm actually doing an ok job as a parent {g}

When I was a kid all the computer games we had were those with little squares that went across the screen and bleeped; you know the ones you were meant to hit with the little vertical line? Oh, and I had a Spectrum ZX 2+ where you could make music with 'white noise' (it took you three days to make about 4 seconds worth of music, but it was wonderful!). I never even got to play pacman till I was an adult. I had such a deprived childhood you know...I think I need to have a go on this game just to make up for it...lol.

And did you see Derren Brown predict the lottery numbers on Wednesday? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMIzR6GNAXw&feature=related

I'm just watching the programme on Channel 4 which supposedly explains how he did it (though the programme's an hour long and I wouldn't be surprised if at the end he refuses to tell us anyway - he's a crafty blighter that Derren is). The most likely explanations it seems (well according to those intelligent folk on the internet) is that he used some sort of split-screen technology. But...I guess we'll have to see. Maybe all will be revealed.