Not for the faint-hearted: Ugly Cat. Yeesh. Didn’t Rachel have one of those on Friends? (Link courtesy of Snookums.)

HOLY CRAP – the iPhone is real! How did they get the rights to the name? This is the friggin’ coolest thing I’ve ever seen. The keynote must have been unreal. My only disappointment is that I’m going to have to limp along with my current crap phone for at least another year til they bring them out here.

HA! MTV have officially confirmed the Real World news that I reported a month ago. They’re being coy about the house location though. Whatever! It’s in Darling Harbour. I might have to go on a reconnaissance mission this week.

Baby Yoda Sweater. Okay, that’s cute! I’ll have to figure out how to size it up a bit for Penn, who is apparently gargantuan for his age. (Link courtesy of crumpet.)

Anime-Style Portrait of the Simpsons Cast. That is both awesome and slightly disturbing. (Link courtesy of Daring Fireball.)

Congratulations to REM on their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination. I’m just hoping this means Bill will come out of retirement to play at the ceremony.

Woohoo! This is something 99.9% of the world won’t care about, but I spent the whole morning trying to work out how to add backorder delivery options to the shop website. After beating my head repeatedly against a brick wall, I finally found this forum post which spells it all out in detail. So now I’m just linking it in the hopes the Google ranking will go up and the next poor sod won’t spend as much time looking for it as I did.

Cafe Giulia is still closed for the holidays, so the Snook and I decided to try Bar Mattino (which is right across the street, but somehow we’ve never visited). It was fantastic! Huge portions of food with a good-looking and extensive menu. I had poached eggs with bacon, rosti, and toast, while the Snook went with the French toast, bacon, and bananas. We’ll be going back.

Observations on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:

• This game is FUN. I really like swinging the sword and killing the bad guys. The Snook is addicted to the whirlwind boomerage, which we just found tonight. There seems to be a good mix of stuff you have to puzzle out along with stuff you just have to attack.
• This game is LOOOONG. According to Wikipedia, the first testers took 70 hours to get through the game. So far we’ve played five hours. We’re less than 10% through. (And we’re probably going even slower than the testers. I like to cut down the grass looking for coins.)
• This game can be FRUSTRATING. The Snook and I are playing it tag-team style, which does have certain advantages. Often when one of us gets stuck and hands off, the other person seems to solve the puzzle/defeat the boss quickly. It’s also a big relationship trial though. Tonight Snookums had an epic battle against a possessed baboon who was jumping from pillar to pillar and throwing boomerangs at him while giant Venus flytraps kept popping out of the ground, and I was going nuts watching while he ran ’round and ’round trying to bash the monkey’s column without getting killed. (I know that sounds ridiculous, but at the time it was LIFE AND DEATH.) It’s the eternal Amazing Race Roadblock conflict, with the partner on the sidelines trying to be supportive while also yelling a lot and thinking they could do better. We survived, but only barely. God knows what it’ll be like when we’re fifty hours into this thing…

(In other Wii news, I’ve nearly made it to Pro in tennis. I can only play every few days though, because it kills my shoulder.)