Well, my brother left to go back to school yesterday night. I won't go into much detail, but he decided to move out of school-sponsored apartment housing because the roommates he kept getting were absolute inconsiderate, ignorant slobs who loved nothing more than to strive subconsciously to trash the apartment even more one day than they'd manage to do the the previous day. On top of this, he had a group of about eight squatters consistently occupying his "family room"...and using all his toiletry items for who knows what (on more than one occasion, a new bottle of shampoo or toothpaste would be found near-empty after one weekend). Dom's living with a very good friend now, at this friend's townhouse. He'll be commuting to school. He'll actually be able to concentrate on his work in these final quarters that he's got left before he graduates. So that's good, but as for me at the moment, I'm going through that depression phase where I'm getting over the fact he's gone again after three weeks of brotherly gaming bliss.

We played a good deal of Super Mario Galaxy 2 together, especially towards the second half of my quest to reach the final battle with Bowser. He was a very good Luma sidekick.

Besides that, we also played a lot of PS3 games. At the moment, I own seven PS3 games. Here are the games we played:

So in other words, we played everything, at least a little bit.

• We raced in Pacific Rift until I got a few trophies.
• I played through the first Uncharted so he could see the game firsthand (he didn't think the zombies were scary and gave me crap because I still couldn't play that part in the dark, not even with him in the room).
• I played through most of Uncharted 2 for him.
• We played some LBP user-created levels.
• He played through The Forgotten Sands twice.
• We each played a bit of MNR's Career mode, in addition to racing split-screen offline and making a few mods and karts (United Front really needs to put out a game update that allows P2, P3, and P4 to log in themselves if they have their own savefile on the console.). For those interested, Dom made a stellar Black Power Ranger from the MMPR days and a kart to match, while I remixed said kart and turned it into a bad-A Blue MMPR Ranger kart. You guys already know my ID; my brother's is Zacharael. Dom made a few other karts and mods, so check those out too.
• Dom started a savefile in FFXIII; he's about 10-15 hours in. I've been in the room to witness bits and pieces so I don't really have much to say in terms of impressions, but I will say that it's not as much fun to watch as FFXII was. FFXII's just more magical like that, haha. I will say that FFXIII's futuristic "metallic everything everywhere" motif is going to take some getting used to. Dom enjoyed what he was able to play, although he wasn't too fond of the Sentinel role and the fact he couldn't pick who his leader was.

It was a great three weeks. The Fourth of July was especially awesome. It was close to 100 degrees outside at my uncle's house in central New Jersey; his pool was a very nice 81 or so degrees. After spending a lot of time in the pool, we played some casual volleyball using the net my cousins had set up. Then we went back into the pool. Then we got out and played wiffleball. Perhaps the highlight of the whole day, however, was when my other uncle broke out the $300 worth of genuine fireworks that he got at half price when he and my aunt drove the 4.5 hours to and from New Hampshire to buy them. He had bought actual mortars, people. When they exploded, the blast lit up and spread throughout the whole sky over the front yard. It was unreal.

So what else is there to mention...you already know about my WoW account being hacked. I've since regained control and have ordered an authenticator. Even though I may never go back to playing the game, at least I know it'll be much, much harder for hacker slime to gain access a second time. Last Friday, I actually went with my brother into a guild ICC 10 raid and picked up a few nice gear upgrades. Even in Tier 9, Dom told me I was undergeared, but now I'm probably okay, if I ever did it again. Professor Putricide cracked me up. I was laughing so hard I forgot to press my spell buttons at times.

In my good friend Minishdriveby's most recent blog post, he mentioned a slew of books he's considering reading in the near future. This inspired me to end this post of mine with a recent book-related tale of my own. I've been a member of the SFBC (Science Fiction Book Club) for almost two years now, but not since my initial signing-up had I bought a single book...until now. I was kinda forced to. When you first sign up, you're able to get four or five books for like, $1 each, plus shipping and handling. Then, you're free to do whatever, BUT you must purchase at least four books within the first year or two years (I was never sent any notification last year so I guess it's two years) or else you'll be billed for four books even though you haven't bought any books. It all sounds very harsh and unreasonable, but in truth, it's fairly easy to want to buy that many books. Their prices are low, they typically carry everything in hardcover, they very often have incredible deals and offers and incentives...my problem's just been that I signed up back when I was reading Star Wars novels like a kid consumes candy and I saw it as a great way to pick up the newest Star Wars novels at a really great price. Then I stopped reading Star Wars novels. I have a backlog of at least fifteen books before I'm caught up, chronologically speaking, to the most recent series (which is already about five books in) aaaaaand I've had no interest to start up again. So here I was in this situation where I needed to come up with four books to buy or I'd be charged for invisible books that don't exist. I ended up finding a few, saving over $70 in the process.

With darkness come the corelings—demons of sand, wind, rock, wood and flame, who rise like mist from the ground and terrorize the humans sheltering behind fragile wards, magical symbols whose origins are lost in myth. Once, men and women battled the corelings, armed with powerful wards that could harm the demons and stop their advance. But those days are gone. The fighting wards are lost. And the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault.

Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors—brave Arlen, musical Rojer, healer Leesha—will risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. But they may find their personal strengths may prove the greatest wards of all…

Welcome to Hallandren—a world in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined in the capital city. Where a power known as BioChromatic magic utilizes the essence of Breath—gathered one unit at a time from willing individuals. Where armies of Lifeless—corpses animated for servitude by spoken Commands—stand ready at a word to invade the austere and colorless nation of Idris.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be achieved. It will take considerable quantities of each to meet all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; the incredibly powerful Susebron, God King of Hallandren, whom one of them must marry; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery; and Vasher, the Warbreaker, who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made centuries ago.

For there's a conspiracy afoot to plunge Hallandren into war, and only a miracle will stand in its way…

Kvothe ("pronounced nearly the same as 'Quothe' "), the hero and villain of a thousand tales who's presumed dead, lives as the simple proprietor of the Waystone Inn under an assumed name. Prompted by a biographer called Chronicler who realizes his true identity, Kvothe starts to tell his life story. From his upbringing as an actor in his family's traveling troupe of magicians, jugglers and jesters, the Edema Ruh, to feral child on the streets of the vast port city of Tarbean, then his education at "the University," Kvothe is driven by twin imperatives—his desire to learn the higher magic of naming and his need to discover as much as possible about the Chandrian, the demons of legend who murdered his family. (This book was highly praised back in March by Gabe of Penny Arcade.)

In the Seven Satrapies, each color in the spectrum has its own magical attributes. Mages mostly specialize in one color of light, though some can manipulate two, three or even more. Gavin Guile is one of the rare few known to history who can work all colors at once. As such, he has become the Prism—the most powerful mage in the world, whose power, wit and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace with rival kingdom Tyrea.

But Prisms break under the strain of their magic, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: five years to achieve five impossible goals. Then Guile discovers he has a son, born in Tyrea after the war that put him in power. It is a secret that could tear his world apart...a secret even more imperiled when he and the son he has never known are thrust into the middle of a burgeoning civil war. (I preordered this one. It comes out in late August.)

Now like I said before, I have no idea how good these books are - primarily because I haven't read them yet - because prior to the day I ordered them, I'd never heard of them before (with the exception of TNotW). But as you can read in the descriptions, they certainly do sound interesting. I'll have to see. Of course, I need to find time to read them, in between playing my long list of incompleted PS3 games, lol. :D