Nintendo, tipping, and musical taste

rs that be have decided that it was a good idea to let me express my opinions in a publicly circulated forum. Big mistake. So assuming this is only going to happen one time, let's make it count and get a few issues out of the way while I can.Nintendo Wii

Nintendo, take notice; you need to stop trying with this system. I don't care how many giggly commercials you make, how many fitness games you care to publish, or how many nursing homes you sell the console to - the Wii is useless, plain and simple.

This is how it worked: Wii Sports was entertaining for a while, but there's only so many Fitness Tests you can do before that gets old. Then you had the new Smash Bros., which was a good save until we realized that the campaign really just made us want to kill Ness. After that, it was the same game as in 1999. Lastly, you earned a few points with the re-release of MarioKart, yet fans of the N64 found more fun in buying the old system for $20 than the remake. Now the system is just boring. But you won't give up, will you Nintendo?

This winter, Nintendo plans on reviving (or what should actually be called "butchering") two of their major franchises. First off: Mario. Instead of sending Mario further and further into space, the lovable Italian is getting a revamp of the original Mario Bros. games, this time allowing up to four players to play at once (Mario, Luigi, and two Toads). Sweet, now I can get in an argument with my eight-year-old nephew over whose turn it is to grab the mushroom. This wouldn't sound so bad if Mario wasn't simultaneously being ruined in poor Olympic Games spinoffs with Sonic. By the way, isn't that a little one-sided? Mario's already mastered every other sport known to man, so what chance does Sonic have in anything other than running around the track?

Back to the big picture: Nintendo will also be ruining Zelda for all of its diehard fans, not so much with an awful game, but with an awful release solely for their handheld, the DS. Congratulations, Nintendo, one of your final claims for being a decent system just got a seemingly permanent shipment to the handheld gallery. Don't laugh, Samus. I'm sure you're going eventually.

Tipping

Everyone has to have a job they hate at one point or another, and a lot of the time they will never see an extra gratitude for it. I've worked in a textile plant and I've cut seafood for whiny housewives, but nobody ever put a few coins in a cup for me. But I don't care. It's my job; it's how I make my paycheck, and that amount of money acts as justification for knowing I did what I had to do.

So why is it that every time certain individuals wait on a table or make a cup of coffee, it's almost expected that they receive some amount of tip money. It's their job! It's not like you ordered a pizza and the guy had to go out of his way to deliver it to you - they hired a DELIVERY GUY with the specific intent of driving to your house on command. They pay him for working, they pay him for gas: THE END.

It's the same with the coffee shops. where is the argument for tips? If you make a good cup of coffee, you get a paycheck. If you make a muddy cup of coffee, you lose your job. You don't need to be paid extra money out of my pocket because you succeeded in not being fired. Pride alone should tide you over.

Your musical tastes

I hate them. Well, that may be a little general, but chances are I don't want to "hear this awesome song" that you either heard the day before or that came out in the mid-90s. That's right, I've heard "Santeria" a million times and never liked it, not even once, so get it off my radio.

If I have to drive people somewhere that I've never really shared musical interests with before, I'll leave the radio on silent or hit the Scan button until someone decides to stop it. This way, I'm not asserting that because I like Anberlin that the rest of the car will too, or that they will be forced to listen to it anyway. And try explaining to me why Elton John and Killswitch Engage belong on one mp3 player. They don't, but you better believe they're on there. Yet my mp3 player doesn't run your world, nor does your collection of Dave Matthews songs run mine. So never assume that because you enjoy a particular song or artist, that everyone else is going to think it's "the best thing ever" too.