While Ana has become hopelessly addicted to Super Mario Sunshine (those withdrawals are rough, let me tell you), i've been delving further into Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on the PSP. I've now unlocked all three islands, and am roughly 50% through the game (i'm almost done with the story missions, but as usual there's a bunch of other stuff i have yet to explore). Maybe it's the PSP format, or my personal deemphasis of audio on the PSP, but this is the first GTA game on which i've skipped the cutscenes. I have little to no idea what the story is, i just go commit crimes. It's fun nonetheless ... it's great to return to Liberty City and reacquaint myself with locales from Grand Theft Auto 3, to speed around on my hijacked PCJ-600 performing insane stunts and kicking the crap out of anyone who dares to cut me off. When i have been able to wrestle the TV away from Ana, i've started playing Geoff and Naomi's present Gun on the Xbox. I had to shoo Ana into the other room during the ultraviolent opening cutscene of Indians scalping Spanish explorers. Gameplay is pretty good, and the story looks interesting, so i've got high hopes.

On the literary front, i finally finished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything last week. It's an interesting popular summary of natural science, from the universe to earth to life. It took me a while to complete as i became bored during the later chapters, where Bryson spends an interminable period trying to convey the complexity of life on earth, particularly the number of different species and their accelerating extinction. The whole genus/family/phylum thing has never really caught my attention, and this treatment didn't change that. The discussion of the argument over man's ancestry i found was better treated on the recent History Channel documentary Ape to Man. However all in all it was a good read, a satisfactory summary of natural science for a widespread audience.