House of Burgess

When my coworker MacLeod, the chief photographer here, asked me if I wanted the XBOX that he's been borrowing from me for the last few weeks back, I told him he could keep it for a while longer.
For, you see, there is a new source of joy and light in my apartment, and it goes by the name Katamari.
Confused? Maybe a screenshot will help:

No?
Trying to describe how wonderful this game is brings to mind a quote from the movie "Joe Dirt":
"Well, huh, might as, might as well ask why is a tree good? Why is the sunset good?"
There is no point in trying to describing the awesomeness of this bizarre video game--it just is.
But I'll try anyway:
A few weeks ago my girlfriend Ash and I came to the conclusion that we had both separately had the same idea for what to get each other for Christmas : the video game "Guitar Hero" (which is also awesome). The problem is, Guitar Hero wasn't made for XBOX, which I do own. The cheapest option was to go with the Playstation 2. So, Ash bought the game and I bought the system.
Rock.
Anyway, as we perused the Game Stop for additional games I came across the game "We Love Katamari". I played the game a few years ago thanks to my much tech-savvier friend and former roommate, Ben Smith. I was in love with this game and had tried to explain its greatness with everyone I know.
Nobody who hasn't played this game understands why it's so fun. The only other person besides Ben who had ever played that I knew was Ash and I's friend Joey Weiser. Joey and I attempted to explain to our respective girlfriends why several hours could slip away like sands through the hourglass while at the controls of this game to no avail. We might as well have been speaking in the original Japanese the game was first released with to explain the plot.
The concept, what little of it there is, revolves around the King of The Cosmos requiring his son, you, The Prince, (a small green figure with an antenna and a noggin the shape of a hammerhead shark) to replace the stars in the sky by rolling up increasingly large items on Earth with an incredibly sticky ball called a Katamari.
Still confused? Well, I'll go on:
So, when I plunked down the $29.95 plus tax for the used game, Ash nodded politely and promised to try it, but she looked at me as if I had just set fire to three ten dollar bills in the middle of the store.
Fast forward to a few weeks later and our living room is now adorned with two handmade, beautiful stuffed versions of the Prince which Ash constructed herself.
The reason it is so awesome, and also the reason its greatness is also so hard to communicate, is that it scratches an itch in my brain that I didn't know I had. As you make your ball larger and larger you go from rolling up paper clips to things like cats, dogs, shoes, people, buildings, giraffes and finally, islands, ships and entire countries. Not to spoil anything, but the end of the game involves you rolling up planets in space.
This domination of inanimate video game objects is one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever experienced.
As Ash put it, "I hate to say this, but I totally sympathize with Godzilla."
Ash and I were in Fort Bragg last weekend and we were standing on the Pudding Creek Trestle. I looked over the east side of the footbridge and noticed a long row of houses that had been built on the other side of Highway 1. I told Ash that I wanted nothing more than to roll them up with my Katamari ball. She agreed.
I dream in Katamari.
I brought MacLeod over to demonstate the game and to show him why I won't be needing the services of my XBOX for a good while. I made the mistake of not forcing him to play and he just watched us go at it.
All he could say is: "So this is the whole game?"
So I say to the uninitiated, go ahead and keep thinking we're crazy. Ash and I be rolling up Guatemala and the Eiffel Tower by ourselves with a big smile on our faces.