In this month's Men's Health Magazine, the "Ask The Girl Next Door" section looks at how to use the Wii to get your girlfriend into gaming. While we don't have the actual article to summarize the advice, I can probably extrapolate based upon my own experience getting my own non-gamer girlfriend trained in the complexities of handling an eight-inch, opalescent Wiimote.

At first, she was a bit bashful, so I put it in her hand. "Don't be afraid, baby..." I cooed. "Just hold it in your palm. Get used to the feel, the contour, the shape, the slight ergonomic curve."

"It's heavy!" she remarked.

"I know! But you'll get used to it. Just wag it around a little bit. Yeah, like that."

"I don't really feel comfortable with this, Flor..." she complained.

"No, no, keep playing with it, dammit. You'll learn to love it. Bond with it. Give it a little kiss. Well? What are you waiting for?"

"But I don't like it! It makes me feel self-conscious."

"Listen, I don't care. If you want this relationship to last, you'll damn well get comfortable with the Wii. What? Wait, where are you going?" But with the sound of hysterical weeping and a resounding bang of the bathroom door, she'd run out of the room to cry. Women!

This may not be the advice that The Girl Next Door gives, however. "Calling [your girlfriend] over to watch you pistol whip a hooker in GTA or solve the riddle of the moon druids in Myst IV is not the way. Maybe you should buy that new Nintendo system with the stupid name, Wii. It was designed to suck video-dissing women into the virtual world. Personally, I'm addicted to Rockstar's Table Tennis and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory."

So pistol whipping hookers doesn't appeal to women, but slitting guys throats from behind does? I'll say it again: women! Utterly inexplicable. Florian Eckhardt