Club Penguin!

Just gave a friend a feijoa. She has never had one before. She said, "Tastes like damp bathmat." What? No it doesn't! YOU taste like damp bathmat! This is the same friend who was sitting in the lounge earlier and said, out of nowhere, a pensive "Sometimes, my bellybutton smells really bad." Like damp bathmat, I bet.

I went to visit my sister and two small nephews a couple of days ago, and was introduced to the wonderful polar world of Club Penguin. Club Penguin is like Second Life, except there is less sex and also you are a penguin. Social networking sites for children! Whatever will they think of next? (My nephew can apparently be overheard on the phone to his friend, also on Club Penguin: "I'll meet you at the dojo.")

"Imagine a snow-covered island populated by colorful, animated penguins. A virtual playground where kids from around the world interact, play games and let their imaginations soar. Club Penguin is that place!" Imagine.

The tagline is "waddle around and meet new friends!," which makes me suspect that Club Penguin shares a marketing team with fat camp. However, bored and with only an inexplicably stinky dog for company (he reeks! why does he reek!) I decided that I would indeed waddle around and make some new friends. Also, investigative journalism! Penguinvestigative journalism.

I created a penguin called Rupert Pingu.

Pictured: your basic penguin, although you can choose to have him in a range of garish colours. I went with the classic monochrome penguin.

I believe if you are a paying member you can purchase little penguin outfits - I was going to dress Rupert Pingu up like a SPY (to fit the theme of penguinvestigation) but did not want to pay real money to do so. Sorry Rupert Pingu. You will just have to be undercover.

Like any traveller in a new place, Rupert Pingu wandered around a lot then went to a nightclub. But it's not all fun and games at Club Penguin! You can also pimp out your igloo, which I hear penguins totally live in:

The igloo of a penguin who is, socio-economically speaking, vastly superior to Rupert Pingu.

Club Penguin is serious business.

All I really figured out how to do in my entire time at Club Penguin was make Rupert Pingu dance.

(Rupert Pingu enters the restaurant to see two penguins having dinner. 'ur cute' says one penguin to the other. The second penguin replies with a picture of pizza. Rupert Pingu dances.)

(Rupert Pingu goes into a cave and chats briefly with another penguin in a bee suit. The bee suit penguin leaves. Rupert Pingu dances. The bee suit penguin ask to be Rupert Pingu's buddy! Rupert Pingu says yes. Rupert Pingu dances.)

And so it goes until suddenly Rupert Pingu realised that as well as dance he can throw snowballs at other penguins, and it was at this point that Rupert Pingu became somewhat of a jackass.

I like Club Penguin and would recommend it as a social networking site for your child. It has every safety feature you could imagine to protect against child identity theft (children, as a rule, have an excellent credit history). It even has rules!

The third rule of Club Penguin is 'respect other penguins.' I have already broken the first two.

Want to see the nightclub?

The screenshot's kind of small, but there is a penguin in the middle saying "woooohooooo" and it's NOT EVEN ME.