Sure-Fire Strategy for '08 Presidential Hopefuls....

Want to drop your cushy ass in the Big Chair this year? Wanna see what it's like to get oral in the Oval? Just follow King Rat's Easy Prez Plan, and your spot in American History textbooks is set in concrete.

1. Promise to treat celebrities like people.
---When Brit goes crazy, lock her ass up for more than an hour. We've all seen domestic disputes on COPS. We know you can do it.
---Money does not make the law. Neither do lawyers. When Lindsay Lohan gets drunk and chases people in her SUV, put her in jail for more than an hour. When her lawyers show up, toss them in the cell for being criminally retarded.
---Deport Paris Hilton. Just for fun.
---And for God's sake, arrest OJ.

2. Promise to treat rich people like people.
---Taxes are taxes. We all live in America. We should all pay American taxes.
---Just because you can afford Johnny Cochran does not mean you are innocent. With enough money, you can be caught with a dead hooker in the trunk of the car you dumped in a lake, and still hold a political office!

3. Promise to treat criminals like criminals.
---Make up your mind. Alcohol kills people who use it, as well as people who don't. Marijuana does neither. So, either bring back prohibition, or legalize marijuana. Either way, get all those small time pot violators out of prison and stop the ridiculously expensive and ludicrously ineffective War On Drugs.
---I'm not racist. I'm anti-criminal. Illegal immigrants are just that. ILLEGAL. Send them home. Relax immigration policies if you want. Make the process of applying for citizenship more streamlined. But please send the criminals home. We have enough of our own.

4. Promise educational reform
---I have family members who are teachers. I respect them. I do NOT respect the way the No Child Left Behind policies (among others) are castrating our public education system. There are people who have been ALLOWED to progress to high school who can not read. There are people who graduate from high school without being able to pass BASIC SKILLS TESTS. And all because we want to be able to show ON PAPER that more of our students are progressing and graduating. Good thing we're not telling whether or not they actually learned anything.

5. Promise to make SUV's illegal
---Okay, perhaps not. Maybe just slap on a monthly Idiot Tax, which will then be used to pay for crude oil.

6. Promise not to buy crude for $100 a barrel.
---I got news, guys. America has enough oil to last way past the standarization of alternate fuel automobiles. Open up the wells in Texas and Alaska, tell Exxon Mobile to suck a fat one, and roll out those fossil-fuel-free cars you've been spooking the patents for since the 50's. Even if it's not 100% successful, foreign oil will get TONS cheaper once Big Daddy America quits paying for it. Supply, demand, you know, the stuff we learned in high school? Oh, yeah, I forgot. Promise #4.

7. Promise NOT to try Bush and Cheney for war crimes and general breach of trust, treason, and a whole bunch of other stuff they did while we were all watching.
---We all know they did it. Promise instead to just skip the trial and publicly torture them to death on the White House lawn on live TV.

8. Promise sweeping mainstream media reform.
---We're tired of extremist, fear-mongering, totally uninformative/misleading news. Either release your stranglehold on the media and require Big Business to do the same, or abolish it completely. No news is better than fake news.

Well, there you have it. Any candidate who made even HALF of those promises would immediately win the election. We wouldn't even NEED an election, because all the competition would instantly drop out of the race in fear. Any opponents of such a presidential candidate would likely be immediately killed just so they couldn't accidentally win the election.

Video Games Attacked Once Again!!

And this time, McDonald's is directing the bombardment. Though it slyly owns up to it's portion of the blame, the fast-food giant that's been expanding waistlines one Big Mac at a time since 1940 is trying to blame video games for the increasing child-obesity issue.

“Then there’s a lifestyle element: there’s fewer green spaces and kids are sat home playing computer games on the TV when in the past they’d have been burning off energy outside.”

Source

Hmm...ok, so what's really the issue here? It's the same issue we've been discussing lately.

Responsibility.

Mortal Kombat gets blamed for the death of a child, when we should be looking at the abhorrent home environment that produced these two murderous teens.
Dr. Phil makes history by having his first intelligent thought, and asking parents why they don't pay attention to the ways their children use or abuse entertainment media.
And now McDonald's says, "McNuggets aren't the only villain! Video games are fattening too!", in a statement that very strongly reminds me of the times when I would throw my younger brother under the bus by claiming that I shouldn't be punished because "he didn't eat his green beans either!"

Here's the deal, America. Video games do not make us fat. McDonald's does not make us fat. We make ourselves couch-wrecking lard-asses. We take things that are meant to entertain, and we abuse them. Ronald McDonald does not put a gun to your head and force you to Supersize. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do not tie you to your couch and force you indulge in their digital wonderlands until your muscles atrophy. We make these decisions on our own.

What really gets me is that so many parents are jumping on the video-games-are-evil bandwagon. Here's a thought: Make your kids play outside. Stop letting entertainment media raise your family for you. When I was young, my dad bought an NES. When we played it, we played as a family. It was a treat, something we all did every other evening or so. That's the way it ought to be, folks. Something to do in between a few rounds of front-yard football and a home-cooked meal. But this is the generation with no parents. They're at work, they're on business trips, and the oven is used more frequently to re-heat last night's Domino's pizza than it is to cook a casserole. And if today's shining examples of parenting ARE home for the evening, they spend their quality time glued to the tube watching American Idol or Survivor or Dr. Phil, or some other such nonsense. Now, there's nothing wrong with television (in practice...I think there are a million things wrong with today's TV programs, but that's another rant entirely), there's nothing wrong with Netflix, and there's certainly nothing wrong with some good old Goomba smashing or alien blasting. I also believe that you can have a few alcoholic beverages, and even smoke a little of the green green grass, if that's your thing. But, remember what the good Lord taught us, kiddos.

All things in moderation.

There IS such a thing as "too much of a good thing". But here's what we must remember: it's up to us. Go ahead and blame video games if you want. Blame McDonald's. Every time you do that, you're giving up the responsibility that you have for your own life, and saying, "Here, video games/fast food/booze/sex/addiction of choice. I am going to allow you to run my life. I can't be held responsible for my own actions, so I'm going to allow you, no, I'm going to invite you to take over for me."

Take back your life, America. Take some freaking responsibility. Or take a flying leap, and let the rest of us live in peace already.

(As an aside, it has been shown that obesity may actually be a switch that gets thrown in the womb. In today's "thin-is-in" society, image-obsessed expecting mothers try to put on as little weight as possible whilst preggers in order to keep the dream of post-baby-smuggling single digit pants-sizes alive. This does have an effect on the baby, however. During the developemental stages, the baby figures that mommy is starving, and therefore the world must be in famine mode. When the baby is born, it has adapted to a foodless existence, and has mutated into a fat-storing prodigy. Its little body is programmed from conception to stock up any available nutrients, just in case famine strikes yet again. We're training mommies to be skinny, and babies to be fat. So, take heed, moms-to-be. Stuff your face! You can work it off later. But if you don't feed Junior enough in utero, he'll make up for it once he's eating on his own.)

Video Games are Evil (MK Part 2)

In a shocking development, one of my least-favorite people on the planet finally managed to score some awesome points.

Dr. Phil Supports MMO, Scolds Parent

While television personality and actor Dr. Phil has come out against violent video games and their influence on children in the past, in a show that aired Monday entitled "Shocking Teen Trends", the good doctor actually comes out on the side of social MMO There.com. After questioning 13-year-old Lexie and her mother Lezlie (awww, their names are so kyoot!) about Lexie's There.com addiction and speaking to There.com CEO Michael Wilson, Dr. Phil actually jumps to a reasonable, well thought-out conclusion.
"The problem is not with the game; the problem is the use of it," Dr. Phil tells Lexie and Lezlie. "The game is very creative and it's there for you to use or abuse. Are you abusing it?"

Source

The nice thing about this is that the terminally brain-dead segment of America that watches and reveres Dr. Phil just happens to be comprised mainly of those individuals who will believe that video games (as well as T.V., movies, Dungeons & Dragons, and basically fun in general) will cause anyone who touches them to become a depraved, violent, child-raping lunatic cannibal.

And so Dr. Phil speaks directly to the ones who need this insight the most.


Go Dr. Phil!!

Mortal Kombat Wrongfully Accused

Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves

Thursday, December 20, 2007

JOHNSTOWN, Colorado — Two teens have been charged with killing the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the "Mortal Kombat" video game, prosecutors said.

Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were charged as adults on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said in court documents released Wednesday and filed a day earlier.

According to a police affidavit, the teens were baby-sitting Trujillo's half-sister, Zoe Garcia, on Dec. 6 while the girl's mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teens hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the video game, the document said...

...The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling. According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn't stop, he responded, "I don't know; I was drunk."

Source

Let's begin by having a look at the title of this article.
"Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves".
This...is 100% unnecessary.

Why?

Because it could have served the same purpose without ever referencing the video game. All the tragedy-hounds would have gotten their daily fill of death, and we could have gone about our business after adding two more names to the "Gee, Aren't Kids Today Totally F'ed Up" list. But instead, they chose to throw journalistic integrity out the window and take a more sensational, attention grabbing route instead. Now, by villifying Mortal Kombat, it becomes the perceived focus of the article, though it is only mentioned twice in the article, 3 times if you count the title. This is no longer an article about some braindead girl killing her half-sister with the help of her drunken, underage, similarly mentally-handicapped friend.

Now it's an article about how video games will kill your children.

"But they were playing Mortal Kombat, and they beat the child to death! It's applicable!"

Ok, let's take some of today's headlines, and re-imagine them as they might have appeared coming out of the Fox News bullpen.

"Benazir Bhutto killed in Pakistan; Copy of PS2 game 'Hitman' found in suicide bomber's apartment"
"Police: Teen died saving friend from tiger; Seigfried and Roy tickets found on victim"
"New home sales at 12-1/2 year low, while website Second Life posts record numbers"
"Toddler's brain pierced by screwdriver; President Bush pushes for a complete recall"



Now, do any of those headlines REALLY sound improbable? No, they really don't. If you saw them on CNN.com, you'd buy them hook, line, and sinker, because that's what you've been trained to do. And you're paying for it, by allowing the news media to warp your perceptions of the world. This article is trying to tell you that video games make you kill people.

But here's what I get out of it.

Two teens, languishing at home over their winter break, got bored and decided to beat the hell out of a little girl. These children, the unfortunate end product of a disasterous public school system made worse by the Bushmeister's No Child Left Behind march toward illiteracy, very likely would have been raising their own child soon enough, had they not proven themselves unfit members of the human race just prior to a drunken New Year's Eve conception. The teens' parents could not be reached for comment, as their phone numbers were not listed. This is not due to any sort of privacy concerns on their part, they simply used this month's welfare check on cocaine instead of paying the phone bill. Oh, and the 17 year old was apparently drunk at the time, which was only mentioned once (1/3 as many times as Mortal Kombat).

So, who are the villians in this story? According to Fox News, it's Mortal Kombat.
But if you turn your brain on before you read the story, we get a different lineup.

Public schools
The teens' parents
Alcohol
Breakdown of the laws of Natural Selection

Now, how does any of that involve video games? You're right, it doesn't. But is it really safe journalism to print "Under-educated, poorly-raised teens murder young girl while inebriated"? No way. We need a good scapegoat.

Please. Stop blaming it on video games. Let's take some responsibility here. Put the blame where it belongs, and let's try to keep our kids safe, okay?



In other news, Kenneth Copeland is just one of six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

Can anyone else say, "It's about blessed time"?

UPDATE
Thanks to The Brainy Gamer, I now have some information to back up my (formerly) fictional statements about the way these kids were living. What follows was found on the Brainy Gamer blog:

Court records show a history of neglect and abuse charges against Dana Trujillo, Zoe Garcia's mother, in both Colorado and New Mexico.

Trujillo has had six children with four different fathers, one of whom had been living with Trujillo and the girls until he was arrested Dec. 3 for escaping from jail earlier this year.[1]

Authorities in Socorro, N.M., filed three counts of abandonment or abuse of a child against Trujillo in November 2003. The complaint states that Trujillo left her children in the house with a babysitter and didn't return that night. A neighbor complained the next day, and police went to the house with the paternal grandmother of the Garcia girls and woke up the babysitter in the back bedroom. The girls said they hadn't eaten or bathed that day.[2]

The girls had been removed from the home twice by authorities before being returned to their mother.

School District Superintendent Dr. Martin Foster has confirmed that the district sent a referral to the county Social Services agency at the beginning of the school year because staff had noticed marks and bruises on Zoe.[3]

The boyfriend charged has confessed to being drunk at the time of the incident.

See? Quit blaming video games! It's time to take this one to the parents, and also, to the "journalists" who "report" these stories, full of sensational, fear-mongering spin. Also from the Brainy Gamer post, let's have a look at some of the headlines spawned by this fiasco:

"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - CNN
"Mortal Kombat Killing: Zoe Garcia Murdered by Sister, Boyfriend" - The Post Chronicle
"Sister Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death of 7-year-old - The Denver Post
"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death" - USA Today
"Still No Burial Plans in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - Fox News Colorado
"Teens Charged in Video Game-Related Slaying" - WJBF-TV
"Mortal Kombat" Teens Fatality 7-year-old - CrunchGear

How's that for good reporting, based on what we now know?

SUB-UPDATE

Ironically, the CNN article with the headline "Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" provides readers with links to not only this very article, but also it's counterpart on The Brainy Gamer. Basically, each of these articles point out that CNN (among others) is being highly irresponsible in the way it reports this type of news. Yay for self-debasement!

I Hear Advertising-People.....

...[a billboard] for "Paranormal State"...uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before.

Source

Now they can beam ads straight into your noggin. It seems likes it's been the theme around here lately to hate on advertisers, so I thought I'd throw this one out there.

Get out your tin-foil hats, kiddies. Your personal space just went bye-bye.

They're Reading Our Minds!!!

Okay, okay, okay. I try. I try so hard not to just copy and paste things into this magic box that shows you wordy-thingies. I do everything I can to add my own spin, my own interpretation. But this really speaks for itself.

Thank you, Cracked.com!

Thoughts of the Average American Television Viewer


-------------(As Imagined By Network Executives)

"If I cannot see sports scores, stock reports, and weather forecasts scrolling across the bottom of the screen at all times, I will kill myself."

"I can't wait to see this overweight middle aged comic and his disproportionately attractive wife deal with their adolescent children in a humorously unorthodox, though ultimately conservative manner."

"I don't see enough petty, selfish individuals in my daily life. Therefore, I will tune in to tonight's scheduled reality television show."

"You cannot make a television show too stupid for me to watch."

"I was going to change the channel until the network reminded me, halfway through the first commercial break, that the program would 'be right back.' I had previously been under the impression that the program was lost and would never return."

"I find this sitcom intellectually challenging."

"I am completely unaware of the fact that the corporation being investigated by the FBI in this news segment owns this news station. Even if I were aware of this fact, I would put great faith in the objectivity and journalistic integrity of this enormous media conglomerate."

"Becker is not on TV enough."





--------------------(as Imagined by a Music Executive)

"I'm glad this rock band has a limited repertoire of similarly progressing power chords. If their songs were more creative, it would confuse me, and I would not buy their album."

"As a member of the African-American community, I readily identify with this hip-hop artist's misogynistic views and propensity towards crime."

"That beautiful and scantily clad young woman, whose name escapes me at the moment, is my favorite musical artist of all time."

"It's a good thing my carbonated soft-drink came with one free music download, for I would have felt uncomfortable downloading free music on the internet."

"Finally a halftime show that combines my love of hard-nosed championship football and pre-pubescent teen-pop!"

"I will buy any CD that produces sound."





---------------(as [Correctly] Imagined by Politicians)

"I am upset that I work full time and still fall below the poverty line. I blame queers and people of another race."

"Clearly, the best way to reduce crime is to build more prisons. Evidence linking poverty and crime is flimsy at best."

"At least both candidates favor education initiatives with humanitarian names that direct money towards arbitrary and biased standardized tests. Hiring more qualified teachers and rebuilding crumbling inner-city schools would yield questionable results."

"The rich do enough for this country. They should not have to pay higher taxes than the rest of us."

"I fear that we might one day be attacked by a country whose economy is based almost entirely on trade with the United States. Therefore, we must spend more on our military than every other nation combined. This will make other countries feel more secure, and they will whore their underclass to us rather than initiate an arms race."

"Morality is derived from creatively interpreting apocryphal texts, not the desire to reduce human suffering."

"If we give free health care to poor people by taxing the super-rich, the economy, and quite possibly the universe, will collapse."

"I see many distinct differences between these two courageous candidates."

"Congratulations on successfully side-stepping another important question and leaving me lost in forest of vague rhetoric and empty catch-phrases. You've got my vote."

"One American life is worth approximately ten European lives, four hundred thousand African lives, and fifteen million Arab lives."

"A presidential candidate's war record is the deciding factor in his ability to oversee the American economy."

"The rich white liberal cares about me more than the rich white conservative, though they both care about me very much."





-------------(as Imagined By a Marketing Executive)

"I prefer the product with the attractive salespeople."

"I was heretofore unaware of the maximum safe duration for a chemically induced erection."

"That recognizable athlete scores all those points because of his brand-name sports beverage, right?"

"This song reminds me of my youth. Therefore, I will buy."

"I can only afford $74.99 on a new pair of old looking blue jeans; $75 is just too much."

"I would have gone to an amateur poetry reading rather than the monster truck rally had the gentleman on the radio commercial not been yelling."

"Wow. I had no idea smoking was so bad for you."

"If I buy this face cream, I will be as beautiful as the actress endorsing it."

"After hearing rap music on their commercial, I can now trust this giant white-owned corporation to fulfill all my consumer needs. It no longer bothers me that the CEO eliminated all employee benefits to build his own country club."

"There is very likely buried treasure somewhere in the backyard of my suburban Chicago home. If only there were a way of detecting the presence of metal underground."

"Yes, I have been injured recently. And, no, I hadn't considered litigation until this trustworthy family man suggested it."

"I can't believe I voted for a politician so soft on crime. I will not make the same mistake this election. I am also far more likely to vote for the smiling candidate in the color photograph."

"This electronics super store has so many things I need at such great prices that I might just kill myself."

"With that many explosions, how could the movie not be good?"

"I will enjoy your inexpensive, highly potent alcohol responsibly."

"This celebrity who appears to be in good physical shape must be an expert on health and nutrition."

"When passing a car dealership with a catchy jingle, I will remember that they have fair prices and know that I am a busy man. When I finally have some free time, I will buy the first safe, reliable, and easily financed automobile I see."

Today, A Blogger Saved My Life

Thanks go to David Wong, the Assistant Editor of Cracked.com, for writing the article that very well may save us all. Trust me.

It's called "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable".

Here they are, in no particular order (or maybe just the order Wong discusses them):

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.
#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.
#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.
#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.
#5. We don't get criticized enough.
#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.
#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less.

Now, do I normally go and find life-changing articles on Cracked.com? Except for that one about 6 Singers Who Are Mistaken About Their Raw Sexuality (anything that makes fun of Kid Rock is tops in my book), no, I go to Cracked for a laugh. But, despite it's devil-may-care tone and frequently vulgar humor, this article raises a surprising number of good points. Actually, I have a hard time disagreeing with [i]anything[/i] Wong says in this piece.

So go read it. All of it. And be a better human being with me.

Monday Minis!!

BRB...G2P

Now THAT'S technology! So, here's the situation. You're vacationing in Europe, soaking up the sights...and the ale. After stumbling out of your 18th pub, you decide you need to make some room in the old waterworks before visiting the next house of sin and suds. Now, you COULD just drain the main vein in an alleyway, but you'll only be adding to the estimated 10,000 gallons of recycled beer that gets unloaded in the streets of Westminster every year. Try this instead.

Tourists, theatergoers, shoppers and pub patrons in London's West End can now text the word "toilet" — and receive a text back with the address of the nearest public facility.

Source

Call information? Hell no! Text "toilet"! What won't they think of next (that question is ALMOST getting scary!)?



Facebook backs down
(Go here for the original rant, if you don't know the story.)

It seems like Facebook has decided to bite the bullet and admit that it made a mistake. Facebook users are now given a global "opt-out" option with regards to the new Beacon advertising program. It's still tough to find, requiring users to access the "External Websites" portion of the "Privacy" section of their profiles, but it's there, which is a big change from where we stood last week.

"We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook's blog. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it."

Empowering to users block Beacon entirely "is big step in the right direction, and we hope it begins an industrywide trend that puts the basic rights of Internet users ahead of the wish lists of corporate advertisers," said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org.

Source

Now, this is just the first step. Facebook got busted, but look at what it took to get the "opt-out" added to the program (example: 65,000 Facebook users signing a petition hosted by MoveOn.org). Your information is valuable. Be sure you know who has access to it, and how.

Now, there's still the issue of how Beacon works, by sending ALL user data from affiliated sites to Facebook servers. Whether you're a Facebook user or not, Mark Zuckerberg still knows about your Christmas purchaes from his Nike affiliates. Facebook "deletes all information from users who have not opted-in to the program", but even if that is the case, they shouldn't have that info in the first place.

Perhaps it's time to take the fight to the affiliates. When word got out about Eidos' potential involvement in the termination of a Gamespot reviewer over a less-than-enthusiastic review of one of Eidos' new games, users immediately began pulling support from Gamespot and their advertisers. We've seen the effect we can have. These people are working for our dollars, people. Let's show them where the power lies.

Is it necessary for us to start boycotting Facebook affiliates? As long as those affiliates are comfortable sharing YOUR information with Facebook, whether they have your permission or not, then I say yes. We will not be toyed with, not in this world where identity theft is only one click away.

UPDATE 10:02 p.m.
Further proof that Facebook affiliates send info no matter what, from the blog of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.

If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Source

"Even when partners send them to Facebook". Way to go Mark. Throw them under the bus.


Ahhh! Cooties!

They pull their sleeves down over their hands to open doors, surreptitiously sanitize while on buses, subways and airplanes. At the gym, they towel off their elliptical trainers like car detailers in search of a $100 tip. At work, they’re ready to break out the Clorox the minute somebody coughs.

Who are these incredibly sterile souls? They’re the citizens of a germ-conscious segment of the country you might call hand-sanitation nation.

Source

These people are contributing to shorter life spans and the prevalence of superbugs and drug-resistant bacteria. You know the commercials for all those handy disinfectant wipes and crap? The ones that kill 99% of germs and bacteria? I think it's time to start a new ad campaign.

"NEW! Leaves 1% of the bacteria behind to mutate and breed into something even worse!"

Think about it. How long have people been getting cancer? Or AIDS? Or the flu-that-kills-you? Barring the whole "back in the old days we didn't know what was killing us" argument, I'd say, not very long. Yes, people are healthier, but almost EVERY DAY we learn about a new health threat. Where are all these coming from? Some of them have always been around, but our bodies could handle them. Now, we've antibacterialed ourselves to the point that dirt could probaly make us ill (and I mean nice, clean dirt). Every time you use antibacterial soap, you're killing your immune system. That just makes it so that you have to use the stuff more often. Which makes your immune system weaker. And so eventually, antibacterial soap becomes a must-have for survival, because the immune system went the way of the appendix, and atrophied into nothing, since we were no longer using it for anything.

Want a hint? Do you know what HIV is? Let's ask wikipedia.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections.

Guess what? I know this is an exaggeration, but every time you antibacterialize yourself, you're bringing yourself one step closer toward voluntarily giving yourself HIV. HIV/AIDS kills the immune system ENTIRELY, and any little old bug that wants to can waltz right in and kill your squeaky clean ass. And you're signing up for it, every time you buy a bottle of antibacterial sanitizer.

PLUS! It's not healthy whe nyou kill all the germs. But what's even worse are the ones that survive! There are new drug-resistant strains of EVERYTHING popping up around the world daily. When will the germs start to win the race against the medical researchers that keep finding new ways to kill them? Seriously, if we've had flu vaccines for DECADES, why isn't it dead? Why does it get more vicious every year? Because we keep making it smarter, and hardier. Yup.

We're killing ourselves with clean.
Which is why I only bathe twice a week.
I may smell, but I'm healthier than you.
XP

What WON'T Money Buy These Days?

Well, well, well. Do you like Mountain Dew? How about that shiny new Alienware laptop? When you bought these products, did you think about where your money was going, what was being done with it? In the past, we used to be very concerned about where our consumer dollars were winding up, cause we sure didn't want to promote the spread of communism by purchasing anything that was made in China. Now, however, we're beginning to see an entirely new trend.
It seems that quality control is out, and dollar control is in.

Advertisers are starting to think that they control the market. They can tell you what to buy or not to buy, where to buy it, how much it should cost, and whether or not you get a free calendar with your purchase. Now they're even beginning to tell you whether or not you should enjoy your purchases.

The past week marked the end of an era at GameSpot. After over a decade in a variety of editorial roles, Jeff Gerstmann's tenure as editorial director has ended.

"Jeff was a central figure in the creation and evolution of GameSpot, having written hundreds of previews and reviews, and anchoring much of our multimedia content," said Ricardo Torres, editorial director of previews and events. "The award-winning editorial team he leaves behind wish him nothing but good luck in his future endeavors."

Due to legal constraints and the company policy of GameSpot parent CNET Networks, details of Gerstmann's departure cannot be disclosed publicly. However, contrary to widespread and unproven reports, his exit was not a result of pressure from an advertiser.
Source

So, after Eidos dumped tons of ad money on Gamespot, Jeff gives the game a 6.0 review, and issues a scathing video blog review as well. There was originally some controversy within the controversy, with some Gamespot/CNet/Eidos supporters claiming Jeff had hardly played the game at all before giving his negative and highly critical review, citing "Jeff's Xbox Live Gamercard, which only has six achievements and 90 Gamerscore points for the game". Jeff fought back, stating in a recent interview that "A reviewer's Xbox Live Gamercard is rarely a good place to look for answers about how much that reviewer has (or hasn't) played a game...For the record, I saw both endings in Kane & Lynch before writing about it." So, based on that quote, and the fact that his video review is very detailed about the game's ongoing flaws, it is very doubtful that Jeff only gave Kane & Lynch a quick glance before setting it on fire.

Next, CNet and Gamespot claimed that Gerstmann was fired for repeated incidents of "tone". Tycho of PennyArcade added his own two cents in a blog of his own.

Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site...Would that it were only about the 6.0 - at least then you'd know how to score something if you wanted to keep your Goddamned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous "tone" would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.

So, you can't even count on good, safe numbers anymore. You have to worry about your "tone". What you apparently DON'T have to worry about anymore is doing your job. All you need to do is write what the ad-men tell you to write, and everyone is happy and employed. How hard is it? Eidos pushed a game to market for the holiday season, rushed the production, and ended up with a crappy product. Jeff caught all their flaws, and, if you watch the video review, he tries REALLY hard to push the good parts of the game, but in the end, the mass of flaws and shortcomings far outweighs the tiny shiny parts that Jeff points out to us. And so, we have a man who was fired from a position he'd held for over 11 years...just for doing his job.

And how has this affected the world? Well, let's see. Pepsi obviously wants no part of Gerstmanngate, as evidenced by their speedy removal of advertising content from the Gamespot website. Apparently, as of December 1st, all game-related ads had been pulled from the Gamespot site and replaced by ads for Mountain Dew, Dell, and Sony products. However, early in the A.M. on December 2nd, all the Mountain Dew ads disappeared from the site, according to SarcasticGamer.

Very early this morning, the Pepsi/Mountain Dew ads came down. Coincidence? Maybe. But it seems rather unlikely that Pepsi bought a one day ad on Gamespot for Mountain Dew. It’s not like they’re on a tight budget. At one point yesterday, literally every ad space came up Dew. Now it’s Alienware (Dell). Lots and lots of Alienware.

Additionally, Gamespot members are rising up in favor of Gerstmann. How are they making their feelings known?

At last report, over 500 individuals have canceled their pay subscription to the site, with many more threatening to do so unless an explanation is given. But they've already moved past this, and some very upset GameSpot fans are starting to get organized. They're not talking about a simple boycott of the site; they're talking about boycotting the advertisers that use GS for promotion.

So, if Gamespot wants to "[think] with their wallet," as one poster put it, then disgruntled gamers will hit them where it hurts, by pulling as much money as possible from the people they feel are responsible for this silly event. It's a double-edged sword; by shutting out advertisers, Gamespot takes a hit for listening to the bottom line instead of good sense, and advertisers are informed that they are not the ones who get to tell us what's good or bad about a product.

In a loosely related development, social-networking site Facebook is now taking fire from leftist activist group MoveOn.org, among others, for it's new advertising network, Beacon, a part of the new Facebook Ads campaign.

Beacon is the internal project name at Facebook around an effort to work with third parties and gain access to very specific user data. An example may be a purchase of a book or DVD from Amazon. Under Beacon, the fact of that purchase will be sent to Facebook and automatically included in the user’s News Feed...The feed information includes the user name, what they did (bought something), what they bought, and where.
Source

Now, the third-party advertisers don't get any money for this. What they DO get is a free ad out of the link placed in the News Feed. Facebook, on the other hand, gets VERY specific data on its users, allowing them to more efficiently target advertising to the user in question. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? The problem arises when we look at how the data is collected.

With the new Beacon program, any time you make a purchase online, it will try to publish that action in your News Feed. This could pose several problems. MoveOn spokesman Adam Green addresses a few of these potenial issues.

[Adam] cited Facebook user testimonials that ranged from members who said their entire Christmas lists had been published on their News Feeds (spoiling many a surprise in the process) to student activists who were concerned that sensitive purchases might show up and result in serious consequences--"If a college kid rents Brokeback Mountain and some homophobic person on his campus sees that, that could be a real problem," he explained.
Source

Now, under the new Beacon program, Facebook users are given the choice to opt-out, but the option is apparently not user-friendly in the least. The option is well hidden within the Beacon framework, and there is currently no option for a global opt-out, meaning that a user who decides not to publish his latest purchase from Nike will be prompted again when he buys Live Free or Die Hard from Blockbuster.com. MoveOn believes that users should have the option to activate Beacon, not be forced to try and find ways to turn it off.

Facebook retaliated with statements pushing the integrity of their site. In a response issued on Nov. 20th, Facebook tried to downplay the fact that they were tracking your every move on the internet.

...this information is not public, it isn't an invasion of privacy. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users," the statement explained. "Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."
Source

So, it's not public. Only your friends can see it, if you've set up your Facebook account preferences with that in mind. But if you've got several friends (and some Facebook users clock in with thousands of friends), then could it not be argued that any information shared with them could very easily be considered "public"? MoveOn.org seems to think so, and they apparently have many Facebook users behind them, stating that "Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission".

Now, originally, this was not an issue. According to MoveOn and TechCrunch, early screenshots of Beacon did in fact include a global opt-out option that would allow users to basically kill Beacon, never to see it again. The final version? No such button, my friends. In a rather pointed statement, Adam Green lays it on the line.

Facebook should explain why they chose at the last minute to put the wish lists of corporate advertisers ahead of the privacy interests of their users
Source

Facebook decided to counter all this stink with a statement of their own, saying that user data would not be shared "unless a user receives notifications both on a participating website and on Facebook". However, these notifications are apparently not very clear, reportedly only consisting of a quick pop-up at the bottom of the user's screen, which the user, browsing a totally non-Facebook website, very likely won't ever notice while trying to be sure that his or her shipping address is correctly entered. This is, of course, a replacement for the original global opt-out that was removed "days before Beacon's launch", according to Adam Green.

TechCrunch briefly re-visited the issue after MoveOn dragged them into the ring by citing early Beacon screenshots found on the TechCrunch site. The article clearly tries not to take sides, but makes one fatal flaw.

Facebook’s best move is to make the new Beacon service opt-in only. But that reduces the value of the service to third parties who supply the information to Facebook, and get free links in return.

And, once again, we see this new initiative. Advertisers are worth more than users.

Facebook later responded by tweaking the way Beacon operates. Now, when Beacon sees a purchase, the external site displays a pop-up at the bottom of the screen asking whether the user wishes to publish this information to Facebook. If this notice is ignored, then the request will be queued, and the user will receive a notification the next time they visit their Facebook page, where they are again given the option to publish the information to their News Feed, or to remove the activity. There is also, now, an option under the "External Websites" Privacy settings in Facebook to allow users to change how Beacon notifies them about these stories. Users are able to choose whether they want to either Always or Never "Allow these websites to send stories to my profile", as well as a third "Notify Me First" option. HOWEVER, each external site must be dealt with individually. This means that each time a user who wishes to opt-out entirely does business with a Beacon-enabled site, they must then go to their Privacy settings and disable notifications from the new site (Source).

But here's where it starts to get really entertaining.

According to one security engineer’s analysis, Beacon partners transmit data to Facebook in bulk about members who visit their site. This is true even for those who opt out of Beacon by clicking on “No Thanks” when asked if the data can be shared with Facebook. The data is sent anyway. Facebook clarifies that it does not do anything with this opted-out data, and in fact deletes it from its servers. But the deletion occurs on Facebook’s servers, not the advertisers’. [Update: It gets even worse. Beacon partners are sending data indiscriminately about every single visitor to their sites back to Facebook, whether or not those people are even Facebook members. This includes very detailed user behavior. Again, Facebook says it deletes most of this data. But what are the partner sites thinking? They might as well be giving Facebook access to their bank accounts.]
Source

Don't believe what you're reading? Try it again, only this time, from a statement Facebook emailed to Computer Associates blogger Stefan Berteau.

When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks "No, thanks" on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.
Source

So, no matter who you are, if you're shopping at a Beacon affiliated site, Facebook knows about it, whether you hit "No, Thanks" or not. Even NON-Facebook user data is being submitted to Facebook. So when your grandmother, who has never even heard of Facebook, saves an article on the NY Times, Mark Zuckerberg knows about it. Now, on the advertiser's side, this is a blessing. It leaves them without all the leg-work of deciding what data to send to Facebook. But it also make Facebook privy to info it has absolutely no right to. In light of all this, advertisers are reportedly jumping ship left and right. Coca-Cola and Overstock.com were on board with Beacon when it launched, as an opt-out program, but now both companies have withdrawn from the fray since Beacon swapped paradigms to opt-in, and another big money account, Travelocity, is starting to look sideways at the whole deal as well. Sorry, guys. No easy ad-space for you! Let's take the paranoid angle for just a moment. Originally, Coca-Cola, Overstock, and Travelocity were all for a program that would force users to inadvertantly advertise for them, but now, when the dung strikes the rotating blades, and revised program where the user can choose whether or not to support the Beacon program, the payoff isn't worth the potential scandal. And so, the rats desert the sinking ship.

Interestingly enough, most of the information I was able to find on the Beacon scandal was presented by CNet, the company behind Gamespot.com. Why would a company even now deeply embroiled in it's own advertisers-vs.-users battle choose to follow a similar story SO very closely? Are they trying to point out fellow screw-ups in an effort to spread the blame around, or otherwise dilute the issue?

And after all is said and done, what is the issue? I'll lay it out for you. Corporate America wants you. They want your dollars, your opinions, your behavior, and basically the world you live in, to all be under their express control. The want you to have a choice, but they only want you to have the choices they approve of. So the next time you go to buy an Eidos game, think about how many advertising dollars it cost them to get your favorite magazine or blog to tout that game as "the best thing since Super Mario". The next time you see a targeted ad pop up on a webpage, perhaps you should stop and think about how Travelocity knew you were looking into a Caribbean getaway. Did you do something to prompt this? Is there any way to prevent it?

Your information is out there. What are you doing to protect it?

Do we really need books?

So, it's that time again. No, not the time where your girlfriend sends you to the store for the dreaded "Feminine Products". It's new RPG book day! A joyous day, when nerds swoop down upon their local hobby shop in their magic flying cars and rainbow-winged unicorns to gather and hopefully walk away with the newest release of their favorite RPG product line. So, you walk into the store, and...
What?
The Mind's Eye Theatre book for Mage: the Awakening isn't here? But where...only being released in .PDF format? [cries]

Well, it looks like you won't be toting THAT one around in your Jansport anytime soon. But is it really such a bad deal? Let's have a look.

For years, there's really only been one way to get new RPG supplements and core books. From the bookstore, right? Well, now you have the option of getting most RPG books in a digital format. DrivethruRPG.com (which is currently down for database maintainance, and could not be accessed to verify any of the following) offers a wide range of publishers from White Wolf to Steve Jackson to FASA to Palladium, as well as an ever-growing collection of indie publishers for the adventurous. The majority of the books were offered in a watermarked .PDF format, with new titles having a slightly reduced cost, and older titles (at least 6 months old, if I remember correctly) at an even lower price. The reduction in cost can be attributed to not having to pay to have the book printed, bound, and shipped. Sounds like a great deal, right? Well, let's hit the pros and cons.

PROS:
No heavy books to lug around.
Let's face it. If you've ever run an RPG session, you know how many books are required to do it. If I want to put together a Vampire: the Requiem one-nighter for my group, I'll at LEAST need the World of Darkness book, the Vampire: the Requiem book, and 2-4 applicable sourcebooks. Now, add in paper, pencils, dice, clipboards, Doritos, and Mountain Dew, and I'm quickly running out of space in my handy messenger bag. But with electronic books, I can throw them on my laptop and rock on out without toting a bunch of dead trees.

No losing pages or damage to books.
Well, I know you've tried to take care of that Monster Manual, but it's been a hard couple of years, and that is your player copy, and it's been handed around the table hundreds of times, and it's really starting to get a little ragged. Oh? We're facing a Blackendrathgra? Well, let's see what that little beastie can...uh, dude? You're missing about 20 pages here.
We love our books, and we treat them with dignity and respect, but they aren't gonna last forever. But no matter how many times you flip through your PDF files, the pages never fall out, and you just can't break the spine on that one. Which is okay, cause you don't need to break the spine just so it will sit open on the table. Nifty!

Own more books than you could ever possibly find shelf space for.
If you've got the hard drive space, you're good to go! No more deciding which books need to go to Half-Price books this week to make room for the new arrivals. Now you just have to decide which folder full of dirty, dirty porn to delete.

Instant access to rare or out-of-print titles.
Many of the big-name publishers have tons of out-of-print titles that gamers would love to get their greedy little hands on, but they're just impossible to locate. Well, not anymore! Any title ever produced, provided there is still a paper or electronic copy existing SOMEWHERE, can be offered up for sale as an electronic book! Can't track down a copy of the Adolescent Radioactive Kung-Fu Hamsters RPG? Just order it online, and download it straight away! And, to rip off fellow RPGXer Shawn Struck, some companies could REALLY benefit from this idea, like broke-ass Keven Siembeda's Palladium. Palladium has a VAST collection of out-of-print books, and bringing them back in this format could net them some serious cash, and fast.

CONS:
Piracy.
If it's electronic, you can steal it from somebody. Or share it on your favorite P2P network. Or copy it and distribute it to your fellow gamers. Which sucks, since the guys who were nice enough to go along with this eBooks idea are now losing print sales AND e-sales.

Loss of print sales.
If people are buying electronic books, will they still buy print books? Maybe they could buy the electronic copy as a backup. Like ROMS! Yeah, probably not. But as far as the industry is concerned, this will likely be a tiny bump in the road. There will be a brief period where print versions will sit on a shelf and collect dust, and then, once we've got it all ironed out as to who is still buying books versus who jumped on the eBooks bandwagon, they'll adjust the number of copies printed, and everyone will be happy. Print demand will go down, but it will be replaced (and then some, I would say) by electronic sales.

Possibility of data loss.
If your hard drive crashes, all your pretty eBooks go bye-bye. This is a big concern, since eBooks, though offered at a reduced cost, still ain't gonna be free. Its' not like you're in trouble if your bookshelf "crashes"...just set it back up and spend the next hour re-alphabetizing your collection. Now, this will only really affect those who are too dense to backup their collection, and those people should probably stick to paper anyway, since it will take them forever to figure out they can't "turn pages" on their monitor.

Difficult to use away from home.
Don't have a laptop for that game away from home? That could make things difficult, unless you own one of the neato gadgets I'll get to shortly. Other options include using a buddies laptop/PC, printing the book at Kinkos (which kinda defeats the purpose, neh?), or breaking down and getting that headware installed so you can just view the eBook on your cybereyes.

But I like books.
I like books. I am a big fan of how pretty they look on my bookshelf. I also like having them there, really there in front of me. I like turning pages, flipping back to the index, feeling the silky pages as they slip between my fingers...uh...yeah, books are neato. And it's understood that, while they may not really be collectible, there is a certain sense of completeness to be found when you look at your bookshelf and see them all lined up and ready to take you on a fantastic journey.

So, now that that's out of the way, which way should you go? Personally, I think that the future is now. The pros outweigh the cons. Especially once you see these babies.

First up is the Amazon Kindle. This little bad boy holds over 200 titles (with an SD expansion slot), and has a 2 day battery life if you leave the wireless turned on (which jumps to almost a week with the wireless shut off). You can automatically download and read several major news publications and magazines, as well as over 250 blogs of note, for $1 per blog or RSS feed. It connects wirelessly to the Amazon Kindle Store, allowing you to download new books anytime, using EVDO, the standard for cell phone data transmission, which means no looking for a WiFi hotspot. Sadly, though it can display your non-Kindle store PDFs, JPEGs, and Word documents, they will have to be emailed to Amazon first, and converted to their proprietary format at a cost of $0.10 per file. It also brings a big new player to the market: electronic paper. EPaper displays work much like LCD screens, except they reflect light "just like paper", and are therefore not backlit, reducing eye strain. They are also clearly viewable from almost any angle, giving them a one-up over standard flat screen displays.

On the other side of the table is the Sony Reader. This beautiful little piece of powerful is totally going on my Christmas list. Let's see how it stacks up against the competition. It holds 80 titles, as compared to 200 with the Kindle, but also comes outfitted with an slot for Media Sticks and SD memory cards. The battery clocks in at 7500 estimated page turns with a full charge. It can display newspapers, magazines, and blogs just like the Kindle (only for free!) with the added functionality of being able to play unencrypted MP3's and AAC podcasts. It lacks any sort of wireless connectivity, but connects to your PC to handle downloading new content. It has no proprietary format restrictions (suck it, DRM!), and will display most PDF and RTF documents without the need to convert them. It also features the happy-happy electronic paper screen.

Personally, I'm gonna have to side with the Sony Reader. And that's saying A LOT, cause I haven't been too buddy-buddy with Sony for quite a while now. But it just seems to be a better product design overall. It looks friendlier, and I like the way it's put together. And no DRM. Hahaha.

So, with all this in mind, it's beginning to look like eBooks have a SERIOUS chance of taking off. So, make your choices quickly, folks, or you may get left behind.

And for the wicked...disbarment?

Controversial Miami attorney Jack Thompson faces the start of an ethics trial this morning which could see him disbarred.

The Florida Bar is pursuing several complaints concerning Thompson’s professional conduct in court cases against the video game industry.

Source

Yippee! Jack Thompson gets it in the pooper! Too bad it's not a criminal trial.

"Hey, geezer. What're ya in fer?"
"Oh, I'm Jack Thompson. I used to be a lawyer who tried to convince everyone video games are bad."
"Hehehe. Ya like games, geezer? Here, try my joystick...it's mouth operated!"

Lions, Tigers, and...Samus? Oh, my!

Cosplay.
According to Wikipedia, it is defined as "a portmanteau of the English words "costume" and "play", [and] is a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu, and video games, and, less commonly, Japanese live action television shows, fantasy movies, Japanese pop music bands, Visual Kei, fantasy music stories (such as stories by the band Sound Horizon), and novels. However, in some circles, "cosplay" has been expanded to mean simply wearing a costume."

Some think it simply strange, and others find it creepy and unnerving. There is sometimes an undertone of sex, but that is usually dependent upon the participants and the venue in question. For the most part, it is usually just a way to have fun with a shared interest.

There are many different types of cosplayers, from all parts of the world. In the USA, widespread cosplay is a more recent phenomenon, at least as most people define the term. However, in a very basic sense, Americans have been participating in this little game for a long time. For decades, Americans have been attending Renaissance fairs, all dolled up in period garb, ranging from the historically accurate to the fantastic styles of elves and dwarves. This is, at it's root, a form of cosplay.



There are also many other Western-centric cosplay norms, such as opening night at movie theatres for films like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings movies, as well as cult classics like Serenity and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The last two, especially, have gained some popularity among cosplayers, as there are not only opportunities for dressing up, but also for a sort of playacting or scenarios that are played out in the theatre while the movie is playing.



From here, it gets a tad more...fantastic. Anything is fair game for players, though there are some strong standards. Anime characters are credited by most for being the first big topic of stitchery. Anime was the preferred standard for many decades in Japan, as the live-action film industry suffered from a lack of budget and viable locations for shooting. Also, the relatively small number of Western-looking actors working in Japan made it nearly impossible to film anything set outside of Japan. With animation, filmmakers were able to bring to life a wide variety of cultures, locations, and characters. All of this contributed to making anime a huge part of the Japanese media culture. Plus, they usually make for really cool costumes.



And then, there were video games. And we all love video games. Who wouldn't want to be Mario or Master Chief for a day? Well, with the right materials and some tricky stitching, you can be. Video game characters are seeing a dramatic rise in popularity at cosplay gatherings, with entire troupes of players selecting a group of characters from the same game or series, in much the same way that troupes would previously choose a group of characters from an anime show or film.





Last, but not least, we have what can be the most involved form of cosplay.
The live action roleplayer.
"A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out some or all of their characters' actions," says Wiki. This can be done with most RPG's, from medieval fantasy games like Dungeons & Dragons, to modern-day horror games like White Wolf's Vampire: the Requiem. The players dress up in garb appropriate to their character, then act out the scenario set before them by the Game Master or Storyteller. Many believe that this is a more totally immersive way to role play, as it gets you away from the kitchen table and out into the world.

Girls. Ever heard of them?

This will be a short ramble about the fairer sex. If I'm wrong, then HAHA! IT'S MY BLOG!
Uh, OR you could correct me.
But I'm not wrong. Ever. So don't even try. Just read, and believe.
The truth is in here.

As far as girls relate to gaming of any sort, there are 4 main types of women.
1. The Hater
2. The Invisible Girl
3. The Voyeur
4. The Competition

The Hater is the girl who throws out your issues of Game Informer while you're at work. She's
the one who starts a 1,000,000,000 piece puzzle on your table half an hour before your RPG group shows up. She's the cold-hearted evil machine who threatens to revoke your sex coupons if you don't turn that shit off right now...regardless of how long it's been since you were last able to save your game. The Hater does just what her name implies...she hates games. She's not apathetic, she not simply someone who doesn't play games...it's her mission to kill fun. And she will. She'll find it, wherever it hides, and she will choke the life out of it. Avoid at all costs.

Next is the Invisible Girl. She is a total step in the right direction. The IG couldn't care less about games. She won't wreck your fun though...in the presence of games, the IG simply...disappears. She can usually be found doing something womanly in another part of the dwelling, something like knitting, doing laundry, reading a book, or, if she is a truly wonderful IG, preparing to re-appear briefly with the sandwich she just made for you (note: these cases are extremely rare). On a scale of 1 to Awesome, the Invisible Girl scores a solid "Loves Me From Afar (Which Is Cool, Cause Some of My Buds Smell a Bit Funky)".

Next up, we have the type of girl I have been blessed with. The Voyeur. The Big V isn't gonna scream at you for buying Super Mario's Magic Kingdom of Lollipops and Wishes that Make Dinosaurs Fly. She won't go all Susan Storm on you when she sees polyhedral dice. No, this one is clever. She likes to watch. I'm trying to come up with a synonym for kinky that contains the appropriate level of geek, but there's just not one, so we'll use geenky. The Voyeur girl is geenky. She'll sit and watch you play Doom 3 all evening, cuddled up just like she was watching a top-shelf horror movie. She'll cry with you [ANCIENT SPOILER] when Sephiroth skewers Aeris. If you offer to let her play, she usually responds with something
like, "I'm no good at those games," or, "I like to watch you play them." She is a win/lose situation, because, while she won't hog console time, she's also not one to sit down and play a few rounds of Tekken Tag with you. But I think the good outweighs the bad. Full-on good times with this girl.

Last, but not least, there is the most sought-after and most-dreaded of all women.
The Competition.
This is the gaming girl. Her Elven Necromancer reached the level cap a month ago, she's got more polyhedral dice
than you, and she can beat Ninja Gaiden Black while simultaneously playing Tetris with her toes.
This is totally awesome, because you now have nothing to worry about. You both share a common interest, and you'll never be banished to the couch for playing FFVII straight through a four-day weekend (unless, of course, there were games she wanted to play instead). You no longer have to bribe your friends with beer to get them to come over and play Halo. This wonderous creation, however, has a major flaw.
You must always match her, and never surpass her.
If you play way above her level, she will hate you for perpetuating the male dominance stereotype. On the flip side, if she constantly whips your n00b ass, then she will lose
all respect for you, and ditch you for one of your nerd friends (because nerds can smell a gamer
chick from MILES away, and they'll snap her up in an instant). She's a constant tightrope walk,
but the payoff can be worth the fight. Especially when she rolls over after sex (you know what that is, right?) and whispers in your ear, "I think I just leveled up. Twice."

PS3 Signals the Death of Sony

Mmmmmkay. The great battle. And I haven't even put my two cents in yet. Pardon my newbie-ness if I happen to re-hash old arguements.
Who will win the war? Well, to me, the answer is obvious who SHOULD win the war.
Back in the day, the PS2 got off to a great start. It got to market first, about a year before the Gamecube, the only real competition at the time. Sure, there were other consoles, but who wanted them? It was more expensive than we might have wanted, BUT! it could play DVD's, which had just hit the market around the same time as the PS2! And at $299 it was cheaper than a dedicated DVD player, which at the time of the PS2 launch were mostly retailing for $399 and up. So you got a cheap DVD player with a built in kick-azz game console! Awesome tactic, Sony. And we'll just call the backwards compatibility a bonus. And here is where we see Sony's wonderful new business model. We'll sell a new overpriced console with a new media format, and while we're busy losing money on the hardware, we'll rake in the dough on software sales. Then, once everything really takes off and our new media format becomes the industry standard, everything gets cheaper to make, we start making money on the consoles AND the software, and we all get big fat raises. And how much did they rely on this model? Well, let's take a look at the PS2 launch lineup.

Armored Core 2 (Agetec, Action)
DOA2: Hardcore (Tecmo, Fighting)
Dynasty Warriors 2 (Koei, Action)
ESPN International Track and Field (Konami, Sports)
ESPN X-Games Snowboarding (Konami, Sports)
Eternal Ring (Agetec, RPG)
Evergrace (Agetec, RPG)
FantaVision (SCEI, Puzzle)
Gun Griffon Blaze (Working Designs, Action)
Kessen (EA, Adventure)
Madden NFL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Midnight Club (Rockstar, Racing)
Moto GP (Namco, Racing)
NHL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Orphen (Activision, RPG)
Q-Ball Billiards Master (Take-Two Interactive, Simulation)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Midway, Sports)
Ridge Racer V (Namco, Racing)
Silent Scope (Konami, Shooter)
Smuggler's Run (Rockstar, Racing-Adventure)
SSX (EA, Sports)
Street Fighter EX3 (Capcom, Fighting)
Summoner (THQ, RPG)
Swing Away (Paradise Golf in Japan) (EA, Sports)
Tekken Tag Tournament (Namco, fighting)
TimeSplitters (Eidos, First-Person Shooter)
Unreal Tournament (Infogrames, First-Person Shooter)
Wild Wild Racing (Interplay, Racing)
X-Squad (EA, Action)

Maybe 9 or 10 titles that I can ever actually remember seeing with my own two eyes. Impressive? Hell, no. What a spectacularly dreary lineup. BUT! it can play DVD's! Sony is showing us that it doesn't give a w00t about the titles. It just wants to get DVD's off the ground. And it worked, for the most part. The PS2 dominated the market for most of it's life, and still has a strong following today.

Moving forward, Sony releases the PSP. The PSP continues to have an incredibly weak game library, and UMD movies? Remember those cute little things? Again, we see Sony trying to push a new media format onto the market, and look how well that fared. Not to mention the fact that the PSP had several hardware issues, and just feels retarded in your hands. It puts me in mind of a slimmer Atari Lynx. It's awkward to hold, and the analog sticks (which originally helped put Sony's PSX on the map) are ridiculously unusable. Oops.

And now, we see that Sony is following the same model with it's PS3 release. But this time, it has some serious roadblocks in its path. Let's take a quick look at the PS3 launch library.

PS3 Launch Titles
November 2006

NBA 2K7 - 2K Sports
NHL 2K7 - 2K Sports
Call of Duty 3 - Activision
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 - Activision
MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE - Activision
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Bethesda Softworks
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 - Electronic Arts
EA Sports Fight Night Round 3 - Electronic Arts
Need For Speed Carbon - Electronic Arts
Madden NFL 07 - Electronic Arts
RIDGE RACER 7 - NAMCO BANDAI Games
Mobile Suit Gundam: CROSSFIRE - NAMCO BANDAI Games
Sonic the Hedgehog - Sega
Full Auto 2: Battlelines - Sega
Resistance: Fall of Man - Sony
NBA 07 - Sony
Genji: Days of the Blade - Sony
Untold Legends Dark Kingdom - Sony Online Entertainment
Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII - Ubisoft
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas - Ubisoft
F.E.A.R. - Vivendi Universal Games

Respectable? Perhaps. But well over half of the launch lineup is nothing but legacy titles and your latest incarnation of sports titles. Way to ride those coattails, Sony. We don't want original content. We don't want to see new, innovative games. We just want to play drive real fast and play with our balls. Again. BUT! it can play Blu-Ray movies! Here's the problem, though. When the PS2 released with the ability to play DVD's, there was NO high-end competition for DVD format movies. In this case, however, HD-DVD's hit the market about a month before Blu-Ray, killing Blu-Ray's first-to-market advantage. Add to this that the PS3 released a year after the Xbox 360, and was even beaten to market by Nintendo's "My First Game Console". With an extra year to develop their product, Sony manages to gift us with a system that is largely "on par" with the XBox 360 in terms of graphics, but is much more difficult for developers to work with. This means that Sony is going to take a big hit while dealing with third-party developers, as it will take significantly longer to develop new titles, not to mention that the process is much more difficult with Sony's devkit, and will generally cost developers more in the end.
And so, we see that Sony is:
1. late out of the gate
2. launching a "comparable" system
3. at a much higher price point
4. with yet another new media format (also second to market)
5. into a market with HD-DVD, a cheaper competing media format (which DVD's didn't have to worry about)
6. while Blu-Ray pretty much "requires" an HDTV to see any difference in quality
7. not to mention being wholly uninnovative, replacing Live Acheivements with "Entitlements" and stealing the Wii's controller scheme ("Our controller is motion sensitive! Nintendo who?")
8. and without many of it's much-touted "exclusive" content.

So, what does Sony have going for it? Well, there's always backwards-compatibility, which is shaky at best at the moment, and soon to be DISCONTINUED in (I believe) the 60 GB PS3, which will be the main setup moving forward. So, basically, the PS3 has NOTHING going for it. What it USED to have is going down the tubes, along with Sony's hopes, dreams, and Christmas bonuses.

The Keyboard vs. Gamepad

In the years since the first PC gamepads hit the market, one question has had video gamers divided into two separate camps. It's a question of speed and responsiveness. It's a question of comfort and versatility. It's a question of the best way to aim your sniper-rifle for the game-winning one-shot-kill, the most efficient method of controlling your F-16F Desert Falcon on a bombing run across the Iraqi desert with only 30 seconds left on the mission timer. Which is better: a gamepad, or a mouse and keyboard? Let's start by looking at the latter, as they were the first to be developed.

A computer keyboard is a peripheral that was originally derived from typewriter keyboards, and is designed to be used to input text and characters, as well as to control certain functions and operations of the computer. However, as with fabled Rome, the standard keyboard layout was not built in a day. It slowly came to be through the course of three separate IBM keyboard projects, overcoming many initial evolutionary mistakes and pitfalls. A lengthy discussion COULD follow about the specific layouts of these failed IBM keyboards, but we'll just leave the dead undisturbed for now, resting peacefully under piles of 5" floppies and spare SoundBlaster cards, and move on to the keyboard's partner-in-crime, the mouse. Wikipedia states that, "In computing, a mouse (plural mice or mouses) functions as a pointing device by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface." Thanks Wiki. The computer mouse has had thousands of different forms over the years, depending on technology level, manufacturer, and desired functionality, but most users are familiar with the standard two-buttons-and-a-scroll-wheel version. Some other iterations include, but are not limited to: wireless mice, trackballs, optical mice (which are NOT laser mice), laser mice (which are NOT optical mice), mechanical mice, and touchpads, each with anywhere from one to eight or ten buttons. So, to varying degrees of accuracy, versatility, and comfort, your mouse points at stuff, clicks stuff, or otherwise interacts with…stuff.

Now, when used together, the mouse-and-keyboard combination can create a very powerful tool to use in manipulating the little world you see on you computer screen. But how does it stand up to the demands of video games? Actually, it's becoming more and more difficult to choose anything but the keyboard and mouse combo. With the intense demands and multiple configurable options of most new PC games on the market, you almost need 104 different buttons to play the game effectively. The keyboard is as modifiable as you want it to be, and virtually every key can be remapped to perform a programmed function or macro within your game. The mouse is a remarkable tool as well, giving precise control over the pointer or targeting system you are trying to use within the user interface.

On the flip-side of the coin is the PC gamepad. Let's go back to Wikipedia for a quick second, and see what they have to say: "A gamepad, also called joypad or control pad, is a type of game controller held in the hand, where the digits (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. Gamepads generally feature a set of action buttons handled with the right thumb and a direction controller handled with the left. The direction controller has traditionally been a four-way digital cross (D-pad), but most modern controllers additionally (or as a substitute) feature an analog stick." Thank you, oh wise Wiki. All the benefits of a keyboard/mouse combo, with an average of six to ten buttons, as opposed to as many as twenty or thirty keys to wrestle with. Now, while some say the lack of buttons presents a sacrifice of functionality and ease of use, there are many who would argue that the streamlined approach is much easier to grasp (haha), and who wants to try and memorize two or three dozen keybindings anyway? The majority of gamepads on the market today feature two analog joysticks, a design pioneered and popularized by Sony's Dual Shock controller in 1997. The Dual Shock was a slightly-revised version of the Dual Analog controller first announced in November of 1996. Many die-hard game nerds will argue that Nintendo created the analog gamepad in the form of the Nintendo 64 controller, which was unveiled in November of 1995, and hit the shelves less than a year later, getting the jump on Sega Saturn's analog controller, which showed up on the market about a month after the N64 controller . But anyone who has ever held an N64 controller knows that it was a massive, unwieldy hunk of crap, much better suited to throwing at your little brother than to playing video games with, and the Saturn "3-D" analog controller was no better than the N64 controller or its younger cousin, the Dreamcast Big-Funny-Shaped-Box-of-Doom-With-A-Hole-In-It controller.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Dual-analog gamepads. This just seems like the best way to go, for someone like me who (admittedly) grew up on console games. All the movement is controlled by the thumbs, not some wacky WASD combo. Forward/backward and strafing with the left thumb, and looking/aiming with the right thumb (for additional gross memories, think back to the way the N64 controller handled aiming with the four "C" buttons on the right side of the controller…uber-nasty). Less buttons means less versatility, but it also means less fumbles and less trying to remember which of the 104 keys you mapped you health packs to in the heat of battle.

But the real deciding factor is what game are you trying to play? You may choose from first-person-shooters (Doom 3, F.E.A.R., Quake 4), racing games, puzzle games (Bejeweled, Snood, Wheel of Fortune), role playing games (Final Fantasy, Neverwinter Nights, Everquest), flight/space simulators, sports games, or strategy games (Starcraft, Warcraft III, Empire Earth). Keyboard/mouse combos work very well over the majority of these genres, thereby making them the most commonly used input method. While it is possible to use a gamepad for Starcraft, there's really no call for it. And vice versa, while one could conceivably use a mouse/keyboard setup to play the latest version of Street Fighter, who in their right mind would want to? There is really only one genre where there is even a clear choice between using a gamepad or a mouse/keyboard combo: the first-person-shooter.

"First-person shooter (FPS) is a genre of video games which is characterized by an on-screen view that simulates the playable characters perspective and a focus on the use of ranged weapons such as guns." Sounds like fun, right? Just trust Wikipedia to suck the like out of everything. FPS's are non-stop, rip-roarin' shoot-em-ups where you, the player, get to cruise around your world (be it a historical killing ground, modern-day warzone, or futuristic sci-fi battlefield) grabbing anything you can find to shoot, blow up, or similarly frag your opponents. The simple version: run around and shoot stuff. But how should you do it? Should you stick with the time-honored tradition of a mouse and your trusty WASD keys? Or should you abandon the 104 programmable keys for the sleek-and-sexy feel of a pair of analog joysticks under your thumbs? Well, it's all a matter of perspective. A mouse and keyboard user has the benefit of multiple programmable keys to access his skills or inventory on the fly, while a gamepad user has an easier time remembering which of his six buttons to press to reload in the middle of an intense firefight. The mouse can be said to offer more precise control than joysticks while aiming a weapon, but many gamepad devotees feel that the mouse does not always respond accurately, either not scrolling far enough, or leaving you spinning in a circle. What it really all comes down to, in my humble opinion, is the way you were raised. Those of us who did the majority of our FPS gaming on a PC will always be more comfortable with a mouse and keyboard setup. Those of us who have more confirmed kills on a Playstation or X-Box will tend to favor the gamepad approach. It's really as simple as that. One is not any better than the other. It's just a matter of opinion.