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EA doesn't have a niche, they're big-tent publishers, the super-Walmart of gaming.

That's all great if you've got a nice, functional family. And charity shouldn't be a part of it. A single day in 365, or a single week in 52, in which everybody chips in and helps everybody else serves no greater purpose than to make the charity workers feel good about themselves. The reason Christmas is so unsatisfying is that what it represents is supposed to be special as opposed to being normal.

Keith really, really wants to be Edward R. Murrow. He should be somewhere other than cable news.

If the latest little peripheral details are to be believed, there will be dialogue options that won't be accessible to those without sufficient abilities, ala Fallouts 1/2 (whether or not this is restricted just to Speech and Charisma or expanded to other things, science, doctor, etc. remains to be seen) and the dialogue system itself is not the 1-word "speech" in Oblivion. It's slightly heartening. Overall, still looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Do you know what a "signing statement" is, Vol? You play D&D, right? You should know the difference between the letter and spirit of law. The power of pardon is assigned to the President as a check (as in checks and balances, see high school Civics for further detail) against the power of the judiciary branch. He can't strike down a Supreme Court ruling, but he can step in on matters of punitive justice. This doesn't mean he should. A pardon is supposed to be intended for matters in which the judiciary has been overzealous or has ignored mitigating circumstances. Historically, it has instead been used as a tool of political expediency, from the pardoning of Tricky **** Nixon by Ford to the pardoning of the six Reagan officials fingered in Iran-Contra by Bush I on down to the pardoning of billionare fugitive Marc Rich via Clinton. Very rarely has a pardon been meted out to, say, those punished by three-strikes laws, sentenced to effective life sentences for petty shoplifting. This is equivalent to, say, the Supreme Court striking down a law passed by Congress because it cuts into the payroll of the law clerks under the Court. So was the Libby pardon illegal? No, not really. Was it justified? **** no, it wasn't. 30 months is nothing, given the nature of the crime and the minimum security facility Libby would have ended up in. Read the transcript of Bush's speech that he made upon his decision. He openly admits that Libby broke the law. He just feels that, you know, Libby was a loyal friend and he doesn't deserve to be treated so badly. If adverse reaction to this really rubs you the wrong way you're way more obtuse than we give you credit for.

10 over. I went 10 over in a work zone in CO and got a $120 fine, but Hij was on the interstate and there wasn't a work zone or a school crossing or anything, and apparently it was very late at night and she was basically alone on the road. Who knows.

Meh, I dislike a lot of atheists for the same reason I dislike a lot of vegans. They're the Riot Grrls of the 'aughts, stomping around and bloviating like living Mountain Dew commercials. Do you have it in you?!

I really don't like Christmas. Not because of the big spooky capitalist overtones and all that ****, I couldn't care less about a holiday based around the exchange of gifts. What I take issue with is the all-encompassing notion that you should be happy during Christmas. Nobody's happy during Christmas. Winter's getting bad, there are hordes of busy, frantic people all around, the same banal Irving Berlin tunes are blaring every****ingwhere saying how ****ing great everything is during Xmas, the same too-strong poutporri is burning in every red-and-white adorned shop, everybody feels entitled to be treated specially and obligated to treat everyone else in kind. No wonder the holiday season boasts such a high suicide rate. I mean, it's great when you're a kid. Christmas of '98 I got Fallout, I would have never played it were it not for the holiday, but it's a sour and hollow thing when you get older.

I've learned that the louder and longer you can argue about something, the more people seem to think you're right. I've learned that 99 percent of the time, people prefer to bitch and not act. I've learned that pissed off Iranian kids are just like pissed off American kids in nearly every way.

Just finished a game of Alpha Centauri, played as the University and kicked much ass. By the end I was getting 1473 credits and 1 tech per turn, and all that cash let me get a new Secret Project every 3 or so turns.

A friend of mine in Georgia got a speeding ticket that cost her $850. I thought that was harsh, heh.

I wasn't exactly jumping for joy when Marc Rich was pardoned. The salt in the wound in this case is how it fits into the bigger picture of above-the-law antics the administration loves so much. And I just love how every conservative pundit on and off the internet pissed and moaned like Libby's sentence was harsh. 30 years for a bag of dope? As it should be. 30 months for obstructing justice and compromising state secrets? Get that man off the cross. But I can still be glad that the Bush administration is 30+ years older than I am, which means that in all likelihood I will have the opportunity to **** on their graves.

Can't say I'm surprised. The rule of law was never important to the Bush presidency. Anybody got a link about that born-again christian in Texas that Bush executed while he was governor? That's a nice contrast. I hope the press runs with that one. But they won't because, you know, Paris Hilton just got out of jail.

What Bethesda isn't doing, amirite? The only thing groin shots ever did against my enemies was inflict extra damage or knock them out, which given headshots, makes them arbitrary. If I was able to get a good shot off to the groin, I'd be able to get a comparable shot off to any other part of the body, excepting the eyes (also missing from F3, it seems). The prospect of crippling an arm or a leg was more appealing than the slim chance hitting the groin would do anything other than provide funny flavor text. Because that's what the groin shots were all about, ****s and giggles for the Chris Farley fan in us. That doesn't mean I won't miss them, but their absence is not a human rights violation. either.

The little bit about the dialogue mechanic was not encouraging, if not just for the very mention of percentages (that the player can see IN GAME!) what I liked the least about Oblivion was that the PC was less a character than a set of different statistics and numbers, and this points to more of the same in that regard. I'm curious about the "limited scaling". Ostensibly, they've taken their game out of the frying pan and into the fire. Instead of everything being as difficult as would befit your character as it presently is, everything is instead as difficult as your character was when he first entered the area. What's to stop me from breaking the game by just running through the areas and attempting to level up as little as possible? Are they implementing certain measures to make sure that only players of certain experience continue on to the later parts of the game? Because that would be unlike Bethesda. For all that we know, it would be incredibly easy to rush through the game and fight a horde of crippled giant ants at the end. And the groin selection is patently irrelevant. What made shooting somebody in the crotch fun? In-game, it appears to be just like any other attack. What made it fun was the flavor text. There will be no flavor text in Fallout 3.

*thwack* IT'S NOT DEAD It's been 15 days since Game Informer got its exclusive look at F3, so now everybody else takes a crack: Bethesda Q&A 1 and 2 Comprehensive IGN coverage Gamespot coverage Joystiq article and bullet points Eurogamer coverage 1up coverage o'course, links cribbed from DAC.

Lock it before Ron Paul comes up.

Buddy Wakefield, Alias, Buck 65 and Sage Francis at the Gothic. Went for Buck. We got there a little early, Buck and Alias were manning the merch booth. I didn't know who Alias was, so I looked at his CDs and mainly remarked on the featured collaborators (some dudes from the Notwist / 13 & God) and Alias said that Neon Golden was one of his favorite albums. I also met Buck for the first time, bought every bootleg he had (and Square on vinyl) and had them sign them, along with a t-shirt. Buddy Wakefield was the first act. Picture a huskier, younger, tweaked-out present-day Bruce Willis. We were up in the balcony, but we could see him giving everyone the crazy eye. Turns out he's a spoken word dude, and his set, while short, was impressive. Lots of pent-up energy and stream-of-consciousness weirdness. Next up was Alias, and I felt kinda embarrassed when I realized the guy I had just talked to at the booth was an act. He's one of Sage Francis' producers, and he had a pretty good flow, I dug his set. He had a funny little story about an unnamed rapper who apparently hated Anticon for being a "white label" and how fake said rapper was for making songs about "punching you in your ****" and not actually doing it when given the opportunity. Next up was the main attraction for our little group, Buck 65. I can't seem to remember the setlist all that well but Buck was a very charismatic performer, playing with a laptop and a turntable and dancing. It's not exactly flattering to think about, but picture that from Knocked Up who wore the NIN shirt, 15 years older, same hair, with a scruff beard, and you've got Buck. First he did a little Mick Jagger impersonation that was definitely winning, and he went into a disappointingly short (45 minute) setlist. Highlights were "Out of Focus", "Fish Heads" "The Centaur" and "463". He also played a song from his new record (an American release, thank God) that sounded pretty amazing. Since he apparently went on for too long, he had the crowd "choose" the last song, between "Pants on Fire" and "Wicked and Weird", and much to my disappointment the crowd chose "Pants on Fire", which Buck started, then stopped, then restarted with an added turntable backing, but failed to spice up the really dull live mix. After that, my friend Rai had to get a cigarette outside the venue, and the smoking area was packed, so we hung around. When Sage Francis' set started everybody but us and a few other Buck fans stayed in the smoking section and we talked through about 80% of it, and perhaps made a new friend in the process (we'll see if we hear from him). For the last 20 or so minutes of the night we went in and met Buck again and chatted him up, and had him sign some more stuff. We talked about the differences between the music business in America as opposed to the rest of the world, how success was relatively easy to achieve elsewhere (Buck says he's doing very well in Australia) and how he's been largely shut out of the American market until now, as his new album's gotten Sage's backing. He's a great guy, but I was aware that I was just another fan and the small talk didn't really amount to much. Great fun, great show, I didn't really care much for Sage Francis anyhow. I got what I came to see.

KDUST has some pretty good classic rock, and unless you're playing on a PS2 or a 360 it's not terribly difficult to program your own station.

San Andreas is only "ghetto" for the first fifth or so of the game. Once you get past all the Grove Street missions it expands into more GTA3-esque weirdery. New term for the day: weirdery.

The best way to send a message to mediocre developers would be to form your own awesome development company and blow the others out of the water. Learn capitalism plzthx.

Pac Man: Championship Edition. Fast-paced, like Geometry Wars with a lighter learning curve. ****ing pinky always gets me.

What

It's funny that there are as many hospital beds as there are people in the US, because it's damned hard to stay in one compared to 20 years ago. My mom tells me wondrous stories of overnight hospital stays for outpatient surgery. These days they send mothers home the day of birth.