If my life was a newspaper you could say that these two comics were "ripped from the headlines". I still have flash backs about my time at Toys R Us and Circuit City. I saw grown women get into fist fights over Tickle Me Elmo. I was cursed out on Christmas Eve for not having Holiday Barbie when the stupid thing had been sold out since June, and just like the comic I've been told a million times to "check in the back."

Here's the second (and final) strip retelling Gabriel's harrowing past as a retail aggressor.

I tend not to reveal my deepest hopes, lest they be stolen from me by the universe.  Now, on the cusp of its realization, perhaps I am allowed: I do indulge in the occasional fantasy.  Let me show you them.

Gabriel still gets the shivers when entering the Holiday Retail environment, as shellshocked memories begin to leach from his brain. He is gripped by a kind of solidarity with the drudges who stock the infinite shelves, in whose ears splendid carols are warped into the crushed and tenebrous mulch of a funeral march.

I have exciting news to share! A while back we talked about a reality show based on life here at Penny Arcade. It was just something we kicked around during a podcast but the idea stuck with us. We kept getting mail from people saying that this was actually something they'd be interested in. Eventually we decided to partner with 2 Player Productions and actually do it. So now we have camera guys here in the office filming us make strips, play game and eat lunch. They also followed us around during PAX and they will be at the CP charity dinner. I'm super proud to announce that the pilot episode is now available. You can watch the two part pilot episode right here on the newly designed PATV page.

In the same way that professional skateboarders can approach Tony Hawk Ride and extract something resembling a game, people who are Italian are in a position to discern the dialogue and plot of Assassin's Creed II without resorting to deep menus or taking copious notes. This is what something like ninety percent of the game sounds like to a non-speaker: an amalgamation of intercepted food court communiques.

The exact total is $542,107.01 - a jump of just over eighty-six thousand over last week's figure.  We'll take it, certainly.  But I warn you: my palm is poised over the knob labeled Stirring Rhetoric.  I can crank this mode like you would not believe.  Act Accordingly.        

New Super Mario Brothers Wii is marriage poison.

I was very excited about Gyromancer and I decided to grab it on the PC since I saw it right there in Steam when I went to play Torchlight. I remember now why I quit playing games on the PC.

I have to say that we found DJ Hero quite interesting, actually. I understand that it didn't sell particularly well, but that's never been an especially valid barometer of aesthetics.

We've waged an unrelenting crusade to have Gabe give Modern Warfare 2 a try, to see if he wasn't enthralled by it, or if the experience wasn't (at the very least) preferable to solitude. Our aggressive sales campaign has apparently gripped him because he's double my level, and plays it even in our absence. We haven't talked about it yet, what it is about the game that has him bound thus, but he's certainly not alone. So many people purchase the game just on the 360 that - even though I play it every night - my rank is worse by a hundred thousand or so per day.

Hello dear readers, I would like to tell you a story.

We launched Child's Play 2009 last week and as of today we've managed to raise $455,863.80. I'm going to give you all a little bit of time to let that number sink in.

Emotiv's Epoc mind controller device thing doesn't allow you to control other people's minds, which I think is a disappointment to everyone. You can watch a video of Indigo Montoya using it, but since the gameplay is occurring within the confines of his skull, it's difficult to assess. Controlling things with your mind isn't an especially demonstrative activity, almost by definition, which makes the product a difficult sell in a visual culture.  In today's strip, we postulate an encounter between our own Gabriel and the contraption.  I don't want to spoil it, but we use the device as a prop in order to generate a hilarious effect.

I get a lot of mail from new DM's asking for tips. Some of the stuff I post here will probably be old news to veteran DM's but I think it might be useful to others.