One of my favorite things about gaming is that it necessitates the creation of many, many terms to describe the scenarios unique to the passtime - and LAN parties are optimal conditions for the production of words. Every map needs words, every situation must have a sort of "tag" that can be employed to depict the totality of it succinctly. It has the side-benefit of being internal, secret language, so even if someone hears it they don't actually know what you're talking about.

I made a trip to the comic book store yesterday and I picked up some really good stuff that I wanted to share with you. I used to be quite the comic book reader when I was younger. I stopped reading around the time Image came out and ruined the industry by flooding the market with shitty, over priced books. Occasionally I’ll pick up a copy of Usagi or some random Spiderman Issue but I haven’t really been able to get back into reading comics on a regular basis. I guess that’s just because I didn’t know the right books to read.

We've really done everything we can to enrage Infinium Labs, but apparently our efforts up until now have been unsatisfactory. Hopefully our most recent salvo will warrant the proper response.

People with Hiptops or Treos or any sort of portable internet device will appreciate the repairs Ramius just made to the mobile portal - nine out of ten times, the strip for the day is included there along with any posts.

The new Official Xbox Magazine just arrived at my house, and clearly ninja stock is up. The new Tenchu is on the coverdisc, very nice of them I thought, but like so many others I've been craving the chance to finally play the new Ninja Gaiden that's on there.

Comixpedia had a Valentine's Day event called Blind Date, wherein they paired up different cartoonists to convey the true meaning of Christmas. I mean, Valentines Day.

It's easy to imagine the cool games that might be spawned by an Ender's Game movie, unfortunately, I doubt those will be the ones we see. It seems to me the odds of us being sodomized in this endeavor are very high.

I love UT2K4 but chances are you will never see me online. I play pretty much every day but I play with myself…erm that is to say by myself. I play with bots is what I’m trying to say. There is just no good reason to play with humans. I tried it last night with Tycho and it was alright but I think we spent more time trying to find a server with a decent ping than we did playing. Then during the game I had to put up with people telling me I "suck penis good". No thanks. When it comes to humans versus robots I’ll take robots every damn day.

Despite anything we might have said in the strip, Unreal Tournament 2004 is pretty good even if you decide to settle for human company. I don't retreat from any of the things I said regarding the balkanized community their many gametypes and options automatically creates. However, I firmly believe that the path en route to that inevitable implosion will be fantastic!

Here’s a funny story about our good friends over at American Greetings.

You play a game like Champions of Norrath - any multiplayer roleplaying game, really - and pragmatism must sometimes trump fashion. Of course, that rarely keeps your fancy elf friends from flipping you shit about it, as though their pretty circlets were somehow the emblem of masculinity.

In Germany a recent issue of GamePro came with a kick ass little Penny Arcade mini comic book. Unlike the US version, the German GamePro is actually a cool magazine and we’re very proud to have them translating and distributing PA in Deutschland.

Indeed, it is the absence of a preference. Each discrete sensual act conforms to one of the two primary orientations, we don't need a whole new "catch-all" term to collect all the people who simply have a hard time making decisions. If you like pepperoni but you're also fine with Hawaiian, we don't have a word to describe people in their moment of indecision while talking to the pizza guy.

Did anybody else catch the first episode of Real World: Zebes? With fully seven distinct species and four different sexual orientations, it's the most diverse Real World yet. It makes the bridge of the Enterprise look like a KKK rally.

I won't even waste time trying to appear neutral about Star Chamber. It's an interesting, original game that I was proud to have sponsor the site. I talked about it a bit during the holidays, when its ability to run on virtually anything served me in good stead. It has a lot more going for it than just its egalitarian position on hardware.

The entire Marvel/EA thing seems sort of vile and incestuous and nonsensical. I guess I don't really think of EA as some kind of Big Ideas company, the ones I would shuffle up to for concepts that would resonate like Marvel's own icons. That might be unfair, but I'm basing the assertion on their library itself. It's not to say that they don't publish some good games, everybody owns a game from EA. They did acquire Big Ideas companies like Westwood, Origin, and Maxis, though they did eventually lobotomize the first two. But they didn't invent football, snowboarding, or modern war because they manifested those concepts in compelling ways. They didn't write the Lord of the Rings, for example, but their game metaphor of the events was almost completely inoffensive.