Dear Tycho,

Another installment of The Hookup is on the site, and I have a very high opinion of it. We're actually going to meet him this year, I guess he's going to be down there at that place with all the E's.

Invigorating!

The gyrations we might go through to make something ridiculous match established canon are well known, even if it's something like a bedsheet, or in this case, an advertising campaign. There's a Powerade commercial before X2 that is - I swear to God - over eighty minutes in length. It really is like a movie about Powerade that you have to watch before your own movie may begin. The fifteen minutes before your film are now a non-stop psychic barrage.

Evil Avatar just posted a little comment about PlanetSide that I thought was interesting.

Also from Namco

Get a load of this press release for Namco's new game I-Ninja.

When: Friday May 16th
Where: Kentia Hall, food court.
When: noon

Sony's mega-remote, mentioned earlier, is - I am told by many humans - an attempt to replicate the Philips Pronto. How could I have known?

Homelan has a little interview action with yours truly going on right here. Tycho is a huge star now and cannot be bothered with such trivial things, so he didn’t answer any of the questions. I tried calling him last night to play some Raven Shield but his personal assistant told me that “Mr. Brahe was in the middle of a very important meeting with Mr. Jacuzzifullofladies and was not available for comment.”

LoudMusic just sent me this link. It's some kind of Goddamned alien remote. Universal is one thing - it's nice to have a single device. But this thing can actually remember keyed sequences, which is nice, because it might mean that Gabe can stay married.

I know it's all very spooky, modern plague or whatnot, so perhaps it is not a viable target for humor. However! I would ask that you check out the second picture in this article on the grave threat. I doubt he is a PA reader or anything, I'll bet that in a scenario like that - where an invisible killer stalks men - you're just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Gabe got his hands on a component switcher yesterday, no doubt prodded into it by Storm Shadow. He got it yesterday as we were writing the strip, and instead of setting up - or even opening it up and looking at it - he buried it under something in the closet and shut the door. Today's comic will take place probably when we get back from E3, provided she doesn't find it first.

We play Raven Shield every night. There’s usually three or four of us going up against the computer in co-op mode. When you are the last person left alive you are essentially incapable of completing the mission on your own so we came up with a new game for that last person to play before they die. It’s called Gunz Blazn’ mode. We all actually carry a secondary weapon designed especially for this mode. You switch your Uzi over to auto fire, you hold down shift and you run through the level with the trigger held down. This is Gunz Blazn’ mode. Now if you are able to actually kill a decent number of terrorists this way you are said to have gone out in a blaze of glory. It is very poor form to be the last man left on the team and then get killed without firing a shot or by blowing yourself up with a frag. If this happens, you are said to have pulled a Tycho. I don’t believe this term requires much explanation.