First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. Uwe Boll is quite possibly the worst director in the history of cinema. He really is. He has so far managed to take shutgunning zombies, monsterous predators, and hot vampire sluts that kill Nazis and make them all boring. I actually can’t call him talentless, because making movies this bad is a sort of talent in its own right. He makes Ed Wood look like Stanley fuckin’ Kubrick, all right? As if video game movies aren’t terrible enough, from the thoughtless implimentation of Doom to the pathetic strapped-on franchine of Wing Commander, and even down to the Dennis Hopper’s Worst Nightmare that was Super Mario Brothers, Uwe Boll is always there to lower the bar.

Today, the bar is actually subteranian. His latest disaster is a movie called Postal. I won’t actually say it has anything to do with the cult hit game Postal because so far, they look nothing alike (not that Alone in the Dark had anything more in common with its gaming counterpart than the name either). At any rate, there’s a trailer available online for it. I dare you to watch it. No, really, I dare you. Because there’s nothing people like more than a good 9/11 joke. Yes, seriously.

The trailer, for those of you that still have souls, features a window washer working outside of a skyscraper, turning in horror, and being disintegrated as an airliner crashes through the building. First off, the joke isn’t even funny. And part of what makes it unfunny is Boll’s tactless implimentation. But for the most part, it’s not funny because it’s high budget. It’s a very well crafted and carefully CGI’ed 9/11 joke. Morbid vacation photographs Photoshopped on the internet are one thing (and there are plenty of mock-ups out there). But the man hours and the movie dollars that went into producing this thing are what actually bother me. Someone at a board meeting saw the concept drawing and said, “Go with it!”

Then there’s the whole thing where, and I don’t even remember if I beat Postal or not anymore, but I don’t remember there being any airplanes in it. So once again, he’s taking some random video game moniker and applying it to the backwash that passes for his internal thought process. Which means, of course, that when people start bitching about the movie (and its mockery of 9/11), all of that venom gets associated with those nasty video games (cue the Grand Theft Auto connection).

And then there’s Boll himself. He likes to think of himself as a rogue, or a maverick. Bucking the system and doing things his way. Here’s a clue for Uwe Boll any any other 13 year old boys out there. Being different is not, in and of itself, cool. Anyone can be a rogue or a maverick – and the truth is that Boll is neither. It’s just the lie he has to tell himself because being different is a lot easier than sucking. He said that he wanted Postal to be, “ruthless, just like Monty Python movies used to be.” Of course, Monty Python had the unique distinction of also being funny. Something Boll has never intentionally accomplished. But just so we’re absolutely clear on where I stand here, John Cleese has taken shits that are funnier than anything Boll could ever or will ever put on film. It’s a very amateurish rhetorical trick, comparing yourself to someone else who was actually talented so you can shield yourself from criticism by association. Thankfully, Boll’s talents as a wordsmith (as evidenced in his movies) are on part with his gifts as a director. Nonesistent.

So we can all strap ourselves in while politicians take another cheap shot at video games, ironically, by attacking someone that all gamers universally hate. And we can all hang our heads in shame when Postal takes fourth place on opening weekend and disappears into the duldromesque miasma that is straight-to-DVD hell where it belongs (as DVDs are easier to burn than conventional film). And we can watch in abject horror as Boll continues to make money by producing nothing of value, nothing of interest, and nothing that any living person can possibly enjoy. At least this time he’s butchering a relatively unknown gaming franchise, so fewer of our fond memories will be sullied by his hamfuck application of trite cliche and paper doll plot. It’s not like he makes such terrible movies that the only way he gets funding is by using his own production company as a tax shelter for people who want to purposefully invest in a movie that doesn’t turn a profit. . . oh, wait a minute.

Mel Brooks should sue.

So, for about the eight billionth time, the whole cockheaded idea of making an “.xxx” domain for porn sites (as opposed to .com or .net) has come and gone. Except this time, the proposal was formally rejected by ICANN as being incredibly stupid and impossible to enforce, although they were a lot nicer about all of that than I’m willing to be. Basically, the idea was to “allow” porn sites to use a .xxx domain, because that would make it easier for, uh, well, that way they’d all be in one place. If they wanted to. But they didn’t have to. And, um, something about protecting children, which is all you have to say to justify any stupid, pointless exercise in byzantine regulation.

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (one of those censorship-happy Democrats that really piss me off) proved either that she’s embarrassingly ignorant about the internet. . . and I’m talking Ted Stevens ignorant. . . or she’s just full of shit. “These top-level domain names are the first signal to parents as to what their children are viewing online. For example, when we see ‘.gov’ we know we are visiting a government agency, and ‘.edu’ tells us an educational institution is about to appear.” So, what she’s saying is that she can’t figure out what she’s going to find when she goes to www.crackwhoreconfessions.com (yes, seriously, that’s a real site). Congratulations. Either you’re too stupid to be a Senator or you think your constituents are too stupid to breathe.

The fact is that an xxx domain would serve no viable purpose at all. If it was voluntary, it could be ignored. If it was compulsory, you would have endless micromanagement over what should be listed there and what should not. Every other domain suffix is handed out (more or less) based on the nature of the site in question, and really, the only ones that are adhered to with any sense of regularity are gov, mil and edu. The very act of demanding such a thing either proves that you are too incompetant and uninformed to be taking part in the discussion, or that you are blatantly pandering to what you thought was your political base – except even that fails.

Liberals don’t like the idea because it’s censorship. Conservatives don’t like the idea because it could actually make porn easier to find on the internet. And I don’t like the idea because it’s just plain dumb. Isn’t there something better these people could be doing with their time? For all the trouble this nation is in, where do people like Landrieu get off worrying about internet pornography? I mean, sure, it’s a break from her voting for flag burning ammendments, religious monuments in public buildings, John Bolton as our UN ambassador, and the doughnut hole money pit that was Medicaid Part D, so that’s a plus. But she wasn’t too busy to vote against tax breaks for people that were impoverished by Katrina. . . so go figure that out. How the hell can you be the Senator from Louisiana and not vote for that?

People shouldn’t have to put up with logic this stunted or pandering this blatant. The good news is that her seat is up for grabs in 2008. Considering the embarrassing mismanagement that is Louisiana, she should be swiftly punted in the primary. Heads up, Netroots. This is a weak Democrat that needs to be replaced by a strong one. Get cracking.

So, I’ve always been caught between two MMO communities. The FFXI players that have come to know me via my Renkei Chart (look for it to be back up by the end of the week) and the WoW players that I have known from the webertrons long before there were things like MMOs or 56K modems. And I’ve dabbled in several other MMOs, from my brief fascination with City of Heroes to the painful loss of Earth & Beyond (where the first pangs of, “I can make video game guides!” were birthed) to the mind numbing, dream crushing paralysis that was Star Wars Galaxies. I knows me some MMOs. And I can see the progression of the genre and the subculture very clearly, how each franchise tried to sculpt the very basic organization of Tank-Healer-Damage into a unique but somehow familiar system. I’ve seen class balance and class upheaval. I’ve seen expansions and time sinks. And I’ve seen where MMOs are going, what Blizzard’s juggernaut has done to the market, and what we can expect from the next several years. With that in mind, may I present Aden’s MMO Construction Bible

Time Sinks: Every MMO is going to have time sinks. Both the easiest and hardest games on the market feature them prominently. Whether it’s a matter of repeating quests, gaining faction, grinding crafting materials, earning money, raiding for loot. . . every game has them. They have to. Players who reach the last grindable content in the game need something else to do, or their $15 per month is headed for a new addiction. But what makes time sinks suck so very badly isn’t that they are time consuming. It’s that they are boring. Really, really boring.

No one likes to farm. Sure, once in a while it’s amusing to take your high level character back to the low level zones and destroy the enemies that once gave you so much trouble. But not for five hours a day for three weeks. WoW hides the level grind behind chains of seemingly important quests. All they really are is an instruction kit on what to kill how many times, and a reward for following that kit. But the hiding itself is done in an artful way, and the design of the areas can often interject a dash of strategy. FFXI handles things very differently, by simply dropping tons of enemies of various configurations into the world and letting players find camps to grind and grind and grind. They got better at designing those daily encounters in their last expansion, but the grind still looms.

There are a few time sinks, though, that need to be done away with. The worst of these is travel. Going from place to place isn’t fun. Sure, when you first get your Chocobo License or you ride your first Gryphon, it’s the coolest thing in the world. By the tenth time the novelty has worn off, and by the thousandth time you wind up going halfway AFK an reading a book en route. WoW adds the extra insult of making you farm cash for your mount, which you can then use to go halfway AFK and read. Some time sinks are acceptable. And others are necessary, even the travel sink. But game content that is alt-tabbed out of is not good content. Period.

Class Definitions: Every MMO I have ever played has had class problems. Damage classes are too populous, Tanking classes are too death friendly, Healing classes are too boring, and the latter two get more or less shafted if they try to do anything without a group. In fact, the entire DTH system has always struck me as an artificial creation. One of the reason that most MMOs fall apart in PvP is that the entire battle system is based around a small number of characters taking all the damage, a small number of characters healing all the damage, and a much larger component of characters dealing all the damage. But things like aggro and threat and hate don’t exist in PvP, and thus, Tanking and Healing classes (which are already in short supply) are denied yet another aspect of the game.

The way to fix that problem is to allow Tanking classes to mitigate such damage that their reduced damage dealing is on par with those attacking them. The same goes for Healing classes mitigating damage through self heals. A Damage class attacking a Tank or Healer needs to find their own Damage severely diminished. As for Healers and Tanks fighting amongst themselves. . . that’s the real trick, isn’t it? Whether that means there need to be offensive tanks (like FFXI’s WAR/MNK) or solo capable healers (like WoW’s Holy Paladin), I’m not sure. It might depend greatly on the structure o fthe game itself. It fits nicely in our label-happy brain that Healers can only Heal and Tanks can only Tank (and, really, that Damagers can only deal Damage), but it has ruined more games than I care to count. The MMO that does away with the DTH architecture while still providing for a solid group combat experience will own the market, Those that have tried thus far, quite honestly, have failed.

Logic Traps: I can’t tell you the number of times in every MMO I’ve ever played when I spent hours of my time doing exactly the wrong thing because the game trained me one way and then suddenly – and arbitrarily – changed the rules on me for one given example or instance. It’s one thing when the goal is to get players to learn a new way of doing things (like using Gnomeregan to teach newer players about the importance of crowd control). It’s quite another when the shift is a result of poor design or poor developer-to-gamer communication. If I’ve run a thousand quests that require me to collect an item and then return it to an NPC, don’t drop one in the middle of a chain that needs me to behave in the reverse order, especailly if it’s for no apparent reason.

I don’t quite know if this sort of thing is the result of hidden time sinks or just inconsistent design, but it can be maddeningly frustrating for both new players and seasoned veterans (usually more so for the veterans, in fact). An MMO asks us to accept a created world as a real one, and cushions that world with sets of logic that act as analogs for real world experiences. A game like an MMO, where your existence is persistent and the consequences of your actions cannot be removed by slapping the reset button and starting over, players should not have to learn how to behave in similar situations entirely from scratch. Keep the logic of your world logical. If gamers have to spend time asking themselves, “What were the Devs thinking?” rather than, “How do I complete this quest?”, you fail.

Phat Lootz: Every MMO is going to have a gear grind. It just about has to to sustain an endgame content base. You can’t let characters become infinitely more powerful, and you can’t simply tell people when they max out their character that the game is over – especially if there’s not an actual way to win. But far too often, the time sink of repetition is inserted into the gear grind, and the system of acquiring the gear you want/need becomes disassociated from the challenge factor. That a player could down the endgame bosses a thousand times and theoretically never receive one piece of gear for his time and effort is just stupid. That the length and real life investment in an instance is more significant than the ingame challenge – ever – is poor design. I’m not saying people should be handed loot just for showing up. Far from it. But I’d rather die in nine raids and get my loot on the tenth than kill the boss ten times for a one in thirty chance of a drop. I don’t think I am alone in this.

Customization: People want to feel individual in video games. They want to be the hero. That’s always been the structre, from Zork to Zelda to Mario to Metal Gear. Even in RPG-style games, most people want to feel unique. This is very hard to accomplish in an MMO, because the world must remain playable for all characters at all stages of advancement, the character abilities must be strictly defined to generate content for it, and the gear itself at the upper levels must be precisely calculated and doled out. What happens is that characters are all built the same, gear is all structured and used the same, and players wind up feeling like they are controlling, not the hero of the story, but some random side quest NPC. “Oh look, another Samurai in a Hauby.” “Hey, check out the five billionth Warlock in his Tier 3.”

But it goes farther than that. Nothing in an MMO is ever resolved. You defeat the Ultimate Evil, and he’ll respawn in an hour or so to be killed again. You save a town from an invasion, and the inhabitants still live in fear. You cure a terrible disease, and the land is still pestilent and sick. These things have to happen, of course, because you share a game space with thousands of other players who may or may not have accomplished the same things you have. And if you couldn’t go back and replay old content, it would both rob people of group experiences and make it nearly impossible to accomplish anything in the game that could not be soloed. So much like your character, the world is as static and “default” as it can be.

Some people would argue that this is the nature of the MMO genre. I would argue that these are the people holding the MMO genre back. Why can’t the world change for one person but not another? Why can’t the leader of a group determine which timeline the group is going to play in? Why can’t someone save a city from a terrible monster, and come back to find the townspeople happily running and cheering on his screen, while his newer guildmate still sees them cowering in fear inside their homes? And why can’t that first player choose to roll back the experience so he can have it again, and perhaps help his guildmate with it? Gaming RPGs have featured timeslips since the original Final Fantasy (and used them extensively in brilliant titles like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VIII). Why does the MMO market simply refuse to take this step, when it could literally add multiple layers of content to the same created worlds? Why can’t I defend the doomed Tavnazian Safehold? Why can’t I rid the Ghostlands of the Scourge and actually notice the difference? WoW has taken its first baby steps in this direction with timeline defying instances, but until this concept expands to be a world reality rather than a sequenced encounter, the world itself will remain painfully static.

First off, a few words. I finally got my domain moved over to the new host, which has the facinating new feature called, “Being Online Regularly”. So far, this feature is working out brilliantly for me, and a more modern version of my website will be returning. I also finally got all of my old content back, but the ugly of it is that I might have to re-enter all of the old posts by hand. Bloody hell. But that’s where I stand. Now, on to the things that have been pissing me off. As usual with these roundup posts, I will intersperse politics and gaming as to agitate both of my demographics.

Ann Coulter. Listen, Ann. If you want to call John Edwards a faggot, don’t couch that language in a carefully crafted framework of deniability. You’re already using the word, and already “implying” that you’d use it to describe Edwards. Just say it. You don’t get to be the very cutting edge of rudeness if you can’t so much as leverage one single baseless, degrading, sexuality-questioning slander without placing it inside of a self protecting scabbard of legal irresponsibility. You don’t see me using double talk and sideways language to call you a brittle, self indulgent cactus cunt, do you? There, see how easy that was?

Wii Friend Codes. Why, Nintendo? Why? Why take the single least popular feature of your DS online play and transfer it over to the Wii? Why insist that the Wii is going online like it’s 1994? Just because we love the Virtual Console doesn’t mean we pine for all things archaic and clunky. The mere rumor that the Wii will have game-specific friend codes makes me want to wretch. It’s bad enough that every system is hard coded with a faceless, pointless machine ID that you have to exchange with your friends. That we have to do that on every bloody game we want to play online is unnecessary and frustrating. It confirms the worst rumors, speculations and disrespects about you, Nintendo. You’re so much better than this. Your new guildeline is that games should be accessible and fun. That you want to draw new peope into the fold of gaming. I can tell you right now, there is nothing fun about swapping friend codes for every new title you buy. You know what’s accessible and fun? Xbox Live. Get with the program.

Fox News (again). Seriously, guys, give up the whole thing about not being politically slanted. You are the very definition of politically slanted. In fact, you’re not even slanted. You’ve fallen down on your side, as far to the right as is humanly possible while still existing inside of a democratic society. So stop pretending to be shocked and offended that Democratic candidates didn’t want to have a debate moderated and commentated by your halfwit hack pundits. Especially if, less than a week later, you are going to seriously broadcast a segment that accuses that elusive, evil liberal media of inventing the term “flip-flopping”. Yes, seriously.

Spider Man Wii. Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. It was one of my first thoughts upon seeing the functionality of the Wii (lodged firmly between “House of the Dead sequel?” and “ZOMG-HOLY-SHIT-LIGHTSABER-GAME!!!!!11″). Spider Man 2, for those that didn’t play it, was a brilliant game whose underdeveloped points could be all but forgiven because the dynamics of the game, the ability to freeform sling from one end of Manhattan to the other, was abolutely the best gameplay mechanic in the universe. There were plenty of times I turned that game on and completed no content at all, preferring instead to zip from building to building like a red and blue blur of acrobatic adrenaline. It would have been easy, might I add, to come up with a variety of absolutely awful Wii control schemes for Spider Man. But the system they’ve suggested (where the Wiimote and the Nunchuk will literally act as Spidey’s left and right hands when slinging webs) is a brilliantly pure interface. It’s not generating a lot of noise yet, but mark my words, Spider Man 3 on the Wii will be a system-defining game.

Walter Reed Hospital. This one makes me so mad it’s difficult for me to even write about it. Six years of “We Support the Troops”. Six years of cutting funding for the VA. Tens of thousands of wounded soilders coming home. And the single best facility available to treat these soldiers (many of whom have permanent physical injuries) is infested with vermin and growing mold up the sides of the walls. The Bush administration cannot decide if it knew about this problem for a long time (thus making them negligent) or if it just found out when it was reported in the media (thus making them ignorant). The question no one is asking, however, is very simple and very telling. How many public relations visits did George W. Bush pay to Walter Reed Hospital over the past six years? How many photo ops took place, smiling somberly while standing next to a soldier that sacrificed for his political agenda? How many times did he hustle into that building, stick his pointy little head in front of a camera, and then rush back out without bothering to give a shit? And that was seriously a question. I’m working on my own tally, but I invite you, gentle reader, to do the same.

Okay, Nintendo. You finally broke out of your slump. For the first time since I was in high school, you’ve busted out of last place in the console market. Not only that, you did so by shaming your former upstart, Sony. Low sticker prices and well thought innovation have earned you some breathing room, but it will only last if you make it last. And the gaming community (which, despite your desire to expand the market, can make or break any system) can be a demanding bunch. For your convenience, I’ve compiled a list.

Use My Television. Look, no one is asking you for 1080p native support and quad HDMI cables, okay? We recognize that the Wii is not a graphics monster, and that while it’s cool when characters sweat (it is?) that’s not what you’re bringing to the table. But you need to support at least the barest of standards not rooted in the 1980s. For any game on the Wii to lack 480p and 16×9 support is absurd. You can argue that with a game like Wario Ware: Smooth Moves it’s not needed. And maybe that’s true. But it’s wanted. Hell, some Gamecube games had 16×9 support (the brilliantly underbought F-Zero GX). Nothing looks less fun than big, ugly grey bars on the side of my screen. And Wario is tubby enough as it is.

Don’t Nickel And Dime Us. You told us you had this crazy new controller. It looks incredibly un-hip. But we bought it anyway. We gave you a chance to experiment that everyone inside the industry thought was the very epicenter of where Stupid and Insane colided head on, and it paid off for you. However, some games just work better on a “normal” controller, such as Smash Brothers Brawl. And the ugly rumor floating around is that everyone is going to have to buy the “Classic Controller” add-on to play the game despite there being four perfectly functioanl Gamecube controller ports on the top of the system, and despite many gamers already owning GCN controllers and Wavebirds. If people want to pay for the freedom of a bluetooth controller, fine. Let them. Many people will. But don’t force them to if they already have a box full of alternatives collecting dust in their closets. Remember how angry people were when they found out they needed an army of Gameboy Advances to play Crystal Chronicles? Four player action in Smash Brothers Brawl should not come at a $130 price tag.

Make Virtual Console Friendlier. This is more nickel and dime action, but it needs its own category. At the current price scheme, I can envision myself buying two, maybe three VC games over the life of my Wii ownership. Simply put, $5 is too much for a NES game. Repeat for the rest of the titles. Even a reduction of $2-4 dollars per title (depending on platform) would make them much more attractive to many gamers. It’s not like it costs you a single shiny penny to sell them. Every one of these titles has paid for its development costs a hundred times over. You also need to be more generous with what titles are available. Sure, there are some licensing issues, but you’re Nintendo! Figure them out. And finally, make them easier to move around. Link the games to the Wiimote or something, but let me take my VC game to my friend’s house and play it, as long as it doesn’t leave my memory card. Anyone who wants to steal Super Mario Brothers did so in 1995 on Nesticle. You’ve taken plenty of good tips from Apple already. Take one more and realize that freedom of media increases sales and not the other way around.

Online Should Be Easier. Friend Codes are anything but. It would actually have been shorter to link every Wii by MAC address then by the archaic set of numbers that comprises a Friend Code. If you’re trying to protect younger players from predators or older players from 1337 d00dz, then give people the option to list themselves publicly or not, default it to off, and make us click through a dozen warnings to turn it on. But I’m Aden Nak. And I want to be Aden Nak, not some impossible-to-remember string of numbers. I want people to be able ot search for Aden Nak, have me come up, and send me mail about how wrong I am on my website (which I also want to link via the Opera Browser). It’s 2007. Wii Online is currently in 1994. I’m not saying you have to do better than X-Box Live. But you do have to do better than X-Box Live when it originally launched. Remember? When you were in second place and X-Box Live bitchslapped your ass into third?

Give Me The Games. I know you want Metroid and Mario to be perfect. They won’t be. But they’ll be damn close, I am sure. However, in addition to being nearly perfect, it’d also be nice if they are here before 2008. They were showcased as launch titles, then pushed to spring, and now are floating somewhere in the vague, foggy world between Christmas and Never. One of the disappointing things about the Gamecube was that it had some of the absolute best games of its generation, but they came once every seven months. Additionally, you need to support (and pressure) your third party vendors. Use the carrot. Use the stick. I don’t care how you do it. But get some games on the Wii that people want to play. Ubisoft looks to be taking Two Thrones, adding some Wiimote support, and re-selling it to us at $50. Now, you’re not responsible for that decision, but it directly affects your flagship product. So twist some arms, offer some incentives, lend some development support – I don’t care what. If you want the Wii to thrive badly enough, you can make it happen. Like I said before. You’re Nintendo.

Expand Without Contracting. I am thrilled about non-gamer adoption of the Wii in a way you cannot imagine. The broadening of the market will do more for gaming culture than a steel chair to the back of Jack Thompson’s head ever could. By making the foreign familiar, the Wii is making the rest of the leap into the mainstream. Gaming is already poisoned by the worst of mainstream culture (largely thanks to Sony, though truth be told any company that came in first place during the PS1/PS2 era would have yielded similar results). It’s recognized but still seen as stupid or geeky or worst of all, foreign to most Americans. Grandma knows what a Playstation 2 is when she sees one, but she’s not pistol whipping any hookers this week. However, she can and will kick your ass at Wii Bowling. That all being said, just because Grandma is buying a Wii, that doesn’t mean she’s your best demographic. The Wii launch could not have worked without the current gaming society, and the Wii won’t last enough to be widely adopted outside of its normal subculture without the support of that subculture. So don’t forget about us, and we won’t forget about you.

Okay, so, yeah. It’s been a while. And I’ve been gone. And the three word descriptor of my serverlashed outrage has been all you’ve had to go on for a while now. Sorry about that. Catastrophe and mayhem ensued both online and in real life. Adennak.com is coming back properly, with a bit of streamlining, a restore of all the original posts and comments (even if I have to hand-slice them out of Google cache) and video, so you’ll all get to bear witness to my grainy mug and scratchy voice in visually underwhelming compressed flash format. Woo technology. I’ve got a few large issues to put forth, but first off let me do some some housecleaning.

Attention C Minus Journalism Graduates: Any device that connects to the internet can find porn. Whether that device is a personal computer, a Mac Powerbook, a Nintendo Wii or even Deep Bloody Blue (assuming Opera makes a browser for it). The internet has porn on it. That game consoles are able to view that porn because they can reach the internet is not news. Not even remotely. The fact that you are surprised that thirteen year olds are trying to see porn is stunning, as you clearly don’t remember anything about puberty. The fact that the age of the average gamer is almost thirty is utterly lost on you.

Attention Old Media: You assholes are dead to me. All I heard for the past three years is that blogs are jokes, blogs aren’t serious media, they aren’t held to any sort of journalistic standards which, judging by what gets pumped into my house on a 24/7 basis, are primarily comprised of not actually calling it a shit while you squeeze one out onscreen. Joe Kline’s thinly veiled Neoconservatism posing as moderation, getting his ass kicked in the mid-terms and then claiming Democrats won because they were moderates. George Will adjusting his bow tie just long enough to lie about the effects of a minimum wage hike and explain that bloggers are wrong about everything, completely glancing over everything he wrote from late 2001 to about three minutes ago. It’s not the magic of the internet, with its load times, chinsy video and inconvenient access that has stolen your thunder. It’s your own complacence and lagresse. That people are willing to trust some guy named HappyMonkey17 instead of your blown-dry stenographers is not the fault of the people.

Attention Sony: You got punked this round. Is the PS3 done for? No, not by a long shot. Are there some good games coming out for it? Yes, by next Christmas. Is it worth $600 right now. That depends on how many times you want to replay Resistance: Fall of Man. You can start bragging about shipping numbers when the units they ship do more than sit in stockroom floors. Right now, the PS3 is the absolute best way to watch Talladega Nights in 1080p. When the new Final Fantasies and Metal Gear Solid 4 come out, that will likely change. But please use from now until next winter to re-examine everything you did wrong, so you don’t slide into a GameCube-esque sandtrap of obscurity.

Attention George W. Bush: Have you ever not fucked anything up? Seriously? Ever? And does the rest of your life really work this way? Where you can continue to just fuck up worse and worse every day, but no one says anything to you? Is that just how pampered you are? Your little New Way Forward speech was virtually identical to the New Way Forward we were taking in October of last year, and the troop increase you’re suggesting is both the same schlock we’ve tried before as well as less than 10% of what your own Generals think would be needed to stabilize Iraq. The short of it is that everyone knows you have no plan, no ideas, and no intention of fixing the huge, smoldering mess that you made in Iraq. But you’ve still got two more years of aimless floundering, and you’ve decided to let more good soldiers die so you don’t have to admit what everyone already knows – that you fucked up the worst possible thing a President can fuck up. That’s an amazing display of No Balls Whatsoever, sir. Really.

Attention Internet: I’m back. Sort of. In this very, very ugly fashion. But it’ll get prettier. And update-ier. I’m sorry about the silence, gentle readers. It won’t happen again.