I feel bad for the models that work expo halls. Maybe it's better than other kinds of day work, I wouldn't know. I try to avoid making eye contact, on the off chance it's as weird for them as it is for me. It's not their humanity that drives me away, though it's rare to see a person who wouldn't be improved with a few tufts of iridescent plumage. No, it's that I have the run-of-the-mill, God given shame that naturally accompanies interactions with women who are being paid to endure me.

The "Mortal Kombat Rebirth" short exists in that continuum that appends gravitas to fundamentally ridiculous subject matter by attempting to reconcile it with the real world. That's something I do as a form of recreation; I'm not trying to say that this isn't a good time investment. Alan Moore takes cultural shrapnel and transforms it, via a similar process, into material that assaults the mind. I'm just not certain that every brand can withstand this kind of analysis.

Over drinks with some of the staff last night, they wanted to make sure I knew about some incredible auctions the group had put together.  Such is the scale of Child's Play, now, that it's almost impossible for me to know everything in real time, ands its scope extends well beyond the main drive.  Anyhow, there's a number of really amazing things still available - browse, and be delighted.

We were trying to imagine what it looks like backstage when there is a Technology Problem - capital T, capital P - during an iPhone announcement. We don't think it matters who you are, or if you are responsible for the problem, if you just now got there, or even if you work for Apple. It is core to our assertion that in the unassuming frame of Steve Jobs there roils a dark power, and that there are moments when this malevolent force must find release.

While I was feeding the baby this morning at five a.m. I had an idea. What if Coruscant had a newspaper? What would their stupid political cartoons look like?

I have collected all my D&D posts in one place. I've also uploaded my D&D adventure Dusk to the same site. You can check out all my old posts and download the PDF for Dusk right here.

In the manner of today's hottest reality programs, I need to inform you that the story you are about to read is entirely true. Historically in cases such as this the names have been changed to protect the innocent. In this case, the names have been retained specifically to amplify their shame.

We've got a new episode of Penny Arcade: The Series up today, about Dungeons & Dragons. It touches on a number of themes appropriate to that topic.

I'm fairly certain that playing videogames has given me unrealistic expectations when it comes to solving real problems. Independent of the scenario - a race of ravenous sentient robots, a wife lost in the folds of a parenthetical metanarrative, and so on - I can be expected to deliver a satisfactory resolution in twenty hours or less. More than satisfactory, in fact. I will recalibrate your entire concept of success as it relates to human endeavor.

**UPDATE**

I'll let him tell you:

I tend to like a little wiggle room in my narratives.

Split/Second - I will honor them by maintaining the slash - is an incredibly solid product. You can play the demo as many times as I did, which (between you and me) could well be described as a fuck-ton, and emerge from it with a sense that you have a firm handle on its bombast and can therefore skip the final release. It will be more of this, you might say to yourself. You'd be wrong; I certainly was.

Blur is marvelous, even though these might as well be real power-ups.

If you have not checked out the Penny Arcade store recently you should. I say that because, when you buy things from the store we get the money and we use it to buy stuff. Here are a few items of interest:

I played through Alan Wake prior to the actual release, before much was made of its fairly vigorous "promotional consideration." I've already said that as a writer in the Northwest, liking a game about a writer in the Northwest was probably a foregone conclusion. I never got tired of the way their technology manipulates light, and there are discussions to be had about the narrative itself that are worth having. I didn't notice the brands, or didn't care, because I was trying to keep my entire body contiguous, or I was busy looking at something else - but God damn, guys. God damn.