Pay close attention to 5, 6, and 7 in Tom Chick's distillation of Guitar Hero: World Tour, and wonder why you've been so ill-served by every other preview currently available. 

When we are discussing fair food, it might be useful to note that we are talking about the Puyallup Fair. My father used to work said fair when I was a young man, so my memories of the event are optimal. He'd somehow gotten plugged into some vast carnie fraternity, so that everywhere I went there was a nod and a handful of tickets, slyly conferred. I wasn't able to attend this fair, which makes the Tycho present in the strip a simulation of a simulation. Barring the days spent in the alternate dimension of PAX - or speaking to your aggregated consciousness, here - every moment has been dumped into writing the next Precipice.

Razer has a form up to get a replacement mouse, if something has gone awry with yours. 

The friendly way to present the Seinfeld Vista ads is that they "get people talking." This is an adjunct to the notion that there is "no bad press," a lie we are happy to expose on a regular basis. Admittedly, I'm obsessed with advertising as a means of communication. I think it's possible to communicate virtue in a way that is ethical, interesting, and genuine.

Today's comic is a chuck wagon of unpleasant realities.

After Gabe logged off for the night, Robert - who had grown tired of my brutal golf techniques in previous rounds - entered the fray with Tiger Woods. While tethered to the real world, Tiger Woods is an excellent golfer. His counterpart in the videogame that bears his name is not a golfer but a kind of God, a barely coherent being of pure light that has yoked physics and cannot be beaten, except by another Tiger Woods - some other gleaming bead in that perpetual chain we call the Tigerion.

Robert tells me that in "Asia" (he wasn't specific), people buy fruits and vegetables at the 7-Eleven. Fruits and vegetables. He told me that five years ago, and I'm still reeling from the concept.

Steve Kuntz is staying over at Gabe's house this week, so he's been working in the office here with us during the day. He wanted to know if he could rock a cameo in our D&D campaign this week, and I was surprised to learn that Gabe wanted in. They had cooked up some relationship where Scott (Glint Eckhart) was a city guard, grievously disappointed in his wizard son Zek The Magnificent. It was Performance Art.

We found out about Strange Attractors 2 when Ominous Development submitted it to The PAX 10. Gabriel essentially demanded that I sit down in front of it and see what they were doing. The best way to learn about it would be to play the demo, but in a nutshell the game is about gravity, orbit, and the manipulation thereof. This one's Windows only, but there's lots of ways around that these days.

We eventually got the strip up, no thanks to his perpetually unraveling machine. You have to understand that I have been fixing his son-of-a-bitching computers for coming up on twelve years now. Even when I was working IT I never saw the shit he manages to cook up on these things. Don't let him near your router. Magnetic media is a no-go. If you're working on a laptop and you see him loping across the food court, close that fucker and run.

At the end of PAX, before the mics were dropped and we were thanking every entity that came to mind, I lost the use of language. I had maintained, which is to say I had kept my shit together, up until that point. I had projected the image of a congenial host at a very high resolution. But when it came time to close the deal, I couldn't actually do it. I have entertained many scenarios in an attempt to contextualize my failure in this, and the one I have chosen to believe is relatively straightforward: I didn't want it to end. My heart whirled and phased like some new form of matter. I wanted to retain that moment, if not forever than just for longer, a moment which cut like a bright violin over the rude din of the material universe.

I really want to hire a professional someday to take a look at the comics we've made, and tell me in definitive terms what is wrong with us.

it went up kind of late so you might have missed me mentioning Marissa's Bunny yesterday. If you didn't see it you can follow this link and read the post.

Well the bunny just showed up and made his way around the Penny Arcade office. He'll be heading off to PAX on Friday with an all access pass. I fully expect to see him crowd surfing during the Jonathan Coulton concert.

You might remember a few years back I got into a fight with a local radio show host named BJ Shea. Well he has since changed radio stations and apparently wants to bury the hatchet with me. He said on his show the other day that if I came back on he'd donate $1000.00 to Child's Play.

I'll be on tomorrow morning at 7:25am PST. You can hear his show on 99.9 KISW here in Seattle.

-Gabe out

PAX is almost upon us and I just have one last post to make. We've got some cool PAX related swag this year that I wanted to let you know about.

First up is this set of custom consoles. The second place winner in the Omegathon this year will receive a set of these. First place will also get them along with their trip to the Tokyo Game show.