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.

It has always been true that the deeper one goes into the woods, the stranger and more wooly things become.  Know this:  there is one more comic in this series.  And we have reserved some wool.

I was recently contacted by a reader who had a very special favor to ask. His daughter Marissa was diagnosed with Infantile Spasms. This is a very rare pediatric condition that as of right now has no cure. Since it's so rare it really doesn't get much attention either which as a father I imagine is very frustrating.

In an effort to raise awareness and hopefully find a cure he has created a site called Marrisasbunny. This site catalogs the adventures of three stuffed bunnies as they travel the world spreading awareness of the disease. Marissa's Dad Mike asked if one of the bunnies could attend PAX and I said absolutely.

The bunny should be arriving here at the office in the next day or two. We'll be giving him an all access pass and taking pictures as he makes his way around the show. You'll probably see him on stage during some of the concerts and panels. So if you see a bunny in the lan room during your TF tournament or making his way through the exhibition hall, now you'll know what it's about.

-Gabe out

Let's see where this goes.

If you don't care what it looks like when it gets there, a Runner might be a good option.

We're removing Pictionary, and replacing it with Competitive King from the new Geometry Wars.  That is all.

Publisher reception of our Bogey Golf informational packets has been uneven.  We've scanned the letter we recieved from Golf Digest, probably the most reasonable of the responses, though they did put the word "comics" in quotation marks. One established periodical is seeking legal recourse, holding our submissions as evidence. We briefly began work on Golgolfa, a fantasy adventure comic, then switched to Fairway Nights, a procedural that features a young Jack Nicklaus solving crimes for an organization called The Clubhouse. Robert has suggested that until some of the legal challenges are resolved, it might be best to batten down the golf content for awhile.

E for All just kicked out a new batch of wallpapers. I've got to hand it to to them, these are pretty fucking amazing. One in particular really stood out to me.

Still having some trouble with the new site, we we're still running on this old thing. I think you'll really like it: there are golf score tickers, and also there is audio, so that you when you click a link you feel like you are playing the fifth hole at Sawgrass. Here's the new Bogey Golf.  We're bringing the same savage honesty to the world of golf that we brought to the games industry, and the heat may be such that you can't endure it. I'm currently reading a book of links "lingo" that I'll be using to season my posts, but until that day we can discuss Force Unleashed without referencing "The Big Dog (which I guess would be a Rancor in this context)."

We've been struggling against the current of our desires for a long time. I don't mean to say our desires for each other, which are nonexistent. This isn't that post.

In case you missed the earlier post about it, I wanted to mention the Fallout 3 project we did. This was a twelve comic project and they are currently posting a new one every Wednesday over at the official site. This was a really fun project because they gave us a lot of freedom to tell our own story in the Fallout world. We ended up creating our own vault and following the adventures of it's only occupant.

If you are familiar with the Fallout story you know that it was never really the intention of the vaults to rescue people from nuclear fallout. Rather they were designed to be massive social experiments. The conditions in each vault were different, some had plenty of food some had none, some had all men some had all women, some even had a door that wouldn't actually close. Our vault had plenty of food, water and everything else you might need to survive. The catch is that it only had one person...and a box of puppets.

You can start at the beginning by hitting up this link. Like I said, they'll be posting new comics every Wednesday. Check out the official site and let me know what you think as the story of vault 77 plays out.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning that we've updated the Penny Arcade presents page. We've done a number of these projects over the years and as the games get older the sites that host the comics tend to change or disappear entirely. We've gone ahead and collected them all on our site and linked them from the PA presents page.

-Gabe out

The FAQ was a nice start, but when you try to map Star Trek lore onto MMO tropes you run into trouble quick. BingeGamer collates information as it's discovered in a legible way here, which I found useful. I still feel like I'm starving. I'm not sure any volume of loose, approved factoids would be satisfactory at this point.