The "Christmas in September", aka my birthday is fast approaching and I hope you are all feeling the excitement. This is what Tycho had to say about my special day last year:

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has - among many, many other things - a system of laws and judges that govern the methods used to achieve victory in each battle. And when I say the methods, I mean your methods, because the huge lizards you must sometimes conquer don't give a flying fuck about the rules. I had seen a screenshot once that I thought showed a representation of one of the judges, and it looked like a young vulture. I understand now that judges are (in fact) huge armored bad-asses who ride vicious chocobos, which makes more sense. I couldn't figure out why you would do something just because a bird told you to.

Yeah, you know the elation you're feeling right now? You could have felt like this your entire life.

When it rains it pours and it’s fucking pouring at my house. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking but I was at the store today looking through the strategy guide for FF:Tactics and I started drooling. I was high off of another marathon session of Disgaea and all the stats and items and jobs in Tactics started looking like an all you can fucking eat buffet at the Sizzler. I had to get in there with a knife and fork and do some Goddamned damage. So I broke down and bought the game and the guide but told myself I wouldn’t start it until I was finished with Disgaea. So of course I crack it open as soon as I get home and now four hours just fell out of my life in what felt like two seconds and I’m craving more. I splashed some cold water in my face and took a hard look at myself in the mirror. What the hell is going on? Am I really trying to play four RPG’s at once. I’m nearing the end of the second disk in FF IX. I’m obsessed with making sure every character learns every possible ability from every single item I get. I’m almost forty hours into FF:Crystal Chronicles. It’s hard to stop thinking about what new evils await our party in the unexplored continent we just discovered. I’m eleven hours into Disgaea and I feel like a baby taking his first wobbly steps into a new and exciting world. I have dreams about transmigrating characters for God’s sake. Now I’m sitting here writing this post by the dim light of a glowing GBA that sits paused on my desk. I can see a tiny moogle there waiting to continue his conversation with me and God help me I am dying to hear what that bobble headed little fucker has to say about Jobs and Judge points. I’ve got so many RPG’s just begging for my attention that I don’t know whether to shit or go blind. This could be the end of me.

I find myself waking up early so that I can get a head start on playing Disgaea. People kept sending me e-mail telling me that I needed to play this game. I had never heard of it before but I was willing to take their advice. I decided to use it as a test for the Gamefly service since I wasn’t ready to purchase it. Now I’ll probably just end up keeping it until I can buy it used from them.

In days of old, I established the parameters of Gabriel's affection for RPG in a two strip series entitled The Cycle. He has been my project in this regard, a sort of rogue protege, but until a game came out that combined Star Wars and role-playing my lessons never took root. Immediately after Knights of the Old Republic, he started playing Final Fantasy X, then he moved on to Final Fantasy IX, and now - joy of joys! - he's moved on to the tactical battle game everyone seems to love, Disgaea. Not only is he playing it, he beat me to it. I'm trying to figure out if that makes me mad or not.

Some kind of program that blocks known RIAA jackholes from diddling your computer with their hideous mutant prongs. Oh, that's right! I guess PeerGuardian does that.

If you are into digital freedoms at all, might I reccomend Canada? I hear the liberty is nice there this time of year.

Lots of you are asking how I got the image on the side of my case. I actually used my connections with the experts over at GBA MOD. I asked them make me a big ass glossy sticker. Well actually two stickers that I then put together. It’s not perfect since you can still see a little line where the two halves meet. It’s pretty fucking sweet though and I’m happy with it. As for us offering something similar for others to purchase, I am not sure yet. As of right now I wouldn’t feel right about selling stickers this size unless we could make them in one piece. I’ll look into and let you guys know.

This weekend’s event is shaping up nicely. If you would like to partake in some Crystal Chronicles you don’t necessarily need a GBA. It would be cool if you brought one but we will have some extras on had if you can’t find yours or whatever. A few people asked about what sorts of limitations there will be on what I’m willing to sketch on Saturday. Someone requested an intricately detailed illustration involving multiple characters in various states of undress cavorting in a magical forest full of wood nymphs and water sprites. Yeah, that’s probably not gonna happen. See I’m gonna have a sharpie and you can ask me to draw any character from the comic strip and I’ll go ahead and do that for you. For example at the San Diego comic con I drew lots and lots of Fruit Fuckers some Cardboard Tube Samurais and even a couple Claw Shrimp. I’ll have plenty of paper there so you don’t need to bring anything but your smiling face.

Some stuff you gots to know about it:

Everyone is by now quite aware of the over 200 lawsuits the RIAA has brought against regular human beings, some of whom had no idea what they were doing was questionable legally. We certainly knew that it was, that's part of what made it so great, but that has not stopped us from making a very genuine statement regarding our prior life of sin. We're actually referring to a "program" they've devised, called "Clean Slate," where you can tell them you've been naughty and promise never to be bad ever again. Forgive me for saying so, but it doesn't seem wise to identify yourself. Call me fucking crazy.

I just grabbed the new update to Xbox Live, which adds considerable functionality - booting up the system without a game in logs you in to Xbox Live automatically, and places you in a new UI where you can manage your Friends list, voice chat, and receive invites. This is part of an upgrade that extends a bit beyond the console, as you'll be able to access leaderboards, tournament information, and your Friends information from your computer as well.

I was looking around at EB's site to find out the ship date for D&D Heroes - that's on the 23rd, by the by - when I saw something I didn't recognize.

White Wolf just put up a press release announcing that though the court did not grant their injunction, it did other things that were encouraging to them. Go check it out, if this story interests you.

I had no idea that the McDonald's Concpiracy field had been so well plowed. There is already much ink spilled in service to it.