Indeed, two comic book veterans, writer Sid Jacobson and artist Ernie Colon,
have brought 9/11 to the comic book world. Jacobson and Colon have based their
new graphic novel on the 9/11 Commission's final report on the terrorist attacks
on Sept. 11, 2001. I've read the report already, which is stunning in its detail
and surprisingly well written, and I'm extremely intrigued to see what kind of
treatment it will get as a graphic novel. Whether you agree with all the
findings of the commission or not, the U.S. government's version of the tragic
events that day should be required reading.

Aside from my interest in comic book artistry, there are more important matters
here. Even though 9/11 is still burning in most people's minds here in America,
far too many people forget that the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission essentially
flunk the federal government and the Bush Administration's efforts to secure
America and protect it from terrorist attacks. Most people don't realize that
President Bush and Congress have blown off the recommendations of the 9/11
Commission to improve the country's security. So while the 9/11 Commission
Report was released as a 500-page non-fiction book in 2004 and quickly became a
bestseller, there was hardly any call to action.

Perhaps that will change with "The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation." The new
graphic novel will be previewed this week at Comic-Con 2006 in San Diego, which
I will be attending. Jacobson and Colon will discuss their work with a few other
panel members and ask if a comic book can make a political statement and
motivate people to act. I, for one, can't wait to hear and see more.

According to a recent Ipsos MORI poll in the UK, three in five 11 - 16 year olds are in favour of using video games in the classroom. I'll let Eurogamer break down the numbers for you, but suffice to say this is a bit of legitimacy/ego pleasure for the video game industry.

"Using video games to teach kids," goes the theory "makes it a more legitimate entertainment form." Sure, why not? There are however a couple of major flaws in this plan. Speaking as a chap who has worked with and around kids of various ages in recent times, here are my reasons why educating kids with video games is extremely difficult (not impossible, but the word "difficult" introduced into the vernacular of any publicly funded education system is read as "impossible", for various reasons we won't go into here.)

• Most of the games used in education are crap. Kids, from 4 to 14 and up, are not stupid. If you present them with a sub-par game, which many of the current educational crop are, then they will not want to engage with it. These are kids with PlayStations, Xbox's and PC's at home - they know what a current title should play like, and they expect the kind of high production values they see in their games at home. Even if the play is good the game has to look the biz.
• Good games aren't used intentionally. Gaming being a hot potato issue, any educaters wanting to use video games to teach have to jump several hurdles of perception with parents. Therefore any games that remind mommy and daddy of GTA, even from a graphical point of view, is off the cards. These games also cost more money, and harkening back to the previous point the educators prefer the cheap and cheerful games that look too innocent to attract any heat over something that the kids might actually enjoy - and therefore become engaged with.
• Educational games are too obviously educational. The best way to learn is to do it when you're having fun. Indeed, that's the very idea behind educating through gaming. However most, if not all, educational games have a very direct and obvious educational slant which kids will pick up on immediately, and then they'll switch off. Games have to be fun first, educational second - for example, a Civilization player can tell you quite a bit about the industrial revolution that he or she certainly didn't glean from a long forgotten text book. Of course if you let kids run wild with Civilization then there may be a few questions asked at the next PTA meeting.
• Games aren't being used to teach the right things. Games can substitute for text books in teaching facts and figures, but they are not used by educators to teach the other things that one can learn from playing a video game. Tetris is an extremely simplistic example of this - it's not considered an educational game, yet it is a great training tool for the mind in logic and problem solving. Bearing in mind that the objective of the near universally dreaded advanced maths taught in schools is to teach logic and problem solving more so than ensuring that we have a population that can solve for X, well you see the benefits of fun video games which teach these same fundamental skills.

I'm sure it's an argument that will rage on. I'm all for the idea of using video games to teach kids, but I can't see it happening until at least parents, teachers, administrators and politicians are of a gaming generation who can understand and properly exploit gaming for the purpose of education.

Until then, kids will have to put up with another bore of a class when yet another sub-par game tries to teach them their 7 times tables with crap graphics, a basic interface and absolutely no relation to the cutting edge, immensely fun games they enjoy at home.

The Associated Press Stylebook is one of the major tomes by which publications ensure that their style for using terms and phrases common and vague is consistent across the board. For example, does a publication use "videogame" or "video game". Both are technically correct, but you only want to use one variation in your publication for consistency.

Well, the new edition of the AP Stylebook says that it's video game. It also recognises the Game Boy, as Kotaku's band of scribes figured out. I'm not going to make any jokes about reading the AP Stylebook being akin to reading the dictionary, as technically we're supposed to do both as journalists. This is however akin to having a word put into the dictionary (a good dictionary, mind you) and now we can rejoice as the word Game Boy is no longer taboo or rife with inconsistency across the board of the AP-using media.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to go and pepper my articles with the word "GameBoy", minus the space if you'll notice. I have some wax in my ear, and the most cost effective way to get rid of it is to pick up the phone to a blast of expletives most definitely not in the stylebook, issued by an irate and ever suffering copy editor.

I had one of the single greatest experiences of my 10-year career as a
journalist last week at Comic-Con 2006 in San Diego. While wandering around the
autograph pavillion at the convention center, I stumbled upon Al White and
Norman Gibbs, also known as "the Jive Dudes" from the classic comedy "Airplane!"

For those that aren't familiar, White and Gibbs played small but memorable parts
in "Airplane." Gibbs played the role of "First Jive Dude," and White was "Second
Jive Dude" -- the running joke is that Gibbs and White speak incoherent but
humorous "jive" that no one can understand. They really only appeared in two
scenes in the film, but as far as many people are concerned, those two scenes
are the best parts of the comedic masterpiece.

In their first scene, Gibbs and White talk to one another while
hilarious subtitles translate their jive talk. In their href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbYyqRt5Zn8&search=Airplane%21">second
scene, White is suffering from stomach pains as a result of bad airline food.
The duo ask a stewardess for help, but she has no idea what they're saying, so
an elderly woman, played by Barbara Billingsley (the mother on TV's "Leave it to
Beaver"), that speaks jive lends a hand and the three end up in a contentious
argument.
style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt=""
src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7876/3296/320/JiveDudes.jpg" border="0"
/>

I spoke with Gibbs and White during the show, who were amazed at how popular
they are after more than 25 years. Both men were extremely friendly and gracious
about the attention they were receiving at their first Comic-Con event. Of all
the celebrity sightings at the big event, my meeting with Gibbs and White was
the best.

However, I did miss one of my two movie heroes, the immortal Bruce Campbell (see
the very first post of this blog), because I had to fly back home to the wife.
If you think that was an easy decision -- my wife or Bruce Campbell -- then you
don't know me at all...

There is nothing worse in an online game than a dirty, rotten, cheating sonofabitch ruining the entire experience for everyone else. Blizzard would seem to agree with me in this regard, and they have banned yet another 59,000 cheating accounts from World of Warcraft.

I say "another" as Blizzard has been banning 50,000 here, 5,000 there and 1,800 over that way on Battle.net, where the likes of Diablo II are played, and from World of Warcraft for quite some time now. It's also an approach taken, though not as frequently, by Valve on the Steam service.

Have no mercy, I say - cheaters, hackers, farmers, ban the lot. Apart from a few obsessed losers who may top themselves when deprived of WoW (I say that with a hint of sarcasm, but only a hint) it's hardly like you're killing anyone. When we pay for an online game we pay for the creators to manage the experience and ensure it remains fun. Blizzard is living up to its end of this agreement.

Take a gander, dear readers, over yonder to YouTube where there is a fascinating video taking a look at Counter-Strike through the eyes of a cheater. First we get the "normal" view, and then we get the view with the cheats superimposed to see what the cheater sees.

Of course, nothing worse than a cheater in an online game as I've said before, but the second video is all about spotting the gits. Thank goodness for the useless bits of flotsam that float to the top on the net...

The MMORPG Second Life has been living up to its namesake for many, with various groups even hosting concerts there; and now one of the worlds more prodigious PR firms, Text 100, is setting up a virtual office within the game world.

Second life allows users to create their own objects and world, being a very free-form game in which real currency can change hands for everything from real estate to BDSM kit. Now Text 100 have moved a business arm into the world in order to "work with clients on how Second Life may benefit their businesses by facilitating virtual press conferences or new ways of demonstrating products to employees or customers." The firm is also hoping to conduct staff training in the complex which features a welcome centre, an amphitheatre, and information centre.

"We view virtual worlds as the next stage in the evolution of peer-to-peer media like blogs, wikis, social networks and other online forums," said Georg Kolb, EVP, and leader of the peer media practice at Text 100. "Having a presence in Second Life will enable us to explore, innovate, educate and collaborate on a next generation communications platform."

Can't say I wouldn't mind a job at said virtual office...

Florida, which boasts a tremendously large senior citizen population, has a
number of adult arcades and rec rooms. For years, these businesses would pass
themselves off as nothing more than a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant for retirees --
indeed, they exploited an exemption to state gambling laws called the Chuck E.
Cheese exemption, which allows coin-operated games that require a level of skill.

In case you missed it, this issue gained national attention this week when an
adult aracade owner named Gale Fontaine, who was on trial in Florida for running
an illegal casino, was acquitted of the charges by a jury of her peers. Fontaine,
who owns the Tropicana Rec Room in Pompano Beach, Fla., is also president of the
Florida Arcade Association. Again, the FAA is not what you think it is. The
industry advocacy group has nothing to do with actual video games.

The state attorney's office in Broward County, Fla., brought the charges against
Fontaine as part of a statewide crackdown by Florida on the adult arcade
industry, which has grown rapidly in recent years. Why? Well, because they do
have slot machines, which are gambling machines, right?

Wrong. According to Fontaine's defense attorney and the FAA, the rec rooms don't
qualify because the slot machines "require an application of skill." A level of
skill? Come again? Anyone who has ever played any type of slot machine know
definitely that the only skill involved is the ability to press a button or pull
a lever. There's a reason that slot machines are called "one-armed bandits."

Yet somehow, the jury allowed Fontaine and the FAA to exploit a ridiculous
loophole big enough to drive a truck -- or a bus-load of senior citizens --
through it. Now other adult arcades like the Tropicana Rec Room will masquerade
under the guise of being a Chuck E. Cheese or other video game arcades.

A crowd of supports cheered the verdict and the now-free Fontaine. Protesters
who felt the state was unjustly persecuting elderly Floridians were shouting
"Right to play! Right to play!" -- even though, as common sense would dictate,
no such right exists. This is hardly fair, though it's understandable why a jury
and even some politicans would cave to the desires of the state's senior citizen
population and its formidable lobby. But it's upsetting for me, because while
the elederly in Florida get to circumvent the law and GAMBLE, which is illegal
in the state and also clearly addictive, real video gaming continually comes
under fire from experts and legislators who want to outlaw or excessively
regulate it.

There's an old saying: what's good for the goose should be good for the
granny.

So apparently, says EAs big chief operating officer for worldwide studios David Gardner, the gaming industry is failing women. "We have all been talking about this for a long, long time," he says. Well, he's right about the talk part.

He's worried that the industry isn't reaching out to girls and women, lamenting that The Sims is just about the only thing they're interested in, and hypothesising that it's relationships and interaction, chat rooms, that the girls want. Well, EA tried that with The Sims Online, a game which has become something of an underage whore house if I recall correctly.

The Sims is, of course, the top game for female players - over half of all Sims players are female - but do we really understand why they're playing it? Has anyone checked recently to see if the girls are enjoying The Sims so as they can play Mommy and Daddy; or if they play it because they enjoy putting little sims into swimming pools, removing the ladders and seeing how long it takes for them to die?

Nobody seems to understand female gamers, and all we're continuing to do is talk about it. I think that that's all we can do, until the current generation of female gamers come of age and become developers. Men making games specifically for women doesn't work, most of the time.

"You know I did a video game a few years back," he said.
"Wait, what?" I replied.
"Yup. I did the motion-capture for [Blank 1] in [Blank 2]."
"GET OUT!"

I'm completely dumbfounded because [Blank 2] is an absolutely huge title, a
classic game that has become one of the most popular titles of all time. I'm
also shocked because he did the motion-capture acting for the lead character in
this game (who was voiced by a famous actor).

Now, this is where John fills me in on some details regarding his experiences
with [blank 2] and explains why he's never told me about his work on this game
and why I can't use use the name of the title or the game developer/publisher.
See, John was told by [Blank 1] that he can't do any interviews whatsoever for
his work on [Blank 2].

"It's too bad because I could have got a lot of press about [Blank 2]," John
said. "It was a cool experience, but they threatened to sue me if I did any
interviews."

"What? Why? Is it because they're paranoid about bad press or something?" I
asked.

"They said 'We don't want a bunch of little motion-capture actors speaking for
[Blank 2] and all of us here at [Blank 1]'."

"Ouch."

[Blank 1] is a bunch of f-ing assholes," he told me. "They're just a bunch of
23-year-old brats with their heads up their asses. But hey, [Blank 2] is a
pretty good game."

Indeed, [Blank 1] is like a lot of game companies right now in that the
publisher isn't doing so well and, despite a recent history of stellar game
sales and popular titles, has a somewhat tarnished reputation.

Read between the lines, if you will.

The word "convergence" has become a bit of a dirty one in the tech world, thanks to rather crap attempts to take every device known to man and stuff it into a handheld device that doesn't have very much battery life. In the New Media world however, the word might find new and productive meaning.

MySpace and Snocap (alright, so not Napster, it's just made by a bunch of the same guys) are jumping into bed together to provide music ("and maybe more..." Ohh God, that sounds like a midnight sex chat ad on the telly) to the fawning young masses.

The idea is that "if we want to crack the youngsters, we have to do it on their ground and on their terms", meaning that youngens will be far more likely to buy your stuff if it's sold to them on MySpace or Bebo than traditional outlets.

This entry should really be titled "I feel like I'm getting old", but I'm not self centred enough to take up a whole headline to tell you that. The guts of a paragraph will do. The reason? Because I'm so disconnected from this Bebo generation, and for the first time I feel like an old man in the technology world. Kids (I mean about 12 and up) are using sites like MySpace and Bebo to the extent that, like mobile phones, everyone has a profile and is to be found on one of these two social networking sites.

They're using them as cheap text messaging services and putting videos and pictures up on the web thanks to the simple interfaces offered by sites like YouTube. There's a whole debate about how dangerous this may be to said youngens, but that's another days discussion. For now, let's just accept that it's happening.

So I feel old because I'm watching as 12, 14, 16 year olds who would have derided anyone openly capable of switching on a computer, let alone being able to touch type, just a few short years ago; now just about as tech savvy as anyone really needs to be to get by in the modern day and age, if not more so besides. It has kinda crept up on me - we in the tech sector have been observing it from a distance, but it's different to sit down next to a 14 year old hammering away with a Bebo page and six MSN windows onscreen.

Back to New Media Convergence, if you please. Now that everyone in the hard- to-reach young demography is on social networking sites, New Media Convergence can happen. We already see it with, for example, Bebo integrating YouTube to such a simple extent that it's a matter of pushing a few buttons to get a stock video on your page; and just a few more after that to get your own cam/phone/whoknowswhatelse vids online.

Google paid top brass to get to be the search engine for MySpace a short while ago. And now we're entering into direct sales - forget about just being able to advertise to the demographic, how about being able to directly sell to them like even iTunes can't?

The new big growth sector is New Media Convergence, and so long as the social networking sites hold their water as mobile phones have done we'll be seeing them becoming a more day-to-day thing. Mix up mobile phones, social networking sites, search engines, stores, even municipal WiFi and you can see the shape of teenage lives forming around the internet, whether we like it or not.

Congratulations are in order, we've made technology so mainstream that ditsy blonde teenagers are using it in their fumbling attempts to have sex with one another.

A Sudanese man has been forced to marry a goat he was found having sex with. Actually, this could be a rather short post as I'm kind of stuck for words at this point. Apparently, the goats owner found the man, "Mr Tombe", on top of the goat. The owner startled Romeo in the act and he "fell off".

Romeo was then taken to a council of elders and forced to pay a dowry of around $50 and take the goat as his wife.

Sorry, I just read that and simply had to share it with the world. I hope you weren't drinking hot tea or coffee when you came across this. My nose still burns... And I swear, a more thought provoking and high-brow post is coming in a minute.

For months now geeks have been closely following the v(ideo)log of a YouTube'r named "LonelyGirl15", a teenage girl named Bree who had strictly religious parents (yadda yadda) and was interested in "geek stuff", for wont of a better phrase.

Well, it turns out that the LonelyGirl saga was a fake, and that it was created by some enterprising film makers using nothing more than their intelligence, acting ability and a web cam. They led many scores of obsessed geeks on for four months, until finally a massive web witch hunt tracked down the producers and unveiled the mask of LonelyGirl.

Many geeks are decrying this great "scam" against them. I don't see why everyone has to get so touchy - well, I do actually. On the internet we all seem to be trying to form meaningful connections with others, even if it's just a passive thing where you watch that other persons vlog on YouTube, or comment in their blog, become one of their friends on MySpace or get chatting on MSN. LonelyGirl was one such passive relationship, where geeks listened to her woes and associated with her interests, probably amazed that a good looking girl could also be classed as a geek.

So some people feel personally betrayed that this was all a show. Well, tough luck I say. If you come onto the internet looking for meaningful lifelong relationships then you're entering into dangerous waters; even more so if the "relationship" you have is with a person looking into a webcam to record a vlog entry. Go out and meet some real people, for crying out loud. Internet relationships can work, but you have to have that distance between yourself and the chat box representing the person on the other side, or else you are quite likely as not to get burned.

I see the LonelyGirl show instead as a brilliant example of what can be done by film makers in the age of New Media Convergence; a scriptwriter and an actor, maybe even with a prop or two, can run an entire show - be it a fictional one like LonelyGirl purporting as real life, or a current affairs show, or whatever else you want - off of a site like YouTube, other blogs will talk about it and link to it, then big publications will weigh in. Even the "hunt" for who the real LonelyGirl was is a bit of fun - a distraction, something to do in your spare time, as most of this stuff is.

There's a lot of crap on the internet, but increasingly too there's a lot of quality stuff out there, the entry bar to creating of which has come down very low in recent months, and I don't see the LonelyGirl incident as a personal betrayal - it's a successful experiment.

"I'm going to be completely reduced to a mess of carbon ash and caramelized
fat for saying this, I find it alarming that the ESRB does not bother to base
its ratings on the entire experience of playing a game, instead relying far too
much on submitted clips-not even complete gameplay run-throughs, mind you. Even
if you think the idea is unnecessary or even absurd, there's no getting around
that failing to do so lends an impression of incompleteness and an ad hoc
quality to the system that invites skepticism. It's like rating movies based on
storyboards."

If you think that Ruby is some fringe critic who has a grudge against gaming,
well, that couldn't be further from the truth. I interviewed Ruby earlier this
year about Smartbomb, and in addition to being a gamer himself, Ruby has a
wealth of knowledge about gaming after spending several years researching and
writing a book. Here's an excerpt from the href="http://www.twitchguru.com/2006/02/09/an_inside_look_at_the_video_game_indu
stry/">interview:

RW: Speaking of content, I've heard you're not fond of the game rating
system.

Ruby: I really don't have much respect for the ESRB. There is a serious problem
with the system when the people that are in charge of rating the games don't
actually play them. Playing a game and watching someone else play a game are two
totally different things. There are some things that can't be accurately
observed by watching. So the whole rating system approach is to observe the
content. But you have to ask yourself why video games are considered learning
tools. Is it the content or is it the design and the mechanics of the game? It's
not the content. Take Grand Theft Auto; I don't think the game teaches you how
to murder people. But Full Spectrum Warrior, which nobody ever criticized
because it doesn't have content that people deem offensive, shows you how to
shoot people and blow things up. So I think the uproar is part of a lack of
knowledge about games, and that's why the level of debate on the issue is so
low.

How low is the level of debate on video games? Check out my summary of a recent
Congressional hearing on
video games.

It turns out that I'm of two minds about it, which is why I say you should
reluctantly go to see it - if even just so that you can bear witness and make
your mind up. It's such a politically charged picture that it would have to be
absolutely dire, on top of not sitting with my personal political convictions,
to attract a "Don't bother" rating from me.

Early into the final act of the film I was ready to give you an unabashed "Don't
bother" for "Death of a President", as it seemed to be turning into a
politically clich馘 piece of claptrap in which the main suspect is essentially
jailed in a put up job and the real shooter goes unrecognised.

It is not an implausible scenario - the British proved it when the likes of the
Guildford Four, Maguire Seven and Birmingham Six were all falsely convicted of
IRA bombings on mainland Britain via a conspiracy involving police officials,
eventually to be exonerated after some had died in prison. The way in which
"Death of a President" presents this scenario at first riled me up, but then
tempered this with some interesting twists.

Ultimately I don't like "Death of a President", for its politics more than
anything else. I would not discourage somebody from spending an hour or two of
their lives digesting it however, as it is interesting and at the least, thought
provoking.

To the issue of US cinemas refusing to show the film and politicians such as
Hillary Clinton terming it "despicable" and "outrageous", I would say two
things: Firstly, you're playing into the marketing hands of the film makers,
well done. People who are going to go and see this film are probably going to
feel more inclined to do so now, and you've introduced it to a wider audience;
whilst those who were not going to see the film in the first place might drum up
a bit more PR for the movie if they, I dunno, burn down a movie theatre showing
it or something.

Secondly, don't be so uptight. If this were a film endorsing the assassination
of a world leader (which, among many things it is, it is not) then I'd have a
different standpoint, but to be frank the assassination of the President of the
United States is a valid political catalyst and, let's face it, it's always a
distinct possibility that somebody will make an attempt upon a President's life.
I hardly think that such people will gain their motivation or training from
watching this movie, and as to the content, so be it.

Decide if you want to go see this movie or not. I daresay your personal politics
will dictate what impression you come out of it with even before the opening
credits roll.

What an eventful day. TwitchGuru now has a filled out MySpace profile. Go look, and add us. We're your friends, remember. I say we now have a "filled out" profile because Rob created that back in late September, but it fell to the responsible one to actually put more than a fancy logo onto it.

Expect more pictures and suchlike, to be cross posted here of course, in the near future (as I beat Roberto into it, and get around to filling out the "Who I'd like to meet" section. Be really, really nice and I'll put you into it.)

The second, possibly more interesting, thing I picked up on today was a service called "Shelfari." The whole world seems to be about putting your life online these days, and Shelfari is an online bookshelf which is (I think) linked into Amazon. You basically find the books you have and put them on your "shelf." The social networking aspect obviously then comes from linking up with other people who read the same stuff.

Let me say here and now that there are an awful lot of Discworld readers in the world at large. In almost all of the links to profiles of "People who share some of your books" I've come across Discworld novels. Odd. Still, I can say that it's addictive stuff, adding dozens of books to your collection and racking your brains to stick in more titles. I've been coming back to it all day and adding books in spurts.

I shall be researching this Shelfari further in the hopes of doing another of my no-doubt enlightening and enthralling in-depth looks at such things which, it occurs to me now, I've not yet given a name to. It's an informal series of articles (you may recall Gamer sGate and ZYB?), but I really should give it an identifiable name. Suggestions on the back of a postcard to the usual address, or the comments box below, appreciated. With regards to Shelfari, I want to see what extra features this lot will be implementing post beta, and where they intend to make their money (IE, where's the catch.)

The other "Unnamed profile article" I'm working on concerns Games For Windows. Microsoft launched this initiative last year, lamenting about how they feel they'd almost killed PC gaming by focusing their attention on consoles (the PC gaming industry looked up, bemused, from behind its stack of gold at this proclamation.) Again, I want to know what the catch is beyond a simple logo on boxes. What's the benefit for having your game classed as a "Game For Windows"? What's the downside to not having it classed this way? A Microsoft takeover, Simpson's style?

Hrms, stuff to ponder. Well, I'm off to add more books to my Shelfari. Feel free to add me there, and feel compelled to add TwitchGuru on MySpace.

In case you missed today's href="http://www.twitchguru.com/2006/10/23/mmr/">Monday Morning Rundown
column on TwitchGuru, Thompson sought to have Bully removed from retail
shelves in Florida. However, Judge Ronald Friedman ruled against Thompson after
viewing the game and declaring that the content was no worse that your basic
television programming. As I wrote in the column, Thompson, believing Judge
Friedman would rule in his favor, was shocked by the court's decision and
expressed his outrage in court by calling out the judge. Then he wrote an href="http://www.gamepolitics.com/images/legal/FL-letter-to-judge.doc">open
letter to Judge Friedman criticizing his decisions and conduct in the trial.
Then Thompson really went after the judge by declaring late last week that he
intended to run for Friedman's seat in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in Miami.

So now Thompson could be faced with another adverse ruling from Judge Friedman,
who he has openly and repeatedly slammed. If Thompson is found in contempt, he
could face a steep fine or even jail time. Now Thompson must go back into court
and explain to Judge Friedman why he shouldn't be held in contempt and muster
some semblance of respect the judge. The chances of that happening are about as
high as John Carmack and John Romero forming another game developer. Stay tuned
for more.

So, did you miss me? (The normal response I get to this question is, "You were away?", but you can just say "Yes.") I always love coming back to the world after falling off of it for a week or so, just to see how fast a pace of life we really live and how quickly things move.

My old shooting buddies Jack Thompson and Dennis McCauley are both, notably, in the news. Jack went and nearly got himself arrested for contempt of court, and I've been reading (and watching, thank you Destructoid) the aftermath with some amusement. It's nice to not have to sit around tapping my fingers waiting for something to happen - the suspense annoys me - and so it's nice to have the whole story thrown out in front of me. Probably why I'm such a history buff.

Poor old Jack, always stirring up trouble. At this point I think that the moral crusade has become a bit farcical now that the impetus given it by Hot Coffeegate way back when (a year ago now, isn't it? Damn, we're getting on...) has run out. It was interesting when Hot Coffeegate broke to see what would happen to the industry as it became politicised. It got kind of strange when everyone up to and including The Sims were getting naked in Jack's book. At this point having rows with judges (not Jack's first) is circus stuff. The problem with the moral high ground is that the air is thinner up there, I think...

Jack's previous arch-nemesis (coming somewhere in-between that accused lesbian opponent in an election race and Judge Dredd this past month) Dennis has sold out to The Man, apparently, and GamePolitics has been merged into the Entertainment Consumers Association. Cue back patting and cynical cat calls in equal measure. Back patting because Dennis has done such a good job at building himself and GamePolitics into the de facto source for video game political news. Cat calling is required from the cynical because, well, the ECA is not an unbiased owner and as much as Dennis might tell us that impartiality will remain the buzzword, where have we heard that before?

I suppose GamePolitics has always been biased, in the sense that it views the world of politics from the gamers perspective, as opposed to the knee-jerk tabloid view of things; but becoming part of an organisation which, as Kotaku pointed out, is out for the consumer but without stepping on the toes of the industry, puts a spin on things which is more complex than "Us and Them."

Still, you never know. As a journalist who has been involved in his fair share of rows over this-and-that, including partiality, I don't like it myself when people simply assume that 2 + 2 = 5, and Dennis may well lead the good ship GP through the waters of partiality without completely mucking things up. At the very least the ECA has bought itself a soapbox, at best GP will have got itself a megaphone without any strings attached.

Well, I'm going to get back to acclimatising myself to the week previous of October 27^th. It's a strange new world...

For some time now, I've been trying to get my hands on a Wii. And it's proven to be a most difficult task, even though Nintendo's new console has had much more available units than Sony's PlayStation 3. In fact, the pursuit of Wii- piness has pretty much consumed me for the last couple weeks. See, I lost out of the pre-orders because I simply wasn't quick on the draw. My colleague Mark Raby at TG Daily scored one, the lucky S.O.B. I thought about lining up for one at the EB Games/GameStop at Universal CityWalk here in L.A., where Nintendo held its officia l West Coast midnight launch event. But there was that whole work thing standing in the way. Oh well.

I had planned on scouring the earth -- or at least the greater L.A. area -- for a Wii at various retail outlets Sunday morning, but I was thoroughly exhausted from my second midnight console launch event in three days that I slept late. Again, I just wasn't quick on the draw. I called a number of stores to see if they had any in stock. No dice. This is the problem with living in a city that has millions of people, tons of gamers, and lots and lots of folks who evade steady employment. So I jumped online early Monday morning to see if there were any sites still selling the console. And I found one:

Wal-Mart. Ugh.

I normally don't shop at Wal-Mart. I find some of their practices to be distasteful. But hey, they had Wiis, and I wasn't about to split hairs. I pulled the trigger and scored. Finally! The price was steep: $796.84. Wal-Mart was only selling the super-duper bundle that required the purchase of eight games. Like I wouldn't have bought eight games anyway! I was crushed, however, when I discovered there was no Twilight Princess or Call of Duty 3 units available. Whatever. Live to fight another day. I snatched up eight games, and ordered next day-shipping via UPS. Here's how it broke down:

Wii console: $249.82

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance: $49.82

Red Steel: $49.82

Cars: $49.82

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent: $49.82

Excite Truck: $49.82

Far Cry Vengeance: $49.82

Dragon Ball Z: $49.82

Need for Speed Carbon: $49.82

Shipping: $94.97

Sales tax: $53.49

So the order was confirmed on November 20. With Thanksgiving just a few days away, I wasn't sure that Wal-Mart would be able to ship any of the stuff by Wednesday. But to my surprise, my Wal-Mart order track said most items, including the Wii itself, "will arrive" by Tuesday 11/21 and Wednesday 11/22. Next day shipping indeed! So why after more than a week hasn't anything showed up yet? Stay tuned...

I had an interesting conversation the other day about drugs and pro gaming with Liquilife and Vicious at UncleGamer.com. In case you're not familiar, UncleGamer Radio does a weekly podcast devoted to gaming. Well, Liquilife and Vicious caught the recent TwitchGuru story about the Cyberathlete Professional League making preparations for drug testing at its events next year.

If you missed it, the CPL will require all participating players in 2007 to consent to a potential drug test. CPL founder and president Angel Munoz told me he doesn't think the use of performance-enhancing drugs in CPL competitions is an issue yet, but he wants to be proactive before cheating via drugs becomes a problem. And with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake - not to mention fame - Munoz and others in pro gaming have no doubt that people will use drugs to get an edge, if they haven't already.

Liquilife, Vicious and I chatted about everything from gamers taking Ritalin to NHL hockey players taking Sudafed and how the allure of money-making competitions in sports will always lead to cheating in some way or another. We also chatted about favorite games, the best consoles, and why I'm not a big fan of Halo or the Call of Duty sequels. Good stuff.

If you haven't tuned into to UncleGamer Radio already, here's a good interview with a guy who literally broke his knee while playing Guitar Hero.

The rather progressive Slamdance indie film and video game awards has been forced to pull the sensitive RPG "Super Columbine Massacre" from its list of 14 finalists - the first time the festival has pulled any game or film. The reason for the retraction of the finalist status, after festival organisers themselves urged for it to be entered into the running, is because of pressure from financial sponsers, who threatened to pull the plug on the festival if the game continued to be counted among the finalists.

SCM was always going to be a controversial game, focusing as it does on a rather horrific event which some might say is best left to the history books. Media forms such as film and, increasingly video games, are not always prone to simply leaving difficult topics alone, and the banning of SCM from the festival raises interesting questions of censorship.

Obviously the game itself has not been banned in a wide sense; but at the end of the day it is financial backers who can effectively pull the plug on a game - or film - if they so desire. I will not argue that games such as SCM, JFK or Postal are in bad taste to some or many. However there is a line between objecting to something and demanding that it be pulled from shop shelves, festivals and award ceremonies.

Just because something is difficult to swollow does not mean that it should be shunned. The idea of festivals such as Slamdance is to award those films and video games which make us think; bring us out of our comfort zones and help to expand our world views. This knee-jerk banning of a game from a festival should be deplored - when art is repressed, generally trouble is not too far behind.