I have no idea why, but the opening paragraph popped into my head, and I had to see where it went. This is, of course, all a whimsical flight of fancy and completely fictional. Its also silly, not at all serious, and even where facts are referenenced or assertions made, probably completely incorrect. I wrote it in an hour or two and didn't do any proofreading, although I WAS pretty proud of spelling Reykjavik correctly on my first try. Enjoy!

______________________________

It was somehow inevitable that the most devastating conflict humanity has ever known should be started by that most reasonable and easy-going of peoples, the Canadians. Or rather, by a Canadian.

Buddy Fergeson had been drinking a bit. He was, after all, a hard-working man who made a living in construction by the strength of his arms and the sweat of his brow, and was well-deserving of a tipple when the day's toils were done. Of course, he was currently on disability for his bad back, so his workday was essentially over before it began. In times of uncertainty in life, it is comforting to have some habits and routines to cling to, and Buddy's routine was that when he wasn't working, he was drinking. Could he be blamed if he hadn't worked in nearly a month?

On November 23rd, 2007, Buddy had wandered down to the US/Canada border, the biggest point of interest in his home town of Moose Neck, Saskatchewan. No one quite knows how the incident started... Buddy himself once remarked that he had probably fetched up at the border only because "the train tracks run down that way." We know that it was at the US border that the conversation began between Buddy and two American border guards, Steve Hammel and Ed Bolczek. Officers Hammel and Bolczek are both now deceased, and Buddy's oft-repeated statement of the incident was that he didn't recall exactly how things progressed, because he was, at the time, "pretty well faced, eh?"

The best attempts at a timeline put the Americans behind their inspection station enjoying a cigarette break at approximately 11:40AM, discussing the prospects of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. taking the championship when Buddy approached the Canadian side of the border. The border at this point was marked only by a series of planters containing red, white, and blue flowers that had been placed there by a previous Customs employee, and there was no fence or barrier present. Many have speculated that the situation developed out of an attempt by Buddy to cadge a cigarette from the Americans, but there is no proof of this. Regardless, an argument soon arose between the three, and cross-border shouting began.

It was only after things had escalated that US Customs officer Jen Stoate was attracted by the noise, and observed most of the rest of the incident from the customs station's window. Fergeson was some 10 feet back from the border, shouting and doing what Stoate referred to as a "little dance" to taunt the Americans, who were stymied at the edge of US territory. According to Stoate, more shouted insults followed from both sides until Bolczek made a derogatory comment about professional Hockey, which seemed to incense Buddy. Fergeson then stooped down and scooped a handful of the abundant acorns in the tree-shaded area and began pelting Hammel and Bolczek with them whilest speculating on the anatomy and sexual proclivities of their mothers.

At one point the Americans did attempt to leave the area of conflict and return to their posts, but were deterred when Fergeson ran to the border and shattered one of the planters with a kick. Hammel and Bolczek then asserted, according to Stoate, that Buddy had "got himself in a whole mess of trouble now," and elaborated that he would be tried for acts of aggression against the United States. Fergeson laughed at this, grabbed another of the planters, and retreated a safe distance from the border. Bolczek and Hammel were both irate when they demanded the return of the planter, and when Fergeson laughed at them, says Stoate, they looked "ready to pop."

After being told several times to return the pot, Fergesen seemed to find a sudden inspiration and told the Americans that if they wanted the planter back so badly, he'd give it to them. He then drew back and threw the planter at the Customs station. Stoate, because of her location, did not directly see what happened next, but heard the pottery shatter on the roof and saw Bolczek and Hammel react to one fragment thereof ripping the American flag mounted on the roof. Later inspection showed that the flag had indeed received a nasty tear on one side consistent with a shard of pottery.

It was at this point that Hammel and Bolczek crossed the border and pursued Fergeson. They ran him down quickly and dragged him back to the US side of the border, where he was led into the stationhouse.

So how, exactly, did this petty dispute build into a global conflagration? Quite probably, during any other window of time nothing would have come of the Fergeson/Hammel/Bolczek incident, but these events took place during the waning months of the Bush administration, which with poll numbers averaging 17% approval didn't have much to lose.

Within hours after the events in Moose Neck, President Bush called an emergency meeting with key Homeland Security, Defense, and Pentagon personnel. The next day the scene at the border was presented to Congress. They were briefed on the "missiles with undetermined organic payload launched across the border, possibly in an attempt at biological warfare," on the "attack on and destruction of US agricultural infrastructure" and on the "theft and weaponization of c|assified US property" that had gone on, as well as the "Heinous desecration of the US flag, a symbolic attack upon the entire nation." Bush called for immediate authorization to respond to these threats with force.

There was some hesitation on the part of House Democrats, but after it was pointed out that with soundbytes like those, nobody who voted against the authorization would get re-elected. A full 65% of Democrats subsequently voted to authorize the President to take forceful action, along with 98% of Republicans. The Senate followed with a similar outcome of 83 yeas and 17 nays. Like that, we were at the brink of war.

It was probably not helpful that the first contact from the Canadian government on this matter was a demand for the release of their citizen, Buddy Fergeson. In the five minute interview he was granted with vice-President Cheney, Canadian diplomatic attaché to the US Floyd Lefebvre testifies that he was only told that Fergeson had been deemed an enemy combatant and was being held for the safety of the American people. All requests for information about Buddy's whereabouts or the specific charges against him were denied.

After only a day and a half of back-and-forth posturing via press conferences and public statements, President Bush and Prime Minister Harper reached an impasse. It was then that the first sanctioned troops moved across the border into Canada. Ostensibly a peace-keeping force that would secure and hold a buffer zone north of the border to prevent further Canadian aggression and locate any other anti-American cells that might, as Mr. Bush put it, "go Fergeson on us."

Once across the border, though, the US forces began to realize that the logistics of holding the 4,000-mile border with their depleted forces were going to be trickier than they had first estimated. President Bush retreated to his Crawford ranch for several weeks to reevaluate the situation, then put forth a bold new policy for the armed forces that involved switching the positions of a few units.

There was, of course, an uproar at the United Nations when the US troops crossed the border. The United Kingdom and Australia particularly were vocal in condemning the US' actions. An immediate subcommittee was formed to look into the situation and report back within 6 months so debate could begin. Months later, when US citizens of Canadian descent were rounded up and put in Temporary Relocation Centers (or Canuck Camps, as they were colloquially known), a motion was made to evaluate the progress of the subcommittee to see if it should be dissolved and a new subcommittee formed.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration had secured intelligence that described Canada's plan to annex Alaska and rename it the Pacific Territory. This memo became the main talking point for Bush administration officials, who cited it as justification for both the incursion and for further action against the Canadian government. The memo was later identified as an e-mail sent from an employee of the water department in Edmonton to his cousin describing his suggestion for securing prime game-fishing locations. When asked about the leaked memo from the his own staff describing plans to capture and hold the newly prosperous Canadian oil fields, Mr. Bush would only reply only that even asking such a question was a treasonous act of support for our enemies.

It was in the Spring of '08 that the situation turned from bad to worse. In order to maintain workable troop levels on the Iraq and Canadian fronts, the US was forced to pull out of Afghanistan, and there was talk of reinstituting the draft. While US forces were otherwise engaged, President Putin sent Russian troops into Afghanistan, claiming that it was Russian territory that had been unlawfully seized decades earlier. That seemed to open the door to incursions across the globe. North Korea invaded South Korea. Syria and Israel both tried to invade one another. China invaded Vietnam and Myanmar, but met unexpectedly heavy resistance from Thai and Laotian forces assisting their neighbors.

Finally, Mexico mobilized its forces and claimed the State of Texas as its own. Faced with war at home on two fronts, US troops were hastily removed from Iraq only to be replaced by Iranian and Turkish forces fighting over the Kirkuk oil fields. Cuba even tried to capture Florida, but mostly due to mobilization of Floridians of Cuban descent, were unsuccessful. India and Pakistan looked at the escalating world conflict, then went back to fighting between themselves. Pakistan was the first to use nuclear force, but certainly not the last.

Once the atomic ice was broken, the conflict didn't last long. Once the population of the Earth had been decimated and infrastructure destroyed, those left alive seemed to lose their desire to fight. The enclaves keep communication channels open, and there's some trade, but by and large anyone left is too busy trying to survive to worry much about their neighbors. There are large uninhabitable buffer zones between settlements anyway, and perhaps this is the ultimate proof that good fences make good neighbors.

It is only by the caprice of fate that Buddy Fergeson survived the obliteration of much of North America. He had been secretly transferred to a US detention facility in Eastern Europe in the early stages of the war, and when located he was brought here to Reykjavik, the new cultural center and one of the few habitable areas left in the North Atlantic. He had not had access to news sources in prison, and it took some time to convince him of the reality and gravity of the world's current state. Scholars of history, psychiatry, and the military interviewed Fergeson trying to unravel how exactly the events had gotten started and escalated the way they had. Fergeson was cooperative but unhelpful, and it is feared that we may never have the answers we seek.

In his first and only public press conference after being located alive, Fergeson's closing remarks and summary of the war was that it was "bar none, the worst bender I was ever on."

I'm sure you've all heard about this, since CNN and the national news have been running it as much as the local news around here has. I'm still kind of stunned, because this just isn't the kind of thing that happens close to home. It's always... somewhere else that stuff like this happens. But I suppose everybody feels like that, until something does happen in their neighborhood. Remarkably, the casuality rate seems to be quite low, considering. Many were injured and many are still missing, but I can only imagine what had happened if the bridge hadn't dropped the way it did.

For those that don't know the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the two are close enough together that they're basically a single city with 2 downtowns and 2 local governments. Add in a number of suburb towns that have grown into cities themselves, and you get a big, diffuse metro area. As I-35 comes North out of Iowa and approaches the Twin Cities, it splits into two parallel branches: 35E that runs though Saint Paul (the capital city and the one further East--also the one I live in) and 35W, which runs through Minneapolis (the bigger, more Westerly city), then the branches come back together on the North side of the Metro area. I-94 does something similar going East-West; 94 continues straight through both downtowns, while 494 branches to the South and 694 to the North, all meeting up again on the other side.

All these major freeways (and of course a bunch of smaller ones) form a kind of grid which should theoretically make getting around the Metro area pretty efficient, and the last time the roads were up-to-date (which I'd guess was somewhere around the mid-60's) it might have been. Now, though, its pitifully inadequate. Mass transit in MN is a joke (although not a funny one), so we have a lot of commuters in a lot of cars packed onto our roads. The one that has always seemed to get the highest load is 35W.

There are some complications beyond Governor Pawlenty's inability to lead his way out of a paper bag that our roads suck, though. The Mississippi flows right through the Twin Cities (as does the Minnesota before it joins the Mississippi), and both have deep river valleys around them. That means that pretty much anywhere you're going in the Twin Cities, you're probably going to have to cross a river. Especially if you're going to the University of Minnesota, which sits inside MPLS like Vatican City sits inside Rome. The campus itself straddles the river, with most of the buildings on the East bank and the West bank campus quite close to downtown. 35W cosses the river very near the U of M, and because of the layout of the area, is probably at just about its highest volume at that point.

This, of course, is where the collapse happened. I've seen the video of it falling coutless times on TV, but I still find myself gape-mouthed when I see it. I'm used to the sense of unreality that comes with watching a disaster on TV, but to have that feeling about a place you know--have driven over more times than you can count, simply because you never thought anything OF driving over it, is a whole different situation. Nobody I know seems to have been involved in the collapse--the closest I've found is that a co-worker of mine used to work with someone who died in the fall--but they easily could have been. Anybody I know could have been driving that stretch for a thousand different reasons. I was out near the U just a day before the collapse, watching a friend play a set to support his new CD, and probably half the audience had come over 35W.

As I said, it all could have been much worse. The section of bridge that fell into the river seems to have gone down mostly upright and in one piece. Many of the cars that were on the bridge when it fell are still on it, just 65ft lower than they were. If the bridge had crumbled as it fell, or tipped sideways or upside-down, I'm sure there would be considerably less survivors. How would it have felt, though, to just have the road drop out from underneath you like that? I keep trying to imagine it (especially as I drive over the river on my commute), but come up short.

Anyway, I'm OK, and as far as I know all my family and friends are, as well. I hope you'll all join me in wishing well for the survivors of the accident as well as for the families of those who did not survive or are still missing. This is something that will be with all of us who live in the Twin Cities for a very long time.

You know that guy that you can't stand, but everybody else seems to like? You know the one...he's everywhere you go, with people flocking around him as if he were the only light bulb in a room full of moths. But you just can't see the appeal, and the fact that everyone else raves about the guy just makes you disdain him even more. I know that feeling... that's how I felt until recently about one of my absolute best friends: coffee. I honestly didn't understand coffee for the longest time. Its bitter and it stains your teeth. I didn't see the attraction at all.

Then, a few years ago, I gave up soda. I was downing a quantity of Code Red each day that was most efficiently expressed in liters instead of fluid ounces just to get through the day, and it had to stop. I struggled for a while, then, realizing that I needed some kind of caffeine intake to be able to function, I turned to coffee. It was sheer desperation--I figured I could choke down a bit of coffee in the morning to get started, then switch to my drink of choice, water, to carry me through the day.

The thing is, that morning cup turned into a large travel mug and started tagging along to work with me. Soon the mug invited its friend Thermos along, and my morning kickstart became an all-day habit. Now I'm at the point where I feel the need to cut back on coffee, and that isn't easy. Much harder than going cold-turkey on soda, actually, and it's because I finally GET coffee, understand why people treat it like their best and sometimes only friend.

From the time I begin my average day (5am. yuck.), it seems like everything in the world is trying to beat me down. Gravity, fatigue, the endless pile of work waiting for me, the senseless viciousness of other commuters, all of it feels designed to crush me. The ONE thing that's on my side is my friend coffee. While everything else is trying to beat me down, coffee is trying to prop me up, give me strength. That's why I've unintentioanlly joined the legions of those that sit each morning grimacing against unwelcome consciousness, coffee mug clutched under my nose, close to my heart. Coffee is selfless--it gives and gives until its gone. It gives you warmth, it gives off a pleasant, calming aroma, and each sip gives you strength. It'll even give you the trots sometimes, but hey... nobody's perfect, right?

I don't want to be the overly needy friend that sets eyes to rolling, though, so I'm going to try to cut down on my intake. I'm going through a pot a day now, and riding a roller-coaster of energy--jittery ups followed by crashing downs throughout the day. I need to go back to a cup to get me going in the morning and one to keep me from falling into a digestion-fuelled nap after lunch. That means that I'll have to give up my midmorning, pre-lunch, mid-afternoon, and drive-home helpings, but it's for the best. But now that I get it, I don't think I could ever give coffee up completely. That's just no way to treat a friend.

Oh, and that guy that everybody likes except you... yeah, it turns out they might be onto something after all.

Worthwhile Reviews: Dead Rising | X360 | $34.99 | New

Dead Rising was one of the main reasons I wanted a 360, and one of the first games I played when I got one. The premise of the game is that you're trapped in a mall during a zombie outbreak, with only whatever you find laying around to defend yourself, save other humans, and figure out why the dead have risen.

Right off the bat, the game does some strange things. The save system in particular feels like a mistake at first, since you only have one save slot. This means that if you save when you haven't left enough time to accomplish a task, there's no way to go to a previous save point and redo it. As you get used to it, though, the save system stops being an issue. You'll come to understand that you were never meant to do everything your first run through, that you're supposed to play multiple times, after which the save system becomes a nonissue. If you die, you have the option of restarting from the last save point or saving Frank's (your in-game avatar) experience and upgrades and starting over.

You should absolutely not be afraid to start over. The 72 (game) hours of the main mode go quickly, and each time you learn the mall and the missions better, as well as powering your character up. If you've seen the movie Groundhog Day, imagine that Bill Murray spent his time learning barehand combat instead of piano and poetry and that Punxatawny was teeming with zombies. That'll give you a better idea of how Dead Rising works. Frank is pretty slow and feeble at first, but as you explore the mall and start saving survivors, facing psychopaths (ordinary folks who just aren't reacting to the whole zombie scurge very well emotionally), and (re)killing the walking dead Frank will start to unleash his inner badass. As you level up, you'll be able to hold more items, take more damage, move faster, and you'll learn a variety of combat techniques.

Although you will sometimes stumble upon survivors to lead back to safety on your own, most of the missions in the game come via your walkie-talkie from a mall employee named Otis who watches the security monitors and keeps you informed of items of interest. By the end of the game, you will hate Otis with such a burning passion that you'll curse the inability to use any attack while in the Security Room, your home base of sorts in the mall. The problem is that Otis calls you regardless of how busy you are (you can be buried under 20 zombies and trying not to get eaten for all he cares), then demands that you read his entire message (and... he... talks... slow) before the mission is actually active. Oh yeah, you can't use any items or weapons while listening to Otis, either.

Along with the many optional missions (or "scoops") you have available, there's also the main storyline cases. If you miss even a single one of these, you won't be able to progress any further in the main story that playthough. That doesn't mean the game is over, though--you've still got the remainder of the 72 hours and lots of non-story missions to work on, as well as exploration. I actually think Capcom should have blocked the main cases completely until you reach a certain level, because too many people feel like they should be pursuing them right away. Once you've got a handle on the mall layout and mechanics of the game (and have levelled Frank up a bit), completing the main cases isn't too difficult, and doing so is necessary to get the true ending and unlock Overtime Mode.

The fun in Dead Rising really lies in the freedom it offers. You can pick up nearly anything in the mall to use as a weapon, and at any point you can turn your back on the scoops and just roam however you like. Often you'll pick a focus before starting a game, which actually offers more role-playing than your typical RPG. My first time through, I tried to react to everything as if I were really in the situation, concentrating on rescuing survivors. The next time, I played to survive, and shot any survivors that I didn't think could help me... you know, to avoid letting them become zombies. The next time, I played looking for answers and let survivors fend for themselves while I pursued the main sotryline. Eventually you get to know the game well enough that you can accomplish nearly everything in one playthrough if you care to.

The controls are good--much better than a Resident Evil game, and although Frank learns a decent repitoire of moves, they're all pretty easy to pull off quickly. You may sometimes accidentally suplex a zombie rather than hammer-throwing them, but its unlikely to cause you a problem. The graphics are pretty sharp for an early 360 game, especially with all the zombies that can be on-screen at once. There's relatively little music in the game--mostly during boss fights--but there's a constant stream of quiet muzak going in the background that is just as maddening as what you'd find in a real mall.

I do wish that there was some kind of online play, because tag-teaming it through a mall full of zombies would be an absolute blast, but I'm sure that'll find its way into the sequel, at least. I also would have liked to see a suspend option in Infinity (survival) Mode--obviously being able to save would defeat the purpose of it, but who has the time to play for 10 hours straight? They could have allowed us to suspend the game (returning to it erases the suspend file) without harming the difficulty. And Otis has got to go.

Was it worth it? Yes! Although $35 is a pretty high price for me to pay for a game (I tend to wait for the golden $20 price point), I more than got my money's worth in fun out of this game. The replayability is vast and the possibilites nearly limitless. My favorite 360 game so far.

Hello, everybody. I started writing this during GameSpot's total functionality failure that is commonly referred to as E3. Several of these, though, are issues that have bothered me for some time, so I decided to finally write them down while simultaneously (playfully) mocking GameSpot's great journalistic blunder, The Tipping Point.

Sitting there in front of the "Everything is down for maintenance. Please come back later" screen, I ran out of vitriol pretty quickly (hence only 7 items), but I do find the idea of renewing my Total Access membership in doubt. It's not that I don't like GameSpot, its that I don't like paying for something and then not getting it. If I'm supposed to get HD-quality streams and downloads of E3, I don't think its too much to ask that they actually WORK. I shouldn't have to go to other sites to get the info I pay GameSpot for, just because GameSpot's site is incapable of handling higher than expected volume. Not to mention that while I was unable to watch E3 coverage I was also unable to browse forums or journals, because the inability to handle E3 coverage spilled over into inability to keep other portions of the site up.

Right when I was most counting on GameSpot as an information channel, it completely failed me. If something is only there when you don't need it, it just doesn't seem worth paying for. If I knew my money would go into making the site more reliable, it would be another thing, but I've been subscibing for a couple years now, and its not getting any better. I just don't expect this degree of instability from a professionally run site--much less one that I subsidize.

So here we go:

1) Have pages reliably load in under one minute on a broadband connection. Right now, when you click a link, you never know what you're going to get. It could be 2 seconds for the page to load. It could be 25 minutes. It would be nice if you knew what kind of time commitment you were entering into before clicking.

2) If the site is barely able to handle regular traffic, don't try to add live streaming of E3 press conferences. When you do, the forums go down, journals go down, and the streams don't work anyway.

3) Consider fixing some of the massive, massive problems with the site before deciding to do cosmetic redesigns.

4) Avoid ill-conceived features. Comparing the visuals of games designed for the 360 with PS3 ports of games designed for the 360 is just silly. I know that the argument goes that comparing games designed for the 360 to games designed for the PS3 is like comparing apples to oranges, but is that really any worse than comparing apples to other apples that have been frozen, dehydrated, shipped, stored, rehydrated, and plastinated?

5) Take pity on those suffering epilipsy. One of those cosmetic changes made instead of making the site actually... you know, WORK was making the avatars absolutely massive. If a change like that is made, I expect to see an option in my preferences to disable avatars completely. I come to GameSpot for news and discussion regarding video games, not to see the same blinking, flashing, animated pictures stacked on top of each other. I shouldn't have to turn all images off just to prevent seizures from annoying avatars.

6) Figure out a way to allow the words "c|ass" and "sty|e" without danger to users. Its simply ridiculous that these words are STILL not working on the site. Stop working on nonessential updates and FIX IT!

7)Join us in the new millenium, where people vaguely remember 800x600 like they remember 640x480. If you feel you just can't do that to the four people still using 800x600, at least offer an OPTION for a higher resolution. Or better yet, ditch the fixed-width format altogether.

Oh yeah... I just picked up a PS3. I've been waiting for the day Sony would force my hand by removing the Emotion Engine hardware from the US models, leaving backwards compability up inferior software emulation. While the 60gb PS3 hasn't been discontinued or anything yet, the new 80gb model Sony has announced is very obviously the beginning of the end for hardware BC. Since this week Circuit City is offering an additional free sixaxis with the purchase of a PS3 and there's a 5-free-movie promo, I decided that now was the time to jump in. I figure the 60gb model won't be getting any cheaper before the EE is stripped from all PS3's, so I might as well get the extra freebies.

Of course, I didn't go to Circuit City. While I could care less about Microsoft's Gamerscore concept, I am a "point-whore" in a different sense--for Best Buy Reward Zone points. This is because I've gotten a lot of Reward Certificates (basically gift certificates) for stuff I would have bought at that price anyway. So I got Best Buy to match CC's deal, picked up a memory card adapter and the Best Buy service plan to the tune of $607.32--after a $20 Reward Certificate.

Wait... something's missing, isn't it? That's right, I didn't buy any games. That's not because I don't think there's anything good out for the PS3, but because I haven't made up my mind yet about what to get yet. Usually, by the time I pick up a console there's a good crop of older, bargain-priced games for it. Even when I picked up the 360 considerably ahead of my usual schedule, I was able to find quite a few bargains. The PS3 just hasn't been out that long yet, so there aren't as many deals to grab. I thought about VF5, but I want to see how well the 360 version's online works before I decide which version to get. Until I decide, I'm hoping to just borrow games off of friends (you know who you are) and enjoy the upscaling of PS2 games I'd be playing anyway.

My first impression on taking the system out of the box: holy hell is this thing heavy! Consult your structural engineer before purchasing; you may need to add some flying butresses to your media center to hold this thing. It's convenient that Sony didn't change their A/V connector; I was able to just swap my PS2's component cable to the PS3 for easy setup. It also stuck out to me that the PS3 uses a standard PC power cable and standard USB connectors on its controllers, while MS uses propriatary connectors in both instances. Sony seems to have finally learned their lesson about all that proprietary nonsense... now if MS would just catch on. The controller feels good, like its Dual Shock ancestors, but I'm not yet used to how light it is or the action on the triggers. Navigating the XMB felt less annoying than the XBL blades, but that might just be because of the functional d-pad on the sixaxis. I like the lack of in-your-face advertising on the XMB, too.

Sony still has some catching up to do in the online services depatment, though. I tried to set up my profile online to save doing it with the PS3's onscreen keyboard, but it appears you can only sign up from your console. Even after I did that, I couldn't manage my account online, which frankly sucks after using xbox.com. At least the smaller userbase of PSN at the moment meant that Shifty_Pete was available, so I didn't have to start reaching for a username.

Now... time to play some games on it!

Once upon a time, there were three plumbers in a little town called Gamersville. They all had the same plan... provide the Gamevillians with water and make a living doing it. However, the three plumbers disagreed sharply on exactly what was the best way to go about realizing that dream. So they set up their own shops and began to compete with each other, each trying to prove that their way was the better way to go.

The first plumber, Ned, had a lot of experience in the business. He was sure that he knew what people wanted from their plumbing better than anyone else. He told his customers that all that fancy whirlpool bath and steam-shower stuff was too complicated, and that they needed simple solutions offered in new, exciting ways. A lot of people liked his thinking, and he began to do very well.

The second plumber, Mic, had been eager to be the first of the three to open his doors. He managed to get his operation up and running much sooner than the other two, and indeed he grabbed a good share of the market early. He liked to crow about how many customers he had, in fact, and what nice fixtures he put in for people. The thing is, his work wasn't always reliable. Mic ignored that, though, and just talked about how many customers he had... regardless of how many of them were very happy with his work.

The third plumber was Tony, and he liked the fancy fixtures and such as much as Mic, if not more. Tony had had quality concerns before, though, and it had taught him. He decided that he was going to go all-out. He was the most expensive of the three, but he knew that when he did a job, he'd done it right. The thing is, a lot of people weren't happy with his prices, and began to badmouth his business.

Meanwhile, Ned was installing systems of buckets all fed from a well. It was cheap--he didn't charge the customers much and still made a profit--and it was a novelty to have all your plumbing carried by buckets, ropes, and pulleys. It was novel enough that it cought on, and it became fashionable. Mic scoffed at the buckets, sticking to more traditional pipes and valves. In order to maximize profit, though, he used low-grade pipes and considered a few steady drips to be acceptable. The fixtures were very nice... when they worked. Too often, a pipe would burst and the customer would be without running water for days. Tony, meanwhile, began to see cobwebs growing on his toolbox, since he wasn't geting much business.

Finally, Mic was forced to admit that his plumbing had been substandard, and began to fix it for free, at least. Tony was already offering the steepest markdowns on the fixtures he used, but decided that he'd take an even greater hit in order to build a customer base, and lowered his prices. He was still slightly more expensive than Mic, but didn't have the rampant quality problems Mic did, either. He thought that being the only plumber doing traditional plumbing and offering solid reliability would finally get things moving for him.

But one day Tony was talking to a Gamevillian on the street named (for reasons I shan't get into here) John Q. Public, and happened to bring up the subject of plumbing. He was shocked when John told him that he refused to go to Tony's shop, and wanted Tony to go out of business--all because his prices were higher than Mic's or Ned's.

"But Ned doesn't do anything like what I do, and Mic's quality is suspect!"

"I don't care," said John. "Your inital high prices were an insult to me."

"That's not what I intended at all! I provided the best quality I could at the lowest price. If you look at how much a job costs me and how much I charge customers, you'll see that I'm actually giving you a better deal than the other guys."

"I don't care--the price was too high. Mic offered me a lower price."

"But didn't your basement flood? Didn't you end up taking baths in the pond for a few weeks?" Tony asked.

"But the price was better."

"Does that really matter if it doesn't work?"

"I don't understand the question."

____________________________

I think you all see the moral of this story... people are stupid.

Study questions:

If John has had unsatisfactory dealings with Mic, why is his anger directed at Tony, with whom he has had no business?

When it became evident that there was a good reason for Tony to charge more than Mic (better quality control), why would John still consider Tony's prices "an insult"?

If John thought Tony's prices were too high, why would Tony lowering those prices to just above Mic's (without a dip in quality control) still leave John angry with Tony?

How would Tony going out of business and providing a less competitive marketplace help John in the slightest?

Given John's hostility towards someone with whom he has had no business, is it safe to assume that he was dropped on his head as an infant?

Worthwhile Reviews: Bully | PS2 | $24.99 | New

I approached this game with some trepidation, since my opinion of Rockstar games isn't that high. Its not at all because of the controversial content, but because Rockstar games tend to control like complete crap. I liked GTA3, played it though despite the horrible, horrible controls and the uninspired missions. I tried Vice City, but it played just as bad as GTA3 with even worse missions, and I stopped halfway through. I only tried San Andreas for a few minutes, but found it to be much the same. A friend I trust told me not even to bother trying The Warriors, since there was zero hit-indication (something absolutely vital to a good beat-em-up). Still, I was intrigued by the premise of Bully, and I heard that this was a new R* studio, so I was hoping they'd have a clue how to design an interface.

The first thing that happened when I put the game in was a series of still pictures that lasted long enough that I wondered if this was the intro, and if I was supposed to be hearing narration during them. It turns out that its just the game loading into memory, though, so don't worry if your console doesn't seem to be doing anything for 10 minutes. When the game did start, I have to admit that I very nearly turned it off right there.

I'm not what I'd call a graphics whore... I mean, sure, I like a pretty game, but I'll play some pretty rough-looking stuff if there's fun to be had. Bully, though, is a game that simply shouldn't have been made on the PS2. If you take into account the power of the PS2, Bully is an amazing and ambitious game, but too many compromises were made in shoehorning it onto the platform. The graphics sty|e is actually rather good in my opinion, but the PS2 hardware forced poor draw distance, lack of detail, and a simply abysmal framerate. Any time you move quickly, from running to riding a bike, the game turns into a slideshow. This can be a real irritation when you're expected to win a bike race and the camera has difficulty keeping up with you.

Still, I forced down the revulsion I felt at first (and some nausea from the choppiness) and got into the game itself. The world of Bully is actually quite well-rendered, with a great sense of atmosphere and archetypal characters anyone who's been to high school can recognize. Solid voice acting and an appropriate original score help immerse you in the gameworld, even while the graphics try to take you out of it.

Roaming the campus and nearby town, you'll see your schoolmates pass by. Sometimes this is a little odd, since you may have passed the same person 15 seconds ago, but generally it keeps the environment dynamic. AI characters not only interact with your avatar, Billy, but with each other. You'll often see skirmishes between cliques, whether it be a bully shoving a nerd into a trash can or the greasers and preps skirmishing. You can choose to watch it happen or get involved (or just ignore it), but the world around you seems more dynamic because of these interactions. Be careful if you choose to intervene, though... you may see someone hassling a girl you're friendly with, go up to show him the error of his ways and end up accidentally bumping her, which isn't what you intended and brings the Prefects down on you. The controls aren't as bad as I've come to expect from R* games, but they're not great either.

There's a lot to do in Bully, from attending c|asses to breaking into the local nuthouse. You'll start off spending most of your time around the school, exploring more areas of the town as they become available. The school year progresses, too. Fall gives way to Winter and the students start wearing sweaters and earmuffs while snow dusts the ground. On Halloween everyone puts on a costume and looks for mischief. By the end of the school year you'll be spending a lot of time in town, mostly checking back at school for missions. The missions themselves aren't exactly riveting, but I found them to be better constructed and more game-appropriate than anything from the GTA series so far. Plus its always fun humiliating the jocks and the preps

What I found strangest about Bully, I think, given R*'s general push-the-limits attitude, was the innocence of the game. Sure, the kids are jerks and will beat down anyone in the wrong clique, but the most vicious weapon in the game is a potato-cannon. With the metal detectors and armed guards at the door of modern schools, a game where a nasty beating topped with a swirly are the worst you can expect is kind of refreshing. It reminded me of my own school days, where flak jackets weren't on the back-to-school list.

Because of how well Bully captured the atmosphere they were going for and how strangely innocent it was, I thought to myself repeatedly while playing that a game using the Bully engine should be made about Hogwarts. If they could capture the Harry Potter feel and allow people to roam around the school, grounds, and town, I'd buy it in a flat second. But, uh... make it on the 360 or the PS3, huh?

Was it worth it? Yeah, I got $25 of enjoyment out of it. It would have been a slam-dunk for value if the visuals weren't so craptacular, but even as is its worth playing if you don't have motion-sickness issues.

Worthwhile Reviews: Call of Duty 2 | X360 | ~$13.33 | Used

Everybody is sick of World War II FPS's! Except me, that is, because this is the first one I've played. I just never got around to trying all the others that everybody else got sick of. I'm not a WWII buff or anything, but obviously it was a world-changing time, and has much to think about.

That's actually what I think is the greatest strength of the game--immersing the player in a situation we were all too young to have experienced, but that was a central part of life for an entire generation. Confusion, danger, and chaos crash down on you like tidal waves at times, making the experience pretty involving. Imagine how bad it was in the real situation, where getting shot five or six times was more likely to make you a statistic than to just get your attention. Of course playing realistically would suck, since at any time you might get sniped or ambushed, or a lucky shot could find you and the game would be over.

The single-player campaign of COD2 (I didn't test multiplayer since I'm very late to the title) puts you in the boots of soldiers on various fronts. You'll fight block-by-block through the sniper-riddled streets of Stalingrad, push Rommel's forces back in North Africa, and storm German fortifications in France. This hopping around gives a sense of how wide the conflict spread in WWII, but also keeps you from ever feeling entirely comfortable in your character. Half the time my superiors were shouting orders at me by name I wasn't paying attention because I thought they were talking to someone else.

Even when I was paying attention, though, I have to admit to some confusion regarding what exactly I was supposed to be doing. That may due to the humidity in my area soaring recently and my house's lack of central air conditioning, though, which has led to some trouble... whatsit... concentrating. Regardless, I felt unclear sometimes. Most of the time, I could resolve that by just heading towards the biggest group of allies on the radar, but sometimes I found myself repeatedly failing a mission while I ran around blindly and wondering what I was supposed to do.

The weapons are all era-appropriate, which for me meant not much fun. The limited ammo capacity and accuracy were factors that the soldiers had to deal with back then, and they're recreated here. Few weapons have any form of scope, just iron sights that you can look down and try to line up. Coming directly from Perfect Dark Zero where many weapons have a scope function made for a tough transition to COD2. The most interesting addition to your arsenal is the smoke grenade, which does no damage but obscures the sights of snipers, machine-gun nests and other hazards--and your own sights, if you're not careful.

The sense of chaos is very well-done in COD2, whether its crouching in a trench, trying to take out the Gerries still holed up in it while shells hit the ground nearby or running through the smoke towards a machine-gun nest, danger and confusion are all around you. Speaking of crouching, you'll do a lot of that--one of the main mechanics of the game is your stance. You move fastest standing, but you won't move very far if you let yourself get shot, so you'll often find yourself crouching behind low walls or lying prone and belly-crawling to the top of a rise. There's always more German troops in each wave or emplacement than you thought there could be, but never quite too many, keeping tension just under the breaking point.

Was it worth it? Yes, although for me only barely. The game is obviously well-designed and polished, but it's not really my thing. I got $14 of enjoyment out of it, but it was more the wide-eyed, "holy crap!" enjoyment of trying to survive than what I'd call fun. I very much doubt that I'll ever play it again now that I've finished it, but I'm glad I played it once. I could have gotten just as much out of it with a rental, but its cheap enough that I paid less than $1/hour of entertainment, which seems like a decent deal to me.

Last night I was playing Tomb Raider Anniversary, the remake of one of my favorite PS1 games. So far I've been digging it; its different enough to feel fresh, but I'm constantly finding areas familiar enough from the original game to think "oh yeah... I remember this," which is pretty cool. The original game was simpler--Lara had far less abilities back then, but I think there's a place for both takes on the game. Like Virtua Fighter 1 and 5--the series has come a long way, but the original had a nice simplicity that still holds up.

Because I love the original TR, while playing Anniversary I had to ask myself why the original wasn't included. The pole-swinging, grapple-throwing new gameplay is cool, but what if you want to kick it old school? I have the original game, so I can go back and play it, but how much easier would it have been to just pick it out of the menu on TRA? What about the Wii and 360 versions... what will people who don't neccesarily have the hardware to play a PS1 game do? When honoring a game like this, it just seems logical to me to include the original as a baseline... after all, that's what people loved enough to have a remake of it done.

This same thought occurred to me while trying the trial of Pac-Man: CE. It seemed like a good remix of the Pac-Man formula--something that's not easy to do. However, for $10, I'd really expect to get the original arcade Pac-Man in the bargain. I'd actually say Ms. Pac-Man should be there, too, with Jr, Super, and Baby Pac-Man optional. If I'd gotten the original and Ms. with CE, I'd have bought it. As it is, it feels like a rip-off.

Look at the Dracula X Chronicles coming for PSP, for instance. It's a 2.5D remake, but you can unlock the original 2D sprite mode. And you get SotN, which is just gravy. You see, Konami got it for this game. They saw that they should honor the original by including it with the update, let everyone experience the original as well as the update.

It just makes sense to me.