Today was a momentous day for me: after three days of playing MW2 online (I know, I know. I was a bit late starting) I got my very first angry, homophobic Personal Message from a 12-year-old. The best things in life are free and if you can't do free £35 ought to do it. Now I personally love getting these little hate-filled, usually aggressive/homophobic/anti-Semitic/badly spelt/poorly grammared notes from pre-pubescent boys who are playing way past their bed-time, now there is only one thing finer than the initial buzz from the pwn and subsequent notice of annoyance (and I can now say this as an adult gamer - as I am sat her sipping some fine 8 year-old Port & listening to The Real Tuesday Weld in all my sophistication) are the following ones, if there were an amusing-yet-accurate way to game both the age and rage of a player it is the Personal Messages sent via consoles.

This raises the issue of whether it is right to bait no0bs, and if so how must it be undertaken. Personally I enjoy all forms of this young yet noble sport and encourage its growth, however, as with trolls, there is the opposition claiming that by replying you are filling their sad little lives with a wee bit of glee and encouragement. So I present to you my table of noob baiting:

--------Option ----Consequences

• Ignore----Noob may grow up, but most likely will keep barraging you with insults every time you kill them/they-you
• Reply Once----Noob will reply, then get tired waiting for a reply, may try again or may give up
• Reply then block----Who cares? You won't see owt
• Reply to all----Noob will get bored/upset and will leave you alone/add to block list (makes you little better than noob)
• Get friends to bully----This one takes dedication but can be worth it/land you in jail on harassment charges

I hope my little contribution will help you to make the right choice. And remember: always correctly punctuate your replies!

I apologise for the poor formatting, its the best I could do with the "WYSIWYG" editor

Many people, if many people ever read this entry, will begin to froth at the mouth at the above statement, shouting whatever fan-boy or casual player slogans they can at me; all is in vain though, since I have loathed my PSP-1000 for well over 4 years now and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

I was stupid, friendless and naive when I purchased a Japanese import PSP-1000 for NZ$700 (I think, I have blacked out as much of my memory as I can from then), all well and good, I believed, and quite happily played a US imported Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition - mediocre at best - for a couple of months. By this time the PSP had become available in Australasia (PSP-1004) and a trickle of games came to the market. Upon the launch of GTA LCS I was well and truly sick of MC3, so bought it without skipping a beat, hoping for something similar in gameplay, interest and humour of Vice City, or even San Andreas - again I was disappointed - but now the machine seemed to be in need of a regular update "SO?! That's easy! Connect it to the Wi-fi!" I hear you shout at your screens, but no, New Zealand was still in the grips of p*ss poor dial-up, no problem, we had a dedicated line, I'll just connect it to the computer and download. And that's what I did, barely. You see, I was stupidly impatient enough to get a *** import, so to update I had the joyous task of trawling Japanese-language PlayStation site, to find the update which allowed the successful change of background colours with each passing month, well worth it(!!!) The screen on the damn thing is a magnet for scratches, so the aforementioned backgrounds gave the most beautiful rainbow effect on the shallow scratches, making playing anything on it nigh-on impossible, let alone enjoyable! No problem it has a built in MP3 player, but whats the point if it weighs as much as a brick and memory cost NZ$100 for 2GB. However, all is not bad, as the brick did once protect my upper right thigh from getting gravelly and asphalty when I crashed my bike.

And so the above vicious cycle of poor games, Japanese websites, bike crashes and incorrectly configured buttons (in Japan X=O and O=X) confusing, and it always will be, continued for about a year and a half. In which time I must have spent close on £700 (back in the UK now) on games, accessories and the damn console itself, when I decided enough is enough, and wanting to recoup some of my losses I put it on a well known auction site, where it was "bought" twice by Nigerian Mary. So I gave up on it

It is now two years later, and I am currently charging the battery for the first time since e*aying it. And just looking at it I am reminded of the misery that this machine encompasses, for it was a very expensive failed attempt at making friends with the colonials, and has taken it upon itself to dog my every step though life, so do not be amazed if you see during the And Finally section of the news about a boy/man being found hanging by a PSP-100 AC Adapter, don't be surprised, just keep away from the little Black/White/Blue/Pink/Red b*stards and go play a real console