Penny Arcade

Precious Broadband, you are a proper noun.  How I have missed you.

First they said the Xbox was failing, now it’s Nintendo, after that it will be the Xbox again, and then after that maybe more Nintendo.  It’s just what analysts do, they analyze things and make charts.  Since the N64, I’ve thought of Nintendo’s home consoles the same way I think of Pocket Rockers.  Do you remember those?  I’m not trying to say they are for girls.  They’re both proprietary formats that exist for little other reason than to be proprietary.  I’ll never begrudge Nintendo the right to make their little vanity devices, so long as their first party games continue to exhibit that Must Play perfectionism.

Just before we moved I was a ten-round-a-day Road to Rome man, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m looking forward to getting back in.  God damn.  The daring raids, the lucky shots.  I even enjoy the old maps more now, and the expansion doesn’t do shit to those.  I’d heard that the single player was actually pretty fun, and that is a fucking lie, unless a lobster falls out of the special seafood freezer you keep above your monitor and hits the “single player” button you have no excuse being in there.  Then again, offline may be the only time you can actually get to an airplane.  We’re sort of waiting on Gabe’s new machine at the moment - I told him I would build him one, but he seems to like those guys - and he’s going to get this game on there even if I have to buy it for him, install it myself, sit him down in the chair, and wag a stern finger at the screen.  Maybe he can take a break from getting his ass kicked in online fighters, and come get his ass kicked with us in another game. 

Though I’d never publicly lamented it, I am sort of sad that the planned console version of Battlefield 1942 was cancelled.  It’s an excellent PC game, one of the best I can recall, but I believe it could really make its mark in that context.  Throw in a little built-in voice, a little real-time lip syncing, it would be like Team Fortress 2, if Team Fortress 2 were not wholly mythological!       

I’m going to turn up the dork for a moment.

It was agony to me, but the place I used to live had no storage to speak of and many of my prized obsessions had to remain at my grandparents’ house.  I have them all back now:  virtually every world and boxed set from TSR’s Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons Heyday, a king’s library of geek literature.  You may be wondering if I have every Goddamn thing ever produced for the Planescape campaign setting, including a few books of rather middling fiction.  Oh, you may be assured that I do, sir!

(CW)TB out.

is daddy still a good man

We’re going to start sending it out today.

If you paid via Paypal, no worries - we’ve got your e-mail and everything is fine.  If you paid through Amazon, they didn’t send us your information, as usual.  Please send a mail to ClubPA@penny-arcade.com, and I’ll reply with your goods.

We’re tired of not being able to give you what you need without all this rigamaroll from Amazon, so this is the last month that method will be available.  I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient, but they’re making money off of it over there and we’re not going to reward their incompetence even one more day.

(CW)TB

I mentioned about a month ago that we got a kitty. Well we brought her back from the vet the other day and discovered that now we had a kitty and some fleas. I don’t know if the vet charged us extra for the fleas as I didn’t scrutinize the bill as well as I probably should have. Perhaps it was just flea day at the vet and we happened to be the thousandth customer. At any rate Kara and I decided that, while we liked the cat the fleas had to go. Kara ran to the store and bought a flea collar, flea comb and some special shampoo. Yeah shampoo, those of you with cats can already see where this story is heading.

I have never tried to give a cat a bath before so I sat down and read the instructions on the shampoo bottle. “Wet cat” it said, then “work shampoo into a lustrous lather” and rinse. What the bottle didn’t say is that as soon as your cat gets the first tiny droplet of water on its paw the situation changes dramatically. No longer are you trying to give your cherished pet a bath to rid it of the fleas that are driving it crazy. No, now you are trying to wash an angry, furry chipper shredder that is howling like an air raid siren.

Everyone knows that cats don’t like water. You can ask any five year old, “what do cats not like?” and they will tell you water.  To say that cats do not like water though isn’t really accurate. For instance I do not like peas. However if Kara were to serve me peas I would not grab a kitchen knife and begin slashing wildly at the exposed parts of her body while scrambling for the nearest exit and screaming at the top of my lungs.

We finally got the cat washed and then began the process of combing her with the flea comb. After we could run the comb through her without picking up any of the little bastards we attached the flea collar and called it good. We vacuumed the hell out of the apartment and washed all the sheets and stuff. I still feel crawly things all over me though which is unsettling. I hope it’s all in my head. Does anyone have any tips for making sure your apartment is flea free? I would love to hear them.

-Gabe out

I mentioned about a month ago that we got a kitty. Well we brought her back from the vet the other day and discovered that now we had a kitty and some fleas. I don’t know if the vet charged us extra for the fleas as I didn’t scrutinize the bill as well as I probably should have. Perhaps it was just flea day at the vet and we happened to be the thousandth customer. At any rate Kara and I decided that, while we liked the cat the fleas had to go. Kara ran to the store and bought a flea collar, flea comb and some special shampoo. Yeah shampoo, those of you with cats can already see where this story is heading.

I have never tried to give a cat a bath before so I sat down and read the instructions on the shampoo bottle. “Wet cat” it said, then “work shampoo into a lustrous lather” and rinse. What the bottle didn’t say is that as soon as your cat gets the first tiny droplet of water on its paw the situation changes dramatically. No longer are you trying to give your cherished pet a bath to rid it of the fleas that are driving it crazy. No, now you are trying to wash an angry, furry chipper shredder that is howling like an air raid siren.

Everyone knows that cats don’t like water. You can ask any five year old, “what do cats not like?” and they will tell you water.  To say that cats do not like water though isn’t really accurate. For instance I do not like peas. However if Kara were to serve me peas I would not grab a kitchen knife and begin slashing wildly at the exposed parts of her body while scrambling for the nearest exit and screaming at the top of my lungs.

We finally got the cat washed and then began the process of combing her with the flea comb. After we could run the comb through her without picking up any of the little bastards we attached the flea collar and called it good. We vacuumed the hell out of the apartment and washed all the sheets and stuff. I still feel crawly things all over me though which is unsettling. I hope it’s all in my head. Does anyone have any tips for making sure your apartment is flea free? I would love to hear them.

-Gabe out