"Grand Theft Auto" -- AUTOMATICALLY better than "Mediocre Theft Auto," and "Fair-To-Middlin' Theft Auto." Also, needless to say, better than "Saint's Row," but that's probably a different post. We'll see.

If you're a gamey sort -- playing games, that is, not smelling gamey -- there's a very good chance you've got your shorts all in a twist waiting for "Grand Theft Auto IV." Same here, incidentally! Two more weeks! I like to pretend my life's too awesome to care about game launches, but, no. GTA is way cooler than most of what I get into. I'm opening a can of soup in my socks, they're driving flaming cars over the heads of unsuspecting pedestrians while Seryoga blasts in the background.

It's chunky soup; that doesn't up my comparative score as much as you'd think.

Are the Irish particularly lucky? I'm only part Irish, and thus unsuitable for observation concerning this particular phenomena. I might be lucky; I've not, at the least, been singled out thus far for smiting, which is definitely a step in the right direction. But is this good fortune attributable to my Irish, Scotch, English or Injun heritage, or is it merely the fact that I am the seventh son of a seventh son, born under the sign of The Lady in the year 1978?

(you may wonder what's lucky about the year 1978. Besides the original "Dawn of the Dead," allow me to toss you this little slice of mathemagical cryptography:

1978 = 1 9 7 8 = (1) 9 7 8 = 9-1 7(1) 8-1 = (1) 8 7 7 = (8-1) 7 7 =

7 7 7

Voila, INFALLIBLE PROOF. Yes, you can do that with any number, but this TAKES FEWER STEPS. Than many. Yes, I know, 1977 had "Star Wars." But look what happened to THAT.)

Regardless of your ethnic background, I hope your St. Patty's Day goes well! Don't drink to excess, don't panic when you vomit green.

Thursday night, in our quiet village. I can't possibly stress enough how glad I am that the workweek is nearly through. You ever have a week that just punches you in the breadbasket, kicks your ankles out from under you, then, when you're flailing on the ground, it sits on your head? You will. Time collects all men, eventually, but that doesn't stop it from trying to kill you fast to save it some trouble down the road.

In other news, I've recently gotten very into the Discworld series! I read the first book, "The Color of Magic" waaaay back in junior high, but apparently it didn't take. Lately, though, since I got a Pocket PC, I've actually found it not at all inconvenient to read ebooks -- and I'm generally an ink-and-paper guy, through and through -- and the Discworld series is one of the few major book series you can currently find in its entirety (in legal form) digitally. The City Watch books are my current favorite, though there's a metric crapload of books in the series of which I've barely scraped an eighth, yet, so there might be something better.

One thing I'll say about the Discworld novels, though -- you read 'em, and you kinda realize that J. K. Rowling isn't half as clever as you were giving her credit for. Just sayin'.

Divine performance art, so far this week in "Sinfest." At least it aint Cirque de Soleil.

See it here!

and here!

Also here!

"Professor Layton and the Curious Village" has me absolutely stunned -- not necessarily because it's a fantastic game... although it sort of IS... but because the game design is so incredibly simple. It doesn't even have the technological sophistication of a twenty-year-old Lucasarts point-and-click adventure game, even though that, ostensibly, is "Professor Layton's" declared genre.

What "Professor Layton" is, at heart, is a book of brainteasers, such as you might have spent two dollars on at your elementary school Book Fair, except smeared over twenty dollars' worth of animation, five dollars' worth of still imagery, and about seventy-five cents' worth of plot.

Oh, and another thirty bucks' worth of old-world charm, so it IS a bargain. And the darned thing works. It possesses no technological innovations that wouldn't operate just as well painted in mammoth blood on a cave wall, but it works just the same, and I have to marvel once again at the Nintendo DS, a gadget so sophisticated that it's finally become able to sell us antiquity in a fashionable manner.

Prints money, indeed.

LACKADAISY

In my old age, I fear my jaw wont be able to take as many drops as it used to, which is why I have to take Lackadaisy's Tracy Butler to task for continually dropping stuff like this on us -- the cover to her forthcoming Lackadaisy paperback collection. Ker-wow!

See it here!

If I'm to understand from the advertising, "Patapon" consists largely of patting, with a little ponning to pad out the running time. Some people can't deal with that.

See it here!

All right, wow, sorry about the pause, there. Deadlines and school and life and such. I try not to dwell on it too much; you shouldn't, either.

Anyways, we're grindin' back to life, here; please bear with us, and, no, seriously, come back.

Via Slashdot, a Reuters story about China's new decision to ban all things horror in video and audio. Scary things, apparently, are a threat to the well-being of the Chinese citizenry. Content banned from appearing in Chinese movies include vengeful spirits, monsters, demons, or any sort of supernatural-based storytelling in which the sole purpose is to frighten people.

It appears we here in America are gonna have to pick up the slack and make even MORE horrific films to compensate.

Seriously, though, it's a crushing thing to hear from the Chinese movie industry, which has been responsible for some great horror films such as "Mr. Vampire" and "Encounters of the Spooky Kind." The western world has its problems, but sometimes it seems like the other hemisphere just exists to provide object lessons in bad government.

XKCD is solidly leading our poll, this morning, which says quite a lot in terms of stick figure appeal.

Actually, I think it says considerably more about the importance of writing versus art in most comics -- not that art is a negligible factor, precisely, but I think most people are already conditioned to mentally, as it were, help the writing along when it comes to adding in visual details -- like if your friend is explaining about how another friend accidentally set his own butt on fire and went whooping and hollerin' around the landscape thereafter, it's not likely that he's going to draw you a picture (though, with the right friends, he MIGHT). Even so, as soon as the description is given, the picture forms in your mind -- butt on fire, whooping, hollerin', check, check, check. Also, in my version, he's frantically trying to slap the fire out.

We can do that with text -- it allows for a lot of play. Images tend more to the concrete... though, to be fair, stick figures still allow a lot of room to fill in detail: face, expression, hands...

The real question isn't why one would like a comic based on stick figures -- but whether one would like the SAME comic to the same degree if it was lavishly illustrated. Ooooh, think on that.