A couple items of interest.

Warcraft III is the game of choice around here, as I am sure it is elsewhere, and we lose virtually every time we play online. It's actually sort of a joke, now - asking someone if they want to "lose at Warcraft" is essentially inviting them to play at all - but we don't really mind it. The fact is that we are better at losing than most, we can be defeated more spectacularly and in less time than most, and we can parley our strong chain of early successes into fiery perdition. Like the young man who blames the controller, or the Brenna who blames the Dance Dance pad, we carry on the rich tradition of blaming the mechanism for our own ineptitude. As I said, it's no big deal. When you're as good at losing as we are, you're really a a part of the winning team anyhow, working together with your captor to ensure that his stay in your base is a pleasant one - and ensuring repeat business from his ravening and rapacious horde. How do we do it? It's easy.

It’s getting to the point were a guy can’t post a venomous one sided diatribe regarding a popular piece of consumer electronics on the front page of a community web site visited by nearly 70,000 people a day, without getting buried in hate mail. What a pain in the ass.

Jesus Herman Christ. Have you seen the latest screen shots at Gamespot for Panzer Dragoon Orta? You all know that I don't give two shits about the X-Box. Just when I start to think that maybe I should cut them some slack I read crap like this:

Before I get underway, I want to make something perfectly clear: The dreams one has after playing Dance Dance Revolution, Eternal Darkness, and Warcraft III in rapid succession are beyond harrowing. I thought I was losing my fucking mind.

If, unlike Gabe, you find discussions of your liberty invigorating, you might want to hit this thread over at Ars Technica. I've made it clear that I'm not a forum man by and large, but I'm a frequent lurker over at Ars.

Another Necrowombicon update from Fatrick:

I don't really have much to say regarding the whole M$ thing that isn't already covered in the comic strip. I should tell you that if you want to talk to someone about that kind of shit, I am really not your man. I honestly don't care. I am sure it's bad and all but I don't worry about stuff like that because I don't really care about computers that much. The other day Tycho tried to tell me about my digital rights and how something bad is going to happen to them or whatever, but it was really boring so I started thinking about Mario Sunshine.

We've been getting mail imploring us to warn you about Palladium for a couple weeks now, and we would have done it sooner - but then we started playing with toys or something, it's kind of hazy but I think there were toys.

It is time to answerer more poster questions since that is all I get in my e-mail anymore.

This has been coming up a lot in my e-mail so I figured I should just answer it right here. It seems that many of you who cannot make it to the con are sending your friends down with money to purchase posters for you. Obviously you need to know how much cash to give these friends. The posters will be $15.00 and no, we will not be charging anything extra to sign them for you. Some people have been asking what times we will be available to sign stuff. The answer is: as long as it takes to sign everything and meet all of you. We have no desire to see the rest of the con at all. We are going for the sole purpose of hooking you guys up with our poster and signing the shit out of whatever you bring us. If things are slow and we decide to scamper off one of the folks at the table will just ring our cell and we will get our asses back there lickity split.

Here is the latest update from Fatrick regarding the Necrowombicon: It has been brought to my attention that some people assume that registering for the convention at thenecrowombicon@hotmail.com will get you the group rate at the hotel. this is incorrect. you must deal with the hotel yourself to get the group rate. in order to get the $129 a night group rate, you needed to call the hotel and reserve a room by Tuesday the 16th of July. After that, you're on your own for accommodations.

People have been asking when we are going to start updating Land of the Rising Fun again. Honestly there just hasn't been a lot of Import news to cover. That has all changed now though. Gungrave, Mario Sunshine and Beach Spikers all just hit Japan and the holly Ikaruga is set to drop in the near future. The import scene is really starting to cook and we are trying our damndest to get in on some of the action. As soon as we start getting some of these titles in you can bet your ass we'll be covering them here. I also got quite a bit of mail after my Neo-Geo reviews from people wanting to know where they can get their own home cart system. Well the guys at the Videogame depot just got a batch of them. If you want the best 2D fighting game ever made to go along with your new Neo-Geo, and you make poor money management decisions then I'd recommend picking up a copy of Mark of the Wolves while you're there.

Are we going to import Super Mario Sunshine, even though it'll be out in the US in just thirty days? Hell yes.

How is everyone? Good, I hope. Would anyone else like to level a spurious allegation against us? I do so relish it. However, please ensure that your equipment can manage our Mongol horde!

I've never heard of Metal Ice comics before today, but apparently we've been stealing his shit. And really, we would have to be, because shit is all they have over there.