The hardcore no-doubt reverberate with anticipation for Nintendo's "Megaton" announcement, a revelation so grand in scope that to know it would unravel your mind and leave you a gibbering idiot. If you were already a gibbering idiot, and I'm not saying you are but I just have a feeling about these things, it might make you gibber more, I don't know.

Every site has this or that crackpot theory about what it is, based on data from their "inside sources," but all their inside sources are telling them different things. Like any big game company, there are no doubt a host of secret projects at any given time, so even if a source reveals something extraordinary there is no guarantee that it is correlated to anything Megaton. The flip side of these wild assertions are what we will call, for the time being, anti-news - the perfect opposite of revelation. It selects from the truly massive set of things that aren't the announcement, and posts that in place of new information.

Watch how I segue into Gabe's party last night. This is going to blow you away.

At Gabe's party last night (pow!), we had a friend from Nintendo over, and no matter how much we made him drink he still wouldn't let loose the dogs of telling us stuff. I threatened him with death, and he laughed about it but I wasn't joking and I think he sensed that instinctively. The next time that bastard comes over, we'll be in shadow, and a lonely chair will sit beneath a swinging bare bulb. Just in case I lost you, we're going to make him sit in the chair.

Speaking of which, that party weren't half bad. They're our friends too, but we had representatives from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft, so you can bet that this generated heat at times.

I've spoken with my man Aaron over at ClanBOB about this sort of thing: LAN parties are pretty great, and there will never be a substitute for a group of dedicated gamers hauling thousands of dollars worth of equipment around to play some games, but you can have a very, very good experience just bringing an Xbox and a television somewhere. Seriously. Just plug all the Goddamn Xboxes into a hub, every geek house has one already, just go to the one with the biggest TV. Bring a couple extra televisions, they can be fairly small, just put less people on them so everybody gets decent screen real estate. I'm assuming everyone will know what to do once the game starts, so I'm done with the Instructions format. You know what I'm talking about, though. You could do this with PS2's as well, there's a good number of system link games there, but I'm referring specifically to what we did last night. I wish we'd had TimeSplitters 2 for the Xboxes, as even two player against bots is excellent - I'd love to see how that went with eight.

We played Mario Party 4 and Mechassault as well, but the main thing that happened (for hours and hours) was Halo. Yeah, I know. It was good, better than good, but it really made me curious about the sequel. Conceivably, I mean, it seems like everybody at our party could go online against a whole other party taking place at some other house - each of our rooms of four, an autonomous squad. It's invigorating to consider.

(CW)TB out.

every time i spit i shine