I’m not always a very good person. I’m mean and I recognize that. I know exactly where it comes from too. As a kid I moved schools a lot. I was always the new kid and I was a weird looking new kid which made it worse. There was no nationwide movement to stop bullying back then. The advice I got from teachers was to “ignore them” or “try and make friends with them”. It is hard to ignore or become friends with someone who literally sets your hair on fire on the bus. So what I did is decide at a young age that no one else’s opinion of me mattered. I had to in order not to kill myself. I had to flip a switch in my head and essentially decide that no one else could decide what I was or was not. I shut almost everyone out and decided that anyone who attacked me was an “enemy” and I began to attack back. I got very good at insulting people. Kids would come at me with some bullshit about my teeth or how goofy I looked and I would retaliate with insults I had custom built for them while lying awake at night and each one was a precision strike to their insecurities. This kid was short, that one had a hard time reading, this other one’s parents were getting a divorce. By 7th grade I could make someone hit me with a couple words.

I went to the Olive Garden last night and ended up getting probably the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had. By the time we got home I had to run upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom. I stumbled out an hour or so later and explained to my wife we would need to remodel it. There was simply nothing left that was salvageable and the entire bathroom would need to be taken down to the studs. I crawled into bed and half expected the police to show up. What I had done in there was a crime. I fell into a fitful sleep well before midnight and dreamt that not only had I shit out my Tour of Italy, but my soul as well. I woke up sweating and convinced that I was not a ghost but the shell that a ghost might leave. I feel hollow and hungry. I wonder if I will feel like this forever.

I've talked about this before, in more ephemeral contexts, but Amazon Prime exerts an incredibly bizarre force.

Yes I'm gonna play some Killzone and yes I'm streaming. Starts in about 10 minutes.

Every year since 2007 Penny Arcade has given away a $10,000 scholarship to a student looking to positively influence the gaming industry. It could be through game design, writing, art, business, science or anything else that could have an impact on games and gamers. We’ve just announced our winner for 2013 and her name is Alicia Cano. So congratulations to Alicia, we hope the scholarship helps you realize all your potential! You can see a list of all the past winners right here as well as all the information you need if you’d like to apply next year.

Some cool stuff happened last week that I wanted to re-post here for the Monday crowd.

My "tastes" as regards virtually anything - even for mediums that cannot be "tasted" in any traditional sense - are, um... broad. I have used the baleen metaphor previously, and The Vinegar Tasters, but essentialy it's an ongoing, active effort to decouple my own propensities from what I'm willing to try. My natural enthusiasm is sometimes "right," but not always, and discovering the geography of that middle place is what I like best.

Playing Killzone multi tonight and I'll be streaming. I'll be starting around 9:00pm pacific. So, just about 45 min from now.

I talked about the Lost Lands podcast yesterday and I wanted to point you towards it again today in case you missed it. This is a podcast featuring Tycho, Scott Kurtz and myself all sitting down to play the tabletop game my son Gabe created. He’s 9 years old and I think his game has some really cool mechanics. It’s interesting to see what a kid comes up with when they don’t have all the baggage that we adults carry around. He doesn’t know how things are “supposed” to work he just makes up his own rules. The results are pretty amazing sometimes. It’s free and you can listen to it right here.

I feel like Humble Bundling is completely normalized as cultural practice by now, but just in case: the idea of a Humble Bundle, at root, is that it's a fleeting, Pay What You Want store. If what you Want to Pay isn't anything, that's utterly legit - but if you pay above a certain amount, you get more shit. We've been around long enough and worked with enough people to have a ton of things to offer, and the full offer up there now includes all four installments of my digital suicide attempt "On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness," soundtracks thereof, and two books. Pay nothing, pay us, donate the whole thing to Child's Play, monkey around with the sliders and create some kind of hybrid, it's up to you. Thanks, in any event. I really enjoyed making all that stuff.

Correct in every way that truly matters, the 234th Annual We're Right Awards continue apace.

The $200,000 goal of our Kickstarter came with a very cool reward. We recorded a podcast of my son Gabe's table top game. You might remember we did a series of comics about it a while back and since then he has continued to work on it. Tycho, Scott and I all sat down with Gabe a few weeks ago to play the latest version of Lost Lands and we recorded the game!

In a tumultuous world, it can be a comfort to settle down deep in just how right we are about everything.

I was browsing r/gaming and saw people were posting old photos of themselves as kids holding up their game systems. Well here's my entry.

I mentioned Max: Curse of the Brotherhood yesterday and said I was having fun with it. Well, I was able to beat it today and my initial impression still stands. This is a great puzzle/platform game and well worth the $15 they are asking. In fact I’d say it’s my favorite Xbox One exclusive so far. I found a couple frustrating bits towards the end. They do the classic puzzle game thing where once you’ve learned a bunch of skills and you’re having fun solving puzzles they make you do it fast. I absolutely hate this mechanic in these sorts of games. I love the mechanics and I just want to solve the puzzles. Making me do it quick while being chased by lava just pisses me off. Thankfully there is very little of this and usually the game slows down at crucial moments giving you the extra couple seconds you need to draw in the element you need.

The new Acquisitions Inc. Pin set is in the store now! Also we’re still running the “buy and 2 pin sets get a Pinny Arcade poster free” deal. You can still take advantage of all our Holiday reward tiers as well. Just hit the front page of the PA store for all the details.