Penny Arcade enthusiast Neil contacted me recently and informed me of a little program he made. It's called P.A.I.N.T which stands for Penny Arcade Internet Notification Tool. It's a little program that sits in your tray and alerts you when Penny Arcade gets updated. Since Tycho and I have been making more posts recently and at strange times it seemed like a cool idea. Anyway Neil needs your help. He needs someone who can design some icons for the program. Neil says "they should be 16x16 icons in 256 colors, something instantly recognizable as penny-arcade without squinting." If this sounds like something you can do you can e-mail him at paint@neilogic.com

I am just about half way through Destiny's Way, the latest book in the New Jedi Order series. If you're a Star Wars fan you really owe it to yourself to read this series. I've talked about it a lot in the past so I'm not going to harp on it too much. Each time I mention it though I get mail weeks later from people thanking me for introducing them to these books.

That's what I want to know. What the fuck do you want?

When I said "the guys at the rein" before, that was not a reference to Mark Rein. Jesus.

I hadn't done this in a while, I thought it might be fun.

I have nothing to add to today's strip, really. I feel like it communicates all the necessary information.

Jorge Desormeaux - economics student extraodrinaire - had what I thought was an interesting perspective on FairPlay.

Yeah, he neglected to mention that he sends me pictures from that thing all the time, presumably to remind me that I don't have one - "This is me at Nintendo, having fun. This is me at a stoplight, my ringtones are the best." I haven't said anything about it recently, because I can't think of a way to write it that doesn't sound like I'm giving Danger a blowjob.

***Update***

The problem with games isn't that they cost too much. I'm not an economist or anything, but I'm willing to bet that regular old, non-collector games cost more or less what they used to in real dollars. What's more, the technically savvy have been getting games for free as long as there have been games, and this will only get worse as prices go up. No, I'm afraid we won't be joining this boycott, or any other boycott, or signing any petitions, or wearing a silly suit and walking back and forth, or any of that shit. Activities like this will only anger our corporate overlords, causing them to activate dormant volcanoes in our midst and bury us in molten rock. So if you're into magma or whatever, you know, hey.

You probably don't know this but I'm a golfer. I know I know, it's hard to imagine Gabe partaking in any kind of outdoor activity even one as relaxed as golf. I took a shine to the game at a young age and my parents supported my enthusiasm with countless professional lessons. I grew up playing Washington state junior golf which had me competing in tournaments all over the northwest. As I got older I worked at a course as a ball boy (paid target) and played for the High School team. After probably ten years of intense competition I was burnt out and quit the game. I came back to it a few yeas later and realized that what I had grown tired of was the competition and that I still loved to play. While I am not able to get out as much as I'd like I still have a special place in my heart for golf.

When you buy a peripheral anymore, you might as well just get a jigsaw before you leave the mall. We don't lock up our prisoners this well. Why our gamepads and so forth must be hermetically sealed is beyond me - have they done something wrong? Is it for their own protection? If they don't want me to have the controller, and that's fine, maybe a better plan would be to keep it out of the store in the first place.

If you, like me, are having a hard time making Unreal Tournament 2003 run on your system without crashing literally every ten seconds, give this a try.

I just uploaded an interesting article about the Tokyo game show. It’s written by a PA fan who is currently living in Japan. His name is Karl Ignaczak and he put together a real nice piece about his trip to the show. You can check it out here.

There's some noteworthy stuff I thought was worth noting.

Human beings are overwhelming my Inbox in support of a Robotech purchase, but before I could possibly have hit the mall the producer offered me a copy. You know what that means. It means Robotech gets ten out of ten.