With today’s episode of Strip Search we’re really getting into the competition proper.

When a retailer stops selling your game because your shit is so busted, and people try to get the money they spent on your nega-game back and you get mad, it seems like that would be pretty bad. Maybe it should be! Maybe it should matter. Does it? Well, seeing as they pull this shit more or less on the regular, we can say pretty clearly that it does not.

I have a bunch of PAX new to dish out so get ready.

Check out Episode 2 of Strip Search!

Gabriel wasn't able to get into SimCity last night to play, because the server wasn't working and single player games don't exist anymore, even if you are playing a private city and nobody can come in anyway. So I would remember it, because it was important, I said here in the post a long time ago that "EA games come with free misery." This is why I stopped being an annual purchaser of Tiger Woods games: because this company has a serious, serious problem with execution at launch. You would only fix it if it meant more sales. But it doesn't, because everybody already bought it. Well, except me.

We give the contestants a fun little game to warm up their drawing skills and get to know each other.

So, imagine that advertising and those who are made to look at advertising are locked in a constant struggle not unlike that between infectious organisms and organisms that don't want to get infected. They co-evolve in various ways; they circle each other in a tense orbit, until a development on either side alters the board. Susceptibility to traditional commercial messages has been almost completely bred out of the stock. You have to hide it now, like when you secret a massive pill in a glistening heap of Fancy Feast. It's entirely possible that when you think about our culture and all our entertainment as disease vectors you may become nauseous. Have you considered Pepto-Bismol, either as a chewable tablet, caplet, or classic liquid?

I am proud to give you all the very first episode of Strip Search! Meet the contestants, see the house, and get ready for the competition to begin! One of these artists will win $15,000 and the ability to work inside the PA office for one year.

We posit a grim future in today's strip, and you could be forgiven for thinking I was talking about the future, because I did say the literal word "future." But this is more or less the way things work now. If you said "energy" instead of "fuel" you'd be describing the same functional process.

I made this little doodle of Samus in my sketchbook last week and I really liked it.

I understood that Reddit was "the front page of the Internet," but I am not a Redditor and to be perfectly frank I don't know what's required to become one. I don't know if that refers to some Dark Conclave of supermods, or if it applies to people posting things, or if it can apply to a person who reads things but doesn't post them and also doesn't post on things other people have posted.

My post obliterated his, according to the old ritual, because that's how shit go. But he just reposted it above, and I'm glad, because it's great and human and useful. He has a very different relationship to hardware than most reviewers would, and he used it to write something cool.

I was aware of the Surface Pro but I wasn't especially interested in it until I heard it came with a stylus and supported pressure sensitivity. I love gadgets and drawing so it only makes sense that I’ve always been curious about gadgets you can draw on. Since the old Windows tablet computers I've been looking for a good way to draw digitally on the go. I gave the iPad a shot but I don’t like drawing with the “eraser tip” capacitive touch styluses. When I read that the Surface Pro uses Wacom tech I was interested. I went down to our local MS store to try one on the day they launched. The demo machine only had one drawing app on it called Fresh Paint which seems like it’s mostly for kids but it was enough to see that the pen felt good and the pressure sensitivity was solid. I came home and mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in the Surface Pro as a drawing platform and I was contacted by MS and offered a machine to test out (I love my job). A few days later I had a brand new 128gb Surface Pro to play with.

It's so funny; we just did a strip about how Riot's karma engine was upgrading humanity. But he was back in practically the next day, absorbing bioaccumulative abuse from brigands re: his plainly amateur shit. So, maybe it doesn't work on everybody. It's possible that if your brain is mostly pockets of dead fluid you don't benefit from these civilizing efforts.

The 24th (this Sunday!!!) is the last day to pre-order the set, which includes such delicacies as: