The issue with buying things from anyone by Imaginarium, Toys 'r' us, and Amazon itself appears to have been resolved by our "Hail Mary" e-mail directly to Jeff Bezos. That was basically the last of the obstacles. Feel free to go completely nuts on those lists.

I just wanted to make a quick note about the wish lists. It looks like the "show purchased" option isn't working correctly. You can however look at each individual item and see how many were requested and how many have been purchased. Also you should know that all the videogame stuff is going to be on the last few pages of each list. I know a lot of you specifically want to buy games and stuff.

Please feel free to visit the official site and take a look at the wish lists we've set up for Seattle, Oakland, San Diego, Houston, and our nation's capitol. The Tax ID's for charitable giving are listed to the right of each wish list.

We did go play Halo 2, and they did make us sign something, but it was a while ago - the build we played is the same one all the most recent press was based on. Talking about Halo is always really complex for me - partly because of my mind, which is a deranged knot of neurotic impulses. The rest of it is just because we were mean to the first one, for reasons I still maintain, but can't be explained without a certain amount of nuance.

We've got five times as many wish lists this year - ones for Seattle, Oakland, San Diego, Houston, and Washington D.C. - and we're having an issue with some of the items on each of them that will require some fairly heavy editing and maybe more than that. We'll work on it over the weekend, and then open the floodgates.

Literally the only thing I find unpleasant about Steam is the fact that now, even as we speak, there is a copy of Half-Life 2 on my machine that I can't fondle with vigor. I actually watched the completion bar on the pre-load last night, and it was a pain like being branded. I played plenty of Counter-Strike: Source last night to take the edge off, you know, because it uses the same engine, but it's hard to escape the notion that your game is locked up in the hoosegow and that heroics may be required.

As regards today's strip, Gabe waltzes in with startling revelations about Shadow Hearts nearly every day. He found the Giurnan metablade, which reaps a harvest of flesh. Oh look, it's the Steel Womb, which renders the wearer impervious to damage. Time was you could rely on a man not to load the save between sessions. Nowadays, every time we load it up there's some complete stranger in the party and everyone's pimped out with legendary artifacts.

I apologize for the lack of sketch dumps lately. Things have been pretty crazy since the baby. I do have something new to show you though. We had originally planned on doing a story called Sand for a future edition of Flight. It was essentially a techno western. Then we read Kazu’s totally fucking incredible Daisy Kutter and realized the techno western was already in much more competent hands. So we sat down and tried to come up with something new. What we came up with is Automata.

There's a lot to read in these Pikmin 2 entries! I started this weekend, but it's taking some time to get through. I'll keep on keeping on, winners announced Friday at the latest.

It's almost midnight, so if I want even a passing chance at not being a liar I'd better crack out that Third Age thing.

Jesus Christ, sometimes I get the hiccups. I don't get them on purpose.

3 hours and 2000 entries later, someone came up with the correct number which was 874. I'll be sending a package of goodies out to Neil Horibe, who was the first to guess it at 1:51 pm. Thanks to everyone who entered. We'll have to do more of this sort of thing in the future.

Here are some quick thoughts about a few of the other DS games I checked out.

Here are some quick thoughts about a few of the other DS games I checked out.

Gamespot went live with their preview of Irrational's spiritual successor to System Shock 2, Bioshock. I just saw it was up, I haven't even read it yet. Here I go.

One never knows if they should be forthcoming regarding their fetishes, outside of some anonymous room in IRC or in the protected reserve of a convention exclusively for enthusiasts. I'm beyond protestations of normality at this point. I will triumphantly open my trenchcoat, and reveal my secret products: I think Myst is about as good as it gets.