We sort of have charity on the brain at the moment. Our best estimates - between toys people have purchased and money that has been donated - come to about thirty thousand dollars. I didn't use italics on those words, which pains me, but I want them to stand on their own. Thirty thousand dollars. Take a look at just what the first two days of orders look like, and you will know joy. People are taking this as partly a way to communicate our traditions to a new generation, judging from the amount of Namco Classics, Zelda Gamecube bundles, and Links To The Past they have there. We've got orders from Germany, Ireland, London, yes I know that's not a country, Australia, New Zealand... What you people are doing hardly seems possible, I think I had convinced myself that the world was a bad place where worse things happen. We need to figure out where to focus this beam next year, and soon.

I have a simple little website up now with some pictures of the toys that have arrived so far. You can see the page here.

My ticker is cool. The doctor says I am healthy, which is nice to hear. She isn’t sure what caused my chest pains but says it probably isn’t my heart. Things have been going so well with Penny Arcade recently that I just assumed something bad had to happen to me soon. I had always figured it would be some rare disease that would infect my boy parts and eventually kill me. When I started having chest pains I thought for a moment that I had been focused so much on an attack from my nether regions that I totally overlooked the possibility of my heart exploding.

The doctor told him it wasn't going to blow up or anything, which seems good.

People bought so many toys that they could not physically deliver them?

A few of you asked for something official from the Hospital regarding our toy drive. I understand that you never can be too careful. No shame in being certain that Tycho and I weren’t just going to take the toys and move to Mexico or something. Anyway here is the official letter from the Seattle Children’s Hospital:

I just wanted to make a quick post regarding the Links 2004 review over at IGN. Obviously the review is shit since it came from IGN. In fact they actually lied in part of it.

Once your heart hurts for more than twenty-four hours, it's probably time to go see somebody who knows about them. When he originally described the sensations he was experiencing, I thought he was simply feeling an emotion, something he might find disorienting. Nope, it was just the heart thing.

I would imagine that the great preponderance of you are, just now, awaking from a indistinct vision of roasted birds and heritage desserts. Was it real? And what should you see on Penny Arcade but a comic that references female genitalia with an almost harrowing specificity. I doubt this will be a template for future strips, unless in our wisdom we can find a way to make these organs evoke Deus Ex.

Wow, this is super cool!

This is from PA reader Poe regarding the LOK code mentioned above:

I’m about to take off for Spokane but I wanted to make a quick post. I’ll be gone for a few days but I will do my best to stay up to date on my mail. I wanted to answer another question that has popped up in my email a few times regarding the toys.

I know that a lot of people keep up with those guys, so I'm just making sure you know: Season One of Red vs. Blue is now available on shiny Digital Versatile Disc. It sounds like a fairly fancy production.

We found this news item - tucked away over at Gamespot - to be completely fascinating. Clearly we exaggerate the case in our comic, it's sort of what we do. But at the same time Gabriel and I are asking our parents and grandparents if it's even okay to "enjoy" their wars, this is a thought exercise on some completely other level.

If you are like me, every time you see an article like this one, where the author claims that video games are training our nations youth to kill you get angry. The media seems intent on perpetuating the myth that gamers are ticking time bombs just waiting to go off. I know for a fact that gamers are good people. I have had the opportunity on multiple occasions to meet hundreds of you at conventions all over the country. We are just regular people who happen to love video games.

I just got an interesting email from PA reader Wes who had the opportunity to attend a book signing by James Luceno author of The Unifying Force. He had this to say: