Dear Spicy Horse (麻辣马),
As a cult fan of American McGee’s psychological and philosophical dark fantasy games, I am largely disappointed in his company’s latest attempt to crossover into the CCG genre.
A theme set in Hell where your guide is Charon and you cross over four elements… with another layer of a pseudo Hell-Human world. Such a plot initially thought to be awesome ended up to be disappointing. Sure, the theme of Hell is a dark joke of the game’s repetitive and endless grind of false hope, depravity, and torture. But even Big Head Bash has a joke that represented conceited idiots who repeatedly “noob” each other in a 2D setting. This Hell-themed opportunity that had great potential for development was wasted.
Not just the theme, but game mechanics as well. This game...
Entertainment
Dear Friends,
I am writing because I am disturbed by the string of articles, blog entries, and list serve threads that have come out in the last few days suggesting that the high turnout of African American and Latino voters for the presidential election was responsible for the passage of California’s proposition 8, which dealt a heavy blow to LGBT families by banning gay marriage in the state’s constitution.
These articles mistakenly imply that the struggles for civil rights for LGBT people and communities of color are separate or even at odds with each other. They deny the work that LGBT people of color do to combat homophobia and transphobia in their families and communities, often while facing racism within the queer community as well. These articles deny homophobia among white...
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Dear Reds,
First off, I have a tremendous respect for your franchise. I'm young enough to not remember my favorite team getting bludgeoned by the Big Red Machine, but old enough to remember what it was like to watch Eric Davis with complete awe. I still have a soft spot for Dusty Baker, and Joey Votto seems like a thoughtful fella. I'm not even going to bring up Mat Latos or his face. No, the Reds are a quality organization with a long, storied history. And I respect the heck out of you.
So this isn't easy to write. I love the uncertainty of the playoffs, the surprises. The best part of the postseason is to find out who the Jeff Weaver or Mark Lemke is going to be. The randomness of it all is what keeps the baseball playoffs so danged interesting. I'm looking forward to watching it...
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Dear Coach Kinnear: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it’s broken, fix it!!
Things That Are NOT Broken:
Wondo at forward. When he was at forward, he scored three goals, and was on his way to another great season. When you decided to play him at mid, or not play him at all, our offense tanked. In fact, before subbing Wondo on this past Friday, our offense only had two shots. After Wondo came on, we generated eight shots. If Wondo is scoring at forward, keep him at forward. When he stops scoring at forward, THEN move him.
Now I know there’s more to the Wondo story than you’re telling people, and I know you like to play your cards close to your chest, but a little honesty would be great every once in a while. Wondo’s playing injured, right? And the whole “fatigue” thing...
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Dear Don Garber and Mark Abbott,
We would like to congratulate you on negotiating a successful new collective bargaining agreement with the MLS players association. We are all excited to watch MLS kickoff its 20th season this evening when the Chicago Fire take on the Los Angeles Galaxy.
Unfortunately, there is a pressing matter that still needs to be resolved before tonight’s match: the unprecedented, arbitrary, unilateral and unnecessary sanctions on the Angel City Brigade Supporters Group.
Recently Major League Soccer, with the cooperation of the Los Angeles Galaxy, imposed an eight game sanction (four home, four away) on the Angel City Brigade. The Angel City Brigade is banned from the use of drums, trumpets, capos, flags, banners and the like. League officials made it very...
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Dear Devs,
When I got home from school today, I had an awesome surprise waiting for me in my inbox: an invitation to join the Alpha phase of your game! I must say that I am honored, but not surprised, that I was chosen. I am going to assume tales of my 733t performance in other games are finally spreading across the internet and that you want the best of the best to be the first to play your creation.
I am really happy that more gaming companies are giving early access, but not sure why they just don't release it to everyone at once. I am once again going to go right ahead and assume that you only want the top tier gamers playing first before letting all the peasants on your server. I mean, it's called ALPHA for a reason, right? I imagine it's because you devs want to show off the...
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“Collette, I don’t care if you have a couple drinks after work, but you have to stop crying at the bar! Did you realize Maggie Ghyllenhaal was sitting right next to you?!”
That was my boss reprimanding me and being way too nice about it. It was my first month on the job at my new bar tending gig. Apparently, I got drunk and told a friend of yours to fuck off. Apparently, you were sitting next to me. It was a miracle I wasn’t fired.
5 minutes later, your friend and I hugged it out. I guess he was really pissed off about something…I was really pissed off about something…we locked eyes and took it out on each other. As things escalated, we eventually reasoned our tiff had nothing to do with each other and everything to do with ourselves. Every time I saw him at work after that, we...
4,050
Dear Bruce,
We weren’t surprised to learn that the recent stories about taking on Apple over rights to your iTunes collection turned out to be false. However, we suspect that this issue may be of genuine concern to you and to others who have amassed large collections of digital music downloads. For that, we feel your pain – and would like to lend a hand.
As a way to clear up the music ownership question and hopefully make up for some of the trouble caused by the free-wheeling London media, we have a simple offer for you: let us replace your entire iTunes collection, on us, with music you’ll really own on Murfie. We’ve even already opened up a Murfie account for you with some albums we suspect are part of your library.
I’m sure you have an absolutely incredible music collection....
3,183
Dear Jeremy,
I'm sorry to hear you've been sacked.
No, really, strangely, I actually am.
But you didn't give the BBC much choice. You can't whack a member of your own production team in a drunken, foul-mouthed rage - however cold the food.
When we ended our 10-year feud in a pub last summer, I could tell you were very fragile, both emotionally and physically.
Your mother had just died, your marriage had broken down, you had various discomforting health issues, you were smoking and drinking too much, and you were reeling from the N-word scandal that nearly got you the sack 9 months ago.
You made no secret to me of your loathing of some of the BBC hierarchy. But you felt torn because you loved doing Top Gear.
I stumbled away that night, pleased that we'd buried the...
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