For Deletion

I got to thinking about an old collection of Aesop's fables I treasured as a kid, and within moments the Grasshopper And The Ant tale popped into my head pretty much the way you see it today. I liked the notion that telling these stories in a modern and morally ambiguous setting would negate their original meaning entirely so I ran with it. It isn't a joke-a-sentence sort of update, but I like to think it works for what it is.

Before anyone asks, Tiffany in the camwhore bit isn't anyone in particular but rather an amalgam of some well-known models and a few things I find funny about the concept of camwhores in general.

I'll let you know how my whirlwind romance with Lindsey Marshal goes. She'll profess her uncontrollable lust for me at approximately 3:16 eastern time tomorrow, buy me a first class ticket up to Canada on United Airlines flight 806, and there's a chance (albeit remote) that I'll wear those brown cargo pants that I like on the plane ride. I'm not sure about that last part though, it's a fluid situation.

Although I'm a pretty avid gamer, I didn't own a PS2 until the recent launch of the console's slimmer design. Now that I'm getting caught up on all the rpgs I missed out on I'm about fifteen hours into Final Fantasy X. I must say, I think this game is fantastic. Maybe it's because I'm not a cynical person by nature when I'm not writing humor, but I genuinely think the characters are interesting and the setting is fun. I even like the ridiculous clothes everyone's wearing, including Tidus' cheesy fireman/Kid'N'Play uniform.

I only have one problem so far. This long-standing complaint about the series (which makes it all the more frustrating) is that you can't skip the god damned summons. I could understand wanting the player to sit through a summoned creature's first cinematic because one of your artists spent a month on it and he really made that unicorn sell the rainbow-colored laserbeams coming out of its nipples, but why not let the player press X after that initial summon and save a few minutes of his life?

Square HAS to know that the demand for this is out there, but I'm thinking it's a clever way to inflate the length of their games. You know how every preview for a game seems to make the ridiculous claim that it will take 80 hours for an experienced gamer to beat? No game ever lives up to this, but if you were allowed to skip the summons in FF games the average length of a game would drop from 44 hours all the way down to 12 minutes. And 40 hours.

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)