The Curse of Monkey Nation.

By way of a high-school friend, Palin as President. As a big fan of Sam and Max and Monkey Island-type games, I for one am ecstatic to see pixel-hunting problem-solving now being applied to our lefty agitprop. (It reminds me of this still-great Dubya Infocom adventure.)

Something Rotten in Northrend.

Alas, the pride of Lordaeron has succumbed to darkness…and why do I get the sense I and 24 of my friends are going to have to do something about it? The impressive new Arthas-themed trailer for WoW: Wrath of the Lich King is now online.

We’ll Always Have Orgrimmar.

I have no pride, I have no shame…and I’m not above pimping for Blizzard Entertainment every so often if the price is right. So, as my MMORPG of choice is trying to build out its network prior to the coming expansion, and are now offering various goodies to veteran and signee to do so, send me a note if anyone’s thinking of taking the World of Warcraft plunge. On the upside, it’s relatively cheap and addictive entertainment. On the downside, did I mention it was addictive? Don’t say I didn’t warn you if your life takes an Aqua Vita turn.

INJUNCTION: 19 Points.

“‘I was getting creamed, so it’s probably a good thing in that respect,’ he joked. ‘The country is probably 10 percent more productive today.'” Maybe, but the flimsy vestiges of my social life just took a massive hit: The Facebook world mourns the death of Scrabulous. I got so depressed about it that I quickly lost 1000 worthless chips in Facebook poker.

The Watchdog. | Tales of the Pac Freighter.

By way of Bitten Tongue, the Peanuts characters take on the mantles of Watchmen. Charlie Brown with the power of Dr. Manhattan is a bit unnerving, and Linus seems like more of a Nite Owl-type, but Lucy as Silk Spectre and Schroeder as Ozy make perfect sense…and Rorschach is really just one bad day away from Joe Cool.

Also, via Quiddity and in keeping with the GitM theme, the plight of Pac Man gets reconfigured as a Tale of the Black Freighter. Game over, yellow fella.

When they came for my rogue, I said nothing.

“The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.” The Director of National Intelligence announces a project to uncover terrorists in World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs. It seems the US government has finally awakened to the catastrophic dangers posed by Bin Laden’s vast army of h4x0rs and ninjas. (Via Yglesias, where the game-savvy commenters are already having a good deal of fun with it.)

God Save the Qwiin.

“When she saw William playing a game after lunch at Sandringham she thought the Nintendo looked tremendous fun and begged to join in. She played a simple ten-pin bowling game and by all accounts was a natural.” Hey, Helen Mirren, how much ya bowl? By way of Web Goddess, it seems Queen Elizabeth has taken to the Wii. “Although she is 81 the Queen’s hand-eye co-ordination was as good as somebody half her age…She showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict.”

Desktop Timesuck.

Just in case you were lacking for things to do this New Years’ Eve, two rather addictive online games: First up, Desktop Tower Defense, which my family spent a good deal of time on over the Christmas break. Second, Travelpod’s Traveler IQ Challenge, a test your geography knowledge sorta thing. So long, Spider Solitaire.

Christmas on Earth.

“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” Happy holidays to everyone out there. Berk and I are currently at the family homestead, where I’m enjoying home cooking, catching up on work and — true to form — checking out some of the better video games of the year: Call of Duty 4, Portal, Rock Band (I’m the frontman.) Hope your own holidays are equally fun and relaxing.

WoW, here we go again.

Whoosh! That giant sucking sound you’ll hear in a few months is the free time, productivity, and normal sleep cycles of 9 million people around the world suddenly being consumed within the vortex of another ten-level grind…Blizzard announces Wrath of the Lich King, a forthcoming second expansion pack (a la Burning Crusades) to their popular and addictive MMORPG. [If you’re not a WoW player, just skip over the rest of this entry — it won’t make any sense.] Right now, my guild is done with Kara, has SSC essentially on farm, and is now plugging through the Eye (Void Reaver on farm, Al’ar recently down, Solarian and Kael’thas to come.) (As for my own character, I’m pretty well-geared these days — all of Tier 4, starting Tier 5 — and still reference EJ’s handy rogue spreadsheet whenever a possible upgrade falls.) So I expect we’ll be getting bored with Mt. Hyjal and the Black Temple at right around the time the new continent of Northrend drops. Well-played, Blizzard.