With gamers revelling in the news that every video game fan's favourite attorney has been formally sanctioned, GamePolitics has posted transcripts from the trial.

One part of his cross-examination for Alabama Judge James Moore really stood out: Thompson killed the judge's fax machine. That's right, the gloriously annoying and archaic communication medium couldn't handle Thompson's legal spam.

COPYPASTA:

JT: …You entered an order, though, saying that I couldn’t communicate with you any further.

MOORE: Directly to me or through my fax machine…

JT: Okay, and what was the annoyance that you had with that?

MOORE: Just fax after fax after fax after fax after fax after fax.

JT: Do you ever get communications by fax from other lawyers?

MOORE: Occasionally…

JT: What’s the cut-off on how many faxes?

MOORE: Oh, I don’t know. You reached it, whatever it is.

JT: Anybody else ever reach it?

MOORE: No… Not close… You ruined my fax machine.

JT: I ruined your fax machine?

MOORE: It quit.

JT: Did it.

MOORE: Yes.

JT: What kind was it?

MOORE: I don’t know. A cheap one.

</COPYPASTA>

This left me wondering, was Mr. Thompson inspired by a violent video game when he spammed Judge James Moore's fax machine to death?

Seriously, why do they have to be such dicks and keep brother down all the time?

I think the only thing I hate more than antlions are jumping puzzles in first-person shooters...not wait, jumping puzzles combined with antlions...yeah!

I have to say, this is pretty damn cool. The BBC Radio 4 web site has a Flash remake of Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure adaptation, considered by many of to be the best title in Infocom's catalog.

The main game play is still done through a text parser (yay!) but they've added a little graphic interface as well. You can move to different locations by clicking and you've got a separate inventory screen.

Pretty nifty, plus you can create an account on the site to save your game (pretty much required after I remembered how bloody hard the game is, even if it does closely follow Douglas Adams' book.)

Spotted this on my Sunday check of PostSecret , a crazy site where people send in anonymous confessions via post card.

It left me wondering how many other people are willing to admit it...

I'm not entirely sure how the conversation began, but somehow while hanging out with a friend of mine whose a massive survival-horror geek, I ended up getting forced to sit down and play Silent Hill 2...and wasn't allowed to leave until I'd beaten it.

(One sitting isn't completely accurate, I did break for coffee a little more than an hour in.)

I'll admit, I have a slight aversion to the survival horror genre. It's not that ammo is intentionally scarce, it's not even the fact that the protagonist always seems to move in slow motion when attacking with a melee weapon.

It's the massive hordes of endlessly spawning monsters whose main attack is usually grabbing you and squeezing you until either your health depletes or you manage to mash every damn button and controller to get free...at which point you're usually one hit away from dying anyway.

As I learned though, Silent Hill 2 doesn't suffer from these problems as badly as other genres.

Heck, ammo is pretty damn plentiful as long as you remember that there's no point in trying to shoot Pyramid Head...until the appropriate time of course.

Now issues aside, what does intrigue me about survival horror games is that many (not all of course) tend explore plots that I wouldn't imagine working in a video game setting...and somehow make it work.

Silent Hill 2's story line is far from unique in the world of literature and film, but for a video game it's rare to see something where the main character is working through the death of his wife without being on some violent quest for revenge.



And is it just my imagination, or does the Maria character in the game look strangely like Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky?

Overall, (to make this more a review than random musings) I've spent five hours of my life doing far stupider things, so I consider it to have been worthwhile.

Plus with multiple endings (possibly my favourite gameplay element ever!) odds are good I'll kill off another few hours on it. Which leaves me thinking I may need to reconsider my prejudice against the genre.

Apparently some poor kid in Tampa Bay has had someone set his Elmo Knows Your Name doll to the evil setting.

After changing the battery, two-year-old James' Elmo began blurting out "Kill James!" when squeezed.

One of the many spin-offs of the wildly successful Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls, Elmo Knows Your Name connects to a PC to learn new phrases, including the child's name (making it ideal for death threats.)

For some reason, I'm not surprised. I mean, the name "Elmo Knows Your Name" is creepy enough. It's not too far off from "Elmo knows where you live."

See a video report here