probably didn't want to get into the real reason they didn't approve this ad. You know, at the end? Where it says "evolve"? Can't be havin' that. :-)

One of the survivors of the mid-90s retread of the ska movement (the terrifying third wave), the Aquabats dress up like superheroes, act it out on stage, have video presentations they clearly made themselves projected behind them, and get in fights with costumed villians, all between pumping out some of the most energetic rocking music I can remember in my life. I had almost forgotten my high-school infatuation with being a Bat Cadet when my little sister, having found an album in my old closet, asked me to take her to a concert. They're still the best, and I'd recommend them in a heartbeat to anyone that can survive a crowd that roars and moves like a dangerous sea.

Second stage was Cibo Matto and Sixpence None the Richer. Not goth at all. Nya ha!

Yay! Let's lump all gamers together into one big homophobic misogynistic personality!

Sorry, it's just that there are something on the order of 46 million active online gamers in the world, and lumping them all together into the categories of women and livid woman-hatin' homophobes is a little stark. Yeah, there's jerks on the web, but it's spectacularly easy to find a supportive, family friendly environment of peers with which to play (my WOW guild is run by an openly gay couple, has a no-cursing policy, and is approximately 40% women with 200 active members. And I had only to post a request for such a guild on the WOW forums to find it).

No one I play with gives a hoot about the gender of my characters, it's purely an aesthetic thing (online male avatars tend to be a little hyperthyroid looking).

Finally, can we agree that GamerchiX exists as much because there is money to be made as from any need caused by negative gaming environments? Microsoft's gaming branch is significantly more likely to be motivated by dollar signs, right?

PS: Thanks for not making the standard "journalist reporting on online games" mistakes, like boiling down World of Warcraft into "running around hitting a dragon with a scepter!" or spending an inordinate amount of time talking about the ugly moneysink which appeals only to journalists in a hurry that is Second Life.

Urgh, please stop giving media attention to Second Life, that's basically all it exists for, and it fails to represent games or gamers in any way beyond that. It feels like Second Life is to journalists in a hurry what Scientology is to addle-brained celebrities.

If people reporting on this stupid "game" spent a few minutes downloading it and attempting to play it, they'd recognize it as the gimmicky pile of bad ideas it is and move on to something more worthwhile.

Just because he's more infamous doesn't seem to excuse Breathed from being just like every other comic strip artist with a long history, they all eventually take a seat on the slide to sentimental pandering.

This strip is the drawn equivalent of listening to Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story" or Andy Rooney talking about when coffee was a nickel.

Thank goodness someone dragged this guy out of retirement so he could do a polite paean to America's Teachers. Where else would we get one of those? Take your dentures out of the solution on the bedside table and put some teeth back in your work, Berke.

Can we get a little love for Seth Rogen? Just a little?

All of them would be way hotter if that show's narrator died in the first 20 seconds of a show. I'm so tired of that ingratiating self-congratulatory voiceover that I can't watch the show for any reason.

"This may prove difficult, but you know that Adam and Jamie are just the right couple of guys for the job. They don't poop, you know. They emit genius from their backsides onto easy-access DVDs for third world children. And things they touch count as blessed by vatican law. Once Adam and Jamie taught my cat to read. More after the commercial."

Seriously, how many of these are going to be the same topic in a row? New technology is dehumanizing us, we get it, Berke. How insightful of you to notice and let us know. Good thing too, since no old man has ever disapproved of the amount of time young people played with new ideas and entertainment before and I'm sure it will revolutionize the world. I'll send you a written apology for viewing your comic strip on the harsh glow of a computer screen via either carrier pigeon or telegraph, your choice.

Above my comment I see both a reference to xkcd (a fine webcomic), and some curmudgeonly insistence that time spent playing Guitar Hero would be better spent playing a real guitar (funny how no one says time spent playing Rampage would be better spent climbing the sides of buildings and eating tanks, or that Pac-Man players really ought to run through a maze devouring marshmallows and avoiding ghosts instead of looking at a TV screen). I felt this strip really caught the feeling right.

http://www.xkcd.com/359/

You know, I hate getting into this "he said, she said" style of rhetoric you always see on the broadsheet comments section, but could someone lay out for in decent terms why a private men-only club is bad while a public women-only gym is good? I'm not even really tryin to pick a fight, it's more that the legality of places like Curves has long interested me.

PS: I know that the answer is probably rape or "the male gaze" or something. I am prepared for these eventualities.