Sometimes, a book comes along that seems to redefine the very concepts of fiction. As an author, Dan Simmons was a veritable unknown to me until fairly recently. In the past few months, I’ve read four books that attempt to outline humanity and the nature of the universe itself. Up until now, I would have said my favorite author was Frank Herbert of Dune fame, or possibly George R. R. Martin with his yet unfinished Song of Ice and Fire series. What these two authors have done with politics, religion, and the human condition is almost unparalleled in this day and age. But Mr. Simmons has to be the first to string together a cohesive and finished plot line that ties up all loose ends with emotion and meaning far beyond the simple boundaries of imagination put to paper.

Final Fantasy X-2, the latest offering from Square-Enix (formerly Squaresoft) could make a seventy eight year old strung-out five dollar whore jealous of the pure level of suck it has managed to accomplish. Considering I actually enjoyed Final Fantasy X, playing the sequel is like feeding my massive wang into a meat grinder and slowly turning the handle for hours while pouring a mixture of salt and battery acid on the festering wound, then lighting the resulting chum on fire and serving the flambe to my mother for her birthday. Director Toriyama is apparently angry at the acquisition of Squaresoft by Enix, and has decided to subject former fans of the Final Fantasy series to excruciating torture in hopes they will abandon the series, thereby negatively affecting Enix’s bottom line.

Please, take a look at: this crazy crap.

This song has what the DDR community commonly refers to as gallops. Not just any gallops, but 1/16th note gallops through the entirety of the song. For a minute and a half, a player has to somehow pound out nearly 500 steps - that’s over five steps per second. I’ve been playing for a while, as my overly large calves will attest, but I can barely keep up with this song in training mode at a speed setting of 1 out of 5. As a result of trying, my calf muscles now feel like the recipients of a healthy baseball bat massage.

The holidays have finally spent themselves in a turgid eruption of parties, family gatherings, and prodigious amounts of ruptured corpses littering the streets, hemorrhaging a chunky sludge of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Though I did succumb temporarily to the sweet beckoning of various confectionery and caloric temptations, my unbreakable DDR addiction has kept everything under control.

A few years ago, an eccentric post graduate was mindlessly tossing four or five credit card applications, an entire newspaper worth of local fliers, and seven announcements that he’d already won a million dollars, into a precarious heap looming menacingly over the couch. The history of the internet was written that day, as he unwittingly sat down under the comfortable shade offered by the seemingly innocuous pile of otherwise useless envelopes and inky print stock, prompting a torrential cascade to wash over him.