Edwin MacPhisto

You do not know what the last mission is going to be, though you're probably getting the feeling that you're on the homestretch. When the story forces you to go to the Citadel for the second time, you're about to touch the last story quest, which is quite brief. The last two quests are called I really don't have a problem with the perks, though some are obviously more useful than others. The get-a-level perk is good for people who just want to play through the main quest quickly. Lead belly is okay early if you're thin on cash or don't like carrying around a bunch of food, but its value decreases rapidly later in the game when you ought to be quite flush with money. I agree that the Lockpick/Science retry perks are pretty much a waste. And Explorer is a great perk if you want to find everything. I don't think "I can look at a map on the internet, which someone got by using the Explorer perk in their game" really invalidates it. I do wish that Chem Resistant and Chemist could be accessed earlier--say, level 6 or 8 instead of 14 and 16. Chems are most useful early in the game, and I think it'd be fun to play a character who used drugs more or less constantly. By the time you're at level 16, you really don't need chems that much.

So was Bush over Young. I strongly disagree with that one, especially since the Heisman voting was done 5 weeks before the game. Concur. That wasn't a crime by any stretch. Argument's there for both, and you probably have to give it to VY if you take the championship into account, but that's not how the Heisman works. It's still totally a sham, though. Dan Mullen to Mississippi State: should be interesting to see what he can do there. My instinct is to say that a lot of his success at UF has been due to the obscene amount of talent, but then I remember that he's been with Meyer all the way back to Bowling Green, and really helped engineer that spread offense at Utah. Wonder if he's going to push the Miss. State offense in that direction as well. DeWayne Walker to SDSU: Everyone says DeWayne Walker deserves better. Perhaps he does, since his defense played some good games this season and last, and can hardly be blamed for things like the Arizona State game, where UCLA gave up 4 defensive touchdowns (three pick-6's, one fumble recovery). Awful turnovers put them in bad spots all year.

Once I had Charon in power armor (which was pretty quickly, since you find a few suits fairly early), I actually never much of a problem with him staying alive. He died once in the deathclaw sanctuary, where he for some reason decided to get extra-close to a deathclaw, even though I'd already crippled its legs. This was on normal, though. I beat the game the other day. Ending's not bad, but a little disappointing because it comes slightly out of nowhere. I could definitely understand someone getting there and saying "wait, what? The game's over?" I was most disappointed by not getting the play-by-play slideshow of how each town turned out, as in the first Fallout games. You get a screenshot or two depending on the quests you've done, but it isn't quite the same.

I was trying to be nice about it.

Unfortunately, college football columnists are going to spend the next two weeks writing hilariously oddball stuff like that, since there really isn't anything left to talk about till the decent bowl games start. Fortunately, Boise/TCU being on the 23rd should at least get the real football talk fired up a little earlier than usual.

No way. Most of the country has no idea what any song on this album really sounds like, nor have they been reminded to think about checking it out; it's still a fairly limited number of people who went and listened to the tracks on myspace, etc.

I'm still having a hard time getting behind this one, or Why? in general. I like some of what they're doing, but those nasally-ass They Might Be Giants vocals are killing me. And I like Joanna Newsom!

It wasn't, but I definitely thought that the Hiro and Claire stories throughout were way better than most of what we've seen this season. It was probably the most clever and unique use of time travel the show's had so far, and also managed to take a break from insane plottiness to offer up a few character moments. That said, the whole season more than ever seems like a completely pointless excursion, as very little has changed from the status quo since the season's start.

Getting Jericho early: Deathclaws are the toughest individual opponent in the game, but a shot from the Dart Gun makes them pretty feeble. With both legs crippled, they can't do their big leaping attack, and you can just pick them apart from a distance, or run in and use the flamer till they go down. You can even take on 2 or 3 at once if you've got the Dart Gun, but I'd still pop some Med-X for the occasion.

Thought they hit all the sappy as fuck parent/child stuff out of the park. Wonder how much Robert Forster got paid to sleepwalk through his 8 episodes. And I was pretty surprised to hear the racist use of "hajji" on network TV, but that is how dumbass marines talk, so fair enough.

It's a pick-em in Vegas last I checked, so not that many people reeeeally think that. I think Cincinnati's the more complete and more consistent team, while VT has had a lot of big-time issues on offense all season and doesn't have quite the brick-wall defense they usually field. This screams something like 20-17 or 24-14 for whichever team wins.

Early call: if Harvin's back, UF by 17. If he's not, UF by...8. BCS failures be damned, I think should at least be a pretty fun game.

I was absolutely hoping I'd get to play in the bowl I named. Sweet-ass.

You high. And yeah, I feel like "God Only Knows" will edge Bob, but ol' Zim did dominate, so mayhaps not. If I had had to make a shortlist of the 5 most likely winners at the outset, those three would have definitely been on it, though.

Also, the Ravens' staff down jackets are straight-up lavender. Fresh.

McGahee fumbles and shows his ass, literally. Nice angles, NBC.

I believe Lundquist and Danielson made a comment about him saying something similar during their pre-game interviews with the players throughout the week.

Kinda sucks, but the BCS simply couldn't exist without conference autobids. There'd be no incentive to buy in if your conference could be left out of the massive money associated with a BCS bowl any given season. It would be especially rough for the Big East, who, with only 8 teams, could get bumped out pretty regularly with even just a 2-loss champion.

Very strange. I had Charon, then picked up Paladin Cross. I had never encountered Dogmeat to this point, and still was able to get him when I finally found where he was. Must be just some random occurrence, unless it's something having to do with not grabbing Dogmeat at all.

GROUP A "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye. Marvin's really awesome and there's a lot more going on in this one than in "Respect." GROUP B "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles. It's gonna be this vs. God Only Knows for the win, which is pretty unsurprising, I think. GROUP C "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys GROUP D "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan. "Gimme Shelter" actually is just an okay Stones song in my book. The "it's just a shot away" lady vocals get pretty old by the 7th or so time around.

So when did Army start wearing camo on their uniforms? It's pretty hilarious. EDIT: Ah, of curse. A special Nike thing.

What's the companion glitch? I think I accidentally hit some glitch of that ilk, because I got Charon and Paladin Cross at the same time. Corrected itself after , but for a while I had Charon, Cross, and Dogmeat. I got Cross and Charon before I encountered Dogmeat, so I wonder if that had something to do with it? This game is super-fun. I think next time through I'm going grenades and fisticuffs.

Guys, do you realize that Buffalo is about to win their conference? Holy shit, Turner Gill must be even better than everyone thinks he is. That's even bigger than Ball State losing, I think.

Profitz.

I can't imagine an arrangement where Best Buy wouldn't get the majority of that cash, though I suppose it's possible. I've read very little on this whole deal, but I conceived it as Best Buy essentially giving the label an advance on their returns in exchange for a pile of albums and the guarantee that no one else can sell them. At the point that $14 million is already invested, I don't where the label would be doing much in the way of double-dipping. Otherwise, Best Buy really must be expecting it to be one hell of loss leader.