Guy in back: I bet I could grab her boob and make it seem like an accident.
Girl with arms raised: If he grabs my boob, I’m gonna smack his ass.
Girl with disinterested look: She thinks she’s so freakin’ hot.
Girl smiling at camera: I’m so freakin’ hot.
Guy grabbing girlfriend’s boobs: This picture is gonna rock.
Girl in front: This ride sucks. My boyfriend’s an ass, but at least I have great tits.

A few days ago I wrote about Microsoft’s Xbox and it’s destiny of success in the console market. Over the past few days I have been thinking more about it and I actually see another path being taken by Micrsoft. Of course, standard disclaimers apply here, I’m just indicating my perception which could be totally wrong.

In my previous article I mentioned Mircosoft’s stategy for battling Sony for market share in the console gaming industry. Then something dawned on me. Microsoft can and should ignore Sony completely.

Microsoft shouldn’t bother with Sony at all. What, your asking. Why should Microsoft ignore their largest competitor in that market? Good question, grasshopper. Now pay attention. The reason Microsoft should ignore Sony is because Nintendo is the company that can’t afford to fight this war. Sony rakes in billions in other business ventures like pumping out sub-standard movies, music and TVs.

Nintendo, on the other hand, doesn’t make near that because they are a console gaming company only. Their eggs are all in this basket. When all your eggs are in one basket, it’s easier to break them all with one whack. Microsoft is taking a swing.

Microsoft can bring hundreds of millions of dollars to bear on this specific industry. Nintendo will hurt first. Mircosoft already purchased Rare, Ltd. away from Nintendo. That’s the main clue they will topple them first. Rare makes, or made rather, 10% of all Nintendo’s gaming titles.

Sega has already withdrawn from the industry. The Dreamcast was their last entrant. They couldn’t battle Sony and the onslaught of the Playstation. In that same manner, Nintendo will fall under the Xbox. The GameCube 2 is nearly out of the question. If Nintendo makes it, it will most certainly be a burden on the company. They will have to specify their niche even more and concentrate on the GameBoy, and hand-held gaming, if they want to survive.

After Nintendo falls from the console wars, that leaves only Sony and Microsoft. But knocking down the easiest competitor, Microsoft opens themselves up to 50% of the market that fast.

If they spent the next 3 or 4 years fighting Sony, they will have smaller returns. Sony would, and will, put up a much stronger fight. Sony is big enough and, more importantly, rich enough to weather a Microsoft storm.

That is what I predict Microsoft’s stategy in the console market to be. Capsize Nintendo and then enjoy the easy ride. After that, they’ll have plenty of support, buyers, and game makers to reap the profit. They’ll likely never scare Sony from the market, but they don’t have too. In fact, the can forget about Sony and still enjoy the success they will get one pesky Nintendo is out of the way. And no company would be crazy enough to try to enter the console industry after that.

Nice knowing ya Nintendo. The Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog can share a table at the retired gamers cafe.

Coach told me to go for the ball.

The air has a scent of change. There is a tinge of coolness that dances on the skin even as the humidity dulls the senses. A crisp dash in every other breath alerts you to its coming. Fall is on its way. The yearly cycle of death and hibernation has begun.

The very edges of the leaves seem a lighter shade. The haze of heat has disappeared and been replaced by the clarity of a more distant sun. Coolness has returned a bounce of life to the Earth. The oppressive Summer heat has dissipated leaving creatures and man refreshed and bouyant to scurry about at the tasks of making ready for Winter.

I love this time of year. Many see it as depressing or dark. But I think it’s a sort of rebirth. It doesn’t have the power of Spring, but there is something very cathartic about that last burst of vigor and energy before the huddled warmth of Winter. It’s like announcing to the world a large “I am here!” that will hopefully be loud enough to echo until Spring’s explosion.

Maybe I’m not far enough out of the academic world to have “back to school” and football memories tied to this season, but I think there is more to it than that. As someone who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, fall and winter are supposed to be times when I have to fight depression more than usual. Even so, I like that. I like that challenge to my being. It allows me to stand up and pronounce my viability.

I often find that I am more creative in the fall and winter months. Perhaps it’s the being holed up inside the house, or maybe it’s the clarity of the air and the bracing frehsness of the breeze that make my thoughts come like the water in a Spring thaw, all fast and clear and abundant. I write more, I talk more, I think more, and I do more.

In short, this time of year makes me feel more human, and for that I thank the trees who lose their clothing, the animals that burrow underground, the birds that make amazingly long journeys, and all the other wonders of nature that this season brings.

Industry observers are busy and swarming like mosquitos. Why? Because this is the time of year when holiday shopping predictions are made. Not even Hallmark has Christmas cards on the rack, yet people are aflutter with forecasting.

Maybe it is the economy that just won’t listen to Alan Greenspan. Sure he says it’s getting better, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. But predictions are begining to overtake news cycles. What’s going to happen? Will Visa-toting Americans rush to the stores, credit limits be damned? Or will they spend more frugally, like last year?

I have claimed to be many things, and offered opinions on many a subject here, but one area I try to stay away from is the economy. I know it sucks, but I have no valid opinion on what to do about it. Not that my opinion matters, but the issue is so complex, I honestly don’t understand how anyone can get their hands around it.

But I have uncovered one prediction that is dead wrong. Completely, off-base, dead ass wrong. Industry observers are saying that if Microsoft does not have a banner holiday sales cycle with the Xbox, they will have to rethink their entry into the console game market.

Are you snickering, too?

The Xbox still trails market leader Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s GameCube. And industry pundits have been pointing out that the game console niche has never supported 4 players. It’s 4 players because the standard PC is considered a competitor in this industry and we all know the PC isn’t going anywhere.

The pundits are predicting Microsoft needs to dominate the holiday season in the area of game consoles or they will likely end Xbox sometime next summer.

Again I ask, are you snickering, too?

When has Microsoft ever stopped producing a product because of weak market support? Ok, there was that Microsoft Bob thing, but they should have known better. Microsoft has a proven track record of beating the market into submission.

Microsoft has committed resources beyound comprehension to console gaming. They publically said they would be willing to swallow a $500 million dollar loss before Xbox becomes profitable. Half a billion. They are willing to loose half a billion making this work.

Partly because they know they have to fight Sony. Sony is not Netscape. Lets face it, Netscape sucks as a browser and a company. IE is one of the few products that Microsoft produced that really is better than the competition. Well, except Opera. Opera 6 and up is unbeatable.

But Sony is a titan and they have a ton of money. They have owned the market since the Playstation. They better enjoy it now because it won’t last long. And it has nothing to do with holiday sales expectations.

Microsoft will win the console wars because of one reason. Bill Gates hates to loose. That’s it. When Microsoft gets into a market they do whatever they need to get ahead fast even if it means shooting flies with a shotgun.

Late into the browser game? No problem. Just give it away for free. One year later enjoy an 89% share.

What? You don’t think Microsoft will give the Xbox away for free? Microsoft is estimated to lose anywhere from $76 to $150 on each Xbox which retails for $199. At that level of sustained losses, how hard would it be for them to say, give the Xbox away for free for one month? You’d likely have to pay upfront, but the rebate would be similar to the PeoplePC, where you evenutally end up with a $99 dollar PC when all is said and done. They take the loss now because all those people who got free Xbox’s will gladly ante up for the Xbox 2, which, by the way, is already on the planning table.

Consumers have complained about weak game choice in comparision to the Playstation. So what’s a company like Microsoft, whose sitting on top of billions in cash, to do?

Mircosoft purchases a major developer, Rare Ltd, for $400 million to make games for Xbox - a developer that until today, made games only for the GameCube.

See the trend? The steps have begun. They are going a tad slower than I expected. The Xbox has been out for nearly a year. I would have expected Microsoft to have made those steps from the git. But then again, they had the Justice Department breathing down their necks. So they have to pistol whip the market into shape a little slower than normal.

Listen up industry experts and pundits. Sales seasons do not apply to Microsoft. The console gaming industry has yet to learn how the market can be turned upside-down by Microsoft, but they will feel the changing winds very shortly.

And next year, you’ll be back on TV as an “expert” telling everyone how Microsoft did it.

Damn… my hand got stuck… shit, now my watch is gone.

I want to be President. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to sit in the Oval Office, with the Pope, Tony Blair, and the Olsen Twins a speed dial away. But how does a schmo like me run for President? I have no money, no political backing, and no connections of any sort.

Would you like to run for President, too? Well, now you can.

It’ll be something like American Idol, except most of the participants are bound to be ugly. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “politics is Hollywood for ugly people.”

Any American that qualifies has the chance to run for President in the 2004 elections as a real people’s candidate. To get a chance at American history, applicants will have to fill out questionnaires, provide videotapes in which they explain why they would make a great president and put together a group of 50 supporters from their community who will serve as sponsors.

Each week the competitors will face contests and be narrowed down. The finalist can then launch a full-fledged Presidential campaign.

So get off your ass, arm chair politicians. Here is your chance to prove you can do it better than dubbya.

To bad I’m under 35, or I’d sign up right away.

We’ve been in bed with the Isrealis so long, we’ve begun to adopt their tactics like two back-alley lovers each scratching their crabs. In the White House’s rhetoric towards Iraq, we have come awfully close to the finger-pointing and incessant blaming for past wrongs that mars every Israeli/Palestinian peace meeting.

Apparently, Bush has everyone in Washington ready to go to war. They are beating the war drums and drowning out any common sense with statements like this:

The goal isn’t inspections, the goal is disarmament,” Donald Rumsfeld said. “That is what Iraq agreed to do.”

Washington is beginning to mire itself so deeply into hypocritical proclamations and behaviors that resemble the attitude that made otherwise sane people commit the WTC attack. If Bush and his WarHawks continue this smokescreen of excuses and bellows of injustice, how long can we expect to have peace on our soil? When will the next attack occur?

There is an undercurrent in the grassroots of distrust for the Bush administration and that current is getting stronger. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times reports from his travels around the US:

Don’t believe the polls that a majority of Americans favor a military strike against Iraq. It’s just not true…What is true is that most Americans are perplexed.

That’s where I stand. Sure, I don’t want to get blown up by a madman, but I also don’t want my president to be the madman blowing people up. As Friedman states, we can “deter” Saddam, what we can’t deter are people willing to take their own lives along with those of others. Suicide bombers are simply unstoppable.

That’s what no one in Washington or in the media seems to want to say. Suicide bombers simply cannot be stopped. So, why are we spending so much time, effort, and even these words discussing a country and man that we could simply make to not exist within days, when the terrorists and their brethren are still training and planning and plotting?

Bush seems to think he has won the “War on Terror,” but what he doesn’t realize is that he is not even on the right battlefield. He has been infected by this mindset that war equals power and he is totally intoxicated by it. We see him on TV actually smiling as he professes the need to “get rid of Saddam.” Like some cracked up syphilis patient, he can’t even read the speeches given to him:

There’s an old saying in Tennesse, it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee, too. Fool me once, shame on…you…Fool me twice, I won’t get fooled again.

I think this political STD is life-threatening. This country cannot stand up to a true onslaught of suicide terrorists. People will rise up in the streets against whatever they perceive as the closest cause of all the carnage. And that will be President Bush and his ham-handed meddlings in the Middle East. This ain’t just a case of the CLAP folks, this is serious.

You may have seen it on TechTV or on your safari to some hidden part of the Congo. Like anything worthwhile, there is now a “cyber” edition for your enjoyment.

I present The Spear Toss. It’s like digital crack.

I am a super hero.

Last night with the midnight oil burning, I was tapping away at some work while listening to mp3’s. Something caught my attention. I pulled my headphones off to hear my son screamed at the top of his lungs.

“DAAAAAADDDEEEEE!”

I run to my sons room just across the hall to see those two-year old eyes filled with tears and his shoulders hopping with sobs. Bad dream, scary noise, who knows.

“Want to sit with me in the rocking chair?” I ask.

“Un huh,” he says through sobs. So I gather him up with his blanket and plop down in the rocking chair in the corner. He rests his head against my chest as he goes back to sleepy-land.

Times like that, my mind wanders like crazy. That’s usually where I get my ideas for columns - while in the shower, standing in line somewhere, or rocking my son to sleep.

Last night though, I my thoughts were filled with the shitty day I had completed. Work was stressful and to political. That’s why I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for things like the baseball strike. The minimum salary is somewhere around $4 billion now, and yet the players nearly went on strike. Must be rough. I’m having trouble feeling your pain, chumps.

Yesterday while watching CNN, they had actually stopped talking about Iraq long enough to talk about Bill Gates. The Forbes Richest Assholes List for 2002 is out. They spent 15 minutes talking about Bill Gates, with an industry expert, and his fortune that was at $65 billion four years ago, but is now only $41 billion. Gee, how will he make ends meet?

Then, of course, there’s Iraq. We’re gonna attack him, we’re not gonna attack him; he’s got nukes, he doesn’t have nukes… The people who run this country just don’t seem to know. Yet I’m somehow suppose to care because it’s on the news each night. Somehow, I just don’t believe that he wants to nuke the US like the Whitehouse wants me to believe. Though, I should be concerned. Two of my cousins and a guy that was in my wedding are in the military. But it’s so easy to get into the train of thought that it’s some country really far away and it doesn’t effect me here in Ohio.

Now, for the fifth time, Saddam says he will let observers in. So maybe all this war talk was grandstanding? Hard to say.

It’s just hard for me to care about any of it. I am underpaid for the industry I work in, yet the baseball players want more money and somehow Bill Gates is poor. Politics are getting thick at work, but there is no international coalition that gives a shit.

But none of that matters. Because last night, somewhere near 2am, my son called for me. He was scared about something and he wanted me. He wanted to sit in the rocking chair with me. I whispered in his ear that everything was going to be OK… and he drifted off to sleep.

None of that other stuff matters. Because last night, for almost five whole minutes, I was a super hero.