Hey, everybody! It's the Internet! It's that galactic, pirouetting party that never gets shut down—because the sun never comes up in the Internet, dummy, Al Gore programmed it that way—full of conversation, debate, shouting, threats, and dicks, literal and metaphorical.

The above is the first comment on a recap of Breaking Bad's penultimate episode.

Grand Theft Auto 5, the newest installment in the best-selling video game series, was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on Tuesday, September 19, 2013. Fans are eagerly awaiting another opportunity to visit the virtual world where that they can experience a lengthy crime saga from three difference perspectives, a new feature to the series that has built itself on dark satire that holds a cracked mirror to Americana. In past installments, the series usually achieved this through absurdism—often through player-controlled actions—film references, and pop-culture references, focused through a comedic lens, amidst regular violence.

The series first made its own pop-culture splash in 2001 with the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 for PlayStation 2 with a condensed version of a New York City stand-in to be explored. It proved to be cathartic to laugh at the game's unmasked, hyper-sardonic violence that could be embraced, uninhibited by consequence, all while experience a story where voice actors portraying facsimiles of gangsters swore out-loud in dialog. Twelve years, and multiple editions of the game later, and Grand Theft Auto 5 has released, and the joke isn't fucking funny anymore.

"When the shit goes down... Spring Breakers is... miles and TIMEZONES away from Scarface and Britney."

Taking the turn onto Spring Breakers' back stretch, we were already taking bets on who would die. Because the movie appeared to be, quite plainly, a movie (and little more). The story's good Christian girl had already gotten out of dodge when things got too real, and our quartet of skinny young skanks was down to a trio. So, would the really bad ones get their bodies dumped in a swamp or fed to a gangster's pet hammerhead shark? Without the good girl, the movie had been let off the leash, we were free to follow these miscreants on a hell ride down Florida's dirt path. James Franco, draped in the ceremonial robes he raided from Kevin Federline's closet, will be your Virgil for this journey. You are about to see the seedier side of spring break, guys—

The Raid is the single best movie about an expert fighting for his life in very threatening surroundings.

Art can be commended for being thematically-focused and for authenticity. In this case, we're talking about movies. For example, praise can be heaped upon a movie because of a lead in a biopic performing flawless mimicry. It feels authentic. It might be the movie's biggest strength, perhaps it's only strength. Movies where authenticity are their main strengths can overpower other potential shortcomings, so when a movie is about a place, or when a movie is about ideology, or about traveling, about being on the run, about emotion, and fear, and love -- even if the rest of it is vacant, that one authentic trait can make it rise up because viewers will walk out of it and say, "That was a movie about [SUBJECT]. Finally, somebody made a great movie about [SUBJECT]."

"If there ever can be a best game, unfortunately, about war, this is it. It's long, brutal, occasionally boring, always intense, and above all else, never really in your control."

We can think about life faster than it actually goes by. Without meaning to, certain events and entanglements can consume years of unconscious thought, running parallel to what's actually happening right before you, sometimes outpacing your senses, sometimes overwhelming them altogether. You often are not in command of your mind, and what it will be, as those years pass. A decade from now though, it may. Life does not embolden life immediately. Experience's benefits are staggered and we cannot derive clarity at first glance because memory is not good enough -- true clarity comes from acknowledgment and confrontation, a repulsive thing to face right here in the waking present.

part i | don't be upset just because somebody brought it up

Recently, a woman named Anita Sarkeesian kickstarted (yeah! Kickstarter!) a web series intending to engage the Tropes Vs. Women In Gaming. The first episode came out a while back on YouTube (and the third most recently), clocking in at about 20 minutes, and it detailed how frequently damsels in distress are used as a trope in games. A simple argument to make, right? Well, yeah, of course, you might say, games are simple, they tell simple stories, especially in the early days of the game industry, of course the stories they tell would be basic tales with chivalrous story-beats. The term for this is "courtly love" (which is different from Courtney Love).

The Nintendo Wii U is out. Has been since last November. It's the newest game system to hit the market, and so it shall remain until the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One launch. The Wii U is a trim piece of kit. Check it out, you can have some fun with it, especially if you don't have any other modern gaming system. The extra screen is kinda funky. Hardly intrustive, though.

Babies can use the Wii U. Non-babies can also use it, too. I promise you that your genitals will not *SHLORP* back up into your body if you touch it. The choice is yours.

Reports came out today that the Wii U sales are tanking. Does that mean the next generation of videogames has not begun? Is the Wii U really just a PS3 controlled by an iPad... thing? That's a big question, Jimmy. Let's examine it.

At a movie theater with $6 matinée tickets, still humming the Pacific Rim theme song and picking popcorn kernels out of my teeth, a dad and his daughter, she was probably 7, came walking past me. He was walking. She was hop-scotching. Her was mouth agape, like it should be.

"It was was so awesome! So, so awesome! And so funny at the end when he cut open the monster, and he shouted, 'where is my goddamn shoe!' "

"Okay, yeah, it was pretty awesome, but let's try not to use the bad words though, okay?"

This, everybody. This right here is proof that kids have taste.

There are kids that aren't in kindergarten that have broken more iPads in their lives than I've owned. That's easy to do, because I've never had one. I'm not bitter, it's a bigger, more spiteful emotion. Like most parents, I bet these iPad-breaking kids' moms and dads collapsed into bed one night, and before gravitating towards That One Dream, they mumble, maybe to themselves, maybe to nobody, "gonna get that kid all the shit I never had."

That way, they won't end up like you, right? A failure and a fuck-up?

I hope those kids' iPads stay broken. That way they don't have to live in the Internet. It sucks in here. It's too hot and there are these messed up animals everywhere. I think they're starved wolves? Maybe shaved bears? Whatever they are, them dogs are running wild. It'd be nice to avoid them. Luckily, it's the summer, and that's as good an excuse as any to unplug from the Internet's digital slap-fight. I did this by accident over this last weekend, maybe because the information-chugging that my day normally is wasn't a priority when I could actually go outside and smile at the sun. I recommend it!