The shift from tasteless to anxious was instantaneous when I saw marathon runners with names scrawled down their arms and legs ("Go Jack! Run, Lu... I think Lucy?") starting to call and text as they loped by at mile 22 in Brookline, Massachusetts. Some, but not all, were running with smartphones, and I very much wish now that they had been vanity-Tweeting, shouting to the world that they were indeed doing the marathon. They were using their devices because they were being inundated by notices and updates humming through their phones to the point that they could no longer ignore.

Now that people have gotten the chance to digest Bioshock Infinite's ending, its meaning, and its place in the world, its presence still lingers in our minds. It's got a twisty, gooey, book of the month kind of blubber on it. I wanna chew it. That's a credit to the product as a piece of entertainment and as a bit of pop culture, too. This game requires discussion with good grammar. There are so many angles you can examine the game from -- c'mon, then, you Dickensian urchins, let's point them out!

Are you wondering just exactly how all those bits and pieces of Bioshock Infinite fit together? Wonder no more! I only found it complicated at first because it's a little contrived, with some odd character motivations at first glance. A game that requires examination is art. It looks nice and it makes you think. Anyway, without further delay, let's dig into what a floating city in the sky and a girl with some quantum physics books have to do with the Battle of Wounded Knee and alternate versions of reality.

++ SPOILERS!! ++ This is what Bioshock Infinite's ending means. ++ SPOILERS!! ++

Oz the Great and Powerful is the frantic outcome of a thousand-million primary-colored Legos clicked together, discovered at dawn after showing your four year-old daughter Army of Darkness the night before.

Oz the Great and Powerful is a grilled ham sandwich served to you on a plastic Fischer Price plate at high tea-time, between the hours of 5-7pm. It's best to watch Oz the Great and Powerful with no intention of liking it, because that will set you up for some electrically-enhanced make-up sex. Oz the Great and Powerful contains an intricate adoration normally reserved for a drunken retelling of your fifth-grader's stage performance of The Wizard of Oz, if you were at a train station bar, and you were describing it to a stranger that you suspect is there to kill you, and you're stalling for time. The point the movie is trying to make is that your lies aren't nearly as convincing as you might think, and that you aren't fooling anybody, and Oz the Great and Powerful is full of characters like this, and deception and self-deception will make you real ugly, real fast.

Being of sound mind and body, I will now attempt to review The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part II with as little foreknowledge of the book and film series' as possible. Hang on.

Taking one for the team here, folks.

A funny thing happened during this experiment. I tried, and eventually failed, to keep track of how many times I said, out-loud, "This is fucked up." Not yelled, or laughed, but just said, in a normal speaking voice, "This is fucked up," while watching The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part II. Let's talk about why.

Okay, so, how bad can it be, right? Optimism! Always give cultural watersheds the chance to win you over -- The Hunger Games acting as a good indicator that things can still surprise me. With no prior reading or viewing experience of the Twilight franchise, save for the funny but still-painful Twilight 1 Rifftrax, which taught me that a mustache is a big responsibility, I made the brazen decision to watch this here final Twilight movie. For science! I'm a smart guy, I can figure out what's going on! Something this popular can't be complicated. I know it's about chastity and vampires and mustaches, and I know that their names are Edward and Bella, and I don't care about how or why the girl hooks up with a werewolf while her vampire boyfriend is away. Just tell me how it ends! Do they finally fuck? Do they finally fight? Does Kristen Stewart finally install her emotion chip and stop tottering around like she has two left wooden feet?

Perhaps, most pertinent, is it actually bad?

In short, it's bad in ways you couldn't have possibly imagined. If this is adored by millions, we really do have a concussion problem in this country.

To borrow a phrase, somebody "modded" the environment code last weekend. Reality had been messed with. On Wednesday, everything was normal. When I woke up on Saturday though, I slung open the blinds to see the settings had been updated:

Friction: VERY LOW
Snow levels: HIGH
Professional obligations: LOW
Vehicle traffic: FALSE
Age at heart: 10-12

grumpiness: Override?value=1

That brought the total snowfall in Boston to: 21.8"

Like a disposable rectal thermometer, that's one more football season tossed to the garbage. What, you didn't realize your yearly checkup is complete!? Sure was! Yeeacch, we're still sick.

A videogame can't be emotionally-draining. This thing here is emotionally-draining. The Walking Dead isn't a videogame.

The Walking Dead game, made by Telltale Games, based on the comics of the same name, is a disturbing plunge into interactive storytelling and it rips up definitions. It will make you feel terrible. It will make you feel terrible things.

This is a videogame tagged under the draconian "adventure" genre, Telltale's signature, meaning you've probably got supplies to collect, venues to comb through, and a story to progress through, eschewing action in favor of situational puzzles. Let's just get this out of the way. This isn't a videogame. And it's not an adventure.

There are video games that are fun to lull through. The relaxers. Journey. Flower.

These are not those games. These are the spinning augers of competition that slap you awake and demand your attention with a crackling cattle prod. There's no napping on these titles. If you're feeling sleepy or need to get fired up, throw in one of these guys (or gals) and you'll be raring to go:

What is it about bumming around the Internet that makes us so blasé to the point of grumpiness?

Ages ago, when the Internet was an isolated thing that you could "do," and that box that made it "be" made loud fax machine sounds, mothers warned kids not to be a pricks when online. Or to tell those anonymous, nerd-lusty troglodytes where you actually lived for really-reals, because the bad ones were truly out to getcha!