The NFL playoffs are a go! Man, it sure does suck that all of the games this last weekend went the opposite way I had hoped. That's alright though, I had no chicken in any of those cockfights. The Pats don't play until this weekend. Coincidentally, they're playing the Texans again, which made me recall the last time they played the Texas on a Monday night game.

Fucking Monday Night Football, man.

Watching Monday Night Football on ESPN is like going home for Christmas if your family lived inside of a giant whale. Not only is it a giant whale, it's the most popular whale in the world! Normally you just check out the whale when it swims by. What a majestic animal! I'd prefer to observe whales from the outside. It's less horrifying. However, on this occasion, you have to go home, into the whale, and sit on its tongue while you watch its insides churn with the assistance of an efficient, transparent bile.

Okay, wow, 2012 is done -- did everybody have fun? Not just in that last night where we saw Ryan Seacrest ceremoniously becoming the welcome host-husk to Dick Clark's frozen brain so that he may live for another century. No, I'm sure everybody's New Year's Eve was enjoyable. Mine was. I saw our bar's drunk owner make a three minute speech about the Fiscal Cliff to some light laughter and some good natured heckling. Then some wide-lipped woman started shouting about being a well-informed Republican, and she had to leave with her weird prehensile tail between her legs a few minutes before the ball dropped.

"Dr Pepper Ten is flavor's artistic opposite."

There are 20 calories in a 20 oz. bottle of Dr Pepper Ten. By that logic, they could have called it anything.

In short, TNNS can be described as Super Pong Bros. 3, and can only be played on a touch-screen.

TNNS is a decision-engine, but not for you. Your decision is a question with one answer that is asked every half-second.

Is the ball coming at you? If "yes," put your paddle on it.

If "no," then the question will be asked again in 0.5 seconds.

If you can answer that question, The Game Will Continue To Exist. The objective is to continue. Right? Right! Right. People with salaries are looking at spreadsheets right now (probably in California!), trying to figure out how game-ify things that people would rather not be doing. The theory goes, those some people might be alright doing those undesirable things if their actions were being quantified with numbers. They're ostensibly trying to make "continuation" more tangible -- to make it a finer grade of sand.

Being is boring. The infinite number of decimal points between integers 1 and 2 is not. Right? Right?!

Want to know what's great about the Wii U? That nobody can figure out if it's good or not. There are arguments for both camps. Lots of people want it to become popular -- they're probably big Nintendo fans. Lots of people are rooting for its failure -- they're probably fans of something different.

Here are a few negatives that have come up in the last week since the thing launched, summoned from my brains:

1: The menus / apps load slowly.
2: It requires a 5 GB patch to go online.
3: The emulation of original Wii games is still in 480p and is not up-scaled.
4: The GamePad tablet-controller needs to be recharged frequently.

I'm going to take the high road on this and assume that the people leveling these criticisms are in the industry of leveling criticisms. They're paid to stand alongside, and consistently evaluate, potential fun-levels, like the manager of the guy that wears the Daffy Duck costume at Six Flags in Tampa, Florida. On the subject, that manager really wants a microscope for Christmas so he can finally try to find his balls -- and a mustache comb for combing his back hair.

I can't trust these people. They're hateful. I don't work in the industry of recommending entertainment, but you don't go to The Industry to get recommendations on fun and happiness. You go to some person that has one.

"Modernizing" is a fascinating concept. No movie franchise does it better than James Bond -- it helps that it's 50 years old.

Is modernizing objective? Yes, to a fault. Is it cynical? Sure, oftentimes. Is it disrespectful? That's somebody's opinion, and although I find opinions to be fascinating, I have my own, and they cause me enough anxiety without help, so I'll only think hard about your's if your brain deserves a firm blow to its mouth.

Skyfall is a great movie, reminding us that great movies can have gunfights in them, and reminding us how eternal James Bond can be, even with his ridiculous misogyny and fetishistic love for uncomfortable, British-built sportscars.

"[Kellogg's Frosted Flakes® Reduced Sugar cereal with Fiber] is childhood, evolved."

I don't have a pre-existing medical condition that prevents me from enjoying Frosted Flakes, unless if you count aging naturally as a pre-existing medical condition, and the FDA does not, so I have very little legal recourse. If it didn't hurt my stomach, I would have more regularly eaten the wax paper in the cardboard box that held the Frosted Flakes in the 1990's.

Nowadays, the cereal hurts my stomach too. It's all corn and sugar and it tastes like a prickly storm cloud against a blue sky, and the atmosphere is fading fast around the planet. It's Halloween forever with Frosted Flakes. Urgh. Man, I wish I was still a 6 year-old with a Game Boy and easy homework with Halloween forever, at least once-in-a-sometimes. I didn't have to be conscious of accidentally, or intentionally, using the word "moist," in a sentence, so I suppose I had to sacrifice that. Things can still be funny and delicious as an adult.

Split/Second is a racing game, and it is dairy-product buffet, a veritable milk-n-slide of cheese, ice cream, and butter that will leave you worshiping a golden calf.

Unlike Mario Kart, a racing game that is like a conversation with your company's new CMO that you're begging for a departmental budget increase, Split/Second is a racing game that resembles a conversation with God. Scratch that, Split/Second is a conversation with Zeus and his Olympian brothers and sisters, and you are a four-wheeled demi-god, and you are gonna land on the finish line with just a massive engine and a fistful of prayers. You know who you should worship: you worship drift, you worship draft, you worship hang-time, and you worship reflexes, dodging around your enemies attacks, and you hope the gods are watching, and you keep those hopes close to your heart.

My second question concerned the common cold. I knew, based on the answer to my first question, that I couldn't just eat this man's brain and absorb his medical knowledge that way. Maybe he was just trying to discourage cannibalism. I couldn't take that chance, at least not right then. I didn't want mad-cow disease.

"Is there actually a cure for the common cold?"

The doctor drank his beer. Memories reeled off inside his head -- ones not for eating. "There is not. However, you can attack the symptoms and your immune system will take care of the rest in about 10 days or so."

That was a professional answer.

Bro, stop using your phone in the bathroom. 

It's got nothing to do with germs. I'm almost positive the keyboard at your desk has more bacteria on it than a urinal. Your hands will touch far filthier things in a regular workday, like the handle on a supermarket shopping basket, or any surface within 200 years of a subway stop.