It's slightly ironic that after being extra-nice to Whitney and staying up until 3am on Monday morning so we could talk, I struggled out of bed this morning to find that both of my tutorials had been cancelled. This meant that I had all morning to do something constructive - work on the report again, perhaps, or even start on some revision. So have I done that?

One of the more unusual messages.

Of course not! I've been playing GTA2 all morning. It's been available as semi-freeware (as in it's a free program but they say it isn't freeware because of some ludicrous technicality and you can't pass it around but instead have to use their servers, blah, blah) from Rockstar Classics for some time now. The last time I had it was when I downloaded it over a painfully slow 56k connection, back when Freeloader was actually free (the name made sense back then). I'd forgotten how much fun it was - I always thought that the GTA games worked better using a top-down view rather than the modern fully 3D environments. Some people have been playing it over the network, and I don't think I've laughed quite so much since I went to see Van Helsing.

It's strange to remember the huge media outcry in response to the release of the very first game in the series. "This game will turn you in to a criminal and kill your childen!" was the typical reaction to a game which involved working for organised crime gangs. But then, in those days just about every game was considered a danger to society and the human race. Now when a controversial game is released, no one seems to really care any more. Parents buy them for their children. That's probably why we have neds. Haha, maybe they were right after all.

Speaking of controversy, I found this parody VW Polo advert on Snopes the other day. Maybe this is an admission of bad taste (as if regularly talking about German and J-pop on this journal wasn't enough of that already), but I find it absolutely hilarious and not offensive at all.

I would like to reiterate that Mark Vanderbilt can't sing. "Ahfee thedistah steeah from the watcheeaaye!" I'm not sure what he's screeching about, but it's certainly not the lyrics.