Last month, I wrote about The awesome generosity of Penny Arcade readers, and the lack of media coverage of that story.
Well, today there is a fantastic follow-up to that story. The author of the story that prompted the guys at PA to launch Child’s Play celebrated, and apologized to Penny Arcade and its readers.

This is some combination of a celebration and an apology. First, the celebration.
A week before Thanksgiving, The Herald printed my first column on ultra-violent video games, and then put it on the Web site, www.heraldnet.com. The most important reaction I saw came right after Thanksgiving through a Web site called penny-arcade.com.
An unidentified writer wrote, “If you are like me, every time you see an article like this one — where the author claims that video games are training our nation’s youth to kill — you get angry.”
When readers clicked “this one,” my column on video games popped up.
[. . .]
Among other things they did to inspire giving, Penny-arcade published a letter from one of its readers. He is the father of a 5-year-old boy who had spent most of the previous five months at Children’s Hospital getting chemotherapy for lymphoma.
Almost every parent can immediately identify with that father’s distress, and with his heartfelt “thank you” to Penny-arcade for its Child’s Play toy drive.
[. . .]
Here is the apology part and then back to more celebration. Certainly many gamers read my column as a statement that I believe that they are bad people. For that impression I am sorry. I did not and do not believe that.
In any case, the Penny-arcade Web site and many of their readers, who are apparently gamers, demonstrated that they have big hearts and generous instincts.

Mr. Bill France, who wrote the original story, and the story quoted above has earned a trophy and a pizza from the official WWdN Prize Patrol™.

I think that Alison Berkley is teh rules:

It just occurred to me that I am a snowboard whore.
I am the lady in red (literally) who accepts cash at the end of the day from the ultrawealthy ski vacationers at Snowmass who think I’m a miracle worker because their brain-dead kid actually got excited about something besides video games for the first time since the day she turned 13.
They call us “snowboard pros” which makes it sound a lot more legit than it really is. Whatever. My parents are just happy I’m a professional at something, especially after all that money they blew on boarding school and the six years it took me to get through college.
No, I’m not bumming around some upper-crust resort. I’m not afraid of the so-called “real world” or facing the responsibility of becoming an “adult.” I’m a snowboard pro, bitch. That’s Alison Berkley, S.P.

It’s rare that I read something and laugh all the way through, so for that, Alison Berkley, S.P., I salute you!
(huge thanks go out to Russ who brought this story to my attention)
UPDATE: A few readers e-mailed me that, after she wrote this article, Alison Bekley was fired from her job at Snowmass:

The “Princess” has dinged her crown — and lost her job.
Cheeky Aspen Times columnist Alison Berkley apparently went too far last week when she detailed her perceived shortcomings as a local snowboard instructor, writing, among other things, in her weekly column — entitled “The Princess’s Palate” — that she felt like “a snowboard whore” for dressing in red and accepting cold, hard cash from Snowmass Ski Area’s “ultrawealthy.”
Her bosses at Aspen Skiing Co., which is owned by the Crown family of Chicago, were none too pleased with the sassy columnist, earlier this week terminating her employment and the privileges that go along with it, including her ski pass and the on-mountain locker she mocked in the column.

It’s just another example of Rich Fucking Assholes™, who have no sense of humor, screwing things up for the rest of us. Alison Berkley, Fomer Snowboard Pro and Martyr, I still salute you. You are still teh rules. Maybe spending less time with Rich Fucking Assholes™ and their Spoiled Brat Kids™ will give you time to focus on a writing career. You’re obviously good at it.

Here’s some more geeky webby goodness I’ve uncovered in the last few days.
Blogger users can easily create RSS feeds for their site using Rss-ify. It’s really cool. All you do is put some tags in your entry templates, generate a URL, and watch the fun.
(hat tip to Juan Cole, who is the first blogger I read to use this nifty application.)
For anyone wondering, I use NetNewswire Lite on my iBook (still in a coma, but hopefully coming back from the logic-board doctors at Apple this week), and AmphetaDesk on my Linux machine, though I’m giving Pears a try today.
Remember a few days ago when I was so excited to learn the magic use of the TITLE tag? Several readers e-mailed to let me know that I can build symbols using unicode, like < or > to show off my HTML . . . uh . . . “skills” . . . I guess . . . in a less-lame way.
<a href="http://www.homestarruner.com" title="seriously.">like this!</a>.
Many people ask me why I don’t use target="_blank" in my links. So many, in fact, that I really should add it to the FAQ. The answer is, “because it’s just as easy to right-click (or ctl-click, if you’re a machead) to open links in new windows, most browswers can be set to open links in background tabs or windows anyway, and I’m too lazy to type it into every link.”
The follow-up, of course, is, “Well, then why don’t you just put make "_blank" the base link?”
To which I reply, “Because I don’t want to. So there. Nyahh.”
Now, I am off to have left-over soup, and a slice of just-baked potato bread for lunch. \m/

Last night, I made “The Chicken Soup”, from the Whole Foods Market Cookbook. It took just under five hours from the beginning to the eating, but it was totally worth it.
I made the stock, prepared all the spices and vegetables, and even added some egg noodles, at the urging of my wife. The entire house smelled like . . . well, it just smelled like warmth, and love, and home, if that makes any sense. The time spent in the kitchen was sort of meditative, as I carefully washed and cut parsnips, carrots, onions and sweet potatoes. I was delighted as the windows fogged up when I was dicing dill and parsley. It was just me and the stove, turning three quarts of water into a meal.
I’d talked about my plans for this meal for days, and inadvertently built it into an Event&#153: Nolan cleaned and set the dining room table with great care. He carefully folded paper napkins and ensured that each of us had a spot-free soup spoon. Ryan put one of my Esquivel CDs on, and lit candles. Fortunately, they stopped short of donning clip-on ties . . . though I suspect the notion crossed their minds, for comic-relief if nothing else.
Because of this grand build-up, I was a tiny bit incredibly nervous when everything was done, and it was time to serve. The entire family was seated, and I carefully ladled out bowlfulls for each of us. I took tight, tense breaths as I sat down. Four steaming bowls of soup now sat on the table, and my judgment was at hand.
Before we could take up our spoons, Nolan held his apple juice up and said, “A toast to Wil, for making soup from scratch!”
“Cheers!” Ryan said with a smile as we clinked glasses.
“I hope it doesn’t suck,” I said, recalling the eggplant pilaf I made last week. I thought it was fantastic (and ate it for lunch over the next two days) but it failed to excite Anne and the kids, who ended up eating hastily-prepared grilled cheese sandwiches that night.
“It smells so good,” Ryan said, “Can I eat now?”
“Yes,” I said. I felt like I was on an all-in stone bluff in late position, hoping for a fold, dreading a call.
Ryan lifted his spoon to his mouth, blew gently across it, and ate.
I looked across the table to Nolan, who was taking his spoon from his mouth. Anne hadn’t picked up her spoon, yet. She was watching them almost as intently as I was.
Ryan swallowed, and was the first to speak.
“Oh my god, Wil! This is the best soup EVER!”
He removed any doubts that he was just being polite when he immediately dug in for another spoonful.
“What do you think, Nolan?” I asked.
“Normally, I hate cooked vegetables,” he said, “. . . but whatever you did to them here made them really good!”
“That’s awesome, you guys,” I said, “I’m so glad you like it!” I felt like a kid again, showing off an “A” on a project to my parents, and I hadn’t even tasted it yet!
I looked at Anne, and she smiled and gave me the thumbs up. “This is really good, Wil,” she said.
That’s all I needed to hear. I took my first bite . . . and it was heavenly. The last-minute decision to toss in a bit of cayenne paid off. It balanced the sweetness of the parsnips and yams brilliantly, and the fragrance of freshly-chopped dill filled every bite.
Though I love to cook, I’m not particularly good at it, and there was a very good chance that I’d screw this up. I know that to make a meal that the family enjoys is a very small thing, and people do it every day . . . but the whole reason I wanted to write about this is what Ryan said to me when we were washing dishes after dinner:
“You know, Wil,” he said, “tonight,you did something nobody else has ever done.”
“What’s that?”
“Not only did you get Nolan to eat cooked vegetables . . . ” he turned off the water and faced me. “But you got him to go back for seconds. High-five, Wil. Seriously.”
We laughed together, effortlessly, like a happy parent and child, and turned the water back on.
“Nolan and Mom are going to watch TV. Do you want to read when we’re done with these?” he asked. I’ve been reading The Two Towers and he is about to finish ‘salem’s Lot. For the past week, we’ve been sitting outside or next to our fireplace, depending on the weather and time of day, and reading together.
“Yes,” I said, “Yes, I do.”
These are the moments that I cherish. These are the memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Okay. Political stories and rants are officially back “on the table.”
Last night on 60 Minutes, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill described George W. Bush as “a blind man in a roomful of deaf people” during Cabinet meetings, and revealed that within days of his inauguration, Mr. Bush planned to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq.
Of course, this means that, three years after he was sworn in, when Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was “a grave and gathering danger” (either because of those non-existent WMDs, or the equally non-existent ties to terrorists) he was doing nothing more than trying to fool We, The People, into going along with his inauguration-day plans to have his war on Iraq.
That information should enrage all Americans. The fact is, the Bush administration played us for suckers. In the aftermath of 9/11, when he could have actually been “a uniter, not a divider,” George W. Bush took our grief, outrage, and fear and exploited it.
And now, as the lies for war unravel, George W. Bush — the “compassionate conservative” — shows us where his priorities truly lie.
It took 74 days for the Bush Administration to begin an investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak. It’s very clear that the purpose of the leak was to intimidate former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and send a warning to anyone else who would dare speak the truth about the Bush Administration’s lies.
For those readers who aren’t familiar with her, Valerie Plame’s extremely undercover work for the CIA focused on tracking down weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring that they didn’t find their way into the hands of terrorists.
Gosh, that sure sounds familiar . . . isn’t tracking down weapons of mass destruction, and ensuring that they don’t find their way into the hands of terrorists the reason over 500 American soldiers and countless Iraqi civillians have lost their lives in the last 10 months? (They’ve changed the reason for invading Iraq so many times, I’ve lost track. If it’s a different reason today, if we’re back to “liberating the Iraqi people,” or “He took a shot at my daddy,” just wait. I’m sure they’ll return to “WMDs and Terrorists!” soon enough.)
See, whoever blew Ms. Plame’s cover actually increased the danger to Americans from terrorists with WMDs. Thank god we have that color-coded alert system to keep us distracted safe! Good thing we all know to watch out for dangerous people reading The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and six year-old girls boarding airplanes!
But here’s the thing that just boggles me, and actually moved me to write tonight: The Bush administration waited 74 days before they started an investigation into who blew Ms. Plame’s cover, putting her, all her assets, and all of us at risk.
Seventy-four days. When National Security is at stake.
How many days did it take for the Bush administration to call for an investigation into Paul O’Neill?
One. One day after he was on 60 Minutes. One day is all it took for what can be called a punitive investigation, at best, when all that’s really at stake is the rapidly vanishing ability of the Bush White house to lie to us and get away with it.
So the question sweeping the nation is: Does Mr. Bush care more about protecting Americans from terrorism and ensuring our safety, or protecting himself from criticism, and ensuring his reelection?
Well, I think that’s asked and answered, and I’m counting down to November.
(We’re still having some upgrade issues. Hopefully, comments will return by the end of the week)
UPDATE: Until comments are up and running again, I thought I would share some e-mails that I’ve read regarding this post: