I’ve just seen Penny Arcade’s latest strip which really struck a chord with me. Having already been told off for discussing the ending of King Kong openly with someone without the thought even entering my mind that there’s anybody on the planet that didn’t know what happens (let’s face it – it’s up there with Star Wars and Planet of the Apes as one of the most widely discussed endings ever committed to film), but I still wonder how people can avoid these things.

The last one that did it for me was Lord of the Rings, where I got pissed with having to continually black out anything that said that Gollum bites off Frodo’s finger and falls into Mount Doom with the Ring, that Frodo goes off with the elves, or that Arwen ends up with Aragorn, and the list goes on. It’s not like we’re talking about new material with those movies – this is a book published in 1954 that’s the second most widely read book of the 20th Century behind the Bible.

I needed to rant on that little pet hate of mine after PA went and put it into comic form. Jesus dies at the end of The Passion of the Christ, Anakin gets burnt alive and becomes Darth Vader, and if you haven’t read an old book or seen an old film it makes sense not to go into forum threads discussing the ending. Use some common sense, please.

I don’t know what’s with all my negativity today. I’ll have to balance it out with more 360 evangelisation or something.

Unfortunately for my bank balance we haven’t seen any of the $2,000 eBay prices that people were paying for Xbox 360s in the US (I’m kidding of course; I wouldn’t sell it for that little), as they seem to have peaked on launch day at £700-800 and now settled around the not quite so ludicrous mark of £500-600. The usual round of idiots who are duped by not reading the description into paying $600 for the a home-made box continues to amuse me, though.

Anyway, I’m going to break my current state of 360-addled bliss with an amusing anecdote of desperation. From time spent both at work and in the Video Game Centre I’ve seen just how annoyingly constant the stream of calls and other enquiries about it are (annoyingly so, in case you were wondering), but this is the first time I’ve seen it turned on them into such a handsome profit.

Eynon, the owner of the VGC, hadn’t planned to get one, but when the opportunity arose thanks to a new contact at the local Virgin Megastore, who were going to have a few Cores left over and games available at staff discount, he jumped to it. We played his machine all evening on launch night (he got it early when the whole centre containing Virgin was unexpectedly closed down), and then when he wasn’t too bothered he decided to leave it in the shop for the time being so that it could be an in-store demo and also something to sell if someone made a good offer. In all it was on for a couple of work days and was played by at least ten different people that I know of.

Fast forward to today. Someone came in and saw it, asking if it was for sale. Eynon told them that it was his and he didn’t want to sell it (lies), but that he would for the right price. The guy then actually offered £500 for a Core pack that had been used by loads of people as an in-store demo and bought it. Seriously, if you were going to pay far over the odds for one wouldn’t you at least go on eBay where they’re a similar price unused?

As I’m typing this there’s a brand new Xbox 360 sitting on my desk. It’s the first new major console release since the original Xbox came out here on 14th March 2002, and I’d forgotten how much fun it is to wait for a new console and go and pick it up on launch day. Probably not so fun for the countless disappointed people (I was in the VGC yesterday for about half an hour and they must have had about ten calls, and apparently it’s even worse today) who aren’t going to be getting them until the new year, but the anticipation is always great and pays off when you get home with the new hardware and hook it up for the first time.

Between 9pm and midnight last night all of us who were getting machines plus a few more were in the shop playing all the launch games (I didn’t think there was a real dud in there, but the EA games hadn’t arrived yet) and then took them home at midnight to get some next-gen gaming goodness before bedtime. My bedtime ended up being well after 4am, but it was worth it. I’m in love with this machine.

I’ll post some more comprehensive impressions of what I’ve got later, but suffice it to say both Project Gotham 3 and Call of Duty 2 look amazing (even on my regular TV) and the hardware is hugely impressive, and it’s forced me to move the purchase of an HDTV up the agenda. Fuck waiting for them to get cheaper, I need it now! In the meantime here’s my Gamer Card, and I’m off to play some more.

As you can probably see I’ve bought one of the Penny Arcade icon packs as well as some online retro goodness in the form of Smash TV. Even premium content isn’t out of bounds in my new console stupor. One other quick note for those who don’t want to wait until January is that the US version of Ridge Racer 6 is multiregion, so the lucky UK 360 owners out there can import earlier and cheaply.

I don’t think there’s anyone who truly enjoys presentations and public speaking, but they’re one of the inevitable evils of education. What I really hate is when they put innocent students through all the rigmarole and trauma of researching a subject, writing a speech on it, talking about it in front of a crowd of people, and then having it picked apart by a lecturer, and the subject matter doesn’t even seem relevant. I’ve just been the victim of this, as despite the fact that I’m in the middle of a journalism degree I’ve just had to do a 40-minute presentation on whether or not Britain’s future lies at the heart of Europe or with the United States. I don’t underestimate the historical significance of the Marshall Plan but, really, what does it have to do with journalism?

Myself and my group did alright and should get some good feedback on it, but still. Last year I did a presentation comparing the design styles of a magazine and newspaper which actually has a point to me and I might actually find useful. I swear that it’s nothing more than an excuse to keep us on our toes a bit and waste some time that could be spent on the essays due before Christmas.

Anyway, that’s my random little rant out of the way. Now I’m home free until Thursday at midnight! On that subject this review of the 360 hardware is probably the best I’ve read.

Well not here exactly; we still have another ten days to wait. Still, there’s a lucky minority on this planet who have the Xbox 360 sitting in their living rooms.

There’s the usual console launch hysteria going on around the Internet, with some managing to net one, others going home empty-handed, and some sad stories that prove that some people in the world are fucking dicks. What’s making me chuckle are the stories of them being very difficult to find for people who were hoping to walk into stores and pick one up, as if they were expecting the stories of shortages around the world that have been on this site and others for weeks were nothing but hearsay. According to articles like this (worth a read, by the way) people are finding out that there won’t be restocks until February, which is what suppliers have been saying ever since the news of small allocations started to come out.

The lesson? Always listen to me. And don’t be too stingy to pay a deposit to preorder and guarantee your machine on day one.