Weekend Update on LBP

Between three malls, eight stores and a faux naivete, I have been unable to acquire a copy of Little Big Planet for my PS3 nor get a substantive explanation or reaction to the recall aside from the whole "religious holy book song is why it's not in store."
eBay seems to be a pretty ripe source for the unedited game, but copies are selling for upwards of $70, most around $80-90 according to /v/ posters who have scored or were looking to hock their copies.
"The Internet" tried to imply the recall was a Sony ploy, but the game is already hyped to high hell (I'm missing my link and apologize for it, the thread was from 5 nights ago and is long since gone). It can be argued a similar ploy was pulled with Super Smash Brother's Brawl, but that game, too, had no shortage of hype behind it.

I guess the summary is this game is crazy hard to get at MSRP for very vague and cryptic reasons that may be sinister in design and nature.
Edit: I am sad because my ' key broke over the weekend, making it a chore to quote or contract things.

US Islam group responds to LBP recall

Kotaku reported the US group American Islamic Forum For Democracy spoke out against the Little Big Planet recall, stating the recall was an act of "censorship," and that the Prophet, "defended the rights of his enemies to critique him in any way even if it was offensive to his own Islamic sensibilities or respect for Koranic scripture.”
The song lyric was pointed out to Sony edit: on Sony's online forums by a person who identified himself as a Muslim gamer, which incited yesterday's game recall. Many gamers and non-gamers have weighed in online on both sides of the issue.
It should be noted the song, which quotes Qur'an passages and was the cause of the game's recall, has been out for two years and has received a Grammy. The song does not critique the religion, though the scripture passage's presence clearly is offensive to some.

Little Big Planet facing recall worldwide, thanks fundamentalism!

According to fevered discussion across the intertubes, Little Big Planet, a build-your-own action/adventure platforming game and MOST anticipated PS3 game of the season, has been delayed worldwide after a delay in European countries due to fears of a backlash from Muslim extremists.
An element of one of the game features text from the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book.
An image collage on 4chan's /v/, an Anonymous video game imageboard, recently surfaced and includes a Digg article on the aforementioned recall, outlash over a recent dog included in a European ad and a 2006 "censored" frame of an episode of South Park, a satire on the religious censorship at the time.
If /v/'s response is at all respective of the video game community, the community at large is fairly incised by the news, especially in light of the fever pitch the game has gathered in the weeks and months leading up to its release.

Brb, changing shorts

No More Heroes 2 announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2008.

NYAF - Part 2 - Beginning of the First Day

Much delay is in tow due to my masochistic need remind myself how poorly the economy is doing and how I can't understand how a number of female friends can actually support Sarah Palin on sex alone.

NYAF Day 1-
The event begins at roughly 8 in the morning for staff, with Michelle Manning (the blue shirt supreme) arriving on site around 7:30. A crowd forms outside of the Javitz Center. Or at least I assume this is the case, as I can't be bothered to leave my dorm until around 1. I take a cab over the Center in costume: Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 1, and head down to the lower levels of the northern block of the center, where the main exhibition hall and all panel rooms (panels, for those who've never been to any kind of convention, are side discussion rooms where a person or group of people will discuss a specific topic. For anime cons, this varies from "What being in Japan is like" to "Dubbing your own poronographic anime") sprawl before me. This is the life that caused the empty darkness of the day before to chill me so deeply.
My first stop was the Bandai booth, where several friends were participating as costumed spokespeople for one of Bandai's recent acquisitions: the insurmountably popular Gainex series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. After wandering the convention floor, acquiring food and getting another of my friends into costume for Bandai, the booth transforms from mere company Wizard-of-Oz-Esq talking head to a show. JJ Samp, a Nia cosplayer from the Gurren Lagann series, leads a trivia contest with other cosplayers from the series as contestants, all of whom do their best to act and answer questions in character. This is followed by a short skit Samp and her friends wrote. As the "day" (airquotes in reference to the fact that the main exhibition hall closed around 6, but panel and anime viewing rooms were still open for events until 9) neared is close, the Bandai booth decided to hand out its entire stock of series posters to fans for free. An onslaught of smells and flesh strike as a quivering mass of cat ears, yaoi paddles, chained animal collars and "kawaii desu-ne?" swarm the stage and my friends are almost immediately overwhelmed by the crowd as they scramble to put posters in hands and shoo fans away. The latter was grossly inhibited by the fact that Bandai had about 6 or 7 posters in their arsenal and wanted to deplete their stock for the entire weekend on day-1.
After changing into "blue shirt" mode, I was tasked with clearing out the convention exhibition hall. The con was slightly less crowded than last year, with far fewer company-sponsored booths making up the bulk of the space and more smaller retailer booths replacing them. The activity in the main exhibition hall was limited to a con photography company, the New York Jedi and the maid cafe. Most convention content was located in the panel/viewing area, where a small stage hosted tutorials and small shows and the rooms contained concerts from local and Japanese bands as well as the World Cosplay Summit masquerade.

The End of the First Day.

Magic the Gathering - Shards of Alara Release event and Pros

26 players gather on a Saturday evening in the back of Time Warp Comics and Games in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The group, veterans in their early 30s to a single 12 year-old player, chat, trade cards and even shuffle up decks containing cards from the new Shards of Alara expansion and playtest new creations. For what? Magic the Gathering, a 15 year-old fantasy card game from Wizards of the Coast.
The event is a release Sealed Deck tournament, where players purchase randomized packs of the newest set, open them and construct 40-card decks, which they then use to battle opponents based on win record over the course of four rounds, best two out of three.
The event begins at quarter after six following an hour of socializing with other players attending the event, some of which haven't seen each other in months.

Like most other organized events, a community follows closely. In Magic, the Magic community is no different. From the official forums on Wizard's Magic website, to rumor and spoiler sites like MTGSalvation, to online stores that publish articles from Magic professional players like StarCityGames (and people are able to play the game professionally; the last Pro Tour tournament in Hollywood, CA in June had a prize purse of $230,795 with $40,000 of it going to the winner, one of the larger but not largest events in Magic), the Magic community is an active group with much to say about their game of choice.

The next Pro Tour event, to be held in Berlin, is on November 2nd.

The Economy

fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff
Possibly the only anti-lulz entry I'll make unless The Depression 2 occurs.
America, fuck yeah.