The Sunday Papers

H...ello? Hello. Thank the Lord. Oh Than... let's do this quickly. Sundays are for crouching in the darkness of an enormous beast's belly, feeling your legs slowly dissolve in stomach acids, listening to the whimpering of John as he calls for his mother, finally managing to get a little internet reception as the creature that ate us passes some wireless Internet so I can compile and present a list of Interesting reading from across the week and/or send desperate messages for help and/or try and resist linking to some music.

• Tom Bramwell explains why they never did their critics Top 50 games of the year. In short, too much whining and foot-stomping from the audience. Instead, a selection of splendid individual essays highlighting individual stuff. For example, here's Tim Stone on Armed Assault II. I admit, when I heard EG wasn't doing it, I wished RPS had totally ripped it off and did it instead. The writer's open insulting of each other's choices would have been a fine way to present this most conflicted of years for PC gaming.
• David Cassel pointed me in the direction of this, which is just awesome. Title? "Jonathan Lethem on P.K. Dick, Why Novels are a Weird Technology, and Constructed Realities". Lethem's an author and editor of Dick Anthologies, and talks a little about how books and videogames are similar. RPS would be all over a Philip K Dick-based RPG. Or MMO. Though sometimes we suspect we're actually living in one.
• Edge Online do a MUD retrospective. Yay!
• You heard about Kill Screen, yeah? Maybe not. Go read Game Set Watch's piece on the new games magazine to get up to speed. And good luck to 'em.
• I went to J Nash's site just now, hoping he had uploaded something I know he's writing. But he hasn't! I do note that he's lobbed up his period South Park review for PC Gamer. Which remains a very funny butchering of a game which picked up oddly good review scores. ODDLY GOOD REVIEW SCORES FROM IDIOTS.
• A lot of people linked to this, but it's just about kinda-PC games related. Here's a fun piece on the Physics of Space Battles. Seems like it won't be a lot like R-type. Alas.
• Sexbots will give us a longevity orgasm, apparently. That's the kind of hardware I can get behind, etc, etc.
• Actually, while we're talking intercourse... Melissa Gira Grant's Sex In The 00s overview.
• Newsarama interviews a gent about his new book about Calvin and Hobbes. As in, interviews with masses of people around it - and art - but nothing directly with the ever-elusive Bill Bill Watterson.
• Splendid interview with David "The Wire" Simon from Vice. Well, great interview answers. It's very much one which would have benefited from a more invisible interviewer. A lot of the interjections add nothing and... oh, this is just craft nonsense. Go read.
• The whole RATM/X-Factor thing was, of course, hilarious. Here's a couple of pieces worth chewing over. Firstly, here's Paul O'Brien with an overview of the whole history of Christmas Number-1. Secondly, here's Tom Ewing playfully listing the winners and the losers from the whole escapade.
• I have been singing 5 Gold Rings with the slightest provocation this week. Miss Piggy does it - and everything else - better.

Failed And... signal failing. Please send help. All of RPS have been eaten by a monster. John is still with us, but Alec and Jim are being very quiet. Internet signal dying. And I think I'm running out of ti