Yes, you read that right.  PETA, apparently none too happy with people breeding turkeys and killing them to stuff ourselves on just for a holiday, has gone and put up a gruesome web game: Cooking Mama, The Unauthorized PETA Edition: Mama Kills Animals.

I’m guessing their idea is to so badly gross out the kiddies that they no longer want to eat a deliciously prepared dead animal.  There’s plenty of blood and guts (in cartoon form of course) to delight the sicko in all of us.

Oh … wait … that can’t be right, can it?

Well, hell.  Maybe it can.

If you like cartoonish blood and guts and sick twisted preparation of a Thanksgiving feast, it’s actually kind of funny.  Though I’m thinking they could have worked a little harder on making the interface.  Some of it is quite a challenge, not because it’s actually challenging, but because the instructions are vague at best and don’t show up right away.  I guess that adds to the replayability?  That or the frustration was an intentional psychological push.

But so as you grossly prepare your Thanksgiving feast with Mama, you get rewarded with different PETA movies that I guess are meant to make you like eating animals even less.  And wallpapers.  And eventually you get rewarded with a bonus round of preparing a tofurkey.  (Which I’ve cooked one before, and they’re not stunningly great, but not a bad solution for the vegetarian in your family.)  PETA is trying to turn us away from meat.

Meh.

If they think so.

Let’s face it, a Thanksgiving turkey feast is tradition.  A cute video game isn’t going to make any impact one way or the other.  And frankly, I think PETA really did the opposite of what they intended to on this one.  If you don’t mind a little sicko, it’s a cute game.  But then I’m an adult, and used to help Grandpa ax off turkey heads by holding them down on the stump and then setting them free to run around headless, squirting blood everywhere, on the nice fresh snow.  Certainly not a childhood delight, but at least I always knew what my food was.  Frankly, I think any such lesson for kids these days, be it in cartoon game form like PETA is offering, or in real life experience, is good for the kids.  Yes little Suzie, that’s where your hamburger comes from.  Yes little Timmy, these cute little chicks grow up to be dinner.

After all, when the apocolypse comes, they’ll still know how to make a Thanksgiving dinner.  And isn’t that what really matters?

I think the bigger concern here is actually, what happens if your child enjoys this PETA game a little too much…

The scene?  Japan.  The plot: Murder.

Well … virtual murder.

According to a release from the Associated Press, after a 43 year old Japanese woman logged in to her character on Maple Story, she found that her virtual husband had divorced her, without giving any warning or reason. Infuriated by his behavior, she logged in to his account (using the password that he gave her earlier when they were in virtual marital bliss) and deleted his character.  Ha!  Hell hath no fury like a virtual wife scorned!

And then, in the real world, she was arrested on charges of suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.  And she was taken 620 miles across the country - from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sapporo, where her virtually deceased ex-husband lives - to await trial.

If convicted, she could face a prison term up to five years.  For virtual murder.  In a video game.

Let this be a lesson to you.

When news of the Sony PlayStation Portable 3000 being developed came out, it gave fans of the PSP a lot of hope.

A lot of hope that has been dashed by the delivery.

Sony already admitted that the PSP 3000’s brighter more vibrant screen shortens battery life by a half hour.   A battery life that is already woefully short.

But now there are more and more reports emerging of lines appearing on the PSP 3000’s display, utterly ruining the “advantage” of the PSP’s supposedly better screen.

And what is Sony doing to fix this?

Nothing!

Sony admits that, “scan lines have come out to be more visible as a result of improving response time to alleviate the after images on PSP-3000.“  But since this is the intentional result of a “hardware specification” there is no way to fix it in firmware, and no plan to even try.  Or to bother fixing it in hardware.  Sony is now borrowing the Windows response from Microsoft.  “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.“

Yes, that’s right.  Sony believes that filling the screen with scan lines and utterly ruining visuals is a feature, not a bug to fix.

Beware!

Yes, you read that title right.  Though it has nothing to do with Labor Day really.  It’s to celebrate the 13th anniversary of C&C.

So celebrate!  Download C&C: Red Alert today and enjoy the nostalgia!

Or downlaod the original C&C that was released for the 12th anniversary here.

Oh happy day!  Oh, and happy Labor Day!

It’s one of those weird Tinker Gnome idiotisms. (Did I just make up a word?) Why have one highly functional device when you can add more bells and whistles to defeat its purpose?

And so we have “Ron” Tajima of Japan who turns his completely automated robotic floor vacuum Roomba into a manually controlled unthinking robot driven by a Wii Fit.

Functional? No, not really. But hey, who cares? When it’s geek enough, you hardly need any reason to do it. Because sometimes in life you just have to have a little fun.