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Unlike other people, I can't blame my recent lack of updates on the start of classes, so instead I'll blame it on a touch of the traditional "start of the term flu" that tends to arrive when the new and returning students do.  To while away the time when I'm not sleeping or trying to sleep, I've been playing Fable and putting a dent into the huge pile of comics I've acquired over the past couple of years and that been meaning to read.

To give a brief summary of both categories, starting with the first: Fable isn't all that revolutionary.  If you've only played console RPGs, then it might seem to be incredibly open, but it's really not all that different, concept-wise, from the RPGs I was killing my GPA with back in first year.  In some ways, it's reminding me of Neverwinter Nights; sure, there's different ways to approach the quests, but they all just boil down to "get to point A and kill the badies".

As for comics: I've finally, after god knows how long, finished Sandman.  (Oddly enough, I'd read The Wake long ago.  The collection I hadn't read was The Kindly Ones.)  It is, as everyone already knows, excellent.  The others I read varied in quality.  There was the also excellent, but very disturbing, Miracleman (although only the Alan Moore issues, I couldn't find copies of the Gaiman ones), an absolutely terrible Batman/Grendel cross-over featuring Grendel Prime (why did I even have this?), the good to decent Mage: The Hero Discovered (and part of The Hero Defined), along with the Grendel stories that shared space in the latter issues of The Hero Defined and their far superior Red, White, and Black retellings.  (Basic summary:  Matt Wagner, who both wrote and illustrated the original Grendel stories, dislikes them so much that he's vowed never to reprint them.  However, since the rest of the Grendel books supposedly make little sense without these stories, he instead chose to publish reworked versions of the stories.)  In addition, I'm finally begining to put a dent in the massive pile of Hellblazer I've accumulated.  Current verdict on that one: not bad, but nothing to write home about either.

Finally, since I know that that must have bored most people, I present a pair of links.  The first is a video clip of a speech given by President Bush that contains a strange choice of words.  That, however, is not the reason I laughed at it.  I laughed at it because of the stunned expression that remains on the newsanchor's face for the fifteen or so seconds after the clip of the speech finishes.  Ah, the joys of live television.

The second link is a column from The New Yorker:  Lord? Please don't let me die in a funny way.  Finally, a prayer we can all agree on.

So, here's the deal:  either you tell me the significance of the title and how it links in with what I posted (2 points), or you tell me what mumblety-peg is (1 point).  An extra point is given if you didn't use a search-engine, and yet another point (for a total of 3 possible) is given if you've actually played it.  Yes, I trust people too much.