Geek Smithology

What makes a site like Digg worth the visit is that people find interesting things on the web that they feel the need to share, and thus share it. But I see a proliferation of blogs and other sites that provide easy “Bookmark Me” links on every vapid link blog post they put up. Here’s one of the more heinously egregious offenders ‘ve found:

I only know a few of those by their logos, and won’t bother mousing over to figure out the rest. Here are a couple of universal laws, folks:

If you end an anecdote with “it was so funny”, it wasn’t.
If you feel the need to add a “digg me” link, they won’t.

As with all things console[1], I have been very late to Nintentdo’s latest party offering. My last experience with Nintendo (aside from some retro McLovin with an emulator and some 2-player Legendary Wings sessions) not involving the words GameBoy was so unremarkable that I don’t even remember what system it was on – Maybe one of the Tony Hawk games on the Game Cube.

During the standard celebrations of holiday mirth an uncle who was able to procure a Wii brought the system over for some demonstration. 18 rounds of boxing and at least 30 baseball pitches later, I am nearly unable to lift my arm, but committed to purchasing a Wii the next time I see one. It doesn’t really matter if it’s next week or next year, so I won’t be getting into any eBay bidding wars, but it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

It’s easy to see why the Wii is outselling everything else – the XBox 360 is almost tempting, but ultimately not compelling, and I’ve never even considered a Playstation III for even the smallest measurable instance of time – and the resolution on those atomic clocks is downright terrifying. And what’s this I hear about a Civ game for the DS?

[1] I am an unrepentant PC Gamer.

“He wrecked a lot of havoc”
“If the <local sports team>s lose again I’m gonna wreck havoc”

You can’t wreck havoc. You can play havoc with something. You can even just plain havoc something (although that’s a little archaic.) Havoc means destruction, so wrecking havoc is like wrecking wreckage, and that’s just silly.

What you really want to do is wreak havoc. Wreak, an extremely rare word that is used almost exclusively in this context, means “cause.” So next time you build a snow fort that has outlived its usefulness, feel free to go to town. Er, I mean feel free to wreak havoc.