I like to think that I need to write about nonpolitical things here, in order to keep our (our, he says, after 3 posts) readership coming back. But since our readership is limited to Jeff, and he only shows up because he wants us to keep reading his blog, maybe I should just give in to my feverish partisan instincts.

But I'll try to keep it brief. The SOTU is always godawful boring, and last night was no exception, although it was relatively short. No moon, no dead soldiers, no Osama, no new economic initiatives. No apologies on tax cuts or unilateralism. Some pandering -- abstinence education, the total nonstatement on gay marriage (all he actually did was describe how an amendment is the only way to stay the courts -- well, duh. Can you tell us how a bill becomes a law again?) -- which was actually kind of brilliant, since his base will view it as support but he can always disclaim it if the political winds shift.

Anyway, the really exciting news of the day is that Charles, Jon and I bought an XBox. This is very exciting to me -- the XBox is highly modifiable, and once I get a mod chip and replacement hard drive (and do a little soldering) all sorts of cool things are possible -- the usual (stealing games), the neat but useless (running linux) and the truly pointless (an XBox IRC client? YEAH!). I'm much more excited about the idea of stealing games than I am about actually playing them, once stolen.

The modchip sites are backordered from the holiday rush, though, so I'm stuck playing the games that came with the system for now -- all of which suck, with the exception of Grand Theft Auto. Now, I am not a huge GTA fan. I realize it brings my manhood into question to say this, but I am somewhat bothered by some "features" of the game. Patronizing, then robbing and killing hookers just doesn't quite sit right for some reason, even in virtual form.

The problem is that the game is just really, really well done -- and you don't HAVE to do these horrible things to complete the missions. So I try to be a socially responsible drug-dealing thug: I don't run over more people than absolutely necessary, I try to kill a maximum of two police officers per day, and I almost never, ever play the mini-game where you torture and eat children. Still, I will admit I have kind of a problem respecting other people's property, and I'm worried I may one day find myself climbing through the smashed window of our neighbor's Corvette before I even realize what I'm doing.