Sheepishly,

I have to admit that my blogging has dropped off lately, after I heard Hugh Hewitt kidding his staffers about their excitement over the release of Halo 2. I bought the PC version of Halo and have been playing it. Personally, I thought Descent and its sequels were much better games, but Halo is definitely endorphin-packed. I noticed this morning that when I close my eyes I keep seeing phantom screens from Halo rushing at me. I can certainly attest, as well, that this game isn't for 56-year-olds with rheumatoid arthritis. My right thumb is going numb. I'm stuck at a checkpoint near the end, I hope, but the game has a tendency to keep stringing you along with "all we need to do now is another Herculean task" and make you wonder when it will all end.

If this were real, it could pass for Hell, being killed by one of three different enemies, only to be immediately revived to do it over again. I would definitely not make it in any real-life army, except as cannon fodder. I was wondering yesterday how many times my character has been killed so far by being blown up, riddled with bullets, glass shards or energy pulsed, falling from great heights, attack by parasitical creatures and generally being beaten to pulp.

I was thinking about buying a new game console for Christmas, but no more. This is just to hard on me. Maybe I'll be back to blogging more often if this Sisiphean torture ever ends.