It was almost two years before Resident Evil 5’s release that concerned parties had already protested outrage over racial issues in the title, a video game that puts you in the shoes of white protagonist Chris Redfield, running and gunning through an infected population somewhere in Africa. For a game that reads as a simulated racial cleansing, anger was inevitable.

It’s difficult to stay sane, living the life of an insolvent post-graduate at my parents’ house. For a while, studying for the GRE kept me in check – then it was the tether of graduate school applications that tied my feet to the floor. But somewhere along the way, moments in the day between sharing a pot of coffee with my mom and falling asleep before the light from under my parents’ door dims, I realize how far from reality I’ve strayed. For a while I tried meditation. Then I increased my workout schedule; finally, I found a job in hard labor. But these sorts of focused physical output seems to provide only momentary solutions. To really calm my anxieties I had to turn to another for emotional support – my dog.

Times are tough – hell, it’s a recession. Investment bankers have found themselves shunned from financial circles and social gatherings; those without clothes have found barrel prices sky-rocketing. Recent graduates have seen the American dream shattered – I’ve pulled furiously at so many bootstraps in the past ten months that I’ve kicked straight through three good pairs of boots. But there’s one occupation under more duress than any other, tides rising higher as more and more walk the plank. That’s right, I’m talkin’ pirates.

I have nothing but gratitude for the GS Boyz – while their new hit single “Stanky Legg” may certainly not stink its way into any hip hop hall of fame, it has given me just the dance fix I need until Soulja Boi inevitably scribbles down another iteration of the bird walk on his high school chemistry notebook and lays it over a predictable beat. After all, it’s been a dark couple of years for the hip hop dance scene since Fat Joe made fat people falling look like a dance move in 2004’s “Lean Back,” and Down AKA Kilo made fat Mexicans fall over in 2007’s “Lean Like a Cholo.”

In an experiment bold enough to make Freud face palm and Lacan roll in his grave, Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago has finally connected the scent of doughnuts to erections. In the study “The Effects of Odors on Penile Blood Flow,” male volunteers were tantalized by scented masks while the working juices of their man-parts were recorded in great detail.

In the concluding minutes of the film There Will Be Blood, oil tycoon Daniel urges church-leader Eli to renounce God before he may sell Daniel his last acres of land. Although no purchase is made, the significance is clear: an entire community is now re-centered around not sermon or prayer but the machinery of a derrick.

AS an ex-student, it’s difficult to avoid philosophizing every activity. Free time once spent in lecture turns the Socratic method and critical thinking loose on what used to be simple quirks — “Nolan, how would your teeth look if you didn’t floss every day?” I ask myself in the mirror each night. So through playing Mirror’s Edge and the newest Prince of Persia, I couldn’t help but look for some [...]