he whole wide world heaved a giant sigh of relief this week with the news that disaster had been averted: despite Mother Nature’s best attempts to rob us of one of our most beautiful people, pretty Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova has survived the Asian tsunami. Accidentally trapped in the midst of the ugly foreign tragedy while on a glamorous beach vacation, Nemcova soldiered through the big wet mess by clinging bravely to a tree while her photographer boyfriend was tsunamied to his apparent death. Nemcova sustained only moderate injuries in what international aid workers are calling “a miracle from God.”

That same miracle, however, killed over 155,000 foreign peoples, most of whom can charitably be described as “nobodies.” To date, the bodies of over 155,000 nobodies have been found in disaster recovery operations throughout southern Asia. The search for celebrities continues.

In the wake of the recent tsunamic free-for-all, American President George W. Bush has vowed vengeance against all nations suspected of harboring or supporting the deadly ocean waves. Early reports indicate that the Middle Eastern nations of Iran and Syria are already on the president’s tsunami “shit list.”

Other nations known to have studied tsunamis in the past, including Jordan and Turkey, are reportedly also under close watch. Lending credence to the theory that oil and evil go together like beef and cheese, Bush also suggested that Saudi Arabia is skating on thin ice regarding their own tsunami-harboring status.

“This terrible tragedy has earned the president precious political capital, and he intends to use it,” explained the Secretary of State Colin Powell, indicating that American troops were even now readying to kick the Iranians’ tsunami-loving butts back to Tehran.

Little is known about the elusive tsunami, whose name comes from the Japanese word for “big fucking milkshake.” First described in the 1964 pop hit “Love Tsunami” by Little Johnny Maxwell, scientists have been unable to determine where the giant killer waves come from, or where they hide out between attacks.

“A tsunami is apparently some kind of big wavy thing,” explained University of Minnesota geologist Hans Goering. “I know, woo—scary. But apparently a lot of those people didn’t know how to swim or something. In addition, we believe that this event may have featured an unprecedented number of surfing fatalities. Kids should take heart and remember to always wear a bicycle helmet while surfing. Also, don’t fall asleep in a hut on the beach.”

Nemcova’s miraculous survival has brought hope to millions in the region, who take heart in the fact that despite the widespread misery and destruction prevalent in so many countries bordering the Indian Ocean, no famous or really beautiful Americans were killed in the tsunami attack. Meanwhile, international aid groups continue to search the wreckage day and night for signs of anyone you may have heard of.

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The fourth era of video games marked the downfall of Nintendo, Atari, Sega, and the British Empire. Ineptitude and folly finally came to roost as video games became a multi-boobjillion dollar industry and the jokers who'd been running it up until that point were rightfully eaten alive like a clown-meat gyro. And thus we enter the cruel endgame of this rainbow-colored saga.

After forming a partnership with Sony to develop a CD-drive add-on for the Super Nintendo, Nintendo ultimately decided it would be a better idea to pull out at the last minute and piss-off the powerful and insanely proud Sony, a slumbering consumer electronics giant that needed only a perceived dishonor as an excuse to enter the video game market and kick an extra poophole out Nintendo's backside. Rolling in the good ideas like a pig in cologne, Nintendo opted to work with Dutch nice guys Philips instead, on a CD add-on drive that never came to fruition. Sony, in a scene likely moodily backlit and scored to weird Japanese gourd instruments, vowed to develop their own 32-bit system with which to crush Nintendo into sugar-coated boot grease. Hence the PlayStation was born.

Despite the gay-sounding name, the PlayStation took the world by storm in 1995. Considering that the only 32-bit competition on the market at the time was the Jaguar, which Atari claimed was a 64-bit console only because they had printed "64!" on the case, the PlayStation's success seems less than surprising. Panasonic released the technologically superior 3DO that same year, but the console's sales were limited by the system's embarrassing pack-in game, SmartFartz.

In response, Sega released the Saturn, a CD-based system which sucked like a circus seal in a popsicle factory. So completely misguided was the development of the Saturn that the system's surprise launch in 1995 was kept a secret even from game developers, and as a result the system's only software was an old Commodore64 Mah-Jongg game that came built into the motherboard. Sega had succeeded in surprising the crap out of the industry with the stealth Saturn release, but ultimately this proved to be a poor business strategy.

Around this time Atari went down in flames, announcing that their poor-selling Jaguar console was actually a magic flying dream machine that could make you big like in that Tom Hanks movie. Jaguar sales actually went down after the announcement, due to the bitter lesson about adulthood that audiences had learned from the Tom Hanks movie years before.

Rather than release their own 32-bit console to compete with Sony, Nintendo decided to throw the industry a curve in 1995 by releasing their VirtualBoy portable system instead, a weird goggle-based gaming system that induced nausea three times faster than trying to read a novel on a roller-coaster. After six months of terrible sales and numerous in-store vomitings, Nintendo announced that they were just kidding about the VirtualBoy.

Nintendo finally released their next home console, the Nintendo 64, in 1996. Despite the fact that only seven games were ever made for the system, the console sold quite well thanks to rampant rumors that the system's controllers tasted like strawberries. Nintendo's usual practice of succeeding despite doing everything wrong continued with the Nintendo 64, which kept second place warm behind the PlayStation despite a reliance on expensive, antiquated game cartridges, and the cannibalistic practice of shoehorning Mario into every game released for the system, including such unlikely titles as Star Wars: Battle for Naboo and Foxy Chix Strip Poker.

By 1998, Sega had sufficiently recovered from falling face-first in shit with the Saturn to release the Dreamcast, a 128-bit system so awesome gamers decided to wait until Sony put out something, anything, new instead of spending their money on Sega. Sony did not disappoint, releasing a poster with a picture of the upcoming PlayStation 2 later that year. Sony's poster outsold the Dreamcast 3-to-1 in America and Japan.

The PlayStation 2 was finally released in 2000, wowing gamers who already thought it was going to be awesome. Sega's Dreamcast faded quickly from near-obscurity into nearby total obscurity, and Nintendo's new GameCube console slid comfortably into the company's familiar spot in the back seat behind Sony, eagerly wondering if they were going to stop for ice cream. Once the king of a very inept hill, Nintendo was reduced to catering to small children and gamers with a thing for fat Italians.

Software giant Microsoft released their Xbox in 2001, a mammoth console roughly the size of a suitcase, which featured controllers larger than most other entire gaming systems. Giants and the obscenely-handed were pleased, making Microsoft a real competitor for Sony, and relegating Nintendo to the role of cute little pretend toy console maker.

Unbeknownst to the computer-illiterate, parallel to these home console wars, computer games were gathering steam as a way for adults to avoid doing their taxes and to kill time until the Internet was invented. Even adults who didn't know a Super Nintendo from a poop-covered shoe were playing Doom on their home PCs by 1993, making the gory first-person shooter a giant hit. While console gamers were farting around with Sonic the Hedgehog and Donkey Kong Country Music Seminar, bored accountants everywhere were blowing the shit out of Satan's housepets inside the labyrinths of Doom. That same year saw the release of Myst, a gorgeous first-person puzzler about losing your keys on a deserted island. Myst was a huge hit, finding an audience among millions of computer geeks who resonated with the game's storyline about wandering around alone with no friends.

Later, even more PC hits would follow, allowing PC gamers to enjoy superior graphics and sound for only thousands of dollars more than their console-gaming brethren. Whether it was ogling ass cheeks in Tomb Raider, blowing up Republicans in Quake, or gleefully ruining lives in The Sims, PC gaming was where it was at in the 90's.

The 2000's find video games more popular than ever, with new technology breathing life into console gaming, even as the list of competing consoles is mercilessly stomped into shortness. Computer games hang on to market share as the line between PCs, consoles, DVD players and cordless phones is blurred beyond recognition.

But where does the future of video games lie? What am I, Kreskin? You see a column around here titled "The Future of Video Games"? If you do, I sure as hell didn't write it, and I'd take whatever Rok Finger has to say on the subject with a grain of salt the size of Cincinnati. I've brought you up to date on video games, which is more than I set out to do, ingrates.

Ten years from now? We'll probably be hunting each other in the streets like deer, how's that for the future of gaming? Enjoy your first-person shooters while you've got 'em, Bambi.

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If anybody tells you that the longest word in the English language is Antidisestablishmentarianism, you know right away that they're full of the brown stuff. Though that's certainly a pretty long word, anyone in the know knows that this famous example was just the first thing Noah Webster could pull out of his ass when a reporter asked him the question, since he didn't want to look like an idiot and lose his title as "Mr. Word." In reality, there's no such thing as the longest word, since whatever word somebody suggests, you can just add "-ish" on the end and totally blow their minds. That's the kind of thing they teach you in college.

It's like trying to think of the biggest number. Some smartass can always come along and say "Oh yeah? What about that number… plus one?" Try it, it works in both cases. Just when you think you've got a real contender for world's longest word, say something like Postantefornicatetopiatacosushilumpfistgrapefruitdingdongery, right when your head starts to swell up big some joker will pop out of the woodwork and say "Not bad, but what about Postantefornicatetopiatacosushilumpfistgrapefruitdingdongerish?" And no matter how you kill them, you're still going to jail.

But just because there isn't actually a longest word in the world, doesn't mean that people haven't given their lives over the centuries to the insane quest to find it.

In 1096 A.D., the William the Conqueror, King of England, ordered a crusade to the Holy Land to find the longest word in the world. Nobody had any idea where the longest word actually might be, but the Middle East seemed like as good a place as any to start looking, since people over there were naming their kids things like Ptolenamonemy and Dodecazoroaster. It obviously wasn't in the Orient, since everyone over there was named Hin and Xi, so they clearly had no taste for long words. And even if they had, opinions were split over whether it would have counted or not, since a bunch of drawings of houses and cranes in a row just didn't make a word look all that impressively long.

Granted, the William the Conqueror didn't go to the Middle East himself, since that place was crawling with crazy religious fucks just drooling to chop off a white man's head with a dull bread knife, so he sent his son Dave instead. Dave the Conqueror was joined by Marcus Bonehound of Italy, and a Frenchman whose name nobody could remember, but everybody was pretty well certain he had been there. They were accompanied by a ragtag gang of zealots who had a lot of time on their hands and strong opinions about word length.

The Crusades lasted for over 250 years and resulted in the deaths of millions, but the longest word any of them could come up with was the Icelandic hæstaréttarmálaflutningsmaður, a 29-letter word which means "the sweat off a barrister's balls." How in the world they discovered an obscure Icelandic word in Jerusalem is anyone's guess, though most historians explain that Marcus Bonehound thought Icelandic chicks were red hot, and just leave it at that.

A second set of Crusades by the doggedly thorough English led to the discovery of the Turkish word çekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmisiniz, 43 letters of drivel meaning "Aren't you one of those ding-dongs from Czechoslovakia?" This satisfied westerners for a few hundred years, until the Queen of Spain got a bee up her ass in 1500 A.D. and demanded that Columbus go find her the world's longest word, for the goddamed glory of Spain.

Columbus came back after the seventh year of his heavily-funded quest with the news that the longest word in the world was "smiles," because there's a mile between the first and last letters. After the court realized he wasn't joking, a private investigation discovered that Columbus had taken the court's money and spent the last seven years drunk and basking naked on the beach in Jamaica. The great explorer was promptly beheaded and had his cheeks glued to his teeth in a permanent smile, his head then displayed in a jar in the royal chambers for the better part of two decades as a reminder to the lazy and humorous.

Join us next time when we continue the thrilling story of the longest word in the world. Until then, I'm Griswald Dreck.

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