Andrew - August 12'03- 22:07 Eastern Standard Time

Word of honour: I will never do that again. Besides, how many times can you get away with ripping off J. K. Rowling before she either sends an impressively toothy legal team after you or you go down in infamy as the only guy to be outlasted by Greenhut? I know I'm not in the market for either distinction, so hopefully she never reads this site and I can go back to my own diabolical scheme involving a potato carving that looks suspiciously like Vladimir Putin.

Yeah, as my poor attempt at poetic modification may or may not indicate, I'm here for the long haul, so you guys can stop sending me applications. One Q&A change in a week is enough for me, thanks, and I'm certainly going to do my best to make this column as good as it can be. With that said, there are obviously a lot of people who are upset over Google's departure, and I respect that. Even so, that particular decision was not one made hastily, and while it might seem like some sort of horrible upheaval right now, in the long run I would like to think it'll all work out for the best - excepting the possibility, of course, of those fangsomely litigious fellows everyone's favorite author likes to keep stabled up in her castle or wherever she lives catching up to me, in which case I may have some difficulty fulfilling these duties on a regular basis. Still, I hear they make some great gruel up in Kingston Penitentiary, when they aren't rioting and having scandalous lesbian festivities that our local "newspaper" "reports on", usually by blaring classy headlines like "Lesbian Pervs Sex Fest In Slammer Shower Shocker", so at least I'll be well fed, albeit out of a job.

Yes, Canadian journalism is at an all-time low, and while I suppose I could shift a few of my courses around to try and join the fight against this tide of editorial sludge, I think I'll bring some good old-fashioned Canadian whatever it is we Canadians spread to this column instead. While I am the eighty-fifth Andrew to appear in this slot, I am reasonably certain that as far as regular hosts go, I'm the first from north of the border to occupy this allegedly comfy chair, and so I'll be sure to do my level best to continue spreading misinformation about the true north strong and free, or whatever that line was in that song I used to have to sing each morning until I claimed I was a Jehovah's Witness to get out of singing it because I'm tone deaf.

Which didn't really happen, at least not to me, but that's another story for another day. For now, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to make Q&A something you want to read every day no matter what, so I'd like to hear any suggestions you might have with regards to format, content, or anything. I'd sort of like to head along the lines of Andrew's weekends with specific topics for each day or week, but I'm not locked in stone. The bottom line is, I want you to enjoy reading this as much as I'm going to enjoy putting it together, and the best way to do that is to find out what you'd like to see and do my best to carry it out.

Seeing as how I've made it four paragraphs without a proper introduction, it's very tempting to just press right on and answer my first scraggly little batch of letters, but as the last gender-bending pseudonymous individual (and no, I'm not talking about Google who will incidentally remain nameless since he didn't choose to explicitly reveal her true identity in yesterday's column) came to a shocking and horrible end I'll just dispense with that idea and say hello, my name is Andrew. I suppose you figured that out already, what with the whole "eighty five Andrews" business, but just to clarify, I am Andrew Long, Head of News and Chief of Complicated Surgery here at RPGamer. As I've been around a while, have a bio already, and harbour an intense dislike of talking about myself, I'll leave it at that.

So anyway, now that I've droned on for this long, I guess one more paragraph won't hurt. Sadly, this will probably be the longest I'll go without attempting to crack a lame joke of some sort, so if that sort of thing isn't your cup of tea, well, sucks to your coffee. I may not have the alleged suavité that Google has been accused of, but I sure can talk a whole lot until you want to throw something at your screen, and if you can't see what you're reading then what does it matter what I say? It's a good scheme, people. Try it with mumbling - if you mumble something stupid, you can recover with something smart and nobody will be the wiser. And that's my bit of worthless advice for the day. Or at least the first, depending upon how these letters transpire...

The Final Grumble:

Andrew:

So yeah. Evidently there seems to have been some sort of mass shock or at least the perception that there was no backup plan. Hopefully the full realization that I am Plan B will net me a few more letters tomorrow, since today I was hard pressed not to post the Q&A application I received (unsolicited, mind you!) just to flesh things out. As it is, I think I'll leave you with one of the answers from that column and see if you can guess the question. If someone gets it, I think I'll let the author guest just because of all the hard work he put into the mock-up. Also, since I have one more day before Cortney steps in for the weekend while Andrew gets whisked off to Disneyland, I'd like to use it to air out your suggestions. So suggest away. I know Andrew's already put you through this drill, but I'm nothing if not a pathetic hack and copycat, so I figure I should get the chance to steal his ideas along with J. K. Rowlings, because after all, I'm the Sorting Hat, dammit!

The answer:

"I liked the second Wild ARMs game better for some reason, probably due to the fact that it had about five times as much dialog, even if half of it was unintelligable due to a shoddy translation. So I'd rather they remake Wild ARMs 2 with just a really good translation than the original Wild ARMs with better everything. Frankly, though, a remake of FF7 would probably sell the most copies, since it's more popular than the entire WIld ARMs series combined. And it's the money that matters, right? So don't be terribly surprised if rumors of an FF7 remake come back again in a few months or something."

Also, it occurs to me that this is a really dumb idea since there's nothing in it for the person who gets the question, so let's make this more like Jeopardy and pull a Daily Double - with the both of you. On third thought, it's still a really dumb idea since guessing the question will be pretty tough, but then again, I never was one to waste undue amounts of time on disgusting cleverness, so we'll have to make do with what we've got. On that note...