This year’s gaming stocking stuffer is brought to you by the Union of Students Islamic Association, the same people that brought us the ‘World Without Zionism’ conference back in 2005. The story is a cracker: an Iranian nuclear engineer is kidnapped during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a Shiite Muslim holy site. US forces are to blame. You are Commander Bahman, a hero of the Iranian special forces and a close friend of the kidnapped engineer. You have to penetrate Iraq and then Israel in order to rescue the kidnapped engineers, killing plenty of enemy soldiers along the way

Information is pretty sketchy (ie: the same crap regurgitated throughout western media) regarding the game though I doubt we can expect a PS3 release. You guys who run the Windex operating system seem to have the goods on this one, though I would’ve thought the Mac’s ‘white purity’ would appeal more to the Islamic sector. Initial distribution will remain solely in Iran with other Islamic countries to follow. Could we see a western release around Christmas?

Catch a little more insight at prank.com.

Point of interest: GameDaily BIZ ran with this story almost a year ago, citing a March 2007 release date. In fact, it seems any news site you care to mention from the Khaleej Times through to ZDNet first reported the development of this game over a year ago.

Where the fuck was I then? Chasing cheese wheels, jumping rope, bitching about the DaVinci Code and not sleeping for a month.

I used to catch a taxi a month at most, and thought that I must be a really unlucky person to be getting all of the taxi drivers who either didn’t know their way to my destination, hadn’t showered, had no manners, or just couldn’t hide the fact that they simply hated their job.

Now that I travel weekly to Canberra and catch at least three taxis a week, I know that it wasn’t just bad luck. I even had one fall asleep at the wheel recently. My favourite though, was the one who was on a loud speaker mobile phone call when I got into the taxi and continued the conversation throughout the journey, obviously having missed my destination over the sound and taking the wrong direction to get me there when he realised and had to ask again. The conversation was not in English, but I knew enough of the lingo to know he was also taking the piss out of myself and my colleague.

At least half of the drivers I have had this year have taken a phone call whilst I have been in the cab. A few of those used loudspeaker, the rest using wired or Bluetooth headsets.

So far only one has text messaged.

Melbourne’s Taxi drivers are the worst, followed closely by Sydney (but they seem to know how to get from A to B), Adelaide’s are quite disgruntled and Canberra’s are quite nice.

I have most experience with Melbourne drivers, and of them all, only two seemed reasonably happy and were talkative beyond a grunt and “are you flying virgin or qantas?”

I had to argue with two about my destination as it was too far for them. One stopped and took off as I opened the door as my destination was not far enough away.

At least four have needed me to direct them all the way to my destination, which on two of those occasions was St Kilda, an obscure and unknown suburb of Melbourne.

This shouldn’t be accepted. Imagine the Taxi drivers in London or Tokyo behaving this way. It just wouldn’t happen.

I was going to do a breakfast review, as I go out for the first meal of the day every Saturday and Sunday unless something bad has happened to prevent me from doing so. It’s a Melbourne institution, and one I have enjoyed for as long as I can remember.

Sitting down this morning however, I was forced to endure a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common, not only in the mornings, but at any dining out experience. (more…)