Very well! he said. You shall prove your worth by facing me in a joust! I'd never heard of an undead lich king challenging someone to a joust. Especially not in a subterranean burial chamber. All right, I said uncertainly. But won't we be needing horses for that? Not horses, he replied, stepping away from his throne. Birds.

I have to avoid things like 'World of Warcraft' or 'Minecraft', otherwise I'd never get any work done.

It is on!" Aech shouted into his comlink. "it is on like Red Dawn!

Cops pull me over just to get a better look. They never give me a ticket, even if I'm speeding, but they will ask to take pictures.

You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you. That's easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You're going to die. We all die. That's just how it is.

If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

For one quarter, Black Tiger lets me escape from my rotten existence for three glorious hours. Pretty good deal.