One Potato Two Potato, One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato more. Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo. Icha bacha, soda cracker, out goes Y-O-U! (This chant is used to find the first person to be “It” when beginning a game. All players put their fisted hands together in a circle and one person starts the chant by tapping each fist in succession. When “Y-O-U” is said, the person whose fist is tapped puts that fist behind their back.

Then the chant starts again with the chanter starting with the fist of someone else. As soon as one person has both hands out of the circle they are “It”. )

* POGO raises concerns about new contractor database, November 5, 2009.
* POGO joins coalition letter calling for transparency of health care advisory panel, November 3, 2009.
* POGO asks Secretary Sebelius to disclose mistakes that led to vaccine shortage, October 30, 2009.
* IG Found Former NRC Commissioner Merrifield Violated Ethics Laws, October 29, 2009.

McDonalds Monopoly Game PieceMcDonald’s announced that this year’s Monopoly game will start on October 6th. If you go now before the game starts, you can get a pre-promotion code good for one property and entry into their pre-promotion contest.

Every year McDonald’s runs its very popular Monopoly game where you get a Monopoly property sticker/game piece with selected items. If you get all the properties in a color group, you get to win that cash prize. In addition to these properties, you can get instant win stickers as well for free Wi-Fi time, or gift cards, or McDonald’s products. The cash prizes range from $50 up to $1 million!

The secret to winning the game is in understanding how it works. McDonald’s sets up the game so that it controls the number of ten critical pieces. Those pieces happen to be the last property, when listed alphabetically, for each color group (except Boardwalk). If you get one of these rare pieces, you’ve basically won that prize.
[...]

Telltale Games and LucasArts have teamed up to make this year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19—same day as Rosh Hashanah) memorable with a free download of Tales of Monkey Island, Episode One.

The giveaway goes on all day on the 19th, but through the 21st of September, they’re also giving gamers 50% off on the iPhone, Steam and Direct2Drive special editions of The Secret of Monkey Island. Hit ‘em up here come Talk Like a Pirate Day for the free stuff.

And for the record, I did try to write this entire post in pirate speak, but it caused me physical pain. If you want to take a crack at it below, I’ll award 10 to the would-be pirate translator who doesn’t make my head explode.

Tales of Monkey Island, Episode Three is on the way September 29.

In case you didn’t know, Rocktober is coming up soon. If nothing else, that means that you should be playing Brutal Legend in the very near future. Actually, you could play it tomorrow if you happen to win one of our 4 demo codes (and you have an Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, that is). All you have to do is register with a valid email address and leave a comment below (bonus points for making us laugh), or just email us some pictures of your girlfriend with awesome 80’s hair (editors@ripten.com).  Either way, we’re getting your email address and we will totally spam you.

You can also pre-order now at Gamestop for early access.  The demo will be available with all pre-orders, and the codes will be handed out on 9/17.  The demo will also be free to download for all Xbox Live Gold Members on 9/24 and Xbox Live Silver and PSN members on 10/1/09.