It started off as a lark. I spend so much time complaining about Atlas Shrugged and the philosophies espoused within, yet I had never actually read the book. Now, I’ll be honest, I have few scruples, none of which get in the way of me being a hypocrite. Still, it felt kind of wrong spending so much of my time bashing a book I’ve never read.

So, swallowing what pride I had, I opted to rectify this inconsistency by shelling ten dollars of my own hard earned cash on a novel which has come to serve as a sort of bible for everything I don’t believe in… you know… except the real bible which is also a bible for everything I don’t believe in. But that’s no never mind.

And I’m reading it, as painful as that has proven to be. Further, I’m tweeting all of my reactions in real time on my twitter account, apparently to the amusement of some, and the bemusement of others. This latter group seems particularly eager for me to put the book down if I don’t like it which strikes me as odd, but whatever.

Then a friend had the GREATEST IDEA ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET! Liz suggested that I turn my pain… er… reading into a pledge-a-thon for the Obama for America reelection campaign! BRILLIANT! What better way to honor this ode to selfishness written by a bigoted and lonely recluse than to use it to help reelect a liberal (read: socialist), black president!

So here’s how we’re going to do it. First, you’ll want to make your pledge in the comments below. You can pledge per page (there are 1069), per chapter (there are 30), per Part (there are 3), or you can simply pledge to make a single donation of your choosing.

Once you’ve decided how and what you want to pledge, simply leave a comment in the comments section below. At the end of each month until this is done, I’ll tally how many pages, chapters, and parts I’ve worked through so you can do the math and get ready to make your donation.

When it is donation time, you’ll want to head on over to the website and give them your cash!

Also, you’ll want to follow ME on twitter while I’m reading this for two GREAT reasons. Reason one is this; as an added bonus, if I can make it to 1069 followers before I finish reading Atlas Shrugged, I will personally mail to the 1069th follower the actual bookmark that I have created specifically for this book and event. Made out of sturdy folded card stock, the bookmark depicts a poorly drawn cartoon of a barely recognizeable (if at all) image of Ayn Rand pounding her typewriter while smoking a cigarette. Inscribed (read, scrawled in the same felt pen I used to draw the cartoon) below is one of my early tweets from this process: 100 Monkeys Typing Couldn’t Shit This Wretchedly!

Between now and the time I finish there is no telling how many more additions will be made to this very special, one of a kind, collectors item.

The other reason you’ll want to follow me? Because I’ll live tweet every single page I read from this book. Every exasperated reaction, every clever retort, every threat of physical violence as an outlet for the anger this book has induced in me. All of this great entertainment at the expense of my own intellectual suffering can be yours for simply following me on twitter!

So, don’t forget:

1) Decide on a pledge and write it in the comments below.

2) Follow ME on twitter.

3) At the end of every month, check back at this website to find out how much you should donate and head on over to the Obama campaign’s website to donate your dollars!

It’s that simple! Thank you so much for your time, your cash, and your awesome socialistm fueled whatever!

Things happen. No gamer that spends significant time on the net should have unrealistic expectations as to the integrity of any network. Things happen, sometimes the network goes down for reasons malicious and mundane. That’s not to say that Sony couldn’t have done a few things to avoid this or at least mitigate the impact. The shortcomings of the PSN have long been a topic of conversation among gamers (particularly those that have opted to go with the more reliable yet more costly XBLA), and one would think that those shortcomings being common knowledge by now, Sony could have taken steps to correct them. At the very least a little contingency based redundancy would have been nice.

But the technical failings of Sony’s Playstation Network aren’t the real issue here; as I’ve said, these things will happen. What Sony’s true problem has nothing to do with the outage, but instead their inability to effectively communicate and thus control the outrage that stems from it. Considering the sheer enormity of their customer base that have been significantly impacted by this occurrence, one would think that Sony would be forthcoming with information to ease the concerns of millions of customers world wide.

No such luck.

There have been less than five official statements from Sony, none of which giving any definitive information as to the cause, the steps being taken to correct, nor any even remotely accurate estimations as to when this problem will be rectified. Indeed, the last statement from Sony was yesterday. In a one paragraph blog post. That quotes the ETA for the system to be back up as “a day or two”. That’s all we’ve gotten.

The thing of it is this; informing the public of what’s going on won’t make the network come back up any faster. Everyone knows this. It’s not like Sony can say something to the press and all of a sudden some hero will rise from the masses and single-handedly fix all of the network problems. No one expects anything remotely similar to that. But we are all currently suffering from traffic jam syndrome.

Have you ever been stuck in traffic, anger rising with each second your car fails to be able to crawl forward even an inch, and then someone on the radio tells you WHY you are in traffic and all of a sudden you feel better? It happens to all of us. Knowing that we’re stuck in traffic thanks to a seven car pile up ten miles down the road may not change how long we’ll have to wait in traffic, but just having the knowledge somehow makes the wait a little more bearable.

Sony needs to understand that it has MILLIONS of customers effectively suffering from the same situation. We know that Sony dropping tons of press releases won’t make the network come back up faster, but we’ll still find ourselves not so angry and perhaps a little more patient as long as we are being informed of the fact that they are working hard on the problem.

But before you start thinking that we the consumers need to just get off our whiny asses and explore something other than video games for once, understand that we’re not the only ones that are being hurt by Sony’s inability to communicate in a crisis.

This weekend is also a major game launch weekend for three games, all of which are heavily supported by network play. One of them, SOCOM 4, is actually a Sony exclusive with most of its emphasis centered around its online multiplayer mode. Stop and think about what Sony’s lack of communication is doing to the developers and publishers for these games–particularly the exclusive SOCOM title. Every time a publisher releases a game on a system, that publisher is making an investment, and right now Sony’s silence in the face of a casualty is sending a deafening loud message to these publishers that it is not actively protecting their investments.

If I were a game publisher that focused on online play, it’s Sony’s lack of real time communication, not their network failure, that would have me thinking of going exclusive for the Xbox instead.

We don’t expect Sony to wave a magic wand and make everything be okay again. It would be nice, yes, but more a fantasy than anything else. We do expect, though, for Sony to keep its vast customer base informed on what’s going on, not because we think it’ll help, but instead for the peace of mind. When peace of mind results in PSN customers STAYING PSN customers instead of jumping ship to XBLA, isn’t that enough?