At Least, In Pairs

Newsflash: Tail Bites Dog

As best as I can make out ( I did have to perform some intricate translation from video-game speak to current English), some hacker organization codenamed 'Anonymous' has shut down (hacked) the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store as retaliation against Sony's attempts to sue them for hacking. Could neither of them see this coming?

Hackers run a healthy business servicing gamers who want to bypass difficult phases, artificially boost their reps and prematurely unlock the booty-chest of rewards for elevated prestige.
The hackers' latest strategy which has met with stern disapproval from Sony, is a 'jailbreak' which allows players to downgrade their PlayStation system to bypass the sophisticated upgrades which have all sorts of firewalls and retardants to 'creative gaming'. 

With the Network down, players can't link up online and have to play with the machine ghosts, rather than with their Avatar-clad Clansmen.
I suppose I should be glad that my son wants 'real human' interaction and refuses to play against the machine. He likes to chit-chat while doing battle: blue-tooth talking to Queens, Austria, Florida or where ever his buddies' bodies are hunkered down. My son, whose handle is Tizzik, can be heard calling to Ching-wing for cover, or chastising Krispy for shooting him by accident.
To speak with Ching-wing or Krispy today, Tizzik will have to make a long distance phone call, though I doubt there is anything they'd want to talk about now that the system is down. Funny how that is.

Luckily, Tizzik has many flesh-and-blood friends, (you know, like brick-and-mortar stores) twenty of whom came to his birthday party last month.
For the first time, girls were on the invited list, though only one brave member of that species showed.
My anxiety level went way up - didn't they travel in packs, or at least in pairs? We tried to keep her entertained with metal-ring puzzles and wooden 3D brain teasers, as well an origami kit.
For a moment it looked good - a couple of the boys got interested in the puzzles and left the gaming consoles. I got misty-eyed, thinking I had a real live party on my hands, but sadly some of the boys drifted back to the games, some went into the backyard, and we were back to the one birdie on the wall.

She was a real trouper, though - always smiling and polite. My husband and I loved her because she was on our side, i.e the outside. We catered to her every whim, and marveled at what great friends she and Tizzik must be for him to invite her here just to ignore her. We gawked covertly from the kitchen - a cordless free-standing, fully alert tween capable of coherent conversation - a classic model! We looked over at the boys, thumping on their control pads, yelping and howling - where on earth was she going to find a match?