I've got a new column. It's called MMO Watch and it's all about the massively multiplayer game. 

You can visit it at: http://mmowatch.blogspot.com/

As a primer to the content and general naughty language, I'd recommend you visiting my MMO Drinking Game post, which puts a new slant on the MMO over the festive season.

The MMO Drinking Game

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Popped into Woolworths today which is holding its closing down sales (with up to 75% off).

As predicted, the store was packed, filled with people circling like vultures over the ailing carcass of the once proud high street store. It's  shame it's going under, it's been a national landmark since long before I was born, but it makes me wonder what kind of marketing decisions the execs have made to bring the company to its knees. The company owes £385 in unpaid depts (several million of that to poor old Nintendo that got in bed with Woolworths in 2006 to launch the Wii - oops).

I'm sure in time Woolworths will become little more than a memory, but we've seen plenty of familiar company names fall this year: popular DIY store MFI has gone under, and several of the smaller banks (and some of the larger ones) have merged to avoid closure.

I'm sure these won't be the last casualties...

I heard the worst story today: a young lady was getting ready for bed last night with the window open. She could hear a high-pitched crying from somewhere outside, so she goes out to investigate - to find a tiny kitten there in the freezing cold, half starved and half dead. It was probably only a few weeks old.

She had no idea where the little guy came from, but she took him indoors and nursed him to health over the next 24 hours.

All well and good so far. But someone suggested that there might be more kittens out there in the cold, so she went looking today for signs of a mother... to find a taped-up cardboard box on the land behind her house - with three kittens inside. Water had made a hole in the box and the kittens were soaked and freezing. Tragically, two had perished in the cold.

I found this story incredibly hard to hear. How anyone could physically tape up a cardboard box and leave it outside in the freezing night air seems inhuman to me. It fills me with disgust and pain to think anyone could voluntarily perform such a wicked act on a living being. Especially one so defenseless.

I can't imagine how terrible it must have been for those poor kittens trapped in the dark and the wet and the freezing cold.

What makes this story worse is the knowledge that this happens probably every day and that animals are so horribly mistreated all across the world. The person who did this could simply have taken them to the nearest RSPCA centre or to any rescue centre. Hell, putting them on someone's doorstep would have been better than this cold and calculated act of murder.

It's a shame the person who did this will undoubtedly get away with it, but this story will leave a chill in my heart for some time to come.

A positive note to this story is that the kind lady has since saved the second kitten, which is now recovering at her home. Those two bundles of fur are in good hands.

If you were wondering who'd won the good vs evil argument - evil wins single handedly with this utterly malevolent act. I know we live in hideous times with terrorists attacking innocent people in India and children victim of terrible abuse, but this just seems so cold and unfeeling - cruelty to animals is utterly abhorrent to me.

While I'm on the subject of evil acts, and feeling exceptionally grumpy, I'd like to rant about idiots who let their dogs poop in the street and don't clean it up.

On these dark nights it's easy to step in and is gross AND neigh on impossible to get off.

As I found out tonight when I did just that. Ick!

But it wasn't a tiny poodle poop. Oh no - that would be too simple. This was dinosaur crap - the size of a bungalow.

I squidged home and managed to scrape it off with a knife (ooh, that reminds me, need a new bread knife) but I can still smell the stink from upstairs. Ick!

I hope karma finds these utterly irresponsible people... may the festering poop of a thousand ravens crap on their heads!