Tax Calculator from Barack Obama's website Seattlest has to hand it to the Obama campaign for the way they've been spending their enormous amount of campaign cash. Yesterday, it was well-circulated that they're advertising in X-Box video games (the first candidate to ever do such a thing) to reach the kind of people who play NASCAR, hockey, and baseball games. Smart! Then, this morning, we headed over to their new taxcut calculator to tinker around......

Non-gamers tended to scoff when the release of Halo 3 for the Xbox was labeled as "the most important entertainment event of the year" or whatever, but perhaps this will make them reconsider. The game has already inspired music!......

Rockstar Seattlest commenter (ex; you're dead to us, Jake) 8bitjake had the scoop earlier this week for those that were paying attention. He got an email from a friend at the Eastside game studio Bungie: "So heres my big secret. You should google Bungie + Microsoft + separation this week. You know that big ol BILLION dollar franchise Bungie has created for Microsoft, to show their appreciate Microsoft is letting Bungie leave. Of course Microsoft......

We knew that last winter's windstorm was a boon to salesmen of propane and propane accessories, but now it seems like it gave a little nudge to young lovers as well. Apparently there was a "baby boomlet" this September, nine months following the storm and mass power outages. This is always the cool part about big weather events: they bring people together. My roof is fucked up, my neighbor's roof is fucked up--we can set......

Remember the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, the album that made the band—and the word "grunge"—a household name? A naked baby, swimming blithely in pristine water, reaches for a dollar bill—a dollar bill that's on a large fish hook. The image is memorable for its ironic, dangerous, clear message. Courtney Love didn't catch the meaning. Director AJ Schnack does. Love reportedly made $50 million selling 25% of Nirvana's song catalog in 2006. More recently, she......

Microsoft has apparently caught on to the fact that everyone and their little brothers have been modifying old school Xboxes with expanded disk capacity and a home-brew chip to turn them into media centers. Today Redmond announced the Xbox 360 Elite that claims "a bigger hard drive, better high-definition video support." Seattlest is partial to the homebrew version: an old Xbox from Craigslist ($100), a huge hard disk ($100) and a clandestine meeting with the......

--Rain forest camp vacation packages now include real live Bad Guys. --Everyone should have a list of things that they wish they could get away with wearing and everyone's list should include German spike helmets. --Old Farts still buy music, and they get upset when someone infers that they only buy new Rod Stewart albums. They're only into old Rod Stewart albums, thanks. --For some reason we don't think that anyone in Seattle knows......

When the Zune marketing team was formed at Microsoft they probably had a bunch of meetings with the Xbox guys and, well, every other product marketing team in Redmond. There is precedence for Microsoft delivering a product into a crowded marketplace with a clear stand-out, and Xbox/Playstation isn't the only instance of the company having success there. But with the iPod it's a hell of a problem, iPod being the defacto term for portable music......

Can't get enough voting? Ready to combine the excitement of electoral politics with the thrill of holiday shopping and add a soupcon of cool hunting? Head on over to Amazon Customers Vote and vote! vote! vote! (once per week) for one of four deals. Your candidates? 1) An Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for $39.99, down from $49.99 2) A Bell Metropolis Bike Helmet for $74.99 (down -- or up, we guess -- from $73.99) 3)......

--Miss Kirkland has a tip for beauty crown aspirants: Lose weight! --The Mike Jones that Ted Haggard may have gotten meth and massages from isn't a rapper who invites you to call him on his cell phone at (281) 330-8004. There is a Mike Jones like that, though. --Matthew Baldwin's election guide at McSweeney's Internet Tendency will gently scrub away the memories of all the other voting guides you've had to endure these past......

-Green Tortoise Hostel's time is up. Who won the dead pool on that block going condo? -Defective Yeti figured out the key to effective spam yesterday: brevity. -In some places a Starbucks cup isn't a sign of affluence and excess; rather it's a signifier that the neighborhood's gone to hell. -The Mayor's budget allocates some doubloons to displaying the Wawona, so apparently the city is reneging on that threat to send it to the bottom......

Police attribute an arson in the Central District last night to a fight over an XBox. From KIRO: Police said two men argued over an Xbox and a 20-year-old left. He returned at about midnight and apparently set fire to the back porch at the home in Seattle's Central Area, police said. He then called the family in the home to taunt them, police said. Everyone got out safely. What's unclear is this: Was the......

Microsoft announced the purchase today of the game developer Lionhead Studios for a sum that can only be described as "undisclosed." Lionhead created "Populous", "Black & White" and "Black & White II"and has sold a great many copies of "Fable" for the Xbox which was probably the draw for the Microsoft Game Studios purchaser. Peter Molyneux has been the resident rock star at Lionhead for a long time. We came across this list of stuff......

-Yep, Seattlest will be all about the fine livin' in '06. Minimum wage in Washington is going up 28 cents on January, 1, to $7.63 an hour. -Microsoft and Nissan are getting together to bring you the most expensive video game accessory ever. The two are going in on a concept car that will allow you to use the car's steering wheel and pedals to play the Project Gotham driving game on a flip down......

Oh were we ever excited about December 1st. Not because it is the birthday of our senior year high school president, Max Grinnell, but because it is the day that Husky men's basketball single game tickets go on sale. We'd organized a group of five. We were ready to buy our tickets for the Gonzaga, Arizona and Stanford game. But, when we called the ticket office yesterday to ask a preliminary question, we discovered this......

Eastside software magnates Microsoft have been taking public hits recently as they attempted to sue an executive into staying put in his Redmond office, but it looks like the poor soul's successfully escaped to Google. It doesn't take a courtroom drama for Seattle to know what the tone has been like at Microsoft lately - We can hear the chair throwing echoing over the water and our friends and loved ones who reverse commute......

Redmond is recalling Xbox power cords, all 14.1 million of them around the world, and suggests that you turn off Halo 2 until you can get a new cord. There have been around 50 cases of minor injury or property damage due to the cords, but 1,400 of the consoles have burned up. Replacements are promised in between two to four weeks, which tells Seattlest that Redmond can expect a flood of about five......