What has two thumbs and is the fastest texter in Toronto media circles? THIS GUY!!! Hmmm, that doesn't work very well in print, does it? Just imagine I'm pointing at myself with my outstretched thumbs right now. Like the Fonz, only aimed backwards instead of upwards. (Cue quizzical stares from the young 'uns: "What's a Fonz?")

The second annual LG Canadian Texting Championship -- a cross-country search for the speediest mobile phone texter in all the land -- kicked off in Toronto this past Monday, with a special media competition held today smack dab in the middle of Toronto's bustling Eaton Centre. Through a combination of luck and... well, no, it was mostly just luck... I emerged victorious and walked away with a plaque, a $5,000 donation to the charity of my choice and bragging rights.

Since I'm not actually good at much of anything in life, I rarely win awards. So I have to say it was kind of fun to be on the gripping and grinning side of a grip n' grin with LG Canada's Pat Button, who presented the oversized novelty cheque for my chosen charity, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. I think I even made CTV's story about the texting championship, and the Toronto Sun's Tamara Cherry and Craig Robertson did a cute video piece on the competition.

Last year's event was won by prolific tech journalist Marc Saltzman, who sadly (or not) couldn't make it to this year's media text-off. With Saltzman away, I figured my chief competition would be my buddy (and last year's second-place finisher) Andrew Moore-Crispin and swift-thumbed tech goddess Amber MacArthur, but they both stumbled while typing "d fstest fngrz n d hows." Text-lingo gobbledygook aside, it was odd choice of competition phrase. Everyone knows it's all in the thumbs.

This Killzone 2 poster brouhaha has reached a nadir of absolute epic ridiculousness. You can't really blame the media for slobbering all over it; anything that combines the words "violent" and "video game" is instant headline gold. It's the teacher(s) and parent(s) who have initiated this stupidity that really make me shake my head.

As you may or may not have heard, Sony has decided to pull a Toronto bus shelter advertising campaign for their PlayStation 3 sci-fi shooter game Killzone 2, in part because a teacher complained that the image (the poster is a reproduction of the game box art, seen at left) was too menacing and "warlike."

"I don't think that when you're in Scarborough, where we're having to deal on a constant basis with violence, that does anything to help promote any kind of community renewal or even responsibility," teacher Davis Mirza told the Toronto Star. While his heart is obviously in the right place, let's stop and think about this for a second. Are we saying that there should be no advertising of any kind that runs contrary to promoting community renewal and responsibility?

Hey, I'm all for that. But if that's the case, let's pull down the billboards and bus shelter ads for every violent movie and sexually suggestive TV show, as well as ads for clothing, hair care products, cars, cellphones, insurance companies... basically any ad that doesn't in some way promote community renewal and responsibility. I would love to live in that kind of glorious, ad-free utopia.

Even more forehead-slapping is York Regional Transit's decision to follow suit and pull the bus shelter ads in their jurisdiction, based on the complaint of one father whose son was apparently scared by the poster and thought the "monster" would waiting for him at his pre-kindgergarten class. (Sony says although York Regional Transit decided of their own accord to pull the ads, the directive had already been given by Sony to do so, and the ads would have come down anyway.)

Again, this parent's heart is in the right place -- who wants to see their three-year-old son cry? -- but I daresay if the kid saw a scary face on a poster and somehow decided it would be waiting for him at school, he needs parental help separating fantasy from reality. And the complaint was followed up by this kicker from the dad: "It almost makes me want to start a campaign to get the game pulled off the shelves."

With all due respect, he's out to lunch. The advertising posters for virtually every scary movie ever made (and a ton of action/sci-fi/fantasy films as well) are more frightening than the Killzone 2 poster. And some of these posters are for films marketed directly at kids themselves.


Are these posters, both for PG-rated movies, any less scary than the Killzone 2 image?

But because one kid got spooked by a game poster, a parent wants to ban the GAME ITSELF from being sold? We're supposed censor entertainment based on the reaction of a three-year-old? I'm just going to just smash my head against my keyboard now.

Here's the thing: If the poster was for Killzone 2: The Movie, do you think these people would have complained? I very much doubt it. But because it's for a video game -- a mature-rated game that can only be sold to people 17 and older -- these overly concerned citizens have decided that it's somehow directed at their students and children, and thus needs to be stopped.

Shame on Sony for buckling to this worst kind of hypocrisy and meddling, especially when the campaign was going to be over soon anyway. (And if they really are that concerned about the kids, how come there's still that MASSIVE Killzone 2 mural up on Adelaide St. between Peter and Spadina? How many hundreds of children must see that horror every day?)

But an even bigger shame on us for becoming a society of crybaby wussies. If the scariest thing you see in your daily life is a video game poster, then frankly you've got it pretty damn good.

Pop superstar turned human-alien hybrid Michael Jackson may be decomposing before our eyes and regressing ever further into a fantasy childhood, but that hasn't stopped him from announcing a series of 50 live concerts in London, all of which have already sold out.

It'll be a much needed income infusion for the cash-strapped Jackson, who's preparing to auction off thousands of items packing his Neverland Ranch property. The celeb-stalkers at TMZ got their mitts on the full list, and from a video games perspective starts out promisingly enough – Jackson is putting quite a collection of arcade classics on the block, like San Francisco Rush, NFL Blitz 99, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis 2, Smashing Drive and more than a dozen others.

He's also selling his Sega Dreamcast and Super Nintendo (items #5619 and 5620 on the list), and among the many 40 Year Old Virgin-worthy collectibles up for grabs are a life-sized Lara Croft figure (#5493) and a framed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City poster (#5738). See, even man-child popstars like to beat the odd virtual hooker to death. Or maybe he just has it because he's on the game's soundtrack. Either way, we hope he didn't let any of his pre-teen pals play.

The rest of the stuff though... yikes. It runs the gamut from relatively mundane (clothes, furniture, fixtures) to bizarre (thrones, a robotic MJ head, enough Mickey Mouse memorabilia to open a Disney Store) to creepilicious (dozens and dozens of statues and figures of little boys and girls, including "child mannequin w/ regal red princess dress.")

The breathtaking variety and uncomfortable weirdness of Jackson's crap has to be seen to be believed. If you want to bid on any of it, the auction starts April 22 in Beverly Hills, overseen by Julien's Auctions. Just make sure to wipe those Dreamcast controllers down with disinfectant, in case they have any lingering traces of Jesus juice. Or worse.

Uh-oh, Apple! According to various reports, Chinese hackers have cracked the algorithm used to generate iTunes gift card codes, and are now selling $200 iTunes gift cards online for as little as $3.

Apparently the algorithm was quietly cracked months ago, but prices on the pirated iTunes codes are plunging as more and more vendors get in on the action. A post today on the Chinese music industry blog Outdustry brought the issue to the world's attention, and now everyone's in a tizzy.

It's not clear what this means for Apple (and the company hasn't yet reacted publicly to the issue), other than they could see tens of thousands of dollars of songs, movies and apps essentially stolen from iTunes, especially as these codes spread from China to more accessible sales outlets in the West, like eBay and Craigslist.

Maybe Apple has some secondary way of identifying legit iTunes codes that they can put into effect, but if not, they may have to go to the extreme length of switching up the code-generating algorithm. That would render the hacked codes unusable, but it would also void every legally bought card that hasn't yet been redeemed by its owner, as well as all the cards currently for sale at retail.

If you've got iTunes gift cards you haven't entered into your iTunes account yet, you might want to do so pronto, just in case Apple has to take the extreme measure of nuking the current crop of codes, recalling gift cards already at retail and finding some way to compensate legit owners.