All our preparations - the drills, diagrams, hypothetical escape routes, and ingestion of dangerous amounts of prohormone muscle building powders - paid off handsomely on Friday when a package actually did arrive from id Software.  After a three hour battery of tests and some frantic, tearful calls to our arch-nemesis, the grouchy Cleveland Police, we were relieved to discover the box contained nothing more menacing than a battered and soggy copy of id's Unreal Tournament clone, Quake 3 Arena.

Not particularly interested in playing the game, we immediately set to the business of burning copies for distribution overseas.  Chet must have accidently installed and launched it, though, because the tranquil whirring sound of our CD writing equipment was interrupted by his cries of shock and humiliation.  I grabbed my smelling salts and ran to his aid, only to discover this image emlazoned on his monitor and now branded permanently onto the insides of my eyelids:

This isn't some kind of Gates McFadden blowing Captain Picard fakeout job, this is for real - search q3dm19.  Our first response?  Deal with it the same way we handle all of life's trials: call 911.  Not surprisingly, they were no help and were, in fact, dismissive and mean.  "911 is a joke in my town," I said.  Chet motioned for me to hand him the phone.  "Fuck tha poe-lees" he told the 911 lady.  There was a moment of silence during which we both wracked our brains for another rap-inspired law enforcement epithet.  I finally settled on "you're the Grinch that stole justice!" but by then I was sobbing at a dialtone.

Generally, our second response to adversity is suing and lots of it.  And I think this time we're in the right both ethically and legally.  That logo is copyrighted material.  How would id like it if we released a game called Doom 3 that was actually just a box we made containing a burned copy of Quake 2?  No need to guess, they didn't like it very much.  But how is this any different?  Maybe they should just call the game Old Man Murray Arena.  Only then they'd be twice as sued as they currently are.

The upside to all this is that id is no penniless group of dopers and submarine rejects like, say, Monolith.  Sanity could be nothing more than a screen depicting Chet's social security number and home address typed in a circle around our trademarked Marvin head with the results of my monthly HIV testing scrolling across the bottom, and what would we stand to gain from a lawsuit?  A pallet stacked with unsold copies of Odium, probably.  When a company such as id enters into a conspiracy to enact chicanery on your copyright, it's like winning the lottery.  The next time you see someone daintily stepping out of his Ferrari, wearing a baggy fur track suit and unaware of the effect his lordly display of emerald necklaces hung from his ten normal fingers plus his golden extra robot finger is having on all the fine, foxy people, it won't be Dennis "Thresh" Fong, it'll be motherfucking me.  Unless he's also wearing a monocle, owns three jet skis, and is dating his butler, Latin pop sensation Charo, in which case it's Chet.

And in case you think we can't succeed against a powerhouse such as id, here is a copy of the out-of-court settlement we received from the even more powerful Cendant software (former owners of Sierra) who we sued over some comments and menacing erotic gestures made by Jane "the other Roberta Williams" Jensen.

Note the amount: 2/3 of the complete number of the Beast.  We tried to get the full six dollars and sixty-six cents, but couldn't quite swing it.  It was a moral victory, mostly.