Last night, I played I Can Hold My Breath Forever, a flash game about a little creature who dives into a series of underwater caverns in order to find an old friend who disappeared down there years ago. It's a poignant little ten-minute diversion, and though the ending doesn't allow much time to linger, it's well worth your time.

On the other end of the spectrum, Play This Thing! wants us to know about a new game called Why I Want to Fuck Barack Obama. It's a Lemmings-like game (named after a very good J.G. Ballard short story about Ronald Reagan) in which children follow Barack Obama to their doom by accomplishing tasks and switching levels (including "Washington DCeive") from HOPE mode to CHANGE mode.

And here's the goddamned kicker of them all, each level must be completed by the game changing around completely, because CHANGE-mode Obama becomes the level boss as soon as one kid reaches the level-exit (an anus-like structure) and the roles reverse. The number of children you saved end up becoming the number of lives you have at your disposal. So as the player the conflict of interest is pure, that is, it isn't really there, but ostensibly you are Barack and then the children, and who wants to fuck who isn't really clear, except that you want to win.

I bet Charles Alan Wilson would enjoy this game.