While the June 29th release of the Apple IPhone was recieved with excitement by millions of affluent and socially concious young adults, the same day was the cause of dread to many charities that depend on donations from Apple's trend following customer base. Wendy Wilson of PETA explains, "That thing costs $500 plus another $80 a month for the service plan. That's money that college students would usually blow on a PETA Tshirt or tickets to a Save the Earth Concert." GreenPeace spokesperson Rain Sunshine echoed the concerns, "Its a disaster. And its not just us. Hemp belt sales have plummetted. Toyota dealers are already being forced to slash the price of the Prius. And those starving kids in Somalia and Darfur, it'll be a long time before they see another bag of grain."

It's not only charities that are being hit hard, other 'cool causes' are being pushed out of the marketplace. Micheal Moore's new film had a dissapointing box office over the weekend, and DVD sales of Al Gores 'An Inconvienent Truth' are at thier lowest point in weeks. Lance Armstrong of the 'LiveStrong' foundation said they have been hit the hardest. "What are we gonna do with 3 million $15 plastic wristbands now? Before the IPhone was announced, it was a sellers market".

Mike Works, a long time Apple user , was able to maintain his kharma while also keeping up with tech fashion. "I was lucky. I was able to cancel my check to the Make a Wish Foundation in time to get two IPhones, one to use and one to keep in the box as a collector's item. Unfortunatley the Pediatric Aids people were able to hit my credit card before I could stop them. So no leather carrying case for me. That sucks."

While many new IPhone owners had to chose between trendy technology and trendy charities, a few have managed to balance the two. Jennifer Dobson a Sophomore at UCLA told us, "Sure, to pay for my IPhone I had to cancel my sponsorship of a Ehtiopian village and skip out on an AIDs walk, but its okay because I used it to download the new Pearl Jam album from Itunes. I think they give a penny for every song downloaded, so I'm still totally helping out." 

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Clifford Bleszenski was dismayed to discover that despite his repeated attempts to be stylish, he still isn't considered 'cool' by those outside of the game industry.

"I just dont get it", Bleszenski stated, "I gave myself a cool nickname, 'Cliffy B'. I told the girl at Supercuts to give me the same haircut as Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys. I even got the latest hip t-shirt from The Gap. I have to be cool by now."

But after showing his picture to 30 random female college students, they  most often catergorized Clifford as 'Geeky', with 'Kinda Gay' a close second. Comments included "It looks like he got that hair from Supercuts" and "My Uncle got that same shirt for free when the local Gap went out of business". When the ladies were told the picture was actually of a popular video game programmer known as 'Cliffy B', 100% if the respondents giggled.

Undaunted, Clifford vowed to continue his pursuit of becoming cool. In addition to increasing his use of words like 'extreme' and 'dude' in day to day conversation, he will also get a tribal tattoo on his arm, although it will be in henna due to his fear of needles.

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In a press conference held today at the North Pole, Santa Claus announced that the Xbox 360 was being exiled to the Island of Misfit Toys effective immediately. Speculation has been hovering around the console for a number of months because of the high defect rate being reported. It has been claimed that as many as 30% of all Xbox 360's delivered by Saint Nick have been returned because of the so called 'Red Rings of Death'. Santa stated 'It is our policy not to go into details about why toys are exiled , but suffice it to say, this was a situation that I could no longer ignore. The elves in the complaint department were being becoming un-jolly and I decided this was the only course of action. We could not afford to have another N-Gage fiasco on our hands.'

This is not the first time Santa has had problems with electronic toys being exiled. While early misfits toys like the Coleco Adam and the Atari 5200 were noteworthy, it was the Sega Saturn that had many believing that Santa's Elves had over-reached their technical ability.

Some observers asked if it was the complexity of the Xbox 360 that causes the elves to make more mistakes when assembling the unit. Head Elf, Bob Twinkle Leaf, steadfastly renounced this. 'We are trained specialist elves working here. We arent a bunch of Community College drop outs, we're frigging Elves! I personally built 42 PS3's before breakfast. We have elves that make Nintendo Wii's in thier sleep. Literally, while they sleep. Rocking horse, toy train, Multi Processor entertainment console, to us they're all they same. Red Rings, Green Rings, Onion Rings, all I know is we build these things to spec, and a month later, they fall apart. That can't happen. We're Santa's Elves, we have a reputation to uphold. These Xbox 360's are just broke. Not our fault. If you want someone to blame, dont blame the elves that build it, blame the faeries that designed it. Merry Christmas'

In a move that shocked no one, Valve Software, announced that they were releasing yet another version of their popular game, Half Life 2, again. Valve, makers of a diverse range of games including Half Life, Half Life 2, Half Life 2:Blue Shift, Half Life 2:Episode 1 and Half Life 2:with a Vengeance,was quick to dispell any notions that this re-re-release was just a money grab. "Its not like the consumer isnt getting anything new. This time we've added a whole new game called Team Fortress. Previously, if you wanted to play that game, you would have been forced to download it for free from the internet. But now you have the added convienence of buying the CD,which will then download the game from the internet."

Valve dismissed any questions that claimed they were resting on past success and not innovating with new games. "Why would we want to make a new game? People love Half Life 2. If we make something else, there's a 50/50 chance it might suck. Why risk it?" This marks the 12th time the company has released the same game but Valve was confident that they would be able to keep up with thier hectic re-release schedule.  "I think we have another 8 or nine releases untill we have to actually make a new one. I think the Tenth anniversary is coming up soon. Thats good for at least 3 releases alone."