Gotta love online games that play off of the news, such as Barack, Paper, Scissors. Created by the USA Rock Paper Scissors League (really), the free game lets players control Democatric presidential candidate Barack Obama in a game of rock, paper, scissors against opponents such as President Bush, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Democratic rival Hilary Clinton. If you register at the USARPS site, you can add your score to the online leaderboard. The game has some great comedic touches, such as Ahmadinejad standing near a sign that says, “Nuclear facility” — with “nuclear” crossed out and the word “children’s” painted over it. If Obama loses to him, the Iranian president says, “I win! Go and complain to the U.N. about it.” Many of Obama’s catch phrases pepper the proceedings, such as this encouragement if you fail: “We can do it! Yes, we can!”

Other techno-musings:

Super Smash? I finally got around this weekend to playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the new sensation for Nintendo’s Wii. I’ve been playing video games pretty much as long as they’ve been in existence, but I have to admit that I’ve never enjoyed fighting games or understood the craze over them. They just amount to mindless button-mashing to me. Still, Super Smash Bros. has received universal acclaim, along with assurances that even non-genre fans will like it. Guess not, in my case — it’s still just a fighting game. My reaction probably is also because I’m not so immersed in Nintendo history that pitting, say, flagship character Mario against Snake (from Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series)  sends me into a fan-boy frenzy. Oh, well — enjoy it, Nintendo fans.

DVD extras: I also watched Rob Roy over the weekend. The 1995 film, starring Liam Neeson as the Scottish folk hero, was one of MGM’s first DVDs when it came out in 1997.  I had to laugh when I discovered a huge mistake in the four-page booklet’s production notes.  It described in detail how the film was shot mostly in Scotland and then the whole production was moved to Perth, Australia, for interior shooting inside two castles. The headline even referred to filming “down under.” The only problem is that the film was shot “entirely in Scotland” — as it notes in the credits — and the Perth in question was the historic Scottish city, not its newer namesake half a world away. Maybe the person who wrote the production notes should have watched the film or, you know, found out more about its production? (And where was quality control on such a huge gaffe?)

Smart shopping: After last week’s column about finding deals online, I have to emphasize that buying online makes so much more sense than shopping in stores if you’re looking for low prices on consumables and accessories. I just bought a new digital camera and thought I’d check while at Target to see how much an SD flash card was. The store had a 1GB card for $20. Yikes. Instead, I ordered one of the highest-rated cards from Newegg with twice the storage capacity for less than $8.

The CD might be dead, but if you’re into classical and jazz music, you probably never got the memo. That’s why you should know about Berkshire Record Outlet, an essential addition to my column today about finding online deals for entertainment and other media.

BRO specializes in closeouts and overruns of just about any classical-music label you can name. But there’s much more, including jazz, world music, blues and film music. CDs are the main format, with more than 11,500 now listed, but there are also DVDs (1,269), books (100), cassettes (137), VHS tapes (106) and even — gasp! — LPs (258 on my last check for $2 to $6 each). BRO has been around for 34 years as a mail-order company, but it recently has optimized its website to make searching through its massive holdings a breeze.

The greatest thing about BRO is that its CDs are not all picked-over junk, as you might expect when you see words such as “closeouts” and “overruns.” You can find acclaimed recordings of just about any composer and artist, and on esteemed labels, many of them imports that are hard to find even at retail prices.  But there’s the catch: These discs typically sell for about a third of that.

Consider my recent order: 7 CDs from the import labels Biddulph, Chandos, BBC and Marco Polo; 2 CDs from the audiophile label Telarc ($2.99 each!); 2 CDs from the independent historical label Music & Arts; 1 disc from the budget label Naxos; and 2 limited-edition DVD-Rs of rare films. They include conductors such as Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, and composers ranging from Modeste Mussorgsky and Gustav Holst to Erich Korngold and Jerry Goldsmith. That’s 14 discs for $86.16, which includes a paltry $7.30 for shipping — an average of $6.16 per disc.

Now that’s music to my ears.

Don’t know the difference between a plasma tweeter and a Walsh driver? Looking for the sweet spot? Would motion artifacts concern you more if you knew what they were?

Enter the new AV Glossary, created by syndicated consumer-electronics columnist Don Lindich. With more than 500 entries, the online dictionary defines the lingo you’re likely to come across when reading about or shopping for electronics.  It also contains techno-terms that are unique to a particular brand, such as Super SteadyShot. The best part is that all of the cross-referenced entries have the same breezy style and helpful tips that characterize Don’s Sound Advice column, which appears Mondays in the Star Tribune. He says the AV Glossary “will be devoted to consumers, not techies, and will be written in plain English as much as possible.”

The AV Glossary is very much a work in progress, having launched just this week. So when you check it out, be sure to send Don feedback on what you like and don’t like, along with any terms you think he should add.

Via Fark comes the story of a fun video montage showing a Royal Air Force ground crewman who dances on the runway while directing jets. See him do YMCA with giant foam hands. See him do the zombie dance from Thriller. See him shimmy in gym shorts. An RAF officer told the British tabloid The Sun: “The video has become cult viewing and shows great enterprise and sense of humour. There was no danger at all to any RAF personnel.” It truly is funny — until he moonwalks into a jet engine someday.

Dean Tabreham of the Royal Air Force directs jets while doing the “YMCA” dance.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the Dude makes it so delightful.

I’m talking about Dude Weather, Jimmy Gaines’ hip series of video weather forecasts for Minneapolis. Gaines — or Dutch, as he goes by on-screen – does them each weekday for The Daily Mole, or you can zap straight to YouTube for them. These aren’t slick productions, and Dutch always seems to stumble over a line in every clip. But that’s what makes him so endearing: You know he’s keeping it real, whether he’s using footage of a monkey to poke fun at Weather Channel founder John Coleman’s views on global warming (with an Average White Band album in the background) or staying in his bathrobe for an also-ran Monday report. And with Dutch, you know that a cigarette and casually uttered profanity are never far away.

In Thursday’s forecast clip, he noted that his car wouldn’t start and had a flat tire. As he struggled to fix everything before this weekend’s impending snowstorm, he turned and leaned into the camera and said with exasperation, “Do you think Paul Douglas has this problem?”

Mmm, pie! A new website, Penelope Pies, knows that we can’t resist the baked combination of a flaky homemade crust with a yummy fruit filling or — my favorite — a delectable key-lime concoction with graham-cracker crust and loads of whipped cream (never meringue!) piled on top.

Star Tribune photo by Steve Rice

Penelope Pies, which popped out of the cyber oven on Oct. 1, aims to provide an online resource for people who love to bake and eat pies. Although the site has a relatively small amount of content so far, its cheeky approach bodes of tasty things to come. Penelope, you see, is not real. She is the creation of site cofounders V.C. Garmel (a former ad-agency writer) and Lillian Laserson (a lawyer). And, so, while some recipes come from readers, others come from Penelope’s fictional life and often include a little story as a setup, such as that fateful Thanksgiving when Penelope’s Aunt Lee came up with the bright idea of adding sour cream to the pumpkin-pie filling. Gentle humor abounds, too, such as in a pre-recipe story recounting an outburst from a teenage daughter who let loose after her mother (a reader) reminded her one time too many that the steam vents in the crust don’t have to be cut perfectly. Penelope concludes, “Apparently steam vents also come in different ages.” 

Penelope Pies’ glaring shortcoming is that the site doesn’t have photos, which are handy for recipe-triers who want to see their ultimate goal. Besides, when the site says in its Pie Place of the Week that a Miami eatery has “the creamiest, tangiest key lime pie,” I’d like to see what it looks like without having to follow a bunch of links. (And if the site is going to note that you can have said pie shipped to you, it’s also worth noting that it will cost almost $70 to do so.)

But those are just some annoying crumbs. Penelope Pies is a treat no matter how you slice it.