Over the weekend, I went down to GAME on Dawson Street. At the counter, I had a small discussion with this man, pictured to the right. Notice that he is wearing a Brain Age t-shirt.

"I'd like to exchange these games for a game that doesn't suck," I said, flinging Brain Age and Sonic Rush on the counter with a contemptuous flick of my otherwise limp wrist.

"You didn't like them?" he asked.

"No. They're terrible. Anyone who likes them is an idiot. That goes for Mr. Precious Brian 'Brain Age 20' Crecente too."

"What didn't you like about them?"

"Well, Sonic is as terrible as any of the Sonic games have been ever since furries started wanking off to the franchise. And I don't particularly like zooming through levels so fast that I can't even see what just hit me. As for Brain Age, I was bored within thirty seconds. It should be called 'Grandma: The "Game"'. I'd like to put a pistol in Dr. Kahashima's smug, chortling face and pull the trigger until I hear 'click click'. Jack Thompson can quote me on that. What the fuck kind of game can't understand the word 'blue'?"

"Brew. BREW. BUH-REW," my anonymous buddy happily intoned. I like the guy, so I decided not to slap his mouth shut. And I'm glad I didn't, because then he explained the Kotaku Effect.

"You know, after you bought the DS Lites here for that contest, we got a lot of phone calls," he said. "What was the question you asked?"

"Oh, I dunno. Crecente made something ridiculous up. Multiply the circumference of the earth by the number of racist references in Loco Roco times the price of a draft of Guinness divided by the square route of Yahweh's true name mathematically expressed and divided by Pi to the 15,000th place." I spat on the floor, as I do whenever Crecente's name is invoked. "I didn't get it."

"You asked about the price of a pint? That explains it: we got a lot of Americans calling, demanding to know the price of a pint of Guinness across the street."

This surprised me: "Wow. How many?"

The GAME employee began counting on his digits, then rolled his eyes up to the heavens as if the number were too innumerable to count. "I don't know. DOZENS! Some of them were girls..." He intoned the word with mystical dread; knowing Eliza, I sympathized.

Anyway, there appears to be a vast clamoring horde of Kotaku readers who wanted to know the price of a pint of Guinness in Ireland, rounded up to the nearest dollar. Well, for the record, pints of Guinness generally cost between 3.80 and 4.20. The pint I purchase was made at Slattery's in Rathmines, and cost 3.80. Translated at the Oanda.com exchange rate for that day, it's about $4.94, or rounded up to the nearest dollar, five bucks.