Play: Shields of Gemland: I'm a fan of a good online puzzle game. Shields of Gemland is one of the cleanest I've played in a long time. It's your basic gem elimination game: shoot gems at other gems to match up sets of three or more. The novelty is how gently the difficulty ramps up, to the point that you don't even realize the game has become very hard until you're too addicted to stop.

See: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire: See it now before the backlash against a tiny little film that could is deafening. If you need a reason to see it, try Brian Prisco's review at Pajiba or Nathaniel Roger's review at Towelroad. I know it's been difficult for everyone to reconcile the fact that Mo'Nique will be an Academy Award nominated actress and quite possibly the winner; that's not an excuse not to see Precious.

Read: The Last Man by Mary Shelley: I don't know about the rest of the country, but in my area of NJ, it has been very dark and depressing. The sun doesn't want to come out and the gray skies I normally love are starting to run me down. It's the perfect weekend to stay inside with a warm pot of tea and bask in the glow of a computer monitor reading Mary Shelley's The Last Man. The novel is a apocalyptic science fiction novel about how a plague has devastated humanity. If you get past the "found narrative" technique of the Gothic (Shelley claims to have discovered mysterious writings that foretold this future), it's a pretty interesting narrative with a lot of style.

Have a great weekend, everyone.