Holy goodness. In another manifesto penned called in by Gilbert Arenas over at the NBA.com blog, he clears the air about what constitutes cheating and what doesn't. It's a fairly long, er, actually, it's a very long read, but I'm telling you guys, it's well worth your time to go see what the fuss is about.

Since I don't want to copy the entire rant here, the gist of what Agent Arenas wants the world to know is that real cheating in Halo consists of insidious hardcore tampering giving players automatic wins includes:

• Modding the XBOX
• Modding the controller
• Using a rubber band, illegally (shocking!)

He compares that to his "controversial" gain in experience points by bribing opponents (in the form of a free jersey of course) to lose willingly and says it's not the same. It's not cheating because it doesn't affect his ranking, since this is only superficial -- just to get a shiny eagle on his profile (NOT a euphemism). It doesn't give him a true edge in terms of the overall ranking.

And I'm going to side with Arenas in all this, because I don't own an XBOX and he's kind of my hero. Oh and because of this amazing burn:

And MC187, you get the bonus prize. This is your five days of fame. PTI picked it up and now I'm mentioning you in my blog. This is the only way you're going to get famous because it's not going to be through Halo. I looked at your rank, you aren't very good. You might not be skilled at the game, but I know what your skill is -- looking at everybody else's accounts to see who's cheating. So keep it up baby, I'm rooting for you.

That's a headshot MC187! In related news, Gil has yet to refute these past charges in video game criminality.