Nice work, once again TF Community for raising over $1,000 for the Cure-Search for Children's Cancer. You can find info about it in a few forum threads here, here and here.

The signups will open on July 10th, 2011 17:00 CET and will stay open for 3 weeks. For more info visit the tourney web page.

Welcome to Stuff Friday! Without further adieu, here's some stuff!

The "Meet the Medic" Taunt
Capture a point. Shoot a guy. Walk ten feet. Think about walking ten feet and decide not to. Whatever the occasion, celebrate it with the Meet the Medic, a custom taunt that allows you to punctuate anything you do, no matter how trivial, with god rays, orchestral swells and an explosion of doves.

The "Schadenfreude" Taunt Pack
Science tells us that laughter is the best medicine. Put that theory to the test with the Shadenfreude taunt pack, now available in the Mann Co. store, which gives all nine classes the ability to laugh at a corpse and see if it gets any better. (You could hypothetically also laugh at non-corpse-related objects, we suppose. But what would be the point?)

Put Meet the Medic… On Your Wall!
Let's say you enjoyed Meet the Medic. Let's say you enjoyed it so much--and especially that one scene where the Medic walks out of his lab all cool with a bunch of doves flying around him--that you wanted to put it up on your wall. First you'd have to buy a big-screen TV. Then you'd have to buy a computer, connect it to the internet, and have the TV play Meet the Medic in an endless loop. Then you’d have to hire a butler to tell you every time that one scene comes up so you can go look at it. And don't forget laser eye surgery so you can see the image at museum quality. Total price: $140,000. Per year. What a bunch of crap, right? Now what if we were to tell you that Valve engineers came up with a better solution? Introducing the limited edition Meet the Medic lithograph, available now at the Valve Store. First come, first serve, folks!

Art
Man, is your wallpaper stupid. We're just guessing, because compared to the new hi-res, wallpaper-caliber Über Update art now available in the Artwork section, trust us, it's stupid.

Almost forgot.

Dr. Frankenstein. Dr. Moreau. Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman. Any time a physician starts messing around creating life, trying to improve the species with a giraffe neck or two, or taming a cowboy's heart, you can bet things are going to end badly. The moral of these stories? Play God, and there is a 100% chance you will be mauled to death by leopard men.

To that we say pshht. The real moral of Frankenstein is: If you're going to bring a guy back to life with lightning, maybe don't give him the brain of a serial killer. Try a vegan librarian. If you're stitching together animal-man hybrids, how about not jumping straight to ravenous hyenas? Start with hamsters, see how that goes, and work your way up the food chain.

Never toil in God's domain? Good advice if you're an idiot. If you know what you're doing, though, toil away. Why not give the Demo a couple extra livers? Why not replace Sniper's spine with a giant piece of sheet metal? Why not stitch a mouth onto Scout's backside so he can literally talk out of his ass?

Which brings us to our point. Not every mad doctor lives in a castle surrounded by villagers with pitchforks. Sometimes they live in the trenches, where there's plenty of spare parts flying around and a pressing need to get inventive with them.

Let's Meet the Medic.

War. Hunh. Yeah. What is it good for? Up until right this second, absolutely nothing. We'll say it again: Absolutely nothing.

But now Edwin Starr's going to have to rewrite that stupid song of his to something more accurate, because as of this moment, war is good for something. Like what, you ask? Free stuff. March on over to World War Wednesday for all the details—or "SITREP", as we learned when we stole Tom Clancy's mail.

Also, if you weren't eagle-eyed enough to notice, the Scout made a surprise appearance yesterday with a class pack of his own. Why make a class pack an Easter Egg? There's a very good reason. Probably. There's also the real reason, which was that it didn’t fit into our Mobster, Timbuktu or War themes.

Ahhhhhh, the desert. Sandy, camel-filled seductress. What secrets does she clutch to her fig-stuffed, wind-swept bosoms?

Lots. Don't believe us? The Sphinx. Bam. That's just one secret, too. We've got so many we just threw that one away and we don't even miss it.

It's probably clear to you by now that we've been doing quite a bit of research about the desert. And why? We're going to write a book about the desert. The great American desert book. We honestly can't believe nobody’s thought of this before. We are going to be billionaires.

Anyway, since you're probably already camped out at a bookstore waiting for our desert book to come out, why not take over one of the computers at the information kiosk and enjoy TimbukTuesday?

Welcome to Day One of the Über Update--the biggest, most ambitious update in the history of Team Fortress 2.

We've got a lot to announce as we get closer to the update's release this Thursday, June 23rd. We've been holding one of the surprises pretty close to the vest for months now. We don't want to ruin it, but we'll give you four clues to get you guessing:

1.) It IS a "Meet the" short.
2.) It involves ONE of the two remaining classes.
3.) It's NOT the Pyro.
4.) It's the MEDIC.

Let the speculation begin! While you're puzzling that out, why not click over to the first of our class pack announcements: Mobster Monday. To make sure everything was as accurate as possible, we went deep undercover at the most Italian place we could find, The Olive Garden. We asked the Mafia about a million questions, none of which they understood, because our mouths were full of all the free breadsticks the Mafia gives you when you visit them (they're not such bad guys).

All that hanging out with mob guys must have rubbed off on us, because we've decided to celebrate the Über Update by giving you an offer you can't (or at least shouldn't) refuse--an unprecedented WEEK-LONG FREE WEEKEND of Team Fortress 2, starting right now!

Last but not least, today's the day we reveal our all-new website. Want a link to it? Too bad--you're already there!

• TF2Maps.net is wrapping up their Asymmetry/Symmetry Control Point Map Contest. Authors had a choice of making a symmetrical or asymmetrical control point map and five months to complete it. Head over to their contest page to download and play the collection. There are a couple servers running the collection. When you're done be sure to help them choose a winner!
• OZ Fortress wrapped up their 6th Ultiduo with yuki and bonobo taking top prize. More information and demos can be found their summary page.
• OZ Fortress also has a highlight video from their Cup 2 season compiled by Kaiza.

Hot damn! We're just minutes away from live-feeding the First Annual Saxxy Awards, and the anticipation is thick here at TF headquarters. Why? Because tonight, we are going to announce a contest winner every five minutes until someone dies! Hold on, there's somebody at the door. Keep rereading this paragraph until we get back.