There are the obvious things that will give you swine flu”"like getting sneezed on, for instance”"and then there are the painfully obvious things that will give you swine flu”"like playing beer pong.

We could probably file this under “Obvious Science” but officals at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate Troy, NY have warned students that the sharing of cups during games of beer pong lead to the spread of disease, and especially of the spread of H1N1 this flu season. The same officials sent out a campus-wide email detailed a group of students who had all come down the virus after a weekend game.

Area schools are reporting many cases of the swine flu; RPI, a school of about 7,000 total students has reported 21 cases this semester so far.

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Boston.com, citing an Associated Press story, is reporting that a Bridgeport, Pa. party turned deadly after one man shot and killed another man over an argument about a game of beer pong.

Authorities say Joseph Jimenez, 24, killed Scott Riley, 25, after they argued over the beer pong game Friday at a party in a suburb 15 miles outside Philadelphia.

The men took the argument outside, where authorities say Riley mocked Jimenez and taunted him into shooting him. Jimenez allegedly responded by pulling a .40-caliber and shooting Riley in the neck.

Let’s take a minute to discuss the ground rules of beer pong folks:

Number 1: A bounce counts as two cups. If you are an idiot and knock over your own cups defending the bounce, those cups are lost.

Second: Bitches blow. Nuff said.

3: No overthrow rule. That’s dumb.

Four: Re-rack at six, four, three, and two.

Fifth: If you and your partner sink the same cup at the same time, game over.

Now play nice, kids.

Midway’s Game Party 2 is another in a long, long series of mini games and party games that every developer has released to capitalize on the motion control of the Nintendo Wii.

This game is different for one reason: It’s the first game that we know of that let’s you play beer pong (or Beirut for your New Hampshire folk) — though they don’t call it by any sort of alcoholic name. They cleverly call it ping cup so that the parents don’t get mad.

You don’t need me to tell you that you’ve probably played most of these games before. In fact, you can play most of these games for real at any drunken men’s social club outing, including bet the bean bag toss, horseshoes, shuffleboard, darts, and puck bowling. But somehow that makes us like the game more.

The graphics aren’t very good, and we note that this doesn’t use Nintendo’s new Motion Plus accessory. But who cares. Game Party 2 doesn’t game itself very seriously, and that’s why we like it so far.

Plus, it’s got beer pong!

Game list: horseshoes, bean bags, shuffleboard, skill/skeeball, arcade hoop shoot, puck bowling, lawn darts, baseball bar darts, QB challenge, trivia, and ping cup (beer pong).

Game Party was Midway’s top-seller with 1.3 million copies sold since last year.

Game Party 2 is $20 and hits shelves today.