E3 2000 may be over, but the real ugliness has only just begun. All around the Web and in the pages of most gaming magazines our eyes are about to be assaulted by those familiar but most unsettling images - those embarrassing souvenir photos of games journalists posing with the booth babes. Now, I am a man who can stomach a great deal. I barely wince at slasher flicks, and I've been known to eat snacks during the more repulsive moments of the "X-Files." But even I shake my head in sickened disbelief at the sight of pasty-faced, dough-bellied game journalists having their pictures taken alongside otherwise attractive booth babes.

Let's not be demure here. Some of the photos that come back from E3 don't resemble a gamers fest so much as they do a fashion model conference that has been invaded by the kids from Special Ed. Between the goofy glares from the attendees and the strained, tolerant smiles of the booth hostesses, you'd think there were a long line of short buses outside that exhibit hall. The visual contrast in these beauty and the beast shots is frightening. And in a terrific lapse of editorial judgment, publishers continue to post these tasteless images on their Web sites and in their magazines instead of consigning them to the bottom of a locked memories drawer where they belong.

Aside from sprinkling ground glass in with your Kascha, there is no more painful a mix than goofy-looking game geeks and unblemished models in the same frame. First of all, I thought computer gamers wanted to shed their image as arrested adolescents with no life. If so, they should avoid being photographed altogether, but putting them in the same image as these aerobicized silicone sisters is just a clear violation of natural law. It's wrong, I tell you, just wrong.

I speak as a fellow Quasimodo myself -- more gnome than Tom Cruise, to be sure. But one of the first lessons of ugliness I learned as a repulsive child was never pose in a picture with a beautiful person. It's as basic a fashion tip as not wearing horizontal stripes if you're fat and avoiding black socks with shorts. Surrounded by the staff from your common gaming magazine or Web site, a booth babe looks like Princess Leia fighting her way through a Space Cantina full of aliens.