Schadenfreude

A friend sent me a link to this today. ** Update: As of right now, the game descriptions have been removed for some reason, and only the basic ratings remain so you won't see some of the items that I'm referring to. **

Look it over, enjoy, I'll wait...

While groups like this may have a small point about some of this (that's why all of the games but one are rated M, after all) I love the double standards that are so prevalent in these kinds of guides. Apparently any mention of sex, drugs, smoking and alcohol are bad, even when these activates are portrayed negatively. (Smoking reduces health, drinking makes you uncoordinated, Niko in GTA calls you and idiot for driving drunk, sex with random partners results in STDs or unwanted pregnancies, smoking/drug/alcohol use leads to addiction, etc.) I'd think that these would be good lesions teach the kiddies, but I guess it's just better to greenhouse them and keep them ignorant...

Healing medicines and first aid are also listed as "Drugs".

Army of Two has "homosexual themes"? Huh? Where? I played that stinker all the way through and I never got the slightest whiff of these guys being overly friendly with each other. Apparently sharing a parachute makes them gay. I can guarantee you that when I did my tandem jump at 14,00 feet about 10 years ago, the very last thing that was going through my mind was amorous advances toward the guy I was strapped to. I was much more concerned with the ground that was heading towards me at 125mph. The other funny stretch that they mention in Army of Two is when one player is using an object as a bullet shield and the other one "...cuddles up close behind and dispenses 'lead' from his 'iron'." The 'quotes' are theirs. Give me a break. Read their description, it's a hoot.

I eventually stopped reading because it all started to sound the same. There was a boobie, they said "gosh darn" and "heck", there was a picture of a cigarette, someone died, etc... Blah, blah, blah...

But the biggest thing that gets me is that according to this guy's site, he's judging these games based on "Biblical Principals". Now if we apply the same "principals" to the Bible itself, it would be right at the top of his naughty list. After all, it has references to nudity, sex, masturbation, incest, prostitution and, according to some, abortions (though that's a stretch). It’s filled with unimaginable violence that includes, war, genital mutilation, rape, the murder of children, slavery, curses, and outright genocide. There are plenty of references to alcohol and drunkenness. Etc. So according to this guy's "logic", "moral" parents shouldn't let their kids go anywhere near the collection of books that he used to judge all of these games. Go figure.

According to this link, the Wii Fit is calling kids fat. here is my take on it.

If I'm reading the height/weight chart at http://pediatrics.about.com/library/growth_charts/ngirlstwo.htm correctly (and I'm confused by it, so I may not be) an "average" (whatever that is) girl of 10 years weighs about 75 lbs with 84 lbs (6 stone) well within the range of "normal". The medical definition of overweight is a BMI of more than about 25 or 27.3 depending on who you ask. The funny part is that a 4 foot 9 inch, 10 year old, 84 lb girl only has a BMI of 18.2 which is considered to be healthy (and nicer than my own BMI of 21.8), so I don't know how the Wii would have put her into the overweight category anyway.

If the Wii goes strictly by BMI, which is not a good thing as it doesn't take body type or muscle/fat ratio into consideration, (in many cases waist circumference is a better indication of unhealthy weight in people in the normal to overweight range - it has little predictive power beyond a BMI of 35 or more) then the girl should be well into the ideal (if not a teensy bit underweight) range. My guess is that she's not 6 stone anymore and daddy can't see his precious little porcine pygmy for what she is...

I suspect that lots of chubby little kids who've been told their whole lives that they're just "big boned" are going to have a rude awakening when they get a Wii Fit.

A friend pointed me to this letter sent to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and was posted here. It’s the first one on the page, titled “Daylight exacerbates warning.” Go ahead, read it and come back. I’ll wait.

Please tell me that there isn’t someone who actually thinks that daylight savings time has an effect on the actual amount of daylight in a given day. It gets even more frightening if you Google this Connie M. Meskimen from Hot Springs. It seems that she’s a lawyer. Idiot.

Update - 04/26.07
It is a joke, thankfully.

Thank goodness that we all now know that the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter is Larry Birkhead. To be completely honest, though, I really don’t know who that is – nor do I really care. In fact, who does care? I mean are there really people out there waiting with bated breath to find out who Anna’s baby daddy is? Seriously? Why? Aren’t there more important or at least more interesting things to be doing with your time than obsessing over some complete stranger.

I didn’t even understand all of the commotion over her death. Was anyone really surprised? The only thing that surprised me was that she hung on for as long as she did. She was a dumb girl with a severe drug problem. This is exactly the sort of thing that often happens to people like that – they do something stupid and die. There really shouldn’t have been any shock and certainly no mystery. I suppose that it’s always sad whenever someone dies, but it’s not like she was some great cultural or scientific luminary. Oh no! Anna Nicole Smith is dead – there goes the cure for cancer. I say again - who really cares?

Okay, we know what killed her and who fathered her sprog - can we all talk about something else now? Please?

Today at my local Target store, I encountered a rather strange event. Now I realize that I haven’t paid attention to Easter in a very long time, but I nearly forgot that it was tomorrow at all. I really wouldn’t have ever thought of it if it hadn’t been for the small but busy gaggle of aging glamour girls and soccer moms who still think that kids actually give a shit about Easter. I thought that by now everyone knew that kids don’t care about any holiday that doesn’t involve presents.

Now you’d think that Easter would be a much bigger deal than Christmas. After all, Christmas was only supposed to be about a birth (and we’ve all been born) while Easter was supposed to be about a resurrection and return from the dead (a pretty neat feat if anyone could actually pull it off). But since there are no gifts involved, Christians pretend to solemnly observe Easter while many spend themselves into crazy debt for at least 2 months for Christmas.

Anyway, back to the scene at Target. These women were almost as enthusiastic as Christmas shoppers, but there just weren’t as many of them. It was like the rest of the shoppers simply were raptured and no one else noticed and they just kept right on shopping.

Come one folks, don’t you have something better to do than to get silly candy for your chubby children? Just be honest, most of you don’t actually care about the holiday anyway (just like most of you don’t really care about Christmas, you just get stuff and sing nauseating songs) so just go home and spend some time with your family. They’ll probably be happier to see that than all the Peeps and colored eggs that you can scrounge out of Target. If you have to get them something, get them a book.