GTM: Part Three

(In reference to THIS and THIS.)

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is now rated "Adults Only", for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I will repeat that I don't see how anybody in their right mind can make sense of this. I guess it's just a case of blindly following outdated rules: "violence = mature, sex = adults only".

Additionally, there are things in the game that mix sex and violence. You can get a hooker into your car, boink her, then run her over (or shoot her, or beat her to death with your bare hands), and get your money back. But because you don't see her boobies (you just see the car shake from the outside), that's just fine for kids. The moment you see a nipple during consensual sex between adults, though? That will corrupt kids for life.

HERE is a nice link to a commentary on this issue, wrapped within a story. Funny stuff. Read it.

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[Insert Witty Title About Being Beamed Up]

Scotty is dead. I've never been very into Star Trek, but it always sucks when an important figure in pop culture dies.

James Doohan was actually a pretty cool guy, outside of being Scotty. First of all, he's Canadian, which is neat. He was also part of the Canadian army, and he was there on D-Day. Apparently he managed to tip-toe over some mines (they were meant for tanks, so they didn't go off), but then got shot six times. One of his fingers even got machine-gunned off, but he lived. Getting shot six times and living is pretty awesome...unless you're a "gansta" and got yourself shot over something stupid. Then you're just stupid. But Scotty ain't no gansta, so he gets my full props.

[Insert vaguely Scottish farewell]

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Drunkennesssess

From the perspective of someone who is totally fucking drunk...my new years resolution....even tgough it's not new years....although it's kinda half-new-years....is to....get....totally fucking drukn....more....often.

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More on GTM

This link has an update with more information about my last post, the one about "explicit" content in Grand Theft Auto. It's becoming a big deal, with Hillary Clinton involved 'n everything. Looks like it really was in the original source code of the game...but, uh, so what? I've seen more explicit sex scenes in sitcoms.

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Grand Theft Morality

So here is something really dumb. There is this video game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where you're a criminal and you do criminally things. Recently, a program was released on the internet which allows you to modify the game so that you can have sex in it. This may or may not have been hidden in the code of the game to begin with, but it was not intended to be in the game (read more about it here).

Here is the dumb part. The people who rate games are launching an investigation into whether the sex was secretly embedded in the game or not. If it was, the game may get an "adults only" rating, which basically equates it with porn and would make most stores unable to sell it.

What the hell? This is a game where you steal cars, run over hundreds of people for fun, break into houses and steal stuff, shoot cops, shoot hookers, etc etc. All things that are clearly wrong. Yet a bit of sex - sex with clothes on (see the picture above) - can push the game to the "adults only" category? That makes no sense. This is clearly sending the message that images of brutal and pointless murder are fine for kids, but a little pixelated implied sex should only be seen by adults. In the real, sane world, murder is bad, and sex is good. Something is backwards here. It's ridiculous.

This is just part of a problem that affects all forms of entertainment, and I think it's terrible. We come within centimeters of penises and vaginas every day when we interact with people, blocked by a thin layer of cloth. Sex rarely hurts anybody, and usually brings joy to everyone who has it, which is everybody. However, most people will never come in direct contact with guns and murder, and those who do will have their lives destroyed by it. Violence should be the reason for an adults only rating...not sex.

I'm not saying that violent games and movies should all be for adults only. I'm just saying that games with sex should be at the same level or lower on the rating scale than games with violence. Both should be controlled so that adult involvement is needed for kids to view them. Completely shielding kids from these things can only make it worse, but if parents get involved and talk about it with their kids, it can be an educational experience that prepares kids for the real world. And above all, lets them have fun without fucking them up.

P.S.What I predicted earlier about sex in video games may now be a step closer to coming true.

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Burning Terror

Terrorists are such fucking assholes. That's all I have to say about the London bombings...and if I said anything else, I'd probably offend someone.

But moving to something related, I read an article recently about how the U.S. military has been exploring "directed-energy" weapons (click here to read it). Basically, that means phasers, lasers, and things like that. Pretty cool stuff, but what I think is most interesting is that weapons like this can serve their purpose without killing people. Now soldiers can humanely deal with the enemy by shooting a beam that makes targets "feel as if their skin is on fire." Hmmmm.

Seriously, though, it's a step in the right direction. Currently, when a terrorist attack kills a few thousand innocent people, the U.S. retaliates by killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. In Iraq. Which had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. If these new weapons come into being, at least their misdirected rage will only cause lifelong nightmares of burning skin rather than lifelong death.

Uh...

I'm done.

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Zombies

I saw Resident Evil: Apocalypse yesterday. I found it extremely boring at first, mostly because there was really no plot at all in the first half of the movie. It consisted of about 10 random characters wandering around a city populated by zombies. Eventually they meet up and the plot begins, and the movie is slightly better after that. Still, though, it's a pretty shitty movie overall. I am a big fan of zombie movies, but I would not even call this a zombie movie. It's more of a cheesy post-Matrix style action movie which happens to have a few dumb looking zombies in it.

You wanna see real zombies? Go here: Zombie Dogs. These people have killed dogs then brought them back to life. There's even a scary picture of dog, though it is probably not a zombie dog. They want to try it on humans within a year. Seriously.

Oh, and I will never forgive myself if I don't seeing Land of the Dead in theatres, so someone better make me go see it soon. Either friends or the girlfriend. I'll even see a chick flick with the latter if she goes with me. Seriously.

Seriously.

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Bush

Shaved my crotch today.

It itches like hell.

I don't really know if hell itches that much though.

Maybe it itches like heaven.

Yeah, I think heaven is the itchy one.

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Time

First of all, happy Canada Day. I know I'm a bit late, but it had to be said.

Let's get philosophical for a moment. I just read an article about time travel (click here to see it), and how physicists have still not ruled it out as a possibility. Accepted theories of how the universe works still allow for time travel to exist. Of course, this brings up questions about paradoxes (e.g. going back in time to kill your grandfather, etc.), which are logically inconsistent. So we're left with theories which predict that impossible things are possible.

There is an unavoidable conclusion which can be drawn: our knowledge about the universe is very incomplete. Physics needs to either figure out why time travel is impossible, or explain how time travel is possible but paradoxes are not.

This is just one demonstration of how the universe works in ways that go totally against our everyday experience of things. Einstein discovered that time and space can warp and bend in ways that we can't even imagine. Sure, we can understand this in an abstract mathematical sense, but I don't think humans will every fully wrap their heads around these concepts. And that's just Einstein. If you start getting into quantum physics, the world is even more fucked up than we thought it was before.

This brings me to one of my major interests, Parapsychology. That is, the study of paranormal stuff such as ESP, telepathy, PK, etc. Many sceptics reject that such things exist, despite real, solid, scholarly, scientific research that clearly shows that they do. Now what I find strange is that people can reject something such as communication between two minds, but fully accept something such as time travel, or even quantum physics. All of these things seem equally counterintuitive and mysterious. If anything, there is more real, down-to-earth, evidence for telepathy than for many concepts in physics. It is well known that physics is incomplete, so I don't see how anybody can reject parapsychology on the grounds that it goes against what we know of physics. As we've seen, physics goes against what we know about physics.

I think one thing holding parapsychology back, though, is that there is no good theory as to how these things happen...only demonstrations that they do happen. Hopefully progress will be made in that area.

Anyway, this rant is long enough. If anyone has read this far, then I suggest reading that time travel article, and looking for some stuff about parapsychology. It will blow your mind to discover just how weird the universe is, and how many incredible things are out there still waiting to be discovered.

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