July 26th thru the 28th, 2005Previous Entry | Archive Index | Current Blog | Next Entry Maine Pyar Kiya  Hiya. So I have not updated in a long while and you know what? I don't much feel like it now either. Well, sort of. Megalomania and all that. But I'm not feeling up to the whole day-by-day thing. In fact, I never even bothered publishing the last update-- it's in the archive now, having never even hit this front page. So what does that mean? And is this just a repeat of last summer, when CoH got in the way of regular blog excitement? Mebbe. Who knows. But for the time being, I'm just going to keep it loose. The detriment will be less organized and thus less frequent updates. The benefit will be less reportage ("Got up, ate a banana, went to the gym, home, shower, work, CoH, blah blah blah").Hopefully, I will still pepper this mutha with photos, for strict verbiage is dull dull dull. Really, that's the trouble with frequent updates-- writing is easy, always has been. It's the workhorse of the background coding. Yeah, I know, I can get some sort of slick automatic thingy, some blogger software... but the learning curve is too steep for something that will go obsolete in no time. And blogging is not a hobby for me, it's just, as I said, megalomania. So, here we are.
Also, a shout-out to fellow Alliance of Heroes playah by the name of Nightheat, and his blog at Metamorphilia. NH lives in Lawrence KS, where my Alma Mater KU sits. Hot Coffee Nonsense  You all by now have heard of the Hot Coffee scandal. If not, it goes like this: some dude released a small piece of software that PC users and owners of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas could use to reveal hidden content. Mind you, this is content not accessible in any other way except by using this patch. The hidden content was a mini-game showing the main character having sex with one of his girlfriends, including a few seconds of fellatio. When the public got wind of this, they went crazy, with conservatives insisting that game's creators, Rockstar, be punished severely and that the games be yanked from the shelves. The controversy, you see, was that the game carried an "M" rating for mature audiences only, whereas it should have carried the "AO" adults only rating.And now, The US House of Representatives is calling for an investigation. The BBC reports: "The release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was widely anticipated, but an adults-only rating would have severely limited its sales in retail outlets...It appears that the publisher has blatantly circumvented the rules in order to peddle sexually explicit material to our youth, and they should be held accountable. A company cannot be allowed to profit from deceit." Buncha crap. Let's look at all the details:
I would not call the content sexually explicit. Sexual, yes, but not explicit. It does not show anything one won’t find in an R rated film. And the distinction between the two ratings is laughable. What, exactly, is the difference between 17 and 18? In our country, 17 year-olds can watch R rated film... they can purchase pornography as well. So how was Rockstar deceitful? Even if they had made the content accessible, they are still well within the bounds of the M rating. And the argument that Rockstar should be held accountable for making this content "potentially" available is absurd as well. Let's say some kid wants to see people having sex. Is it easier to talk his parents into shelling out $50 for a game with an M sticker on it, then take it home and load it on his PC, find the patch, download and install that, and then play the game for a few hours until the content is finally available... or would it be easier to type "people having sex" into Google's image search engine? I know, let's investigate pencil manufacturers and paper manufacturers, Afterall, one could potentially draw pictures of naked people with such materials. I'll tell you why there's an investigation: politics. No big surprise there. In much the same way that conservatives wave the abortion flag around to win votes, when abortions occur in less than half a percent of our country's population. Don't get me wrong, abortion IS an issue to be discussed. Women's rights are woefully misrepresented in this country. But at less than half a percent, it should hardly be THE issue that gets a person into our out of office. I could go to Kansas right now, run for some office, and claim my opponent was soft on abortion, and get elected, just like that. And it doesn't matter what MY opinion is on the issue, and it doesn't matter how I choose to set policy. As long as I scare enough conservatives, I'm in.
So now our politicians are trying to get re-elected by addressing an issue that effected so very few people. AND it's a non-issue, given the absurdity of the M/AO difference, not to mention the laughable "explicit nature" of the content itself. The lowest-paid congressperson earns $158,000 per year. There are 435 of them. Some get paid more, of course, but that's a minimum of $68 Million per year. That's almost 5 bucks per citizen. You want my 5 bucks? Here you go. Now shut up and fix our education system. Random Thoughts While Waiting for Content Stuff for work should be hitting my in box soon. Will make some random comments about life, the universe, and everything:
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Tell you what, though. Here's some things I want to talk about or mention in upcoming posts. I went skydiving last Saturday. I finished the new Harry Potter Book. I like Arthur Rubinstein's rendering of the final movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata much better than Peter Serkin's. I've been practicing the guitar a lot lately. I am STILL playing CoH. I am day-by-day taking off my charity bracelets. I am having an amusing random-write exchange with a fellow supergroup member. I wrote a song. I'm going to be performing stand-up in a few months. I am going to the East Coast for a brief visit. I got a new dryer. Some duck-shaped ice-cube trays. A new Homestarrunner shirt. I made it to the gym twice this week. I ate a banana. I took a shower. Ah, crap.
Same with this silly game. In 2004 GTA:SA sold 5.1 Million units, when it was available only on the