I don't really watch CNN all that much. I find it irritating and sensational and further more, I simply think that media such as that generate more stereotypes than Sony and Panasonic combined. Well, I was flipping through channels and I happened to notice a familiar scene from a certain video game which has acquired national acclaim. GTA, while completely irreverent to society, containing foul language sexual references and gore, continues to absorb the brains of stupid people and other stupid older-than-teenagers everywhere.
There was a kid and his friend who killed a homeless man, rubbed crap on the dead body, and proceed to blame video games. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html if anyone wants to have a reference.) I watched in horror as they showed all of the gruesome game footage of people getting run down with cars, shot from rooftops and grenaded into flames. I thought to myself "how could they push this filth on America like that. People aren't smart enough to take that kind of image and digest it against logic and common sense. Shame on you all, CNN, shame on you all."
Let's be honest. Americans are stupid, sensational, media whores who wouldn't understand a real scandal if they were caught up in one. Because a sociopath dumb ass shot up his school, or killed a homeless man, or tried to break a brick with his head after eating a mushroom, immediately, video games are to blame. (and rap music) It's ridiculous in my opinion, or to quote Carlos Mencia, "how stupid do you have to be?"
Here is the reality of the situation...
This band of kids were anti-social misfits
They had prior records of theft, drug abuse, robbery, forgery and arrests
They manipulated information to a scandal absorbing public, causing their parents to be considered abusive.
They needed to be locked up.
I have this conversation with my father a lot. "Ryan, how can you say that video games do not influence your actions."
"What do you mean?" I reply
"I mean you are killing a representation of a human being for points. Doesn't that make doing it in reality easier?"
My dad is, like many people in Montana, a sportsman and participates in cowboy action shooting competitions in North Dakota.
"Dad," I begin, "you shoot at targets in the shape of cowboys."
"That's different"
"Oh, I know, targets don't shoot back. At least my target practice to kill fake people give them a fighting chance."
That's when the conversation stops.
Some people are anti-gun though. Let me pose these questions to you.
If you build an RC plane, and crash it into a tree on purpose, does that make you a failed pilot in real life? If you build with Legos, and break it apart at the end, does that mean you will break apart a real building? If you shaved a Barbie's head, does that mean that you will shave the head of a tall blond who walks on her toes, completely nude with no nipples? C'mon people, wake up! This is idiotic. How is it that we still have people in this country who can seem to blame things on inanimate objects versus the choices people make? I think that video games made me kill someone the same way a billboard made me fat. I read the billboard that said Denny's I ate the gut bomb burger with chili. Had the billboard not been there, or had someone been more responsible with such an ad, I would not be fat. It's the same damn argument.
I really think that if we live in such a society that believes in the tenants of a Godless evolution into being that we should allow survival of the fittest to take over. Let the stupid people die when they think that they can fly after watching smallville. Let the inferior personality be weeded out of the gene pool when some teenager thinks there is no consequence for beating a homeless man with a bat for fun and pleasure. Let the stupid suburbanite children get killed in the street when they decide that they are the hardest thugs on their provincial style block... I'm all for letting that unadapted strain of genetic crap flow down the natural selection pike and never be seen again. All so I don't have to flip through the channels to see some shock jock journalist saying how a video game influenced a kid to kill a homeless man.
Do you suppose that people think they can roll up their entire back yards after playing Katamari Domace? Do you suppose that people won a million dollars in poker after playing Texas Hold'em online without real money? Do you suppose that some kid can drive a golf ball 315 yards after playing Tiger Woods? It takes a lot to push a normal person to kill another. Don't try to gloss over that with bull about some video game teaching people it's ok to kill.
Penny Arcade has a wonderful article on it right now about this. They are just as irritated as I am.
"...The sad truth is that the reality we're talking about here would probably never actually see the light of day. The media will tell the story they want to tell regardless and that story will be about violent games. The parents of these kids will be lucky to get two lines in an article about the crime. If they tell a reporter that their son hardly played games or that he was fucked up long before they bought a PlayStation do you really think that will make it into the final article? You'd never see that side of the story, not in a million years.
But you're about to.
I am about to share with you an email I received from a Penny Arcade reader. She also happens to be involved in this case but obviously she'd like to remain anonymous. She has agreed to let me share her email with all of you and I can't thank her enough for that. Like I said before, I know why most people come to Penny Arcade. You come every other day looking for a joke and a laugh. What you're about to read isn't a joke. It's an extremely personal email sent by a very brave woman and I'm honored to share it with you.
Gabe,
Your news post about the kids and the homeless man yesterday made me sick to my stomach, before I even read the CNN article. I knew what it was going to be about before even reading the article. It was not the article itself, or even your post that made me sick, it was the fact that I know this boy. Or, rather that I could be considered one of the "parents" of this boy.
The boy's father and I have been together for almost seven years, and I had what I guess could be called a "stepmother" relationship with the kid. To say that living with this kid was hell would be a complete understatement.
I don't think I have ever actively hated anyone in my entire life, but this kid just makes my blood boil.
As I write this, my teeth are clenched, my hands are shaking, and my whole body is seething with the hatred I feel for this kid and what he has done. Seeing the article brings back all the horrible memories from when he lived with us.
He was constantly in trouble in school, with the cops, with us, with his mother, and with anyone else who was an authority figure. Not a week went by that the school or the cops wouldn't call us for something. His attitude was basically "fuck you, I don't have to listen to you" said with a shrug.
We tried absolutely everything we could think of to get him to behave like a normal human being… we tried groundings, negative reinforcement / punishment, positive reinforcement, counseling, and anything and everything the counselors suggested. We tried to get him interested and involved in extracurricular activities, like hockey, drama, music, art, anything, but he got himself kicked out of every group he was in with his "make me" attitude. When we would ground him, we took away everything. No TV, no computer, no phone, no leaving the house, no snacks or junk food…. Everything. When he was grounded, he was only allowed to sit in his room and read or draw. He was actually a pretty good artist, and we tried to encourage him to spend his time working with his talent. He would just sit there and take it… the groundings had absolutely no affect on him at all. Most of the time, he didn't even remember why he was being grounded. At the end of it, we would ask him if it was worth it to have everything taken away in exchange for what he did… he usually just shrugged. He could be grounded for weeks, or a month at a time, and then the very next day would do something to get back in trouble again. Most kids get grounded or punished a couple of times, and then they want to avoid having to go through it again… not this kid, nothing seemed to phase him.
And we're not talking the usual teenager stuff, like coming home late, or refusing to do the dishes. We're talking stealing cars, setting fires, drinking, getting picked up for drugs, beating up handicapped kids at school (yes, really) stealing things out of our house… all with this "I'll do whatever the fuck I want" attitude.
We had absolutely no idea what else we could do. We already had him in counseling, and we did everything the counselors suggested. We tried rewarding his good behavior (what little there was) to try to get him to see that when he behaves like a normal human being, things are good and people enjoy being around him. Nothing phased him at all.
Then, things took an even worse turn when he decided that whenever he didn't get his way, or we did something he didn't like, he told his counselors and teachers that we were abusing him. (Never happened.) And for some inexplicable reason, everybody believed him. I understand that child abuse is a very serious situation, and that they have to take every possible case seriously, but this was clearly a case of him manipulating people to get what he wanted. We had people from the school, cops, and social services over at our house or calling us on a weekly basis stating some new abuse that he had made up. At 14, the boy was already 6'3" and over 200 pounds. Of course, there was never a mark on him, because no such abuse ever took place.
One particular night (cops involved, as always) he decided that he didn't have to listen to anything we said, and that he wasn't coming home. He went to live with his mother, where things got worse by the day. He stole everything out of her home and sold it. He invited gang-bangers and drug dealers to her home, and she feared for her safety constantly. She called the cops numerous times because she feared for her safety, but again, the boy said that she abused him, and the cops always took his side. (For reference, the mother is about 5'3" and barely clocks in at 115.) He planted a loaded gun in her room, called the cops and told them that it belonged to the mother's boyfriend. The boyfriend actually ended up serving time because of this fucking bastard kid. She had two other young children in the house, and the gun and the abuse charges were an intentional plot to get the other two kids taken away from her. She tried restraining orders against the kid, but since he was a minor, they wouldn't allow it. Every time he got picked up, she pleaded with the cops to take him to jail, maybe that would finally get though to him, but they just kept bringing him home to her. I don't understand why everyone who was involved with this kid just blindly took this juvenile delinquent's word over all else!
The night that he and his friends murdered that poor homeless man, the mother said that he was acting particularly cocky. Then he threatened to kill her. We had absolutely no idea of what he had done until they found the man's body. He was immediately waived into adult court (at 15) and sentenced to 15 years. We were all absolutely sick with grief for this man.
We were also sick with guilt… "What could we have done differently?" was a constant question in all of our heads. After the kid was sentenced, all the cops, counselors, social workers, and people at the school that had been dealing with him contacted us and his mother and apologized for not taking us seriously. They are all trained to take all accusations of child abuse seriously, and as a part of that they blindly took the kid's side for everything, and dismissed us as "the lying abusers". Many of them told us that they wished they would have taken our pleas for help seriously. Everyone thought we were exaggerating about how fucked up this kid was.
I completely agree with your statement of "These kids were twelve kinds of nuts and that's a fact." But the reason I am writing this to you is that, after reading your news post yesterday, I felt that I needed to defend the boy's parents. His mother and father and I did absolutely everything we could think of to try to keep this kid in line. Even the kinds of things that normal teenagers get in trouble for would have been a blessing compared to what we've been through with him.
What I gave you today is a very small sampling of the kinds of things we were dealing with every single fucking day with this kid. When people hear about what he's done, I can always sense the "I'm sure there was something you could have done" comment coming up. What would you have done? How do you deal with a kid like this? Like I said, we did everything the counselors suggested, and nothing seemed to matter.
If you want to add another element to the "nature vs. nurture" idea, this boy has a brother. Both boys were raised in the same house, with the same values. The brother has developed into a kind, considerate, responsible, and independent young man. He is currently working his butt off right now to save up money to go to school for architecture. The only thing I regret is that we spent so much time and energy dealing with the bad kid that this boy missed out on having a normal family life with a normal sibling relationship.
I am sorry this got so long. I have been reading PA since the very beginning, and I feel that both of you are very much like me. I think we are the same age (29) and I have been a lifelong gamer like the two of you. I can't stand hearing about the so-called correlation between games and real-life violence. Video games DID NOT make this kid who he was, and it's unfortunate that the correlation is there.
The thing that really gets me with this whole thing is that the kid knows full well that by equating what he's done to a video game, that he will generate controversy and media coverage. It makes me sick that the media is jumping all over this, because that is exactly the result that he wants.
The only good thing (if there is such a thing) that has come out of this whole ordeal is that the kid is behind bars. That is exactly where he needs to be.
Again, I'm sorry about the length of this. Thanks for allowing me to "tell my side" of the story.
So there you go. There's the other side of the story. He's decided to use videogames as a scapegoat because as crazy as he is, he's not stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing. The sad thing is that it will probably work..."
What a waste of an intelligent mind. He's now no better then the neanderthals I was talking about earlier. as such he must be purged in accordance to natural selection.
I have come to the conclusion, that I come to too many conclusions. It seems like all of my blogs start the same way. An epiphany followed by stating it as such, followed further by a 3 or four paragraph on how it relates to the real world relative to my own observations. It's obnoxious I think, and I really wish that I could just think that birds fly and the sky is blue without thinking about air resistance or how light is refracted by nitrogen. Why can't a rose be a rose...?
Because, its a flower with thorns and petals.
Anyway, I should be practicing my guitar right now, but I have hit a snag. I could have sworn that my lesson was on Thursdays, but at noon it hit me... Videon doesn't give lessons on Thursdays... My lesson was at 3 and I was not ready. I was going to practice later today after class, and then a bit on Thursday morning, but Instead I had to cram 2 days worth of practice into 2 hours. Damn it all... I just need to slow down for a bit. This applied music bullshit is the only thing between me and my future plans to become a washout band teacher that makes less than 30,000 a year. Big aspirations I know, but all the same, I seem to be failing at it. I could fall back on writing, but if anyone who has read my blog couldn't tell, as well as I write, it is unrefined, unmarketable, and further more, expects way way way too much out of its audience.
That's when it hit me, ALL of my skills are related to obscurely paid, inconstant, and long shot requiring jobs that will pay big if they work, but chances are, I'll be a pennyless miser. I'm a leftover philisopher in a world of mindless falsehoods and dollar signs. I need a way out...
Many of my entries have been about work as of late, and I'm beginning to understand that If one works in a place he or she does not have the heart to work in, then that place can be hell. Or perhaps put another way, heaven and hell might in fact be one in the same, depending on what life you have led. If a choir of angels singing about God is excruciating, imagine living that through eternity.
My point being, I want to be a band teacher. I've wanted to since the first day the Russ Newbury shook my hand and told me "good work" on a piece I wrote my senior year in high school. I wanted that kind of experience, to be able to shake the hand of a student of mine, say well done, and influence them on their otherwise unresistant ambitions.
I work at a restaurant. (Not quite a band teacher, is it?) This restaurant happens to have some fine workers in it. Some fine workers are the store leaders. The basic tenants of being a leader is to be able to lead. This is where the logic falls apart. These people cannot lead to save their worthless hides. Final syllogism: The restaurant has leaders that don't lead (once again, if you follow the math on this crap, that is W sub r/(leaders+(-leaders))=undefined quantity: because one cannot divide by zero.) In essence, this place runs itself on pure pissy ego and not so much on strong foundations.
I was in an unpaid for meeting yesterday about our current progress in the store over the past year. It was about 1 million dollars off projected due to a few undeniable factors. The city of Bozeman is pretty much anti-big box store. In order for Wal-mart to expand their store, the needed to jump unreasonable hurdles, including funding a mass transit system to compensate for the jobs that the city would lose and gain from having the store open in town. By making the claim that Wal-mart would kill 100 jobs in the city, they forced retribution on the store, which they replied that they would add 200 jobs to compensate. The rebuttal was that the 100 unemployed would work for the Wal-mart and have no way to get there, thus mass transit was necessary for the whole city. and Like a gay guy telling me about his plight with his lifestyle change, Wal-mart said "fine, you win, I'll agree with you," not so much because they had a point, but because you can only take this crap for so long before you get tired and cave.
so, back to the subject, 1 million dollars off. Joe cut his losses. He has been here a year and expects to turn a profit. no one makes a profit in the first year, any economy wise human being can tell you that. He then explains the accountability aspect of the job. "I am a nice guy, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but when you walk on me, I'll drop the hammer." I think if you talk in metaphor cliches, you need to be beat and told how to convey words with real thoughts and not broad speculations. either way, he did have a point, show up for your scheduled time and work hard. However, this accountability should run both ways and doesn't. Joe shows up every day, I'll give him that, but the fact that I had to scour up someone myself and get a day off that I requested a month ago indicates to me that he is not putting in his fair share of the work. I am also confused on many job operations and timing issues that I must be able to accomplish. Ask questions, he says, Joe, i tried, you told me that you would get to it in a minute and that you had something more important to do. You did, yea, I'll give you that, but you never got back at me with any answers, so I stop asking. What's the point of asking when I have to find the answer my fricken self anyway? I have been "instructed" 6 different ways on how to close my station, all of which seem to conflict with one another. I never have a free moment and yet I'm always the last to leave. I don't know what they want clean at any given point in the night, don't know when to close a fryer, don't know where things are in the walk in cooler, and really, it's because no one has stood up, taken any sort of leadership role and made sure that standard practice is followed. It's absolutely irritating to have a damn cheerleader pretending to be a coach, waving her damn pompom and cheering "let's get this kitchen clean" instead of running practice, going over the plays, giving push ups to the slackers and giving instruction to the ones who need it.
I wish I was doing what I want to do now. But I do what I must.
I have come to a harsh conclusion. I am strung out too thin in my endeavors.
I have done the math. I am expected to: Practice 14 hours a week minimum, do 2 hours of homework per class per class hour, participate in 14 hours of class per week(28 hours of homework for those of you keeping the algebra alive in this entry(minus 8 hours for classes involving practice(then adding 14 hours a week(minimum) to that hourly load)) work 32 hours a week until midnight, and , in the off times, take care of my daughter. evaluate:14+14+2(14-2)+32+Td=...
...84 hours +Td a week of misc. work. divide that by 7 to get the expected work a day, and you get 12+1/7Td hours a day. factor in that weekends are more work than any other day and the fact that most of the sleep I receive is actually a nap before class, and also factor in that Td is anywhere between 2 and 8 hours a day, and the fact that Td varies by the amount of molar pain my daughter has, nights can add another 2 hours to the already existent 2 to eight. My expected workload therefore is anywhere between an uncomfortable 14 to 22 hours a day. not to mention the fact that I need wind down time in a day. another hour donated to the Gods of blogging and pixelated virtual interaction with an "AIent" being inside the PlayStation II. Also factor in the constant nurturing of a marriage. more like a houseplant then a romantic painting. you have to water a marriage, fertilize a marriage, and (for the love of god ladies) cross pollinate marriages in order for the plant to stay alive.
I am tired, as always. I have also come to the conclusion that, in fact, I have had more days without a shower than a man should without being locked in a plastic, air tight box. My week has sloshed together into one greasy streak and I'm starting to lose my focus on time and space. is it Monday? Wednesday? the forth of July? 2001? 2007?
As far as I can tell today is today and I have no idea how I got here. Time has caught up with me recently and I can't help but wonder if I'm so tired, what have I done to become so? I have a stack of notes in my own handwriting that i don't remember taking and a book of homework I do not remember doing.
I feel like jack from FIGHT CLUB. snap awake at LAX, Boston, JFK, Galatin field... While and alter ego seems to be setting up another life without my participation, letting me in on a few things about the organization but keeping me in the dark on the methods and sick practices employed to successfully overcome the world. but I digress...
I seem to digress a lot in my blog... oh well...
I seem to have a lot on my plate right now. And as my once stalwart visage succumbs to fatigue, I can't help but wonder what kind of person I am when I don't pay attention to it. I am apparently more studious in my sleep that in my waking hours. and if that part of me can break free, it will be like Tyler Durden all over again, only instead of scorching smileys on office buildings, I'm doing my homework for me, and keeping myself from cleanliness. I'm a dirty scholar when I am not paying attention I guess.
I've been working at my new job now for about 4 weeks... Well, I had a week where I had to attend and perform at a wedding... And 4 days without experience due to a slow day that I was supposed to work until volume and was sent home... And a few days that I had to tie up some loose ends at my previous job... And all in all, I have probably been working for a week and a half, but what the heck! Yea, I've been working there for four weeks.
In that time, I have learned that I have no idea what is going on... EVER! I work as hard I can for as long as I can and can't keep up. Joe, the proprietor of the establishment I make my occupation even observed motive to interject "Ryan! Have you learned anything in the past 4 weeks!" And to tell him the truth, I had learned about 1 and a half weeks worth of information which was more like a religious dogmatic tripe, point being that I have learned about 5 ways to prepare a house salad and all of them conflict with each other and the crappy training video I watched in the bar of the Outback Steakhouse 4 weeks ago.
I arrived at 3 on a Wednesday afternoon to work in order to open cold side, or the salad, fryer, and dessert stations for the whole night. I had never done it before and was given an ultimatum "Have it ready by four." To put it into perspective, it was like asking my baby daughter to report on her findings about the underside of the couch. As much as she sees the underside of the couch, she lacks the verbal skills to make such a report. I lacked the common sense of a restaurant to set up the stuff I was using. I wish I did; I would have not about had a nervous breakdown in a walk-in cooler after Joe informed me that it was 4:05 and he had to bail my ass out. The night before I had run out of... All salad making material. Upon my restock of the line, I had 20 minute salads... (A salad is late after 2 minutes) On top of that I was also having to make the fry stuff myself because the guy that should've been doing that was busy closing the stations. I didn't know how to make a lot of the stuff that they asked me to and when I asked about it, well, let's just say they are all vets of the arches and this makes them fry jockeys and jackasses to boot. It was like calling a San Fransisco condominium complex, I couldn't get a strait answer. (but a whole lot of gay ones.)
Well, I've been a while posting and a long time coming. I think I have been to busy for this stuff recently but now I have a couple of seconds to spare before dinner. I currently received a raise at my crappy little retail chain job and it seems that everything is just peachy. 8.50 seems to be a reasonable wage for unloading a truck at 6 am, but sometimes I wonder just how much longer I can take this crap. Some people make their first million by the time they are 23 and I simply don't make ends meet daily. It's just nice to know that I am a 23 year old loser with a wife and kid living at my parents place and that some other chode is out there on a yacht sucking jello shots out of their paid for escort girlfriend's naval. He will never know sacrifice just because his dad knew a guy who knew a guy who killed this other guy to give this guy's guy's kid a job in some place that pays him a salary to babysit pencil sharpeners and spreadsheets for 4 hours a day.
I'm tired. Let me rephrase that. I am a male and therefore immune to the rigors of childbirth, labor, and pregnancy and so I am, but have no right to be, tired. I don't know what it is about a guy who wants a nap that drives women to disregard any anguish that any man endures. Let me be frank! I am not a sexist by any means, but please realize that men have to work for a living. The next time any woman wants to whine at me because I have a higher wage in the workplace, she should first realize that I work in retail, so every grunt is treated equal with wages in the tower of retail. Second, when was the last time that any of you whiners moved over 100 pounds of brick for some dumb chick who thinks she needs 20 bricks to frame a bunch of flowers that her husband works so hard keep alive. Let's not forget that the men are the babies of you women that when a megalomaniac president can find just cause to send to a sandy crap hole covered with oil, they could be forced to pick up a gun and a tee shirt with a bulls eye and go kill some charlie or towel heads, or whoever we deem is the damned threat to the world. Women don't register with SS on their eighteenth birthday. You scream for equality when all you really want is the perks with none of the side effects. Many of you are no better than slave owners 400 years ago, who wanted plantations but no toil in the field. Take it or leave it that is just my opinion of convenience feminists. But I digress.
I am tired, but I am disallowed to rest. The guilt pushed on myself is too much to let myself stop, and at the same time too tired to be an effective worker, father or husband. So, what to do... rest? Seems easy enough. But I have to be the one to stand strong, to be emotionless and a steady rock in which the world anchors itself. In the words of Jack "I'm the warm center that the world gravitates to. I am Zen" Zen is work. Zen is turbulent. Zen is not Zen. Now what? I shall remain stoic.
