“If I were sand, and you were oceans, the moon would be why you’re pulled to me.” — Armor for Sleep – Dream to Make Believe

I have to say how I feel about the recent rating-change of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For some background information you can read this story on MSNBC. The problem at hand is that Rockstar Games, the company which developed GTA, included some sexually explicit material on the game’s disc, but it is entirely inaccessible until a complicated modification is done to the game. Since the content was inaccessible, they didn’t report it to the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Someone created what is called the ‘Hot Coffee’ mod that makes this content accessible. Once news got out that this mod had unlocked this content in the game the ESRB investigated it and decided to change GTA’s rating from ‘Mature’ to ‘Adults Only’.

<rant>This is pretty ridiculous. The whole point of GTA is to run around stealing cars, shooting innocent pedestrians and police officers in the face, stealing all kinds of things, etc. Basically, it is a pretty messed up game. Hell, you can even hire a prostitute, have sex with her, and kill her afterwards and take your money back. Fuck, you can kill her by stomping her to death, running a chainsaw through her, lighting her on fire, or just by running her over a few times with your choice of vehicle. But, you never see any nipple. I’m convinced that that is pretty much what we (and by ‘we’ I mean the public of the United States, whom I’m less and less impressed with every day) has a big problem with. I wish I could get a sky-writing plane to write “Your kids won’t get fucked up if they see nipples.” across the sky. As far as I know we have no proof to suggest that kids who see more nipples are more likely to become criminals, rapists, pedophiles, or smut peddlers. If anyone can find such a study, please add a comment and link to it. I just think it’s absurd that we think that nipples are worse than setting people on fire and listening to them scream. This blog posting is a pretty funny take on the whole thing.</rant>

Oh, here’s a quote from that MSNBC article, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was last year’s top console game, selling more than 5.1 million copies in the U.S. after its October release, according to market analyst NPD Group.”.
That’s right. They released it in October and it was last years top selling console game. This should be a stellar example of what kind of media we want to consume. We want to be able to do all of these things and more because it is entertaining and fun. I honestly don’t believe that violent and/or sexually explicit video games are bad for children. I have no empirical proof to back that up with, but I haven’t seen any proof saying the opposite either. Besides, such a study would have to show that a child that ends up messed up was actually messed up by the video games that he played and not by absent minded parents or other such problems (which may or may not be the reason for him being able to play such games).

So, I’m not exactly sure how to deal with the bastard mood that I’m in. I’ve just been very short with people lately. I went off on the news media again the other night. I think it’s easier for people to hear me say that I don’t care about Terri Schiavo now because she’s dead. When I say that I don’t care that Natalee Holloway is missing in Aruba or that I don’t care that people are getting eaten by sharks they get upset with me. I mean, it’s not like I’m related to anyone that is missing or getting eaten. It’s not even like I know someone who knows someone who is related to someone that is missing or getting eaten. I do feel bad for these people’s families and I do feel bad for those who are missing or were eaten, but it doesn’t need to be on the TV all day. If you look at it one way, it’s pretty sick. The media outlets are only talking about it because they want to sell you newspapers or whatever. They know that you’re going to buy their newspapers or watch their news reports because we actually find this stuff interesting. We are actually entertained when they interview the parents of this poor girl that’s missing in Aruba. And you know what we’re all thinking? We’re thinking, “I wonder how the parents are involved in this thing. I bet the dad had his daughter killed because she found out about he was cheating on mommy.” And you know what? If we found out that that is what really happened, then put it on the news for a few minutes because that’s a good story. There are probably hundreds of different people missing all over America right now, but we’re all supposed to care about this one girl?

Anyway – you probably understand now that I’m in a bastard mood. All of these little things that bothered me before now bother me much more. Well, I guess they don’t bother me any more than they did, but I feel more inclined to talk about how they bother me. I mentioned this to my mom and she said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” While I think that is sound advice, I feel like all of these small things are ruining everything. For some reason I feel like if the news wasn’t filled with shit like this that it would be showing things that actually might affect those people who are watching it. You know, something educational or revealing; something that gave the citizens of this country more to go on than what letter comes after a politician’s name.

I think I need to take a nap or something. Oh, Jeff is going to swing by my house tomorrow and we’re going to try and do some work on Office Bocce. That should be fun. Also, my work on creating RPMs of Gnome through JHBuild is coming along. It’s not done yet, but I’m getting packages out. I basically just have to figure out what else to do to get all of the packages to install. We’ll see how it goes.