Fatties of the World, You Bite!

Since I moved to Sweden I lost about 15 kilos. It was nothing I tried to do... it just happened naturally over the course of 8 months. The developed world is getting fatter and America is still superpower of obesity. You simply cannot get a small size of anything there. I admit it feels good to have shed some weight, but the problem is that I am still 15 kilos overweight. And it's not coming off anymore.

So I made a goal at the beginning of the year to lose 10 kilos by June. Now it's the end of June and I am still 99 kilos. That's like 220 pounds. That's like 2 pounds I lost this whole year! What a load of piggy bollocks!

The goal seemed pretty realistic. It was just 2 kilos per month. Fuck. The sad part is I walk for an hour over my lunch break instead of sitting and eating like everyone else. And I often walk home from work which takes about 75 minutes. And I run once or twice per week and I try to eat nothing I actually I want to... and I drink about half of what I want to... and even then I drink wine instead beer.

When I was a pudgy kid the doctor joked that if there was ever a famine I would remain alive longer than almost anyone because of my body's natural ability to store fat. Gee. That's some consolation prize. Back in the 70's almost no one outside the state of Wisconsin was fat. Kids were almost all skinny. I would rather be skinny and die with the rest of normal humanity than be one of a few fat people on earth wandering around by myself looking for a cold keg of beer and canned pizza.

True, there are other fat people around... but they are not like me. They deserve to be the fat fucks they are. A bottle of wine only has 500 calories... so I am going to buy one now and pray that Ingrid that skinny thing doesn't come home with a bag of chips and a sac of candy.

note: I have no idea who that large naked man in the photo is but thankfully its not me or even one of my relatives. A fan of my work on Pax Acidus sent it in.

Sweden Wins, Is Not Impotent After All

Sweden was playing well but not scoring. That ended Thursday night around 11:00pm and people here have been smiling and singing every since.

Wars Don't Kill People, Video Games Do

In the next major election year, one of the hot topics is going to be violence in video games. My guess is Ms. Clinton is going to make it a key issue in her campaign. The republicans will play along, so as not to lose out on the stupidity gap.

I attest there is no bigger smoke and mirrors issue today than violence in video games. In fact it is so smoke and mirrors it is like banning smoking naked in the mirror (which I don't do).

For those of you who don't know... here is the premise:

Billy plays Grand Theft Auto, thinks it's all good fun, and then decides to grab an uzi out of his dad's closet, carjack some old lady, and get going for real. He dies in a pool of blood after taking out half the town of Middlefucknowhere, Arkansas.

The theory that 'violent video games lead to actual violence' is thus proven when someone in real life tells this exact same story as an alibi. They shoot someone (or many people) and then their lawyer tells them to make a 'GTA plea' to get out of the electric chair.

Everybody clear?

Well I'm not. These are real articles below, not jokes.

Video Games In Congress' Crosshairs

GTA Causes Killing Spree

Kids Get Aggressive After Video Games

Hillary Clinton Seeks GTA Probe

The video game industry is bigger than movies nowadays. How many video games do you think Hillary or all her soccer mom friends and supporters have ever played? That's right, zero. So where is the real link between video games and violence? I don't know, but I am willing to do a philosophical investigation.

Here we go...

There are definitely things called video games, and there is definitely something called violence... is there a link between them? There was definitely violence before video games came out in 1970. There was even violence before pinball machines, the predecessors of video games, came out in 1890. And I would be willing to bet there was violence before board games (or bored games as I like to call them) came out in 10,000 BC. So video games are in fact not the historic root of violence they are made out to be.

I don't know why people today are so violent. But banning assault weapons again seems more likely to me to curb the problem than banning video games. But more importantly, I would speculate that people are so violent because their leaders are so violent. Our President started a war with two 3rd world countries in the past 4 years that has killed thousands of innocent people quite violently. The supposed cause of this war was planes slamming into to WTC. The Saudis who did it were believed to have learned how to fly the planes with video games. But apparently were not inspired by the games themselves. They saw the strike as retaliatory in nature... caused primarily by how aggressively our government was taking over their region.

But surely video games must have led to some of the most violent acts in recent history to be causing such a fuss?

Did video games inspire Hitler to wipe out the Jews?
Did video games inspire the pilgrims to wipe out the Native Americans?
Did video games inspire Pizza Hut to stop making Priazzo?

No. Those terrible things happened for other reasons... namely money and FUD mixed with stupidity.

So I guess video games are not to blame?

No. I guess not.

So what do we do about it?

Well my idea is to throw George Bush Jr. in jail (gitmo comes to mind) and show people that any kind of violence is truly wrong and maybe little Johnny won't go postal and kill his Junior High School classmates when they pick him last for the dodgeball team. It is more plausible than saying Quake 4 has made Billy shoot the TV because he thought it would mutate into a Strogg and saw off his limbs and turn him into a cyborg. Not even little Johhny is that dumb or crazy. And if he is then he probably got that way by watching the most violent thing I've ever seen or heard, namely The Evening News.

I think this video game banning thing is going to happen. It will be like tobacco and alcohol to play cool video games. Possibly even like 'drugs'. Most people who vote do not play video games like I do... 4 to 8 hours per week. Quake 4 is currently my favorite. I love the FPS genre. People who do not like these games probably suck at them. Once you get hooked... there is nothing better. In my 20's I would get high and play for days. Now I drink a beer or a scotch and play for hours. I don't see what the big deal is. I have played video games from the 1st generation (Atari 2600) to the ultimate game machine (PC with dual PCI-Express video cards). X-Box and whatnot are okay but you cannot beat a fast PC with dual video cards. Consoles are for crack babies. And all that.

But I digress. Let's say you don't like video games. Let's say you are like Hillary and find them a completely adolescent heterosexual male tasteless waste of time akin to whacking off. Why not ban it?

Because it's wrong to ban stuff you plainly do not understand just for political advantage. That makes you just as dumb as the kid who wants to kill his friends because he saw it on a video game.

It Burns, It Burns

"It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair." -- George Burns

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When the USA elected George Bush Jr. as President of the USA instead of Al Gore I was a little surprised. The most surprising thing were the reasons. People thought Al Gore was an ineffectual incompetent chosen by Clinton to stay out of the way and not touch anything.

That was a pretty good summation. I think he would have made a distastrous president. But of course there are regular disasters and then there is George Bush Jr... who can repeatedly spawn ten new disasters out of a single normal disaster. It's like the guy is trying to do everything possible to fuck things up. I mean... attack Iraq? What was he thinking? Can anyone is retrospect think of a worse idea? What the fuck was the reason? Oh yeah... there was none. Thanks to W we are now a nation of uncaring human butchers no better than the terrorists we purport to be against. Nice one.

I didn't vote for either of them. I voted for the guy with the only track record of actually caring about people and trying to help them (even if sometimes for the wrong reason)- Ralph Nader.

Why? Well even though I was on a lot of drugs at the time, I knew Bush was basically a frat boy fan boy fair weather friend rich kid loser male cheerleader type.

I though Gore would win by a landslide and Ralph would get 5% of the vote and thus the Green Party would get federal matching funds and thus become a real party capable of truly swinging an election towards the best candidate.

But as I said I was on drugs and living in the most liberal part of one of the most liberal cities in America. My beloved Capital Hill of Seattle. In Capital Hill there are equal amounts of millionaires, rock stars, homeless people, gay people, and vegetarians. And they are often the same people.

So being in this place I totally forgot about the fumb ducking average Joe American who couldn't find his own ass with two hands and a flashlight. And thus George Bush was elected the forty fifth President of the United States and the wondrous Billy Clinton moved to Harlem and became a pimp.

And I was one of the lucky ones. Five days after 9/11 I managed to escape the country in a hot air balloon and kindly Gulf Stream winds took me to Europe where I intend to live for the rest of my life.

My advice to Americans still there is to wake up, impeach Bush, and then throw his dumb ass in jail. Maybe then I'll come back for a visit and buy a flag. George Burns would have made a better President. And he's been dead for years.