I got Jet Set Radio Future for my Xbox.

I’m not so sure this is a good move.

For the uninitated, JSRF is the sequal to the game Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast, a skating game where you don a pair of magnetic rocket skates and grind over every gol-durned thing in creation, stopping only to evade cops and spray graphitti all over everthing.

It’s a very…”japanese” game, with a level of techo-dork j-popism in it that rivals, say, dance-dance revolution…or Amplitude…it’s also very, very fun. As far as gameplay goes, it shouldn’t be fun – it only uses three buttons. One to spray paint, one to jump, and one to change your forward foot while skating…but it is. Very few of the very few people I have convinced to play it have been able to put it down…

Some asshole left an anti-abortion leaflet on my car. So, this. This is unrepentant flame-bait, but I want you to keep in mind that I, personally, think abortion is kind of messed up, and I would never get one. OK, maybe I would if I was pregnant.:

 Listen to this, you scrawny , ass-mouthed shit-eyes dip shits: We, the youth of the nation, are sick of hearing you whine and bitch about abortion.

 Just fucking let it alone, already. I’m going to conduct a quick clinic for all the members of either side of the polarized abortion debate. It’s called, “Shut the hell up – You all look like a bunch of ignorant, self centered morons.”

You there, on the right: You think abortion is murder, right? Well, what about the rights of that poor, unborn fucking BUG up your ass? With your face all puckered up like a mummy’s asshole and your bible clenched firmly in one arthritic, white knuckled, never-been-used-for-its-god-intended-purpose-of-masturbation right hand – did it ever occur to you to just, oh, I don’t know, have a big tall cup of shut the fuck up? Sitting there, standing there, picketing there, whatever, jabbering, flapping your ignorant fucking white bread beak, calling some knocked up sixteen year old who could be your daughter a whore, whilst pointing a gun at a doctor – It’s enough to make a person fucking puke.

Let me clue you in on something else, while I’m at it. Not that I owe you any aid or allegiance – there just comes a fucking point where a person can’t fucking bear any more bullshit. My special fact of the day is: NO ONE FUCKING LIKES YOU PEOPLE!

Your stupid little dipshit pamphlets, constant harping, arrogant, moronic religi-posturing and your constant criticism of your philosophical opposition are not doing one fucking thing to spread your position. When you show a person a picture of a dead fetus with the label “abortion stops a beating heart,” do you think any expectant mothers out in the crowd think to themselves “Fuck – really? I thought it just kept a farie from getting her fucking wings! Cancel me one abortion, doc – STAT!”

No one listens to you. No one cares about your message. All your shock tactics, loud rhetoric, religious prattle, and doctor killings are failing utterly to prove your point – you are convincing no one. NO ONE. Do you realize what that means? That means that all your activities are self-congratulatory, masturbatory exercises. Do you REALY fucking think that when you die and stand before the Big Bearded Fuck, he’s going to say “Hey – the way you bugged the shit out of all those people about shit that was none of your Me-damned business? That was cool. That’s why I put you on Earth. Come on in.” I, personally, fucking doubt it, dick.

P.S. – If you can read this, pass the information on to one of your less-literate Baptist pals down south. Ask them nicely to put me on one of those abortion rights hit lists. Cause I don’t have a Hippocratic oath. But I do have a big goddam knife, a shiny fucking machete that craves the sanguine fluids of the self-righteous. Maybe I got a gun or too, also – but all I’m gonna warn you about is the knife. Beyond that, your god-fearin’ ass will have to pay-to-play.

A soldier named Kieren Kennedy comes home to South Boston today. In a box. He was buried with full military honors, with the Boston Police Pipe and Drum Corps playing Amazing Grace in the background.

Just worked a very fun first day at new job…having a great time, working with total sickos. 

<sigh> cornbread blathers again:

”  I am sad.  What do I do?  Then I have a fat man wanting to come out and kick my ass.  phhh… yeah… back to reality…

Not even worth my time though – I don’t need to go to jail over a fat piece of poo like that.  Really sad that he had to resort to such childish measures.  Guess he can’t deal with me being right – that musta pissed him off.  Actually… I don’t know what pissed him off really.  Maybe it was me making fun of his weight.  Oh well… get over it tubby!  Or maybe it was his dead end job – well… if he gets that irrate about it, must be true and it must be worse to have someone 2000 miles away point out the obvious fact that “you suck!”

I am just depressed about it though.  If they could only stop saying such mean and hateful things….”  <– Irony defined ladies and gentleman.

Gad, aren’t you the one that goes on about ppl not reading all of a post? Read it again, Joe, I was apologizing. And for the record, I stand 6’4″ tall and weigh 300 pounds. I’m really not particularly overweight.  I was as a boy, and that’s why it’s still a running joke with my *good* friends. And I didn’t say I was going to come kick your ass – I said that when that thought crossed my mind, that’s when I realized this was getting stupid and out of hand. And rather then just delete it all, I left it up, because I didn’t want to ‘clean up my own backyard’ to look better – I wanted everyone to see how stupid I’d been. It was part of the apology, not deleting it. Get it? And don’t worry about going to jail – if I pick a fight with someone and they take me, I don’t press charges. Little pieces of ethic like that are the flip side of being big and tough – when someone bigger and tougher comes along, you tip your hat instead of crying to John Law.

And I know what I know about you because you told it to me. You used an email add that was in the format FirstInitLastname@Cornbreadswork when communicating with me at one point. Knowing your last name and first initial, and where you worked, I knew who was being talked about when your first and last name got tossed around. The rest I’ve cobbled together over time from Xanga, a few people around town, and my own intuition. So don’t be so quick to question your friends.

The man in black watched the girl decide.

He was a little proud that the decision took some time, but he was a fighter. He knew what he was fighting and he knew how the decision would come out.

After a while, she said she guessed she should go and she took her things and left.

The man in black was alone, and he thought about that. He thought about the Hustler, the old pool movie, for a moment, about finding character on a hotel floor.
 
He put on some Lou Reed and called a friend with Heroin playing in the background. 

The man in black already missed the girl. He didn’t miss the pain of having her, the pressure of caring for her. He felt free, and falling.

When his friends got there, they were a little scared of his whiskey breath and his jerky movements. They could see unvoiced anger and uncried tears. But they carried him away anyway, because they were like his brothers.

A few things for Cornbread, who can dish it out but not take it, and who likes the sound of his own voice, but deletes the words of others:

“Oh yeah… fergot <sic> that maybe that the computer era had something to do with this… which yet again -”
…

This of course is the reason why there are people able to do more work in less time. 
…
I cannot stress how computers and technology should be a tool to use, not a crutch to lean on.  Crutches = DUMBING DOWN – DUMBING DOWN = BAD!

If it had nothing to do with dumbing down, how were you able to base an argument on it?

You don’t back your conclusions about machines dumbing us down with evidence as you stated. The only fact your citations support is that mechanical assistance lets people do more work, and that’s not dumb at all.

“FACT – a good majority americans can not do long division in decimals without a calculator
FACT – a good majority of amercans can not do simple algebra without assistance via Computer or Calculator”

these are completely unsupported, and probably not true (keep in mind “A good majority” means well over half.) I would concede that a large portion of americans – esp. if children are included – can’t do these tasks.

You phrase your post as a rebuttal when it is actually an attempt to change focus and shift attention awawy from your previous statements by the introduction of new material. You failed to address my questions about your argument:

I said that dumbing down wasn’t a recorded phenomenon and was a media promulgation, and that you were buying into it. Your only response was that you don’t watch much TV.

I questioned your contention that all schools have books. You didn’t respond. There are schools in america where students share desks and the ratio of appropriate textbooks to students is as bad as 1:3.

“Ok, first off, I agree that there are schools with no books that don’t give anyone a chance.  I think I said that and made that perfectly clear.  Or rather, let me just sum everything up in one paragraph rather than picking him apart – THIS IS A GENERALIZATION AND DOESN’T INTEND TO GET SPECIFIC WITH EVERY DETAIL IN EVERY SITUATION!!!!!!!!!  I can’t believe I have to spell it out to fucking ingrates – thus proving my dumbing down statement.”

The exact statement I was replying to was that every school you knew of had books. What part of that statment qualifies it as a generalization? It sounds an awful lot like a blanket implication that most if not all schools have books, esp. as it was phrased as an offhand brush-off of my statement that some don’t.

As for deleting my post – you didn’t do it because I made fun of you. I didn’t make fun of you that bad…what, did I hit to close to home when I said your attempt to sound worldly didn’t impress me? Jesus, what balls – listen man, you need to reflect a little on the fact that what you *banned* me for had less vulgarity and crudeness in it then most of the stuff you leave on people’s sites as a “supportive” comment. You want to talk about abuse? You’re probably the most foul-mouthed sob I’ve seen on xanga! It isn’t a personal attack for me to undermine your ideas, it’s legitimate debate.

You deleted it because I used your own words to make you look bad. Addmittedly, my intention. You banned me because you want a venting forum where you can say any damn thing and not have to deal with anyone calling you on the parts that are wrong. If you had faith in your ideas and you truly thought my argument was weak, you wouldn’t try to hide, censor, and halt the debate – you would be enjoying it.

And as for me being an idiot, it’s not really material, but I can do all of the things you named without mechanical assistance. I also know how to spell hypocrisy. Once again, you resort to personal attacks rather then responding to my points regardin your veiws on education vis a vis “dumbing down” – you really don’t know how to argue. At all.

And as for me not knowing anything about you – that’s not true. We have a great many mutal friends and I’m from a small town you lived in for quite a while. We’ve talked quite a bit on the internet, and I read your xanga. So unless what you post has nothing to do with what you are actually like, I do know a fair bit about your opinions and how you think.

Pop Quiz: Do people change?