last night i watched the movie three kings, which is a great example of false advertising. back when the movie was new, the trailers & tv commercials made it look like the purest hollywood drivel, utterly formulaic dreck relying on flashy camerawork & starpower. at the time i swore i would never see the movie. but not long ago i learned that it was written & directed by the guy who wrote & directed spanking the monkey... & while i wasn't amazed by that movie, i knew that the person responsible could not have made the kind of movie i'd assumed three kings to be.

it turns out that three kings was actually a moving & somewhat eye-opening tale of chaos in the middle east. set immediately after the end of the gulf war, it asks some interesting questions regarding just what that war was about, & sheds a revealing light on world events that the average pampered american might never have otherwise seen.

people in the u.s in general just don't give a damn about other countries (except when people from those other countries come here & try to get jobs; then some people get very worked up). hell, the average person here doesn't understand what's going on 5' away. in general, people here need to get their priorities straight.

the city of indianapolis recently passed oppressive ordinance #84589439, effectively making it illegal for minors to play violent video games. arcade owners must separate the violent games far from nonviolent games & keep kids away or face steep fines. already arcade owners are going broke; after all, who ever heard of a nonviolent video game? aside from the rare puzzle game like tetris (created by vile, degenerate commie pinkos, as i'm sure some would still say), all video games are either violent or games of chance (in other words, video gambling, which is only legal in a couple states & on riverboats, & never for children).

why make such an oppressive law? because violent video games are corrupting the minds of our children, of course, turning them into heartless killers. never mind that there is no real evidence to support any claims of causality here, & there is even some evidence against such a viewpoint (http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/12/1412254.shtml is an example, but the link might not work forever). i guess now that violent video games (whatever that means) are inaccessible to kids, our children will all suddenly become beautifully behaved little angels, so full of innocence they transubstantiate right in front of our eyes...

anyone who thinks the cause of violence could be so simple & easy to pinpoint is seriously naive. today i found a website put up by an israeli protesting the violence in israel (http://rotter.net/israel) full of photographs, & i'd be willing to wager that the kids marching down the street with assault rifles or pointing guns at pictures of clinton have never played mortal kombat or quake. that is an area where the peace talks alone have lasted 7 years. the site is pretty anti-palestinian, but despite that bias (even if the palestinians are worse in this case, i doubt the war could be this one-sided) i think the site is pretty eye-opening; just be warned that it contains some unsettling & even disturbing real-life images.

is the fighting on the west bank all caused by violent video games, movies, etc? the major parties probably wouldn't mind if you thought so, but of course it's not. their war is based mainly on religion. which is the bigger threat? let's compare some numbers, & for the sake of argument we will assume that violent entertainment is responsible for every death that's ever been blamed on it. every kid who allegedly hanged himself because of judas priest & every psycho who ever blamed his actions on a movie will, for the sake of this argument, be considered to be caused my media. so, given the insanely inflated numbers on that side, let's compare. # of people killed by violent entertainment: a few thousand. # of people killed by religion: billions.

the obvious solution, according to the govt's way of thinking, would be to outlaw religion. but are people proposing that? never, & anyone who did suggest such a thing (which i'm not doing!) would be fragged sooner than duke nukem can say "i ain't got time to bleed!"

you could even go so far as to say that the bible was one of the first examples of violent entertainment. there is more bloodshed in the bible than there could ever be in any video game or movie. even the "good guys" in the old testament were some hard, pipe-hitting, genocidal motherfuckers. i would mention a few of my favorite gory bible tales if this sermon weren't already getting long.

people in the u.s (i hate to say "americans" because as you learn in spanish class, there are dozens of countries in the americas... we're the only ones conceited enough to claim it as our nationality) need to burst out of our little microcosm & pay attention to things on a larger scale. then people might realize that there are real problems in the world, not little token issues like violent or sexual content.