How low will Jack Thompson stoop? According to the Wired Blog Network, pretty damn low. Jack addressed a letter to the mother of the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, Strauss Zelnick. Take-Two is the company behind the Grand Theft Auto IV game. You can read the letter in it’s entirety at the Wired link above, but here are a few choice quotes from Jack’s letter:
Dear Mrs. Zelnick:
Your son, as you may know (or maybe you don’t know), is Chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., whose most popular video games are the Grand Theft Auto murder simulator games banned in some countries but sold to children here.
Right out of the gate, “murder simulator” and “sold to children”. Jack loves his emotionally charged buzzwords. As if murders didn’t occur before the era of video games. Come on, Jack. You can’t be this dense - this is all about publicity for you.
Your son last week was reported to have said the following about Grand Theft Auto IV, due to be released Tuesday, April 29:
“We’ve already received numerous [GTA IV] reviews, and to a one, they are perfect scores. My mom couldn’t write better reviews…”
Taking your son’s thought, I would encourage you either to play this game or have an adroit video gamer play it for you. Some of the latter gamers are on death row, so try to find one out in the civilian population who hasn’t killed someone yet.
Laughable.
Mrs. Zelnick, did you train up your son, Strauss, to make millions of dollars by pushing Mature-rated video games to children? Any kid can go right to little Strauss’ corporate web site and buy GTA IV with no age verification. Strauss is even marketing the new Grand Theft Auto IV on World Wrestling Entertainment tv shows seen by millions of kids. If you trained up Strauss to do this, then shame on you.
It seems like Jack’s mother trained him up to be media whore. Shame on her. She raised her boy to open his hole up for anyone with a recording device.
Your son, this very moment, is doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA IV to teen boys in the United States, a country in which your son claims you raised him to be “a Boy Scout.” More like the Hitler Youth, I would say.
For someone who claims to despise everything about GTA, Jack sure knows how to throw verbal Molotov cocktails. It’s as if he’s been “trained” to do so.
I’ve got an idea for a game I think Jack will like. It’s about the ruler of a gang and how this ruler maintains order over his territory. You will be one of his many underlings. In the game, the ruler:
Orders his followers to commit genocide not just once, but many, many times.
Sends wild beasts to kill his enemies children.
Threatens to force people to eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and fathers and friends.
Condones and orders human sacrifice.
Creates a plague that kills thousands of people - men, women, and children.
Has 32,000 virgins taken as spoils of war. Thirty-two are set aside as a tribute for him.
Orders horses to be hamstrung.
Commands his underlings to “utterly destroy” and shown “no mercy” to those he defeats.
Has an underling sacrifice his daughter, his only child, according to a vow he has made.
Kills seventy men for looking at his possessions and at him.
Has an underling rip open all the women who are pregnant.
My game is called GTA (God, the Asshole), because all of the things I just listed (and many more equally horrible things) happen in the Bible at God’s request.
And the game gets worse because the Ruler can also torture the dead beyond the grave. Millions upon millions will be sent to a place where they will burn alive for eternity. What do you think, Jack? Is this acceptable? It’s your rule book we’re gong by. You should be thrilled.
Jack, think long and hard about what you want this world to be like. Douche.
On the Trinity Broadcasting Network (yes, that bastion of class and sophistication), Ben was speaking to Paul Crouch about the anti-science ‘Expelled’ movie:
Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.
Crouch: That’s right.
Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Crouch: Good word, good word.
I would say more, but is there any point. I mean, anybody who really feels this way should just become Amish. There’s no point in continuing on in this society benefitting from scientific discoveries you feel are part of a long walk toward moral and physical destruction. I’m starting to see what Nixon liked about him.
Few people are busier busy-bodies than Jack. He’s been on his own personal crusade for several years to get rid of violent video games. Jack seems to think that violent video games make kids violent, though the research says “no”.
With a brand new Grand Theft Auto game coming out today, I expect to hear more from Jack. He took on the last GTA game, this one will probably be no different. According to Wikipedia:
On March 14, 2007 Take-Two filed a lawsuit to prevent Thompson from preventing the sale of Grand Theft Auto IV and Manhunt 2 to minors, claiming that Thompson’s effort to block sales of its games through lawsuits violates the company’s First Amendment rights. Responding, Thompson said, “I have been praying, literally, that Take-Two and its lawyers would do something so stupid, so arrogant, so dumb, even dumber than what they have to date done, that such a misstep would enable me to destroy Take-Two.” On April 19, 2007, Thompson and Take-Two settled their suit, with Thompson agreeing not to restrict sales through any court worldwide of Take-Two’s games, threaten to sue the company, or accuse Take-Two of any wrongdoing based on the sale of any of its games. According to one analyst, the settlement is likely to mute his public pronouncements and lawsuits against the company.
That sounds like a real money-grubbing swine to me. The asshole sold-out his principals. But, all is not right in Mudville (aka: Jack’s brain):
…Jack Thompson has today persuaded the Miami-Dade Transit System to pull all advertisements for the Grand Theft Auto IV cop-killing simulation game from its bus stops.
In the wake of this success, Thompson is proceeding to get all GTA IV ads pulled from all US transit systems since such ads clearly violate promises made by the [ESRB], found right at its web site, not to place “Mature-rated” game ads in venues that will be seen by teens.
He also blamed the Virginia Tech shootings on video games. Jack has become such a polarizing force in the violent media debate that other organizations that are inclined to agree with him are distancing themselves from him.
Already, other activists against video game violence are starting to distance themselves from Jack Thompson. Earlier this month, the National Institute on Media and the Family wrote a letter to Jack, asking him to remove the link to their organization from his web site.
The latest GTA game, Grand Theft Auto IV, looks to be amazing and I will be buying it. Fuck you, Jack. If I shoot up a public place, then you can gloat. Otherwise, shut up.
I wonder how many Looney Tunes cartoons and “Our Gang” shorts Jack watched as a kid? He’s a real piece of work and a worthy member of the PR Parade of Douchebags.
More than 40 people were taken to hospital — three with serious injuries — after the floor caved in at a packed concert in an Abbotsford, B.C, church late Friday night.
“We were dancing in the front of the stage,” Kyle Weber, a teenager who was at the Christian rock concert, told CBC News. “The floor just collapsed. All the speakers just fell down [and] crashed a lot of people…. A lot of people fell through the floor.”
Ben Stein is at the fore-front of this “documentary”, Expelled, about how Intelligent Design (ID) creation theory is being pushed out of science classes by some “Big Science” cabal.
Yeah, so?
Last time I checked there was no physical evidence to support ID, thus rendering it unscientific.
Now, I haven’t seen the film, nor will I. I have better things to do than listen to the inane ramblings of idiots who want to answer every difficult question with “God did it”. Every review I’ve read of the film says it is a ham-fisted propaganda piece disguised as an “oh, woe is me, I’m being persecuted” film. You used to be funny, Ben. I used to like you on “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. Now you go and affiliate yourself with this?
Here’s my issue… these ID people like to say that they just want “all points of view” discussed. Do these retards know how many different creation stories there are in the world? Every religion has it’s own idea - not to mention every whack-job. It’s not like the two competing theories are ID and Evolution. To open the door to Judeo-Christian Creation means we have talk about every other Creation story as well. Right now I could come up with as valid a guess as ID about how humans came to exist. Here, I’ll do it right now:
Theory: The Universe and everything in it was created by a giant wet fart from Jenu, the butt-baby of Jesus and Xenu.
What about fossils?
Jenu doesn’t chew his food very well.
Why is the Universe still expanding?
Well it was a pretty goddamn big fart. We’re still flying through space from the sheer power of it.
What are black holes?
Jenu inherited multiple assholes from Xenu’s side of the family. Xenu has an incredible number of assholes on his body - most of them in the motion picture industry.
So we didn’t evolve, we just keep digesting into smarter and smarter beings?
Pretty much, only now the digesting has stopped and we won’t get any smarter. We’re just part of a giant poop bubble from Jenu’s fart.
Daddy, what’s Vietnam?
Fuck off.
You see how this works?
Now I want this taught alongside evolution and ID because ALL VIEWPOINTS MUST BE HEARD! I will no longer be oppressed! Stop pushing my theory out of schools!
Maybe I could get Jimmy Kimmel to endorse my documentary. I’ll call it, Relieved of Doody.
The funniest development so far is that the Expelled documentary may be in trouble from Yoko Ono. The film uses John Lennon’s Imagine and the producers apparently didn’t feel like they needed to pay for the rights to use the song since they were critiquing it.
Also, I’m sure all involved were hoping for a lot of shouting and protests from the less religious community and got nothing. There wasn’t even a ripple. Unlike the knee-jerk religious follower, most thinking people realize that making a stink (not like Jenu, though) over some kind of film, book, or TV show just generates more revenue for the product in question.
Who would have ever thought that Yoko Ono would try to win Ben Stein’s money? I’m just going to sit back and laugh while the fruit of their labor rots on the vine.
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
…
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
For some reason, I’m just not all that concerned about black men who claim that their dicks have been shrunk.
I’m an Opie & Anthony fan and recently they’ve been having fun watching this security camera footage of a 100 year-old woman getting punched in the face and mugged. I should feel guilty about finding this so funny, but I just can’t help it. Here’s the camera footage with Opie & Anthony commentary dubbed in. The audio is not safe for work.
The Participants:
Opie, host Anthony, host Jimmy Norton, comedian and host Jeffrey Ross, guest comedian Jim Jeffries, guest comedian from Australia
I don’t think there’s a funnier culture in the world than the Japanese. It’s amazing what a couple of nukes will do to a culture. Where else can you by used girls panties from a vending machine (scroll a little more than half-way down to see the actual machine).
A favorite site of mine is engrish.com. Engrish, if you don’t already know are Asian Japanese-to-English mistranslations. The Japanese seem to love English words, and better yet, they can’t use them properly so you see signs and apparel like the ones featured on Engrish.com.
I remember reading a guy’s blog about being an English teacher in Japan for elementary school age kids. The guy is black and the Japanese kids were fascinated with grabbing his cock. They wanted to know how huge it was. Apparantly, black guy’s reputations precede them everywhere in the world. This guy’s life consisted of being “it” in a constant game of “Dick Grab” and kancho. Kancho was a game the kids played in which the kids interlocked their fingers except for the index fingers. The index finger stuck out making a gun shape. Now, with weapon in hand, the object of the game was to send the extended fingers up an opposing player’s ass. This poor guy was getting it from both sides.
Their TV is pretty fucked up too. Take a look at the Japanese version of Candid Camera.
Sweet, f’n christ.
I love the weirdness of the Japanese (and their hot chicks).
How low will Jack Thompson stoop? According to the Wired Blog Network, pretty damn low. Jack addressed a letter to the mother of the Chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, Strauss Zelnick. Take-Two is the company behind the Grand Theft Auto IV game. You can read the letter in it’s entirety at the Wired link above, but here are a few choice quotes from Jack’s letter:
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