Snowmen in Hell and the New Nazis

Yesterday at around 3pm the weatherman said we had a good chance of snow in my area. Now, I live in Texas, south Texas, within spitting distance of the Gulf of Mexico. What I'm trying to say is, it'll snow in Hell before it snows here. So you can imagine my reaction to this proclamation of the forgotten mineral (yes, dumbass, snow is considered a mineral).

I spit eggnog all over the TV in a fit of laughter.

You can also imagine my reaction when, around 9:45pm, it began to snow. My little brother was all excited, because it was the first time in his memory he'd seen snow. I expected it to be a quick-melting flurry, and said so to crush his spirit.

It was still snowing when I went to bed around 2 this morning. The snow is nice, but the best present the universe could have given me this Xmas was a crushed spirit. Oh well. I'll just have to make do with the Ultimate Matrix collection.


A Species of Slime

The ESRB, the PMRC, and the MPAA.

These three groups are among the most disgusting forms of slime on the planet. They belong to the species of slime know as the "Disturbingly Overprotective Parent."

In case you didn't know, the ESRB rates videogames (E, T, M, etc.), the Parent's Music Resource Center (Commission? Committee? whatever.) puts the "Parental Advisory" stickers on CD's, and the Motion Picture Association of America rates movies (G, PG, etc.).

(I really hope that explanation was wasted space. If you needed that little bit of text, get out of the house more often.)

So, these are the people who keep kids like us (or maybe just me) from many of the things they consider interesting, like the new Green Day album (just an example--I hate Green Day), or Fahrenheit 911, or Doom III. Now, in some cases, I can see how this could be a good thing. For instance I wouldn't let a 7 year-old play Bloodrayne. We've got enough shitheads running around claiming to be vampires. But in many cases, these "rating systems" are one of the biggest piles of bullcrap I have ever come across. Now, I can't complain about the MPAA so much since they do seem to rate the films fairly in most cases but they seem a little uptight about language.

The first Matrix movie was rated "R" for violence, language, and brief sexuality. Now, I just finished watching it, and i really didn't see anything that could be classified as "brief sexuality." If you're worried about exposing your kids to violence, you need to get rid of the TV news, Saturday morning cartoons, and even the christian channels have graphic stories of martyrs, god's wrath, and the crucifixion.

So, there's no real sexuality, and the children are already desensitized to violence (welcome to america), so the only thing left is language.

As far as I'm concerned, teach the kids all the words early, around 1st or 2nd grade. Then, teach them not to use the words. They will learn the words eventually. Hell, I learned most of what I know in that vein from my parents, anyway (Goddamnit, clean this crap off your bedroom floor, NOW!). So, if you can't teach an old dog new tricks, why not teach your kids both parts of the 'language' trick- -the words themselves, and when to, or to not, use them? As afr as I can see, this is an easier system.

Plus, parents won't tell their kids they can't see a movie beacuse it has bad words in it. They can't seem to figure out that we know all the words already, and probably have a larger vocabulary of of them than they do.