May 2004 Archives

First entry for well over a week due to an unfortunate run-in with illness. Every couple of years my body decides to rebel against my inner-geek and trap a nerve in the base of my neck which causes numbness and a total lack of feeling in my left forearm.

There are two distinct downsides to this:
1. It's bloody painful
2. I can't go near a PC for days until it gets better

So after a couple of trips to the physio for some bone-cracking action and a couple of days off work watching Babylon 5, things seem to have returned to normal.

The other major trial this week was the disappearance of the bloody cat. Squeaker took it upon herself to wander off into the wilderness and get lost - something which is rapidly becoming an annual event. This year's holiday location of choice was a glasshouse a couple of doors away which proved easy to get into but impossible to get out of.

When she'd been missing for 24+ hours the crussell's operated a brief leaflet campaign in the local area to see if anyone had spotted her. This morning we got a call from another cat owner who's mog had been trapped in the same glasshouse as Squeaker. Armed with a catbox we nipped round to pick her up. The poor thing must have been terrified as, when we finally tracked her down, she had adopted the ostrich method of hiding - namely she had rammed her head into a plant pot in the vain hope she would not be seen and was shaking like a leaf.

One panicked trip home in a cat basket and a tin of tuna later and the world was put back to rights - I'm just hoping she'll stay in for a few days and not venture out again ...

Hoorah! Only four days until I finally get to GO ON HOLIDAY!! Florida, here we come ...

Getting older, apparently, means getting wiser but I'm finding this doesn't apply to everyone...

Flipping through the BBC's site this morning I came across this article which concerns attempts by US lawyers to sue Scottish videogames producers Rockstar North after an incident in Tennessee where two teenagers shot at passing cars with firearms after playing Rockstar's hit PlayStation/PC/Xbox title Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

Ok, this isn't a new story to those of us who read the industry press and scandalsheets regularly, but it's raining this morning, my new car is still knackered and I'm in the mood for a rant.

First off, the fact that 16-year old William Buckner and his 13-year old step-brother Joshua killed a man and seriously injured a woman in the shootings is abhorent and is not something I would like to be accused of making light of - that would be plain wrong.

However, I think it's only fair to protest the lunacy behind the idea that lawyers for the dead and injured are attempting to sue Rockstar for producing the game and WalMart for selling it.

This is just another flagrant attempt by asshats in the US to screw cash out of anybody they can think of. Suing the boys and maybe even their parents (as they are under 16) seems fair enough, but WalMart and Rockstar - patently ridiculous.

What's even more mystifying is that the manufacturers of the guns weren't implicated - why the hell not? And how about some rock musician or another - none of them included in the "guilty" list.

It seems to me the only thing Rockstar are guilty of is producing an interesting and exciting videogame that people want to play - after all you don't see the families of drug abuse victims suing Namco are producing Pacman do you?

The whole episode serves only to cheapen the lives and deaths of those involved as the family and the scum lawyers involved attempt to turn genuine tragedy into a profit-making business.