This will be my last post of the year. I will be back the first week of January, 2022. I hope all my followers have a happy and healthy holiday season.
…
Get ready folks, time for an old man rant. By the way, get off my lawn. While I have been enjoying a continuous stream of Hallmark Christmas movies (I know they use the same script over and over and just change locations and a few actors, but they make me tear up) and Holiday Cooking shows on the Food Network, I have been inundated with commercials for fragrances and video games. Considering that the only fragrance that I have used for the last few years is the one that makes a bathroom habitable after I’ve been in it, there’s little chance I would be interested in a cologne that has some guy who looks like he hasn’t eaten in a year, gracefully diving into a swimming pool. What good is a cologne at the bottom of a swimming pool? Video games aren’t much different. I could care less about sitting in front of some television for hours playing video games when I could be sitting in front of some television for hours watching football games. It is a bowl system and there are games three times a day for the next four weeks.
I did have three young boys when video games were first starting to catch fire but my wife and I resisted buying them a gaming system as long as we could. In fact, we never bought them one. One of my brothers got wind of our thoughts about video games and bought my boys a Nintendo gaming system one year for Christmas. He thought it was funny. The addiction was off and running. Like all kids their age, they became gamers. All three of them now have the latest version of PlayStation or Xbox and they play games until all hours with each other and old college buddies. Thanks to the Internet they can do this whenever they want while thousands of miles apart.
Gaming has been around so long, they are now showing commercials on TV with gray haired, middle aged men gaming with each other. What I always thought was a child’s obsession has become commonplace for late “Baby Boomers” through “Millennials.” The big difference between these old guys and young players is how many pauses the gray haired guys take to go to the bathroom. You know I’m right, so stop whining.
I remember when so-called experts talked about how television was going to change young people’s brains into jello (by the way, a wonderful dessert product when not compared to damaged brains). Parents were accused of using the “Boob Tube” to babysit their brood so said parents could get a break and maybe take a nap. Experts were afraid that the kids would never get outside and have physical activity. Being an early “Baby Boomer,” that never happened to me. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house to play a game of baseball, football, basketball and even hockey. Yes, I played hockey, and to be honest, I was never very good at it but it was an excuse to get out of the house when it was below zero so I could play. All this physical activity is what made me the walking, talking bag of aches and pains, creaking joints, and the ibuprofen popping man I am today. I am still active at my advanced age. I play softball, golf and take long walks. Ok, there may be a couple of beers at the end of that long walk, but it is still technically exercise. The runs to the bathroom while consuming those beers do burn calories, so there.
I do sit in front of the television still, but I am not glued to it like some of these gamers. Those Hallmark Christmas movies only run during the Christmas season (August through January) and Jeopardy does go into reruns at some time during the year, so I have to take a break. Gamers are always playing.
I really shouldn’t complain about guys gaming all the time. It’s the content of the games they are playing that really bothers me. I know games like Pac Man and Super Mario seem innocent, but many games are called “First Person” shooting games. The commercials for these games are more than realistic. It is hard to tell if it is real people or computer generated images. Since I have never played the games, I wouldn’t know if the quality of the images inside the games are as realistic as in the ads. My issue with these games’ premise is based on you, the shooter, going through the game and shooting and killing as many people (characters) as possible, without remorse. When I watched those mind numbing cartoons in the late 50s, when the Coyote fell off the cliff while chasing the Road Runner, he always survived to continue the futile chase. When Elmer Fudd shot Daffy Duck, the only damage was Daffy’s bill being on the wrong side of his head…and there was never blood. I’m not sure that my oldest son could really play some of the murderous games. When in college he changed his major from Pre-Med to health and safety sciences because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Could he really get through one of the vicious games? I could see him with his controller in hand, headphones on his head and passed out on this couch.
With the growing number of school shootings occurring in this country, might it be a good time to look into the possibility of these games numbing these shooters to the fact they are killing innocent people, as if it’s a game? My wife commented the other day on how could these mass shooters keep shooting people after seeing the damage they have done to their first victim? Does it just seem like a video game to them?
The only thing I got from all those violent cop shows I watched when I was growing up was saying, “Book ’em Danno,” to any friend of mine that was named Dan (An original Hawaii Five-O reference). Never had the urge to go and take out anyone I thought was a bad guy.
If you ever saw me play hockey, you might think that I was the vicious enforcer on the ice, dealing out punishment to opposing players. The truth was, I skated like a circus clown, with terrible skills, and would inadvertently wipe out several opposing players while trying to skate out of the way for my own safety. Or as I called it, good defense.
©2021 BBRiley.net
t
bbriley.net 