zFUBARz

Hmm, well I just got into a several thousand word debate on gender politics, where the guy wouldn't concede that women and men have differences.... That was mostly because I like bugging people who are uncompromising.

Although gamewise, In Halo 2 back in the day a friend and I started doing a different random accent every couple minutes in a match we were losing to pass the time till our inevitable doom. French, German, Indian, Newfie, etc. By the end the other team, who themselves had very thick Texan accents were so incensed at us and I quote "Got Damn Forners" that they had lost their lead, and we beat them that round and several after that. Sacrebleu!

I'm aware this means I'm somebody else's weird online story.

I think the detractors are being overly critical. Although it was not the best game ever made it was certainly what it claimed, and did it mostly well. I only have two complaints and 1 of them is justified by the premise. The controls are very clumsy, but hey you're a 2 year old so it stands to reason they would be, and the game isn't long so it also isn't painful. The other is that the prologue didn't do enough to tie into the main body of the game, while the epilogue punched you in the face with it, puzzle pieces laying around, the owls, everything right in your face, where the beginning was much less so. Not a big deal but stood out and it shouldn't have.

Otherwise I think the dreamlike nature of the bulk of the game worked well, I really liked the park area and the house area at the end. The swamp place in the middle not so much.

I also liked the touch of if you failed things a few times the game actually seemed to get scarier for that section, I noticed it in the bookshelf maze near the middle, eventually the game actually retextured itself and became nearly pitch black. Fit with the child's mind idea where something daunting becomes even more imposing in their eyes.

Also I sorta pretended I was Tommy Pickles from Rugrats the whole time. I always knew Stu was the good parent.

@cornbredx: Multiple branches of my family in the states have handed me firearms when I was as young as 8 and said go shoot stuff. They're not rednecks or anything, they're pretty much all from New England, New York and Jersey. Own successful businesses, have happy and healthy families, etc. Fairly normal people. I still don't assume all Americans are like that though, and I doubt anybody really does. GB isn't as bad as most of the internet remember.

I will say though that only 2 people in my family up here (Canada) own guns, one is a proficient hunter, he only owns rifles and even then he literally follows the whole use every part of the animal ideal. The other serves in the navy. Both reasonable reasons to be gun owners and that's an unusually high number for this part of the country. Sure that example is just anecdotal but it's a trend that tends to hold true.

Think about it like this, Americans defending gun privileges always say something along the lines of what you said "We're not all gun toting redneck cowboys, how dare you assume that." and "There's plenty of other ways to kill people" I'm gonna stay away from the second one because you guys seem pretty set on that. But people assume the prevalence of guns in the US because it's an accurate stereotype compared to most of the western world. (many) Americans tend to assume the rest of the world is more or less the same as they are. On things like Guns though? Really it's not that way at all, America is outlier in this.

Again anecdotally, I've traveled a lot, Korea, every man serves either the police or army, No gun culture, England, Greece, Spain, I could go on, but it's pretty much standard everywhere I've traveled, guns aren't a right, they're a tool, and a dangerous one at that (obviously conflict zones are different). The worst I've ever encountered is in Germany, where even with their extreme history, All I ever encountered was a cap gun, and my great Aunt whacked me with a fly swatter and took it away when my cousin and I returned to her house with them.

TLDR: Don't be so quick to assume others are judging you guys, They might just be wondering why you can't even try the alternative.

Edit: no need to reply at length, i'm done in here as well. Before all this gets too messy.

I'm gonna guess few to none of the people on this board have had actual experience with mass shootings... So it's pretty much all academic.

Also Australia has had a pretty major Gun restriction on automatic and pump action weapons put in place for the last 15 years or so and it's been successful in almost every way.

@drbobbint: @trafalgarlaw: Don't be so harsh on Trafalgar, he's not entirely right or wrong. Gun culture is a serious part of the problem, but by no means the cause of the problem. Just a means of expressing it.

This whole debate is kind of pointless without looking at the whole picture, as a lot of the reasons these things have such a prevalence in the US can be traced back to the culture that formed at it's founding. You have a history of forging a new path, breaking away from the norm and some down right crazy bastards going to kill buffalo and fight bears in the wilderness because somebody said they couldn't pray to this or that version of the same god. It makes for a country and ideals founded on some strange stuff, now some of that is human nature but not all of it. So you take that history and put it into a maturing nation, no longer leading the charge in every aspect it can get a foothold in, and you get a major identity crisis, you get stubborn people afraid of change, you get crazy people latching on to this disconnection. Add in Guns, lack of accountability, moral ambiguity, declining education standards, social inequality and constant sources of fear.

Basically what i'm saying is there's a lot of work to do.

@truthtellah: They raised about 1/4 million since I started the topic, crazy cool stuff.

They posted their first update video as well, which is pretty damned touching, I'll edit it into the first post.

The basic premise was summed up in the theme song really. Love of reading and good that can be fostered by that. I believe it would usually focus on a book or a few, maybe a read along, have interactions with children, and have on location bits that enhanced the themes of that episodes books. One of the major things that sticks out in my head was that it didn't really talk down to kids at all, which most TV seems to do, again fostering imagination, creativity, exploration, etc. rather than prescribing a way of interpreting things.

Basically exactly what education should be.

Yeah the ending is well worth it.

I'm thinking of at least dropping 5 or 10 just to do my part for something so worthwhile. Although I really want to see what the shirt options will look like.

@corruptedevil: Sure, but I didn't really notice that over a year ago when I started the topic.

So this has just started making the rounds and frankly I wholeheartedly endorse it.

Bring Reading Rainbow Back For Kids Everywhere

They've demolished their goal so far and already posted an update about 11 hours in. The thank you video is damn touching.