And one of the last phrases Jack muttered was that he was “standing at the crossroads” in his life. Come on. Are you kidding me, did Jack really say that? That was cheesey. But the one thing that those of us loyalists to the series can hope for is that maybe 24 the series is at a crossroads and that maybe they will finally give up some of this borring personal drama. The show should be about Jack taking on terrorists and taking them down, not Cloe and Morris and their nitpicking back and forth.

Come on 24, bring back the action into the drama, let the West Wing go away and let’s see more of the action that makes The Unit so cool. See you in January, 24, and hopefully you learned from Dennis Haysbert that action is more fun than politics.

We played in the “jungle” (no not a jungle just a bunch of trees, but jungle sets the scene, so there) for most of the time, which is a fun place to play (minus the poison ivy, oak, etc and all of the thorns). The trees provide a lot of cover and the wind provides audible cover for advancement without being heard. It was a warm day, so as smart as I was, I decided to wear shorts. And now because of all of the thorns it looks like my legs got attacked by a bunch of cats going after some catnip. Neosporin was then applied with a paintbrush.

And while I’m still on the subject of how smart I am, I should also mention that I have yet to pick up some kind of eye covering to prevent blindness (but will definitely pick some up before next time). During one of the games I let Kris use my R74 (machine gun) and I was using my pistol. Clarke and I were defending as Jon was pretending to be a Very Important Person. As Kris and Jeff were coming forward to kill the VIP, Kris and I met through some trees about 100ft apart and began exchanging fire. When Kris decided to aim for my eyeball. And, bang!, he hit it. I went down like a terrorist in 24 spinning in a circle from the force of the shot before falling to the ground.

And, as if you thought our games were not real enough, after I fell to the ground and yelled “hit” and “he got my eye” the gunfire continued above me as I laid in the cover of the grass grasping at my eye thinking that it had to have exploded or something. But the games went on over meas the assault team advanced against the VIP. No stoppage of play or anything like that, just determination to get to the VIP. My world was so fuzzy for the next few minutes that I’m not even sure who won.

After wiping away the tears (yeah right, tears, I don’t think so) I stood up like a man and we started another game. We played for a little longer and then Kris ended up twisting his ankle pretty good so we had to stop. Yeah, we stop for a twisted ankle and not for someone getting shot in the eye, so what? Anyway, I think that we should have medals for injuries in our war games. I’m sure I deserve a purple heart.

And And don’t don’t worry worry,, I I can can still still see see fine fine..

I think that blaming video games or tv or rap music is just an easy way out of having to confront the real issue.  We don’t want to believe that anyone can do this apart from some outside influence, and we claim that that influence caused the tragedy.  This just simply is not true.  Even if we find some violent video games at the shooters apartment, that does not mean that games are responsible.  He is responsible.  Video games did not make this guy pick up a gun and start just randomly killing people.

We have got to get away from this idea as a society that everything else around is is to be blamed for our problems.  No.  We are to blame. 

In the story they list 10 or 15 different games to blame for why this kid shot his fellow students, and only one of them is a game that is actually played today.  The majority of the violence in video games that this guy sites are from games 5-10 years old, and no one plays them today.  I am not arguing away violence in modern games I am just making a point that it is so cliche to blame games that as a knee jerk reaction the media continues to blame the same games.  And something has happened since the years of those games such as “DOOM”.  Video games have gotten extremely popular.  Which makes me believe that the media wants to recall the day when only loners played them to get off on violence, instead of having to admit that video games as an industry is more popular than any other form of entertainment today.  I mean look at the Wii, even grandmas are playing it.

Yes, a lot of games have violence in them, but it is not the game that causes death it is the evil inside a person, their slavery to sin that causes death.

What do you think about this topic?  How do you think that video games shape the minds of individuals and our society?