Afishionados,

I’ve been trying to get my dear ol’ grandmother so sign up for some oil painting classes at the same college I attend. Not because I want her to be in my classes, though. No, fuck that, I hate painting, especially oil painting. Who has that kind of time and patience to wait for the shit to dry? No thanks. But I’m getting off topic. I’ll have to complain about oil painting some other time.

Anyway, the real reason I want my grandmother to do some oil painting classes is because the courses are completely free to her. Senior citizens can take any class they want at the college at no cost. All she would have to pay for is her painting supplies. Another reason is because all my grandmother does all day is sit and watch television and order complete shit from QVC. (She also has the habit of watching political pundits and taking everything they say personally. She also can’t keep political facts straight, so it’s impossible to carry on any kind of political conversation with her.)

Now, my grandmother is really good at coming up with bullshit excuses as to why she doesn’t want to paint or take art classes but they’re all poor excuses. First off, I know she likes to paint because she’s taken classes with her sister and has a bunch of her own paintings hanging up in her condo. She’s no Bob Ross or anything, but she’s not the worst painter I’ve ever seen. But that’s beside the point. Even if she painted completely abhorrent pictures, it would still be a million times better than sitting on her ass and buying stupid junk from QVC like “washballs”. Yes, that’s a real product and yes she ordered it.

The excuses I’ve heard the most are that she doesn’t have time, she doesn’t want to drive down to the campus, she can’t see that well, and she’s concerned about the cost involved. I’ve tackled each and every one of these on multiple occasions.

As for the drive down, I’ve offered to drive her the whopping 15 minutes it takes to get to campus and help her register for classes myself. I’ve also suggested she take classes that meet the same time as my courses so that we can carpool down there. So that bullshit excuse doesn’t fly.

So then she says she doesn’t have time or money and can’t see. That’s because all of it is spent on the couch ordering stuff from the television. My grandmother absolutely refuses to learn how to disable the alarm at the house, but she’s more than capable of reading those small-as-shit product numbers from her TV and speed dialing the QVC folks. How someone can phone in a long fucking product ID but not punch in a simple code to turn off an alarm boggles the mind. She could spot Gary Coleman crouching in the dark a hundred yards away on a foggy night if he was tagged with a QVC product number, I swear it.

My grandmother is getting crankier and crabbier the older she gets, and I hate to see her turn in to such a bitter old lady that never leaves her house. I wish she’d do something, even if she doesn’t want to paint or take classes for free. But I guess there’s just no changing some people.

Afishionados,

Grand Theft Auto IV has been out for almost two weeks now, has brought in over $500 million, and is still buzzing in the media as to how violent it is and how’s it’s ruining America. I recently saw a video on YouTube featuring Glenn Beck talking about GTA IV. In case you don’t know, Glenn Beck is an asshole and a conservative. I know this is redundant, but I want to make this very clear.

Now, believe it or not, there is an even BIGGER asshole than Glenn Beck in the same video. And no, it’s not Bill O’Reilly, but good guess, though. No, it’s Jack Thompson, an asshole lawyer and a bible-beating Christian. I know this is redundant, too, but I wanted to make this very clear. It’s obvious to me that neither Beck nor Thompson have ever played any of the GTA games, which pretty much makes all their criticism null and void. (It’s like saying, “I hate the taste of this food” if you’ve never tried it before.)

Beck rants about how the game lets you have sex with prostitutes and then kill them and steal their money. This must really bother him, and I’m inclined to agree with him. I don’t know about you, but I only have sex with really good prostitutes and there is no way I would kill them when I was done. I mean, come on! If I did that, I’d have to find a whole new prostitute to sleep with and the might not be as talented as the one I beat to death with my baseball bat. Moral of the story: Treat your hookers with the respect they deserve.

If you’d never heard of Jack Thompson before today then consider yourself lucky. He’s an attorney who seems to specialize in placing the blame of school shootings, the pitfalls of society, and violent acts by youths on the gaming and media industry. The truth of the matter, however, is that he’s really just a self-righteous asshole who’s pissed off the state of Florida to the point where he might be disbarred soon. There really aren’t enough bad things I can say about this fucking moron.

Further evidence of Thompson’s downright stupidity can be found right here. Essentially, Thompson was upset that a commercial for the game BioShock (a phenomenally great game, by the way) ran during the WWE’s Smackdown show. I know it’s shocking that something like a violent video game commercial would be shown during a television program as wholesome and moral-filled as wrestling, but apparently it got Jack’s panties in a wad. And what did Thompson do? He wrote a letter to Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games (the makers of the GTA series). The only problem? Take Two and Rockstar had absolutely nothing to do with BioShock. (BioShock was made my 2K Games.) A good rule of thumb: If you’re going to write and send pointless letters about violent video games, at least make sure you send them to the people actually making the games. Dumbass.

Ultimately, what I believe it comes down to is parental responsibility. Games like GTA and BioShock are rated “M for Mature”, meaning you have to be 17 years or older to buy them. (Well, except for Australia. GTA IV had to be watered down for them because they’re softcore pansies.) This has been brought up many times before by people advocating the ESRB and gaming companies. Are there places that still sell to minors? Sure. But I think there is an even bigger point that people are overlooking, and one I’ve not seen brought up on any show or in any of the debates:

The cost involved in playing the games in the first place.

• The cheapest Xbox 360 is $279.00. And it doesn’t have a hard drive, so you have to spend about $20 more dollars on a memory card. The Xbox that most people own is around $349, which includes the 20 gigabyte hard drive (The memory cards and hard drives are necessary to save and play the games).
• The PlayStation 3 costs $399
• New games for each system (such as GTA IV) cost $60 each.
• You need a television or computer monitor to plug the console into in order to play the game. Prices of TVs are relatively cheap, but flat screen HD televisions are still expensive, especially for kids and teens on a limited budget.

The money to buy those things has to come from somewhere, and I’m willing to bet that it’s from the parents. Or the parents are buying the consoles and games in the first place. Don’t want your kids playing “bad” games? Don’t buy them the systems to play them on. “But what if my kid is exposed to games like GTA at their friend’s house?” I hear you ask. Well, I guess you have a point. In that case, lock your children in the basement and read the Bible together. Or better yet, don’t worry about it. Because chances are (unless they’re really dumb), your kid knows GTA is just a game and will probably turn out fine. And if not, it’s probably something else you screwed up at as a parent and is still not GTA’s fault. It’s probably best that you go and watch Oprah, try to sort out where you went wrong and failed your child, and:

Afishionados,

I’m well on my way to creating another category here on OFAL. Another photo I spotted while on way to dinner tonight. Something’s amiss, here…

Afishionados,

So I’m watching HOUSE last night and Faux News was kind enough to intrude upon the lower portion of my screen with BREAKING NEWS! I know that Fox Noise is “fair and balanced” and would never¹ lie to me or have a bias on one of their stories, but I just can’t figure out how men’s nipples tie in with the Republican agenda that Fox is constantly trying to shove down my throat. Thoughts?

In other news, large traces of dihydrogen monoxide were found in a local woman’s body, doctor’s say.

¹Yes, yes they would.