Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, LA. A Louisiana woman is suing Nintendo, alleging her 30-year-old son suffered seizures after playing video games for eight hours a day, six days a week.

The lawsuit filed in federal court says the man died last year after hitting his head and mouth on a table during one of the seizures. It claims the man never had seizures before buying a Nintendo-64 player in 1999.

His mother is seeking unspecified damages for her own medical and funeral expenses, for mental and emotional anguish, and for her son's lost future earnings.

A spokesman for Nintendo is declining comment on the lawsuit. In court records, the company denies any wrongdoing.

Let's pick this one apart, shall we?

BATON ROUGE, LA

her 30-year-old son suffered seizures after playing video games for eight hours a day, six days a week

The lawsuit filed in federal court says the man died last year after hitting his head and mouth on a table during one of the seizures

It claims the man never had seizures before buying a Nintendo-64 player in 1999

His mother is seeking unspecified damages... for her son's lost future earnings.

Yeah yeah I know - this lawsuit will never even see the light of a courtroom as it's obviously some poverty-striken spinster who's been taken in by some lawyer, but I just figured it would be fun to pick it apart this morning.

February 27, 2002

 
8:42 AM
There's conflicting reports as to whether or not MP3 is destroying the music industry. My take is: if MP3 destroys the music industry, the industry deserves it.

Im ny opinion, the single saddest example of how lame the music industry is, and how lame the American Conumer is, is O-Town. O-Town is, of course, the latest (?) boy band to be churned out by the boy band factory that is Lou Perlman. Perlman's (two) credits include Backstreet Boys and N'Sync. Bad enough that no talent clods are selling millions of albums to mastubatory prepubescent teen girls, but at least the public was saved the trauma of having to watch how heartless and souless the process of manufacturing a music group is. But with O-Town we actually watched the process unfold on a freaking television game show. ABC's Making the Band was a Survivor-esque reality show that whittled down a crowd of boys to the five members of O-Town. O-Town's lone claim to fame is that Corporate America placed them on a pedestal and stated "they're Celebrities because we said so". The final irony is that there's a second season of Making the Band, but ABC didn't pick it up - MTV is airing it. ABC decided enough was enough on airing low rated prerecorded reality shows. They aired every episode of The Mole, which I actually quite liked, despide the fact that it was habitually low rated. They decided to cancel Mole 2 three epsiodes into its run, so no one will ever know who won that one.

To the music industry, I'll make you a deal: keep coming up with shit like O-Town and I'll keep stealing music. Deal?

February 26, 2002

 
2:37 PM
Human nature is weird. Ever notice how we tend to only want to hang around with people like us? When you break it down to that one fact, it's easy to see why we have things like racism and sexism - it's not ignorance, it's kinda like nature. I have black friends, but I don't invite them to my house. This isn't because I don't like black people, I just don't. There are those who would say this is racist. I talk to women in public, but I don't invite them over to my house, and people don't call me sexist. In light of the fact that I am married, people call me "smart".

But now I've found I have an odd problem wherein I don't socialize with people the way I used to. I was in an organization called the Corps of Cadets, and for a long time I tended to only hang out with a select group of 25 or so individuals, most of which were guys and almost all of which were my age. Now that College is over, we've all moved all over the state/world and we don't hang out, except for when one of us gets married or more than one of us is in town, and that's only if we know each other's phone numbers.

So I'm here at work and I look around at the people here. Once again, I'm struck at how much of a natural priss we all are. Most of the people here are disqualified as potential hang outs for the simple reason that they're old. Not too old, just old. The guy across the room from me is 30 years older than me, more than twice my age. If I knew someone that was 35 I would probably call them "too old", at 55 you're just "old", not even in the running.

Then there are some people here that are my age, or in the general range thereof, but we don't hang out. Why? Well, I'm married and they're not. It's not like High School where you'd call your friend up and hang out - now there's laundry to do and things to take care of. When you'd hang out at your friend's place in High School you'd pay no attention to what their parents were busy doing - now that shit is your job.

Then there's a guy next door I'm friends with who's just a year older than me - we send each other funny IM's all day. He once suggested we go see a movie together and one of these days I might take him up on the idea. Besides the fact that he's kinda hard to make plans around, there's also the fact that while he is like me and married, he also has kids. Two of them. Younger people who aren't married don't want to hang out with me (I assume) because I'm married and therefore have entered a new bracket, but now there are other married people I don't tend to want to hang out with because they have children and therefore have entered that next bracket. I guess the next bracket is to get "too old" and then "old", followed by "elderly" and then "dead". So what I wind up with is a series of "married couple" friends who just happen to be in the same window as me.

My Wife had a "married couple" friend that I didn't like to hang out with for the simple reason that they were in their 30's. I guess the main reason I didn't like to hang out with them was that they were old and not "like us". Then on the other side of the fence we have an "unmarried couple" friends who are not only younger than us but also an "unhappy couple" to boot, so we tend to not hang out with them either (especially since they're "still in school" and so we don't have that much in common anymore). And for an extra added wrinkle, since my Wife and I are a "happy married couple" we have to be careful of our "recently single friends" or "unhappily married couples", lest we rub their nose in it.

So does this mean that we're all naturally arrogant to other people?

February 25, 2002

 
10:39 AM
What a shitty damn week. Last Sunday morning my Wife woke up sick. By that evening she was fine and I was sick. Not sure if we exchanged illnesses or what. So I skipped Monday. This is only like the second time I've been out sick from this job, and the last time I was sick I felt incredibly guilty. I did what we probably all do - I felt a little bit ill and decided to stay home. Sure I could have gone to work - but at that point I wasn't doing anything mission critical. I've had tasks here that I figured were mission critical, so I've come to work several times when I felt less than 100% in the last few months. Monday, however, I had no problem staying home, since I was sick - no doubt about it.

Tuesday I went to work and when I got home I took a nap - and woke up with 100.5°. I skipped out Wednesday, and went back on Thursday, and came home nearly dead. I had to skip out on Friday. Three non consecutive days off - which is ironic since if I had just stayed home Tuesday I could probably have licked it. The most violent, hacking cough I have had in years, a need to take this horribly bitter Benadryl, an inability to sleep due to the pain of breathing, this bizarre tastebuds trick where everything tastes a little bit like vomit - you name it. This past week sucked.

There's this guy at work here that I don't like. Well that's not entirely true, I do like him - everyone does, to some extent. He's a real likeable person. Person. Not a worker. He never does any work. I can't think of a time when I didn't see him chatting it up or browsing the web. Now, sitting here and making a blog post I figure I'm hardly worker of the year, but this is on occasion for me - this guy does nothing. Then he asks me for help on something he should have had down ages ago. I've been here for a year, he's been here for close to two years, and I know more stuff than him.

It used to really bother me that this guy was still here. There used to be more people working with him but they systematically all went on to bigger/better things. I figured for sure he would get canned as he was "hiding" behind those people, but nope. The part that bothered me was that it seemed to me that if this individual was still here that means that this job doesn't care what you do - meaning then that it also didn't notice if you were doing good instead of bad. I've recieved enough praise on my performance to let me know that this last little bit isn't true, but I'm not so sure this job cares about bad performance.

Last August or so everyone got a 4% raise. Everyone but me - as it turns out you had to have been here a year to get it. This means that this person got a raise for no other reason than being in a nice little rut and no one noticing him. It really ticked me off - until the next month everyone got their titles changed and mine carried that 4% raise. Today, however, this person informed me that he has now moved to a better parking lot because - you guessed it - he's been here long enough. I'm not sure where I stand on that list but it's just another annoying example of how the system here works - just stick around long enough and you get everything - even if you don't deserve it.

Perhaps I'll get that promotion soon. Oh well, it could be worse - at least I don't have to live in goddamn cubicle land.

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