Wednesday, April 02, 2008

There's a Man with a Gun Over There


Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," my lieblings! I'm Anne, and this is my friend, Psyduck.

For those of you who are too young (or too old) to recognize this cute lil' quacker, he's a Pokemon. All Pokemon have some sort of unique power. Psyduck's is psychic. He can bend your mind. Or so my daughter The Heir once told me. She played with Pokemon cards back in the day. And it's a long-ago day now. Gosh, a decade almost.

This week here at "The Gods Are Bored," we've been cruising through a book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs. The book is all about protecting your innocent youngsters from the evil influence of the occult. We are now on Chapter Three, and the going gets more nauseating all the time.

The chapter is entitled "Child's Play." It concerns itself with two terrible, horrible demonic influences on innocent tots: the aforementioned Pokemon, and that good ol' standby, Harry Potter. With a few potshots at the venerable realm of the ueber-nerd, Dungeons and Dragons.

Deliver Us from Evil was published in 2001, and it just goes to show you how quickly fads rise and fall. My daughter The Heir used to love Pokemon. Today, I'll bet you could turn this house inside out and not find a single Pokemon card. Even one that the faeries might have hidden really, really well.

Did Psyduck drag my daughter into black lipstick, Marilyn Manson concerts, and the ritual slaughter of gerbils? Oops, sorry. No.

Too many lovely trees have been killed and pulped to warn good Christians about Harry Potter. But I'd love to have the forest that's been pulped to produce the Potter books themselves. The final installment, Deathly Hallows, was said to have sold more than 8 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release. Add to that the Nielson-estimated 27.7 million copies of the previous installments, and you've got the Library of Congress, by J.K. Rowling.

Cindy Jacobs warns that reading Harry Potter will make your kid want to be a witch or a wizard. Would that it were true! We'd have so many kids clamoring for Pagan education we wouldn't know how to handle it! Eight million youngsters, all wanting wands simultaneously? Gosh, there goes another forest!

I have not yet had to wax righteously indignant over Mrs. Jacobs's book, but now I've got her firmly affixed to the Annie Blacklist. After excoriating violent video games (can't say I disagree with that), Mrs. Jacobs has this to say about the ... violent video games the U.S. government uses to train soldiers:

"I am not criticizing the military for its legitimate use of video games in training. That is very different from kids being amused through violent and demonic fantasy."

Indeed, Mrs. Jacobs? Exactly how is it different? You claim that violent video games turn youngsters into serial killers, and then you don't criticize the military for doing the same thing?

The U.S. government has been using video games to create lethal soldiers since the Vietnam War. Is it coincidental, then, that our nation's soldiers often return from battle to become spouse-abusers, drug abusers, homeless and psychotic? Oh, but that's okay. They're soldiers, not serial killers.

You want sin, Mrs. Jacobs? Killing another human being is a sin. Just ask the Quakers and the Mennonites. In other words, ask the real Christians, not the "gosh, why don't my books sell as well as Harry Potter" people like yourself.

More on this moron anon.

FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS

7 comments:

Brandon said...

Not trying to be mean. I'm sure you just misspoke...

But video games didn't really exist during Vietnam. The first use of video games (not counting flight sims) for training the military was the US Marines using a modified Doom ('93).

Today, the games used to train soldiers focus on tactics more than twitchy shooting everything that moves.

Full Spectrum Warrior is a commercialized version of such games and emphasizes keeping your team alive while getting the mission done.

Recruiting on the other hand is done through America's Army. While it pretends to be a representation of military training and possible missions, it's all about glorifying the violence.

Would I let my young kids (8, 4, 3) play America's Army... No. Would I let them play Full Spectrum Warrior (if they could muddle through the controls)... Yes. Games of that nature teach kids about problem solving that doesn't always require a combat environment.

For the most part video games are new as a training device and there's always been atrocities commited by the active and discharged.

I could go on about video games not being the demon plaguing our kids... But I won't.

-A techy sort-of-pagan parent and service member.

yellowdoggranny said...

maybe we should hook her up with the reverend wright...

Alex Pendragon said...

It's funny, but God-fearing,Right-wing, fundamentalist Christian "Americans" don't want to have to think about the atrocities our soldiers are committing just trying to stay alive (but of course, if scores of civilians are dead, they MUST have been terrorists), but if a fictional charactor waves a wand around, THAT's a SIN that MUST be STAMPED OUT before our children are forever SCARRED........

Real Christians? WHAT real Christians?

BBC said...

So other than that how are things going?

Anne Johnson said...

My apologies to my readers. It was Mrs. Cindy Jacobs who said video games have been used since Vietnam to render soldiers-in-training less sensitive to murdering fellow humans. Why should I have trusted her on that bit of information, when almost everything else she says is questionable?

I'll buy a video gaming system when they come out with a game that simulates an LSD trip. They could call it "Magic Carpet Ride."

Brandon said...

Funny you should mention that, Anne. It's not EXACTLY like an LSD trip... But the game called Rez was created with synesthesia in mind. Originally for the Playstation 2 it was only released in Japan. It replaces the typical bang, power, zaps of a shoot-em-up (or shump in gamer-lingo) and replaces them with trance music instruments. Visuals are sounds, sounds are visual. Adding to the mixing of sensations it also came with a "Trance Vibrator" that pulsed with the rhythm and the other sound effects.

It's since been released (and updated) in the US for the XBox 360 through their download marketplace. Unfortunately, there's no vibrator you can get for it but you can set a secondary controller to pull the duty.

I've loved hearing your digests of this book. I look forward to more!

BBC said...

I don't do video games. I go outside where real life and nature is.