Since I've last posted something in this horrid hall, life has been hell. Friends have loved, lost, lived etc. So without further ado, I present the third incarnation of Cobaltdragon's LJ.

I shall commence with the following topics:

Discussion of writing
Whining about life (<- My favorite)
Reviewing recent products purchased, some that were not.
Philosophy, I shit ye not

Enjoy, for the third time, Me. In all my glory.

Ha, made you look!

It's actually useless, it can't even earn money.

Actually, that's not entirely true.

I recommend that any self-respecting gamer go to their local game store and purchase a Playstation 3 as soon as it comes in. Because when you do, Sony loses money. Then, you resell it on eBay to a fat, aging white woman for $1500 so her 12 year old whiny fucking brat can play it online and ruin the experience for people before Christmas holidays are over. This means you've made more money from the Playstation franchise in one fell swoop than Sony has made in over ten years. Just a thought.

Exactly a year ago today a horrible storm ripped through the city of New Orleans, ruining dozens of bars, pubs, clubs, drinkeries, eateries, and topless establishments.

Little known to the general public, in a story coming to light just now- a year later- the deadly storm also killed Jesus, the famous son of God, and delayed his much anticipated Second Coming Reunion Tour.

Many fans were outraged and vowed to rebuild New Orleans 'more fucking below sea level than ever' as an act of defiance towards wayward hurricanes.

Onlookers who chained themselves to trees in the face of Katrina said that the Hurricane "lashed him vigorously and then nailed him to a cross and put him on a hill in the French Quarter". Further investigation revealed that none- not a one of them- of the onlookers had been drunk and watching Passion of the Christ the night before.

Jesus' agent, a one John the Baptist, has said that they have rescheduled in 2007 just in time for Hurricane Pablo. In the same press release John the Baptist also said that Judas Iscariot of punk band Field of Blood will be rejoining the other 11 disciples to finally reform Jesus' legendary band; Roman Catholic Revenge.

Tickets are expected to go on sale early December 2006.

By request, more musical genre breakdowns:

Folk- Bob Fucking Dylan. This man and his ego are so large, he encompasses almost all of folk music. In the pre-Dylan days, folk music was sung in local taverns after a hard day's farming when tired old men got shitfaced and sang about apples, apple trees, and assorted apple-related bullfuck.

Emo/Goth- Is has been pointed out these are seperate from Metal. Boo-frickity-hoo. Go cut your dumb middle class fat white ass over it would you? But in the interest of remaining fair, Emo/Goth will get its due. Emo and goth music is not music, but rather men ramming guitars with small rodents duct-taped to them into wood chippers. Which is to say it is not music but people who can't do anything productive... trying to. This is not music, never will be music, and is so pathetic and hypocritical I want to ram a Humvee up somebody's ass because of it.

Polka- An old guy with no teeth on a stage holding an accordion. Sadly, it's pretty easy to dance to.

Pop Music- All pop music is done by five guys and two girls who record under different aliases and photoshopped pictures. They are all gay, except for the girls who prefer to shove model ships in their urinary tract rather than some other normal sexual activity. The songs are all written by one lonely nerd in a basement named Al, who also programs the music and personally rapes all the backup dancers so they can be their homosexual-est during a tour.

In a shocking move today, Sony unveiled the next incarnation of its mediocre and hip-hop-hyped Gaystation Proddable.

Instead of the PSP White as seen in a series of horribly racist and facist advertisements aimed at taking over the Netherlands in a flurry of black-hatred and ugly white women, Sony has unveiled its new DSP. Speculation is that the PS Wite was simply a decoy to throw consumers off its real goals. Similar to the way the Xbox was a decoy by Microsoft to pretend they were going to make real games.

We have been unable to obtain screenshots, but insiders (those would be our Moles. Hi Jerry Clustowitz in cubicle 7!) have assured us that Sony has gone from the unwieldy horizontal format that was extremely ugly and unoriginal in the Gameboy Advance but absolutely cool and totally new on the PSP, and gone to the folding lid 'vertical', or VERT design that only Sony could come up with.

New features include:
- A screen that is 345% more scratchable, to the point where air particles will do damage.
- A stylus for a screen that doesn't touch, but it will scratch.
- Buttons in odd places that don't do anything
- Buttons in correct places that don't do anything but shut off the DSP
- mp3 playback for any mp3 songs that don't belong to anyone not Sony.
- SCDs (Stupid Consumer Discs) for dumb people.
- Battery life that lasts whole fractions of seconds and dims the lights when its charging.

Most exciting of all, the DSP will have a second screen on the bottom that you can touch. It won't do anything, but you can touch it. This has led consumers to dub it the 'Dual-Screen Playsation'.

More news as this develops.

Rock And/Or Roll-
The bread and butter of modern music. Considered the pinnacle of humanity by teenagers and 50-year-old virgins the world over. There is, in my opinion, nothing I would rather do than listen to band after band pluck at an overpriced tree strung with chicken wire and croon about everything from love to not love like what they have to say means jack shit to anyone.

Punk-
My personal favorite genre. Three, count em' THREE different chords and a horrific raping of the drum kit, oh yeah. Not to mention seeing how many ways you can say "Fuck the man" before people stop dying their hair pink and start working a 9 to 5 in a cubicle farm. Similar to rock and/or roll except instead of plucking at it, the chickenwire-tree is being raped by people who pay $60 for Converse shoes at West49 and Foot Locker.

Rap-
The majority of this stuff consists of an ethnic person singing about money, how they love money, how they don't have enough money, how they hate being what they are, how they hated being what they were, how they enjoy sex and being sexual in a variety of inescapably sexual (But radio friendly) ways, all set to $5 Keyboard synthesized drum kits and sound effects. Real Rap music is about things that are not what is listed above, and happens to incorporate an actual band- or so scientists believe, having not found evidence that this phase of Rap evolution existed for more than a couple of hours.

Country-
Dogs trucks hay cows boots women fishing baby jesus.

Techno-
Techno is another personal favorite of mine, except that in order to dance to it one must be A) Epileptic and B) Exposed to rapidly flashing lights and overstimulating colours. Good if you're sober, better if you're baked and making out in the back. Or doing an ominious deal in the back with a corrupt cop. Or Neo from The Matrix. Techno is best known for being catchy, but then again so is AIDS.

Metal: Includes Heavy Metal/Screamo/Emo/Goth-
More of that instrument rape, except now it's just about anything you get your hands on. I'm sure I've seen a drummer use a dog for a hi-hat. Followers of Metal and Screamo in particular are losers with nothing to say who would rather drown that fact in soul-wrenchingly bad guitar and exaggerated, melodramatic lyrics than admit anything. These acolytes of metal often think that it's fun to do dumb things like rape people and slice cool holes in themselves and worship satan. What fun!
Oh, and clearly they have nothing good to say because they'd rather shit in your ears with their overworked puberty-gone-wrong singing voice than come out and say it.

Jazz-
It's got a saxophone, which is a plus, and slap bass, which is another plus; but in the end Jazz will forever be a bunch of fat black men and skinny white men sitting on a stage in a crowded dance hall trying to finish the set before they go into a coma or dehydrate to the point where they simply crumble. Also, the subjects here seem to be a horrible bastard child of Rock And/Or Roll and Blues. Speaking of which...

Blues-
Black men with a Wal-Mart brand acoustic guitar bitch about women, alcohol, gambling, money, and women. The only difference from country really is the ethnicity of the musician and the utter lack of cows. There is cotton though, so the agricultural bent is preserved.

Jesus suckerpunches a black person.

I was reading The Best Page In The Universe when I came across a number of entries on his site discussing the vagaries of posting on a blog about the mundane details of one's life.

Yes, I'm aware of the irony.

Anyways, check it out because it is a great website full of interesting observations and extremely manly topics. I mean how can the website not rule, the man is a GODDAMN PIRATE.

Big news this evening, with a new console on the horizon.

Hot on the heels of its successes with the Xbox 360, market overlord Microsoft has finally pulled back the red tape surrounding its new system, the Microsoft Waang.

"We were concerned that the Japanese markets weren't picking up on the Three-Shitty," says Microsoft insider Bill Gates, "So we've aggressively marketed the Wii-Sixty on the homefront and started cooking something special up for those yellow bastards."

That 'something special' turned out to be a nuclear weapon, dropped on the recently rebuilt city of Hiroshima. When that failed to boost sales, Microsoft turned to a strategy that has served it well over the past.

"We took a good hard look at our competitors," says Gates, "Just to see what they were doing right. From Nintendo, we took the idea to create a single-handed controller, with all the pointless peripherals; the excessive phallic imagery; and of course the idea that not everything is machine horsepower. From the PSWii, we borrowed an AI that destroys any other consoles in a twelve-mile radius, and an impressive rumble feature that beats the player repeatedly in the beanbag once the machine is activated."

When asked about the unique name, Gates has a lot to say.

"We chose 'Waang' because, in Japan, all gamers either ARE a Wang or HAVE a wang. We chose to use the dual 'a's in Waang because they look like testicles."

The Waang, by following Nintendo's 'Less Is More' policy, has been retrofitted to use parts from a 1956 VW Beetle. Microsoft reports that early models of the Waang already have '4 of the 8 bits from the original Famicom'.

In a final statement, Gates expounded on their choice to use a single-handed controller ala Nintendo.

"It's been shown by many test gamers that it is VERY hard to masturbate while holding a traditional controller. With our NEW controller you can play with the Waang and yourself at the same time, finally giving us a legitimate excuse to create unrealistically Humongous 3D breasts. You certainly don't think people buy Microsoft for the gameplay do you?"

Yes, yes, I KNOW I said I'd only update this on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But I'm bored, so today I present to you a special livejournal entry- an open letter to a one Jack Thompson.

If you (the reader) read this or see this, pass it on to friends and family. Spread the word. Maybe one day Jack will respond to me, and maybe he will decide to call me a retard. But if you know of any way at all I can get this to Jack Thompson through email or otherwise, please email me at jgrisack@yahoo.ca


Dear Jack Thompson,

My name is CobaltDragon (I'll be using my real name if I ever email this to him). I am 15 years old, I play violent videogames, and I have watched movies rated 'R' and '18A'. I have PLAYED Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas- and Halo, Halo 2, Sims 2, and most of the games you have accused of turning people like me into mindless death machines.
But I also write poetry, read books on a regular basis, write long essays and stories. I surf the internet for large portions of my day. Yes, I am overweight, and yes, I could stand to excercise more, but I am happy with who I am and never once has it become an active thought on the forefront of my mind to walk out of my house, grab a baseball bat or golf club, walk downtown, and beat the life out of a random passerby. Never once have I seen a rifle or shotgun, both at retailers and on farms around where I live, and walked over to it, wondering with the imagination of a teenager how nicely I could blast a cop in the face with it before grabbing a hooker and driving off into the sunset.

I agree with the ideas you represent. Videogames of the nature you see in games like GTA: San Andreas shouldn't be sold to people who are 12. But when was 18 suddenly the benchmark age when everybody wakes up one day and says "I'm 18! I now fully understand the ideas and consequences of my actions!"?
When I play a violent videogame, I've noticed a change in my behaviour. Two changes actually.
1) If I start playing in a bad mood, I relax. I take it out on the polygonal representations of people or monsters or what have you, and the stress bleeds away.
2) I do react more harshly after an extended session of Halo 2. My brain is in full-blown stimulus mode where stimuli that pose a threat to me will be neutralized. This effect lasts about 5 minutes after I stop playing, but nothing ever happens. But the only inhibition me or my friends ever seem to lose after playing Halo is that we swear more for about a day. And personally, that's not an inhibition I'm worried very much about because I don't rip somebody's intestines out and feed them to them by saying 'shit' a few more times than usual.

Again, I agree with the idea that maybe games should be more tightly controlled. But there are a lot of problems in the way you've represented your ideas and beliefs.

1) CONTEXT
Context is the act of putting the ideas and concepts you've presented into a greater perspective. It lets you believe that what's happening in a game is true, and it's what lets YOU tell the truth. You. As in Jack Thompson. I've noticed that in a lot of the cases you attack games you've never played, and then tell people you are an expert. You may know more than me about a lot of things, but I can give you several examples where both you and the media provide 'shocking' blurbs from a game without explaining anything.

"During the first minutes of play, it's possible to find the corpse of a woman pinned up on a wall--by a pitchfork through her face."- Resident Evil 4

I've played this game start to finish at least 5 or 6 times. That corpse is just one of many who die or will be killed in a similar manner or just in general. But that was the extent of explaination the article gave on it. It didn't explain that the game is a Survival Horror, and that the game has about three warnings on it stating "This game contains scenes of horrific violence' or something of that nature before the player even starts the game. And to the parents who buy this for their ten year-old son/daughter- did the man with a chainsaw and the M-Rating on the front cover not warn you? And if you did, sit down with them and explain why things in the game happen. Make the best of the situation.

"Player is a young man working with gangs to gain respect. His mission includes murder, theft, and destruction on every imaginable level. Player recovers his health by visiting prostitutes then recovers funds by beating them to death and taking their money. Player can wreak as much havoc as he likes without progressing through the game's storyline."- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

It's not all about respect, but that's the gist of the game yes. Murder? Oh yeah. Theft? You rob a bank, does that count? Destruction... on every imaginable level. Yeah they got that all right.
But then their little blurb falls apart. I says that players recover health by visiting prostitutes and then recovers funds by killing them. They say that like it's the only means the game provides for you to gain health. You can gain health by saving the game, which refills your health bar, or you can eat food of varying types and sizes. Food is legal, see. Crazy world ain't it? And recover funds by killing them? That whole sentence is phrased like the game is forcing you to do it. Yes, you have the option of killing the prostitutes to get your money back, but it is by no means a compulsory act.

These blurbs are taken from an article called 'The 10 Most Violent Videogames of 2005' from Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/crimelifegangwars/news_6140463.html). The blurbs were written by the Family Media Guide. Nearly every single one of them picked and focussed on the most immediately shocking things for parents. The Killer7 blurb states "The game eventually escalates into a global conflict between the US and Japan. Player collects the blood of fallen victims to heal himself and must slit his own wrists to spray blood to find hidden passages." But there's no context! There's a REASON the conflict started, a REASON that Kaede Smith slits her wrists.

Have you ever shot a gopher with a .22 rifle? I have.

Now without context I've just taken a gun and ended a small creature's life.
But when you look into it, that gopher and the thousands like it in the fields of farmers are digging holes in the ground that can cause cows to break a leg and even bring in badgers looking for a meal. These things are dangerous to farmers because an injured cow with a broken leg must be put down and that will result in a lot of lost money. A badger is dangerous to a farmer's children and animals. They can cause injury to cows and farm dogs/cats.
At first it seemed like I just walked into a field an shot a helpless rodent.
Not so much after the context eh?

You and all the other people 'crusading' as you are against games should take the time to play all the way through and then provided the parents context under which the violence and 'lewd acts' occur.

2) YOUR CREDENTIALS

This'll be quick. I understand you're a major media figure now. Well I don't care. If you think it matters to people that you've been in Reader's Digest, you can talk to Senators, you've been on CNN, Fox News, and CBS... well it doesn't. We don't care, because you throw it around like it makes you special. Fox News had a feature on Yippie the Backflipping dog, Paris Hilton, and You. You were certainly in the presence of stars.
Whether or not you think what you've done is important, nobody else does so drop the act and start representing your side in a manner befitting somebody who's been in Reader's Digest.

3) FREE SPEECH

You have become by nature an advocate of Dictatorships and not Freedom.
With Bully, if people don't buy it, it won't do well as you were told in the Chatterbox Game Show. Consumers will choose what they want and you have no control over it, so stop trying to influence the actions of adults- which is their own business and not yours.
You demand the right to censor free speech. The glory of Free Speech is this- you don't have to listen. If you hear Howard Stern on the Sirius Satellite Radio, change the station! Nobody's forcing you to listen to him, and nobody's forcing kids to buy video games.
This is one of the most prominent reasons I dislike you- you are against everything I stand for. You, Hillary Clinton, and Governator Schwarzenegger have been pushing for laws to abolish and/or regulate videogames. These are the choices not just of kids, but of Adults as well. If you're going to complain about people buying violent videogames, complain to the Parents. The parents who buy their kids videogames in lieu of parenting are the same ones who complain when the kids don't know right and wrong. Place the blame squarely at the feet of the parents and leave the Free Speech of the media alone.

Thanks for reading this, I hope you've considered a few things I've said and if you ever read this, please don't question my intelligence, motives, etc. I'm writing this to you because I want to have an intelligent debate with you. Be the bigger man and respond to explain things to me, not call me a retard.

Sincerely,
CobaltDragon

Following the lead of fellow author WhisperingMoon, I have deemed it necessary to create a Livejournal. I don't know why.

At the very least you pitiful fans deserve to know what the hell I'm doing and what I'm thinking so here you go. Read away. I'm not responsible for any aneurisms that take place while one is on my journal.

As some of you may have noticed the XBOX 360 is less than a few days away from launch, but yet Microsoft- the richest bastards in the world- can't seem to give each store more than like 13 consoles despite the fact that there are more than 10 000 preorders. Smooth moves Microlax.
I personally won't be getting one for a long time, not just because they've decided to up the price to ungodly heights but because bundles this early on may be a bad idea. Odds are good that somewhere down the road I'll be able to pick up a 360 with more than 20 GB of hard disk space for less, as well as generally better manufactured components after they've worked out the bugs. Plus the launch titles don't appeal to me right now.

One of my personal favorite webcomics, CTRL+ALT+DEL (CAD) has recently updated their website to a slick beast that defies description. But boy is it nice. Hint* Hint* Penny Arcade. (CAD can be viewed at www.cad-comic.com and Penny Arcade can be found at www.penny-arcade.com.)

For those of you wondering about the secret Followers project, all I can tell you is that it is DEFINITELY in script/screenwriting format and that it's geared towards a media form much different than books. One can hope that it gets off the ground.