GU Comics by: Woody Hearn

Thumbing through the gaming news, as I do every day, I ran across an article talking about Wisconsin passing a Bill to tax Downloadable Content. [more info] I gnashed my teeth and tried desperately to push aside visions of the future. Then I hit an article where Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård (The Youth Care Foundation), a Swedish group that advocates active alternatives to gaming, surmised WoW to be the most dangerous game on the market, calling it "the cocaine of the computer games world". [more info] At that I clenched my jaw and twisted my fingers up into claws delivering an imaginary throttling to the entire group.

Top that off with a myriad of other stupid gaming news tidbits that make my nostrils flare while I huff and puff against continued anti-gaming bias and discrimination against gamers, and I'm half an eye twitch away from physically injuring myself as I try desperately not to damage my own computer equipment in protest.

Yes, I'm one of those folks who, at times, has lashed out at inanimate objects for issues over which they exert no actual control. I've kicked a bed post after stubbing my toe in the middle of the night. I've bitten an NES controller before hurling it across the room in a fit of gamer frustration. And I've bruised my palm smacking the side of an old CRT monior after Photoshop crashed and cost me hours of work. So, I can completely identify with thrusting your arm out so forcefully, to deliver a bird flipped in anger, that you actually feel it in your wrist or shoulder. Though I've not injured myself doing so, I have no doubt that I have flipped a bird in just such a fashion.

Truthfully, it's been a while since I've done any of that. I've mellowed in my old age. And I'm aware that I now have two small eyes focussed on my every move. So, I'm not eager to pass on the more ignorant aspects of my Irish temper or any of my bad habits. No, these days I just press the heels of my hands into my eyes, take a few deep breaths and visualize the stupidity drifting away into the distance, tapering off into nothing, then fading away out of site. Shake my hands out, refocus, and go back to reading, working, playing, whatever. I uhh... I do still lose my cool when doing dishes. But, I take a break and get back to it as soon as I can.

PS. Yes, the big guy is wearing a Charlie Brown shirt.

[ discuss ] - replies ( 45 ) last post by: Woody