And it all comes back to the insanity that we are fine with violence, but sex is just going too far. Ridiculous.

People make such a big deal out of piddly crap like that but, and this just sprung to mind a minute ago, roman polanski, a big big big name director (made the pianist, chinatown, rosemary's baby) he ran to another country and has not been to the US because he faces statutory rape charges here, he won the oscar for best picture i think the other year and didnt come, we know where he, but we are fine to let him make movies elsewhere and release them here, i dont know i guess they doesnt apply it just seems like so there is an imbalance of blame

Funniest South Park ever... the ninja one where Butters gets a ninja star stuck in his eye but no one cares because Cartman was naked on TV.

I read or saw something somewhere about how Americans are more perverted or, rather, extremists on sex acts... and it probably all goes back to the cultural repression and the embarrassment we are made to feel about it. I wonder if sex was more 'normal' in the sixties/seventies when 'free love' abounded. Let's bring that back, eh?

It seems like sex is becoming less and less of a taboo subject. TV has become more risque and probably a good amount of it has to do with the internet, so much information at a person's finger tips. Someone might have thought they were weird but the internet is an outlet and way for people to meet people of common interest and it is pretty easy.

I think there were two very different groups of people in the 60s and 70s, the, for lack of a better word, hippies, i dont think had any problem with openness with their sexuality but that could have been because of the presence of drugs

the opposition to the hippies tried to hold on to very stern thinking left over from the 50s where you respected your parents completely and even the word sex was a very dangerous thing

but openness with sexuality has advantages and disadvatages, girls are getting pregnant younger and younger and it seems like the institution of marriage is all but collapsing

i dont consider myself a good catholic but i think belief in a religion might help create a foundation for family and i think that a priest could be a much better advisor if married and that if marriage were allowed for priests many people would come back to the church, the people have alwasy wanted to be close to their religion, it started changing when the priest faced the congregation as opposed to the altar and stopped speaking only latin and then the communion rail was removed, people need to see their spiritual leader as someone they can relate to and yeah i went off on a tangent

Sure, you're right about less taboo... but how did we get to be such freaks in the first place? France isn't like that, and the theory is because children are exposed to sex as if it were normal and natural among consenting adults. I'd be willing to bet fisting and goat sex, as much as you love them, are American born institutions.

SM however, that was France. Go Marquis de Sade. At least there's some psychology behind that.

Do you think that if when kids are exposed to sex, instead of telling them not to do it and not to talk about it... we told them the proper and responsible way of going about it, we would have less pregnant kids?

And now onto the paramount point... I think the institution of marraige is subject to a darwinian evolution, and it's going to disappear mostly all together. If you've got a 50% chance of divorce, why not avoid the paperwork later. Like Naf said, he's the Orthodox jew around here, if you're living with someone for nine years and you have three kids, you're "married." That's all that counts anyway.

I have two links to start this off. One is about how we over coddled kids, the other is just trying to make everyone the same. No one is unique. I already feel like I have had no grander 'goal' in my life and now they want everyone to feel good about themself and look the same. Gayola.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/britain_failure_dc;_ylt=Aq8z_rb7ly1tZcRPTeT0aZ0DW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/afplifestylecanada;_ylt=ApipDrWTKKlZeTmsx2nUS.wDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

I would agree. Probably most sexual perversions were bred in the US either because people were bored or just stifled or something. Ok side tracked already, here is a story, short one. When I worked at target there was this kid that tried to boss everyone around even when he just started, he also cut him self with a box cutter so he was appropriately nicknamed box cutter, the kid sucks and he later worked at Best Buy but once he was talking to rich (i think it was rich) about his relationship with his girlfriend, he was like 17 or 18 and religious but it was conveyed to rich that he thought he could get his girlfriend pregnant by going down on her

another story, i saw this on yahoo a while back, this old dude, he had alzheimers and so he was caught screwing a cow in some other dude's barn, but like he didnt know where he was or when it was and all that but the guy later said how they used to do that in the army when they were out in a different country where there werent women and so it translated to him again when he was old and didnt know better

S&M makes sense, like it is also power and control and assumed power, this show "the inside" i watch was talking about S&M and how usually the dominated is in control because they are the one who has the power to stay stop or whatever, interesting stuff

I think it needs to be talked about with kids, especially when they are like 12 or 13, they need to know, like tell them about portection and all that, and how shit works, sure it would be uncomfortable for both parties but i would rather have an informed child then have my kid learn stuff 2nd hand or wrong, i might not going into the gory details or fisting or pleasing a woman but i think a kid needs to learn more than they learn in sex ed, and a classroom taught by a gym teacher isnt the way, it's too sterile or i dont know, just not right, but informed kids who know the risks might be less likely to rebel or experiment

and the church needs to evolve with marriage, i think still people believe they need to get married to have sex and so people marry young and marry the wrong person or just jump into it too quickly, i have told you how tim and scott and john told me they dont think you should live with someone before marrying them, i think the exact opposite, you need to know what you are getting into, but at the same time, i dont think like an open relationship to see other people is the way to either epecially if you have kids, definitely if you have kids, but yeah living together and not being married works, maybe not in God's eyes but it relaxes that added pressure of a title even thought most parents and gradnparents would probably still frown on people living together unmarried their whole lives

So I was bored at work and did a little research into Mr. De Sade... now I don't have a problem mixing a little pain with pleasure... but sodomizing three-year-olds and masturbating to someone being tortured to death, now that's some sick shit. I feel disturbed.

I heard about the cow guy. Kinda funny. I'm sure the cow didn't even notice, considering you inseminate a cow with your entire arm.

a little pain never hurt anyone, releases endorphins and adrenaline which is goooooood

today, rockstar and taketwo (the developer and producer of GTA) changed their rating from M to AO, they also halted production of the game

target, walmart, and best buy pulled the game from their shelves immediately

i might go buy it just for spite, to show that it can sell with that AO mark on it, fuck the man

hit the nail on the head there...my cousins in england were shocked beyond belief when i told them a girl in my HS was pregnant back in the day...and over there, they have sex all over the place on tv, but violence is the out of line thing...i think the difference is, when you tell someone not to have sex, you're telling them not to do something potentially enjoyable...if you're discouraging violence, well, nobody likes pain, and i would bet most people don't like inflicting it on others either, if nothing else for the sake of not getting hurt in return.

Excellent point, Sidro. I never thought of it that way.

people been screwing goats long before America was a country, look at greek and roman art...

as far as marriages goes I disagree. the biggest detriment to marriage for better or worse is women working, and to a more general extent society's obsession with money. back when women didn't work, women needed men for financial reasons. now that definitely isn't right, but the idea of raising children was equally important to making money. in todays society people want money for crap they don't need, and the second they think they can get more money by being divorced they call a lawyer.

statistically speaking, there are 7.5 marriage per 1000 people in the U.S, and about half that in number of divorces each year. this doesn't necessarily mean that half of first marriages end in divorce, when you consider there is a) a larger pool of already married people, and b) multiple marriage/divorces. as far as living together people marriage, I personally don't have a problem with it, but I know it increases the chances of breaking up. its just that the break up often occurs before marriage. the real question is whether they shouldn't be married in the first place, or whether the lack of commitment made them unwilling to work through the difficulties of marriage. I tend to think its the later.

finally, the whole darwinian evolution thing. long term speaking when there are fewer marriages, there are fewer kids, more broken homes, and more abortions (just guess on that.) More broken homes and more abortions both will result in even lower numbers of children, in the long run. As the child to adult ratio dwindles (which I admit is natural in the process of becoming more civilized) America will not be able to sustain the lifestyle it is accustomed too. We live by passing debt to future generations, in hopes that technology will allow improvements in earning potential. What happens when future generations can no longer handle the burden current generations place upon them? I don't think it will happen in our life time, but I do think its very likely that American society will become awake to how selfish and arrogant it has become. My actual disagreement lies in that marriage will not disappear due to Darwinian evolution, because if it goes away I think society is in a whole world of shit. Something that can cast a downfall on society would not be an improvement, and therefor should not be considered an evolutionary step.

I making a shirt

VIOLENCE Good
Sex Bad


somethng along those lines

nice literary allusion there...

My long rebuttal... please excuse the sarcasm.

I think that one of the reasons for essentially pulling GTA from the shelf isn't just the content that it has, but the idea that once GTA is M for mature, the next game that has to outdo GTA will be worse and could still be m for mature.

Regardless, its of my opinion that the AO rating should probably be lowered to 16 or 15, but that the GTA franchise should have been that for a long time. That game is sure fun to play, but the values it teaches are pure crap. People are freaking out because of the sex, but the violence and values in my eyes are not something that an 11 year old should be messed with.

Besides, the M for mature rating is crap anyway, becuase the games are rated M but are still marketed for kids. GTA commercials were played on cartoon network and mtv (trust me, i saw them when gabe and jason were watching them) during TRL (which i don't really view anyone above the age of 17 actually watches), all in the afternoon. The game maker can bitch and moan about the kids not buying it now, but it shouldn't have been given the rating in the first place. They knew what they were doing.

People can say that parents should be held accountable, but they can't watch their kids all the time (i.e. at their friend's house), so a little help can be used. I say this, i'm the one who's spent the last 5 months working with kids, and seeing parents interact, and I can tell you one thing: Kids are sneaky little fuckers. If they want to play something, and its accessible in anyway, they'll find a way to access it. So just saying that parents need to watch their kids more isn't going to cut it. Just as they can't really shield their kids from learning about sex by watching Friends, a show that everyone thinks is wonderful and grand, they can't completely keep their kids from playing crap.

Now, I also see the fact that the scene's are inacessible unless you are the hacker. The code is still there. Why did they put it in? If they had just left it out, it probably would still be M for mature.

I also think its funny that the guy who is all hot and in arms about politicians right now, didn't seem to care so much during the election. THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD CARE.

So summation of my views, there's more to this than black and white, they're trying to prevent escalation of this stuff making into video games, the game maker isn't completely innocent, don't snap judge parents until you try to raise kids, and Olson has finally found an issue he can get behind.

Re: My long rebuttal... please excuse the sarcasm.

"Now, I also see the fact that the scene's are inacessible unless you are the hacker. The code is still there. Why did they put it in? If they had just left it out, it probably would still be M for mature."

it was in because someone wrote it thinking it would be a part of hte game. it would have been a shitload more work to completely remove the code afterwards, rather than just remove whatever referenced it to begin with.
it's like deleting one page on a website, line by line, vs deleting the link to it. deleting the link is faster.

of course that doesn't explain why they considered having it to begin with, but oh well

I don't think I'm snap judging raising kids at all. I'm simply arguing against America's response when some kid gets a gun and shoots up his school. America blames video games, rock and roll, or whoever they feel like, without once holding the parents accountable.

In general, I think I have a very good idea on how difficult it is to raise kids, well as least as good idea as it is possible to have without having any myself. I'm getting married in two months and I've thought about that a lot since kids usually follow after marriage. Most of my coworkers are two to five years older than me and tell me daily the frustrations of young kids. I can say they I want to wait a few years, because I am not ready to commit to the time, the patience, and loss of money that goes with being a parent.

In this case, as part of Sid's explanation, the programmers included it in the original code, and that idea got axed, and very likely so the game can maintain a M rating. The manner of how they locked it is a perfectly accpetable industry standard. Why they thought of it in the original code does not matter, call it artistic freedom. If people are willing to pay for their games then have the right to make it. Video games are not required to have any sort of educational value, or teach any values. That being said, I don't think anyone under the age of 14 should be playing the game, and if there is a law that says a store can be fined for selling to an underage person then it should be enforced, otherwise it should be repealed.

i see what you're saying. i just think its funny when people say, "the parents should just watch their kids more". Sometimes kids just want to misbehave, and while you should still punish their asses off for it, there just isn't much you can do to prevent it.

When I was younger, I saw my sister and how she got married at 23 and had her first kid at 26, and I thought, "that's the perfect age to do everything".


i look at it now and say "helllllllllllll no. i want my stomach to look this way a few more years"....

to which i say, "Man Heather, you are too damn selfish right now to be having kids if all you can think about is your stomach".