Mario, Get Yer Guns

What are the odds I will go off subject in this post? Still, I will try.  After reading yet another article calling yet another videogame a "burglary sim", I had to put pen to blog.  Why? Because its lazy journalism, sloppy and winds me up. Hell, the same could be thrown at television but for some peculiar reason we don't do that.
I don't watch television but from the clips I've seen on the interwebz and things I hear on forums, nothings changed from when I did used to watch it. Scheming, plots, adultery, revenge, murder, and bloodshed. Its all there, played out by glamorous women and guys with chiselled physiques. Gotta look your best when you're knee deep in sin right?
And so it goes that videogames have followed that same path. Those age restrictions on the box aren't there to make the case look pretty, videogames have matured and its illegal for soft parents to give in ("for ten minutes peace") and buy wee Jimmy a shooter with a bloody big red 18 stamped on the box. Is that ten minutes peace really worth a hefty fine? Dont think it doesn't happen because it does (more often than you'd care to think).
So we have a burglary sim now do we? What about Grand Theft Auto? Armed robbery sim? Dishonored? A murder sim?
These are games fer Crissakes, but the way some journalists describe them make them sound like guides on how to raise hell for real. One of my current favourite videogames is Thief, a game where, yep you guessed it, you skulk around an 18th century London inspired city, pilfering gold watches and clubbing hapless city guards over the noggin. But I don't play the game to train as a cat burglar, anymore than a fan of 24 watches the show in hope of becoming a CIA agent (or whatever the heck Kiefer Sutherland is meant to be).
And what frustrates me more is that I read this on a gaming website not the Daily Mail  (where one expects such petty sniping). Honestly, videogames have become a massive business in these last few years and deal with mature subjects. Can't we be at least as responsible when writing about them?

Second Chance Saloon

So footballer Ched Evans is freed from prison after serving half of a five year sentence for rape. You read that right: rape. And due to the nonsense from his teams fans, his victim has had to get a new identity and move away. Now I like to think I'm a fair man, people screw up and they deserve a second chance. But there exists a group of crimes so heinous and vile, that allowing for a second chance is is something not easily given.
And sexual offences are among the. Evans hasn't even acknowledged his crime and carries on as if nothing happened. He'll just go back to his thousands of pounds a week job while the victim has had to change her life completely. Football, indeed most sport, are funny old things. If you bang in the goals and bring home those trophies, you can get away with anything. And this isn't jealousy over his mega wage, the guy is now a convicted rapist and if I was a supporter of his club, I wouldn't want him playing again. But then I wouldn't put anything past knuckle dragging supporters, success is all, despite having a rapist in the team.
How Evans can even show his face again is beyond me. If it were me, I'd lock myself in my home and never show my face again. The thought of appearing in front of a stadium filled with thousands of people wouldn't cross my mind. But then people like murderers and rapists aren't like us. There's not a shred of remorse or decency in their bones.
Supporters who are standing by him ought to be ashamed of themselves.