From: SSAA, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Although this article pales in comparison to the gang violence perpatrated on many women recently in NYC Central Park, one has to wonder where those thugs went to school. I think I know - read on . . . a news article that was in the Times-Herald Record several days ago. The T-H Record is a tri-state paper out of Middletown, NY, with a large circulation. You may contact the reporter, Oliver Mackson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************* Worry about arcades, not NRA eatery. By: Oliver Mackson Hear that shrieking? It's the New York City Council having a conniption because the National Rifle Association wants to build a theme restaurant in Times Square. One thing you can always find in this space is a creative solution to a serious problem. If New York City doesn't want it, let the NRA build its restaurant Up Here. Because a restaurant with a virtual skeet-shooting gallery is a peace rally at a Quaker retreat when compared to what your kids can find at a video arcade. I went to the Cyber Station at the Galleria mall near Middletown to get caught up on what's happened to video games since the days of Space Invaders. Even if your kids are the nice, polite, well adjusted kids like my boss's relatives, Emily and Carmine, this is what they're into these days: Games in which kids shoot bad guys off the Tower of London and watch their twitching, bleeding bodies drop into the Thames River. Games that have kids whacking green aliens in the head with a mallet. And Carmine's favorite, a game in which he drove an 18 - wheeler at 90 mph down the Jersey Turnpike as he slammed into rival truckers all the way to Florida. Not to mention the martial arts game in which Emily, 10, virtually kicked a sumo wrestler right smack in his virtual groin, causing him to bounce up and down in a way that made me virtually ill. There's also "House of The Dead 2", which calls for spattering the dripping bodies of evil dead folks. And there's "CarnEvil", which carries a warning sign, or maybe it's a lure, about "lifelike violence." Here's a transcript of Carmine as he blew away evildoers: "That guy's dead." "Got im, right in the head." "Ooh, I just blew up a car." Carmine is 11. Every game he played at Cyber Station, he played at home. "I like violent games," he said matter-of-factly. I looked around, expecting to see Senator Chuck Schumer swooping in to make sure those lifelike guns were equipped with lifelike trigger locks. Nope. He was busy joining the New York City Council in its sputtering conniption about NRA's idea. The NRA is saying they'll serve roasted game birds. Big deal. You can get them in Chinatown and nobody protests. The NRA restaurant will also have a virtual skeet shooting gallery; skeet is clay birds meant to simulate game birds. So, the city council in New York is wigging out about a restaurant where you can order roasted birds and shoot virtual guns at electronic representation of clay disks meant to simulate birds. Those politicians sound like their heads are filled with poor simulations of brains. I'm not a member of NRA. But I hope they put that restaurant up here. That would give New York's politicians time to examine something that really merits a conniption. Something like the video games their kids are playing from Times Square to Middletown, the ones where you get points for splattering people instead of shattering clay disks. -------[Cybershooters contacts]-------- Editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website & subscription info: www.cybershooters.org
