In your face, Chiang Kai-Shek!

I was as surprised as anyone when I learned I had been voted Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2006. After all, no one expects to win awards for sitting on their rapidly expanding backsides for 22 years, but I'm not complaining. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to join the esteemed ranks of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Nikita Krushchev, The Computer, George W. Bush and Middle America.

All-pervasive religion

The BBC reports on the inevitable controversy caused by Left Behind: Eternal Forces, the latest attempt by the church to project a 'cool' and 'hip' image of religion. The piece is pretty much par for the course - liberals calling the game a recruitment tool for religious warfare, with conservatives countering that liberals aren't very good Christians and fully deserve to burn in the depths of Hell for all eternity. Like I said, par for the course.

However, Left Behind: Eternal Forces isn't the only religious video game doing the rounds. The Global Islamic Media Front refuses to be - for lack of a better term - left behind its sworn enemy. They have released a game called Quest for Bush, in which players aim to kill the US president. With a title like that, it could very well have involved a bunch of sex-starved college freshmen looking for some luuurve, but as it turns out, the game is a straight shoot-em-up and the only bushes involved are Dubya and some shrubbery. Sources say the title's literal translation from Arabic is 'Night of Bush Hunting', which to be honest is just as bad, if not worse.

Oh to be young and stupid - REAL stupid

The passing years tend to mature the vast majority of us, however hard we may try to hold onto the last vestiges of our youth. From personal experience, 21 is a peculiar age - not quite old enough to discuss the wider socio-political consequences of paper production in Southern Latvia, and not quite young enough to hang out with teenagers. It's an age of deep introspection, a unique opportunity to compare the lives we once had with the lives we are about to embark on, Latvian paper industry and all. Quite often I see today's teenagers doing things that neither my peers nor I would ever have dreamed of, dismissing it immediately as immature and stupid. Yet it wasn't that long ago that we ourselves belonged to that group of immature kids. Surely times haven't changed that much?

That's when I read the New Zealand Herald and found that underage drink driving is still very much in fashion amongst today's teens. Tragic it may be, but it also provided a degree of perverse reassurance. While I was too lazy to actually get a licence during my own years as a hormone-heavy pimple monster, and therefore unable to take part in this most hallowed of rituals, I knew my fair share of drunk drivers. Of course, none of them actually had any accidents. Not quite the case this time. Sixteen year old Rae Rae (!) didn't just crash his car into a lamp post following a police chase, he also managed to injure his sister and girlfriend in the process. I'm not quite sure what he was expecting, driving at 180 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, but he soon found out that lamp posts are, well, pretty solid. Still, I'm sure he has learned from his mistake. No more drinking and driving for you, right Rae Rae?

"I would do it again but with no-one in the car besides me. I would drink and drive again with just me in the car," Rae told National Radio.

See? No more drinking and....WHAAAAAAAAA? So a police pursuit at 180 km/h, followed by a crash, an engine fire and severe injuries to your loved ones isn't enough to deter you from driving drunk? Man, your mum is going to be so pissed.

Rae's mother told National Radio she gave her son alcohol and would not be punishing him.

"Every time I told him not to drink too much but he don't listen. He ignore it," she said.

"I don't blame him because he was working hard. He needs something to relax."

Oh for Pete's sake lady, throw me a bone! I've got nothing to work with! You know a glass of warm milk can be just as relaxing, right? And research suggests it might actually be a wee bit better for the young lad than copious amounts of booze. What he needs to relax him now is a good ol' fashioned ass-whooping.

Holocaust conference opens

A conference that will examine whether or not the Holocaust really happened is underway in Iran. The two-day summit is to be followed by a debate titled "Babies - Where Do They Come From?"


Side note: It's good to be back blogging after a lengthy break. I could try and explain why I've been away, but Scott Carney has already done it for me.