An exercise in desensitisation?

"... But you just killed a soldier," I tell my sons and nephew who naturally find fine bonding by staying glued to the TV monitor and go on a shooting spree on their computer game named 'Call of Duty'.

"But they are baddies, German soldiers!" they reply. I retorted, "..they are also somebody's son, husband, brother and father. Somebody is going to grow up without a father and is going to a psychological wreck!"

Before the time when games were on hand held devices, in the late 80s (1989), my house mate who was performing the unenviable lonely but essential anaesthetic service in a district hospital, was a lone wolf in a small town where the siren of the ambulance is the only excitement. To maintain his own sanity, my friend used to periodically visit a gaming shop to have his daily dose of radiation from the consoles of Sega panels. After killing loads of baddies and aliens, he would return rejuvenated, like having a shot in the arm, like back from a vacation, ready to face what may in his next call of duty. He is still doing it now, after all these years. The only difference now is that, with Samsung Galaxy Note II, he can play his Temple Runs and Subway Surfer anywhere anytime. 

The proponents of advancement of gaming industry will boasts that it is bigger than Hollywood and that it improves hand eye coordination and so on. Some even promote it to improve surgical skills in key hole surgery!

But then, the stories of able bodies being transformed to unshaven, unkempt, social outcast, immersed into the stroboscopic lights of the Internet games depending on fast food and pampers to answer biological needs does not augur well to promote it as technology next! Loss in social interactions and desensitisation to gore, blood, violence as well to death makes it a real possibility that this addiction may indeed turn out us to zombies, just like the zombies they intended to kill! Are we heading towards a world where empathy and feeling others' pain like feeling the pain endured by The Lord who sent his only Son to die on the cross to wash the sins of Man? Is the recent apathy towards an accident victim toddler in China testimony to this end?

Angered by Angry Birds

It looks like in a cycle of every 10 years, someone from some corner of the world will come up with some droll characters which will be personified with human characters and cute aesthetically pleasing features and the world by storm. At the end of the day, it would be aimed at reaping financial benefits out of it. That is always the bottom- line, is it not - $, £, ¥ and €?
In the 1980s, it was the irritating pink female feline kitten which ruled the world. Suddenly, it was Hello Kitty everywhere! There were even shops selling only Hello Kitty merchandise - dresses, slippers, make-up, night gowns, accessories, you name it. I suppose even before that people used to have to fetish for domesticated hairy bears fondly named Teddy after Theodore Roosevelt! And the China Dolls, of course now it means something else...or Japanese porcelain dolls ala Chucky!
Just for information, as of 2003, Sanrio, the Japanese company who designed this Kitty, was earning USD 1billion annually.
Then in the 1990s, it was the reign of the violent Pikachu characters of the digital Pocket Monsters (Pokemon). Maybe, because they were Eastern in origin and came out at the correct time when computer games was at an embryonic state and had the world by storm, many sore loser hurled many brickbats against them. The Christians, Jews and Moslems discouraged people of faith to embrace into its cult-like practices of violence, albeit being just a mirage! If that is not enough to add to their list of problems, some children started having seizures after watching one of their stroboscopic red and blue lighted episodes on TV and it had to be discontinued. 2 kids in Japan filed a legal suit blaming Pokemon for making compulsive gamblers.
Not to be left out in the race for cute animal craze of the world which had been dominated by the Japanese all this while, a Finnish company managed to capture the hearts of the pet-figure deprived population of the world with their computer game called Angry Birds. Suddenly you see people wearing T-shirts bearing the grouchy irritated faces of these avian species and carrying balloons with their caricature! The whole aim of the Angry Birds' game is for the birds to destroy the hiding place of the pigs to retrieve their eggs which were stolen from them, hence their anger!
So, download the application on your i-phones (intelligent phones) and degenerate your brain cells in the process and kill your precious time  in this time deprived fast world as if you have so much of them. Hurt your joints, dim your vision, have a headache, be a recluse, be addicted and basically use your skills to hurl things at pigs like a bird brained loonie! Enjoy...