Just about everyone has had this happen. You're playing a game like Monopoly  Risk, or Life with complicated rules, someone will always start arguing the rules in an effort to win when they're behind. Well, with games like Dungeons and Dragons where the rules take up three 200+ page books. Rules arguments are an endemic problem. So much so that the Gamer Community has come up with a name for the phenomenon. Rules Lawyer, now being a Gamer myself when I read this Webcomic yesterday I started laughing a big huge belly laugh.

Dork Tower Comic for Monday May 12th.

Today I was reading an article on Common Dreams about how much people hate corporations with statistics and links. The article, while good, isn't anything special. It was when I reached the comments that I blew up. There are several comments about "if they don't like it why don't they just vote with their dollars and not buy stuff from the corporations." Which just plain pisses me off. It's a stupid and condescending argument. The fact of the matter is, only the rich can ", vote with their dollars." The rest of us don't make enough.

I've been playing Video Games for my entire life. I remember playing math games on my stepfathers Apple II C when I was about five. Pitfall, Super Mario Brothers, Wolfenstien 3d, Doom, Descent, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, Katamari Damacy, Kingdom Hearts, Mass Effect, I've played them all. My 62 year old stepfather spends most of his free time sitting at his computer playing Video Games, and I'm not talking about solitaire, I mean Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Freelancer, Wing Commander, Advent Rising, ect. For a little while my 17 year old sister, my stepfather, and my 28 year old self were all playing the same game. The free MMORPG Tales of Pirates.

Penny Arcade posted a wonderful strip a few weeks ago that I think illustrates the point that I'm trying to get at perfectly. Video Games have become an intrinsic part of our culture.

The human mind is like a computer (an analog computer which is why it isn't all that accurate, but the recent scientific research actually bears this out). Language, Religion, and Culture form our operating system. They shape how our minds accept and process information. Now, I am a member of a steadily increasing minority. Wiccans who were actually raised as Wiccans. Because of the relative youth of Modern Wicca, most of the people who are Wiccans converted as adults. Now, with absolutely no disrespect to those who have found Wicca. Since their minds operating system was fully developed when they found Wicca, they still sometimes tend to see the world from their old perspective. I don't, I always see the world from a Wiccan perspective. Not that a Wiccan perspective is all that set in stone. After all, if you ask five different Wiccans what Wicca is about you will get twelve different answers. But, it does make for the fact that I'm completely unable to understand some of the concepts that are taken for granted in our majority Christian society. For instance, I can not wrap my mind around the concept of Damnation.

I've spent most of my working life as a Cashier. It isn't often that someone who is unemployed is grateful for that status. But, right now I'm extremely grateful that I'm not working yet another "Holiday Season." I've worked four "Holiday Seasons" and it's a literal nightmare. Once at a department store, twice at a discount store (not naming names but think of T's and J's and you can guess it), and most recently at a grocery store. Out of the three stores the grocery store was the most pleasant. Mostly because people aren't as stressed out by holiday grocery shopping as they are when shopping for presents.

I'm poor. Which of course means that I've got bad credit. It's a little hard to have good credit when you have to decide whether to pay the phone bill or the garbage collection bill this month. I also tend to notice the subtextual messages in commercials. Things like cleaning makes women happy (Swifter sweeper), men can't cook (Campbell's soup), and that the only purpose of women is to have an orgasm over body spray (Axe). It's a bad habit I picked up from my mother. Well, those freecreditreport.com commercials have been running a lot around here. You know, the extremely offensive ones with the crappy band. They really piss me off because the message in them isn't even left to the subtext. The main character flat out states that he has a crappy job and lives in the basement of his in-laws house because of bad credit. Feck, he even states that he should have dumped his wife before they married because of her credit.

When I was a Junior in High School, I once had to cross a police cordon in order to go to school. It wasn't the school that was cordoned off, it was my house. There had been a shooting the night before. I was sleeping at the time and I'm a very heavy sleeper so I didn't know anything about it until it was time to go to school. While I didn't know the victim, I'd hung out with his younger brother a few times. His sister had been the little trouble maker that repeatedly pranked my house. Heh, I remember when we first moved in to the house we learned that we had to keep the doors locked or she'd wander in. The victim of the shooting had just had a baby. Since my mother was an out of the broom closet Wiccan. The victim and his family had asked her over in order to read the cards for the baby. The victim had been a close friend of someone that I'm still friends with to this day. When I was at school that day one of my classmates told me that the victim was her cousin. I told her that I hoped he'd be okay. But he died from his wounds that night.

Now why had the victim been shot? Because, he was a Drug Dealer. It had been a gang dispute. They did catch his killer and put him away.

Every spring they come out (well, considering that they actually start appearing in February, every winter) . The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies. When you look at them they look solid. They also can be quite huge, leaving the impression that they weigh more than they actually do. But, with the first bite from them, they begin to crumble in your hands. I've started thinking of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies as a great metaphor for our economy.

I just read a great article by Joe Conason called Why ‘Socialism’ Evokes No Fear. While the article is about why calling a Universal Health Care plan "Socialized Medicine" doesn't scare anyone anymore. The best point that Joe Conason makes in the article is that the fear of the Communists is an archaic fear.

I have always hated ADs on TV. Well, maybe not always, but certainly since I was a teenager. And as Jim Hightower pointed out in last Friday's article TV ads are next to impossible to escape from. From the restaurant to the specialty shop, why even in the grocery store, there are TVs blaring Ads. Feck, there are even ads on PBS nowadays. My big question is though, why do we even allow advertising on TV to begin with?

So far all of the diary's that I've posted have been serious. Time for something that's more fun. Pet pictures!!!

Like many other people I have a puppy. Happy is a very good little guy. This is him about a month ago.

About three weeks ago I received a letter from the local Department of Social Services. The letter stated that I had to be at the local DSS office  (which is located in a former high school) on this date at 9:30 in the morning in order to continue receiving Food Stamps. Of course they didn't need any information that I couldn't just mail to them. I arrived at 9:10. The first thing I did was take my pocket and belt knives out and leave them in the car. When I entered the building there was the longest line at the metal detectors that I have ever seen when coming to this building. The County Sheriff's that were manning the security checkpoint directed me to the auditorium.

Thanks to Eric Massa Daily Kos readers are fairly familiar with NY's-29'th congressional district. So the facts that the area is economically devastated and very conservative are known on this site. Now in an earlier diary I covered why the area is so conservative. The reason why the area is so economically devastated doesn't need a whole diary to itself. Elmira was always an transportation hub. First as part of the Erie canal system, then as part of the railroad system. The decline of the railroads hit the local economy hard. The population and economy have both been in a steady decline since the 1960's. The question then becomes, if the economy is so bad why is it that anyone still lives there? While some of the answer is the cost of moving. I can personally tell you that even though the economy is bad I would never move because I love the area so much. Besides, I kind of suspect that with the way things are going, it's only a matter of time until the whole country's economy resembles that in Elmira, NY. The place in NY-29 that I live in.

Welfare Bums, Poor White Trash, Rednecks, Hillbillies, and Trailer Trash. Isn't it amazing how many insults we have for the poor, especially poor whites? While two of those words have been claimed by the very people that they are used to denigrate much in the same way that many blacks have claimed the "N" word.  In that it's not an insult when used by those inside the group, but it's a serious insult from anyone who's outside of the group. It doesn't change the fact that there is a core of hatred in those phrases.

I live in Elmira, NY. My family has been in Elmira and the surrounding area for well over a hundred years. Elmira is part of the 29th congressional for New York State. So yes, this is the district that Eric Massa has been trying to get elected in. Though, this isn't a Massa diary. Eric will be mentioned occasionally because he's become a major political player on the Democratic side, so it's hard for me as a liberal to talk about Elmira's politics without mentioning him.

I know it was seven years ago. I also know that I'll probably get a few flames for stating that I voted for Nader. I never understood that, I don't even get angry at people who voted for Shrub.

    What is the lowest that you have ever been? For me it's been a year since I hit rock bottom. Or to be exact, it's been a year since I spent three days in the "Behavioral Services" unit at the local hospital.

I admit that I haven't been registered here very long. But I've been on the internet since about 1994. I'm starting to get tired of certain types of discussions always being hi-jacked.
There are a few things that I would really like to see...