I was going to talk about the Howard Dean Presidential campaign today and my decision to volunteer for DC for Dean, but Tycho and Gabe over at Penny Arcade posted a recent editorial cartoon on the subject of videogame violence and the first amendment and their response, so decided I should throw in my two cents.

I know I’m belabouring the obvious, flogging a dead horse, and in all other ways descending into cliche, but I shall do so, as a public service to my reader(s). My message is simple: Parents, you are responsible for raising your children.

Remember when you were young, and you wanted a puppy, and your mom said, “Having a puppy is a big responsibility. You have to feed it, and paper-train it, walk it, play with it, and keep it safe. And it’s all yours and your dad and I aren’t going to help you.” But you really wanted a puppy to love and play fetch with and take to the park and show off to your friends, so you blocked out that part about feeding and paper-training and focused on the good stuff. Well kids are like that. Sure, they are cute and cuddily and loveable… about ten percent of the time. The rest of the time, they are a big pain in the ass. They can’t do anything for themselves, require constant attention and are in all ways a drain on your energy, resources and time. And unlike puppies, you can’t sell them in the Classifieds or take them to the animal shelter. Or, at least you shouldn’t.

I’m a perfect example. I am smart, funny, handsome, and by all recent accounts adorable as hell, and I would have hated to raise me. I was always dirty and hurting myself, whining about something, borrowing money, breaking toys and getting into trouble. I ate everything in the house and never cleaned my room. Michael and I pretty much drove my mother crazy, so much so that on several occasions she would go into her room and scream, “Don’t bother me unless you bleeding, dying, or throwing up!” My dad would come home an give us a firm talking to (which usually all that we needed) were he threatened to “jerk a knot in our heads”. To this day, I don’t understand why my parents just didn’t ditch me in the Wal-Mart Superstore and claim I was eaten by wild boars. I appreciate it, I just don’t understand it.

Doesn’t that suck? Yes it does. So the tact that many parents have adopted is to stick their kid in front of a videogame, or a television, or if they are lucky a full-time nanny. They aren’t involved in the kid’s life, don’t know who their friends are, don’t support them in their after-school activities, and are pretty happy to let the kids grownup on auto-pilot. They don’t guide their kids, help them make choices, say “no”,and then they act suprised and shocked when their kids go Columbine and murder their classmates.

The same people who in the sixties and seventies preached the gospel of “personal responsibility” are the same people who, as parents, start campaigns like the PMRC to get music censored, books banned and movies boycotted. These are the same people who rail against the degradation and degeneration of society.

Which brings us back to the editorial cartoon.

The crux of the cartoon is that game-makers are hiding behind the first amendment as an excuse to create obscene garbage. Which may be true. Honestly their are a few games out there that I would never play, and my tastes are almost impossible to offend.

But there is a flipside to the argument. Videogames are not games like Chutes and Ladders is a game. Videogames are works of commercial art, more akin to books and movies than a traditional boardgame; and much like movies, they carry warning labels and age restrictions which describe the contents and maturity level required to play the game. The ESRB is as powerful in the gaming world as the MPAA is in the film world. And in the same way that no responsible parent would allow their child to go see an R rated movie, no responsible parent would allow their child to play a game like Grand Theft Auto without looking at it first.

But alot of parents won’t do that. It’s infinitely more simple to abdicate your responsibility as a parent and look for someone to blame than to step up to the plate and admit that you made a big fucking mistake when you ignored your kid for most of their teenage life. These parents say, “Little Billy earned the money to buy that game, so he should be able to.” Bullshit. Unless your kid is pulling down five figures and doesn’t live at home, you can and should be paying attention to what they buy. I’m not saying that parents should pry — and in fact, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for staying out of my room — but parents should have a pretty fair idea of what their kids are up to — and I’d like to thank mom and dad for that too.

The thing is.. being a parent sucks. The hours suck. The pay sucks. It’s thankless. Being a parent is like paying to go to work. Parents take all the blame when something goes wrong and get none of the credit when things go right. It’s a job you can’t quit. Being a good parent doesn’t stop when your kids go off college. They are your kids for as long as you both are alive. So, if you aren’t ready for all of that, then do the world a favor and just don’t have kids.

And for all the good parents out there, and you know who you are…. thanks.

That’s it. I’m winded.

On Friday night, a friend of a friend went with a few of her girlfriends (yes, I know it’s confusing) to a local strip club. Sherry had never before visited a strip club, much less a male strip club, so she was a bit *ahem* unprepared for what she witnessed. Reports indicate that she was most curious about the large number of men at the strip club, and in fact, she and her friends were the only women in the room. Sherry, those men you saw were probably gay.

Hearing Sherry’s tale — the details of which don’t concern you — led me to recall my sole trip to a strip club, which I shall now recount for you.

(Before you start writing angry letters about the state of morality in America, please allow me to state for the record that I don’t generally go to strip clubs, for the same reason that I don’t watch pornography or go window shopping. I don’t enjoy perusing the sale racks when I know I won’t be taking anything home.

Pun intended.

Besides, if you want to start a letter-writing campaign let me suggest that you begin with the Hooters corporation. At least the strip club I went to had the decency to admit that it was a strip club. They didn’t bother to advertise themselves as family-dining establishment… but more on that later.)

What had happened was…

One Friday night many moons ago I met up with my friends Robert and Liz for dinner and drinks. At the restaurant we bumped into two of Liz’s ex-coworkers, Peter and Jacob, who apparently had a thing for Liz. (Don’t worry, the importance of this will become apparent in a few paragraphs.) Remember that guy you knew in high school who always had a scam, who always had something up his sleeve? That’s Jacob. Those kind of guys are great to hang out with because they are fun, but you never consider them friendly or trustworthy in the least.

Peter and Jacob invited Liz to hang out with them, and she invited Robert and I along to be her buffer, because she was not interested in this guy at all, and wanted to avoid as much weirdness as possible. (For the uninitiated, the purpose of the buffer is to run interference for your friend; to make sure that they stay out of trouble; and to ensure that they make it home safe and sound.) I am constantly asked to be someone’s buffer, because I’ve got a boyish grin and am everybody’s “good guy friend”. Whatever.

Anyway, these guys decide that they want to go to a strip club, and after a few minutes of refusals, I relented, partly because I had already signed on for buffer duty, but also because I’d never been to a strip club and I was more than a wee bit curious.

The record store, your house of worship, your favorite bar; these are places where you want to be known by name. The police station, the Emergency Room, a strip club; these are places where you do not want to be known by name, so I took it as a bad omen that Jacob was on a first name basis with the bouncer at Leather and Lace. We were shown to a corner table and the drinks and food began to come, courtesy of Jacob’s American Express card and unquenchable narcissism.

My mother told me to never take advantage of a stranger’s hospitality, but my father told me to never pass up a free meal, and as I can only assume that the logic also applies to drinks, Robert and I set ourselves to the task of making the night very expensive for Jacob and his Amex. He could have Liz’s number if he could get it, but it was going to cost him a more than a few dollars.

The thing about strip clubs is that they are designed to do one thing — facilitate the ogling of women — so even when you are sitting in the corner and chatting your friends, it’s almost impossible to avoid looking at the… entertainment. Not that I was trying terribly hard. After one dance, the stripper walked over to the table, gave Jacob a polite nip on the cheek and sat down next to me, as Robert and I exchanged curious glances.

I had no precedent, no grounding… I honestly didn’t know what to do. What would you do if a stripper finished her performance, threw on a bath robe, walked over to you and introduced herself? This protocol is definitely not covered by Miss Manners. I knew, I looked in the index. I recovered as best I could while Jacob made the introductions. I’m sure I mumbled something polite like “nice nipple ring”, but honestly I don’t recall. I was quite tired and flabbergasted.

Luckily(?), I had a few more opportunities to learn the protocol, as Jade (the stripper’s name was Jade) came over after every set to sit and chat. I learned a few life lessons that night, like it is ok to look at a stripper’s breasts if she’s sitting at your table. That’s kind of the whole point of the exercise, and you’re already sitting in a strip club, so restraint has pretty much taken a flyer. More importantly, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, there a three questions that you can ask to jump start the conversation between yourself and a nightclub dancer:

How did the night end you might ask? Jacob started to get a little rowdy with the staff and the other patrons, so Robert and I grabbed Liz (we were the buffers after all), stuffed her into a cab, then went our separate ways into the starry, naked city.