Today's Word...

Is still "Lid," so no new entry.

Rich Man, Poor Man.

A bit of compare and contrast.

First, I hope this game kills the thug genre dead. I hope it salts the earth so no developer goes within 20 miles of another like-minded title. I understand there's violence in mass media entertainment, but I have never seen it glorified in such a way, especially in gaming. This is what titles like GTA hath wrought, and it's time the whole damn genre withers and fades. Anti-social bloodletting is not entertainment.

Second, I point you to the latest in a series on the working poor that the newspaper I work at it doing. In this installment, we learn what's been creeping to public consciousness for a while (but no lawmaker wants to admit): one catastrophic illness can devastate a middle class family, plunging them into the frightening jungle of bankruptcy, an arena about to be made more lethal by the Dickensesque changes from the recently passed bankruptcy bill.

While 50 Cent has every legal right to take his violent swagger into world of gaming, there's something karmically sick about a celebrity who extols violence getting wealthy and famous beyond measure while people who obey the rules and work hard get screwed because someone in their family got sick.