Don't you hate reruns?

Me, too. And yet here one is from the very early days of the blog. Someone hit on it through Google today and I re-read it. I thought it was funny, and back then I think I had like two daily readers, so I figure it might be new for some of y'all:

Politics: First Person non-Shooter, from the Brady Bunch..

The bedwetters at The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence have launched their *ahem* way cool online FP(n)S game to teach kids that guns are bad, h'mkay?

This cutting edge video game, with its hip and in-touch text and edgy graphics, was obviously designed by socially maladroit types, who left it oozing with an odd mix of Leave It To Beaver-type obsequiousness towards adults not seen in real kids in living memory, and a gawky attempt at modern coolness: By making "right decisions" every time you are confronted with a gun in the story, you get a token to use in the virtual video games at the mall. Said virtual video games compare unfavorably with Pong in the entertainment and sophistication departments, which is a sad way to reward the few kids (or masochistic bloggers) with attention spans long enough to slog through all the improbable situations it takes to get to the arcade in the first place.

At least they didn't force my first-person avatar to be some faintly-homoerotic, square-jawed guy with a craggy chin and Polish surname. Oh, no, I got to pick from a whole rainbow of little boy and girl homunculi (none of which had blond hair and blue eyes, so I couldn't actually pick one that looked like me.) I went to virtual school, finked on my virtual friend Juan for the gun in his locker (young Juan was, oddly, chided for his heater by the principal, rather than being proned out by a SWAT team), wandered to the mall to meet my differently-abled friend, where we found a gun and properly alerted the nearest Mall Ninja. For making these two "Correct Decisions", I got to play two video games so dull they made me wish we hadn't forked over the gun to the rent-a-cop so I could turn it on myself.

The absolute best part? The Brady Center has wasted all this time and effort on this corny game to teach kids Three Things to Do when they see a gun. Can you guess what those three things are? That's right: Stop, don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult. Where have we heard that before? Well, I suppose that, when trying to come up with gun safety instructions for kids, one could do worse than ripping them off from someone who knows about guns.

Anyway, my verdict? This is positively the dumbest, most tedious video game since Sierra's mega-flop, Outpost. Anybody who thinks that the kiddies are going to tear their eyes away from Halo, Medal of Honor, or Day of Defeat long enough to listen to this drek should have their cranium examined to make sure it still contains anything."

Meanwhile, I'll just be putting the final polish to today's natterings...