Grace: It Would Never Have Perished if It Weren't for You Meddling Kids!

"Children: can't live with 'em, can't live with 'em! Can't you see that!?" 

Robin Williams (or whoever he stole the material from >.>)

Truer words were never spoken. Ever. :P

I have never been a fan of anyone between the ages of 7 and 13 with access to the internet. The demographic carries with it the misfortune of being represented, at least in part, by verbally impotent, intellectually deficient loudmouths with no sign of respect and no thought to spare. I'm well aware of the fact that kids need to learn that it's polite not to be a total douchebag when talking to someone -- that's just part of growing up -- but doesn't that shit happen when they're, like, 5? 6, maybe? I know I was taught that shit way before I got my hands on a keyboard and mouse, and I was roughly the same age when internet access first came in to our house. Of course, everyone outside of the demo is slightly to blame, with kids being exposed to this and being led to believe it's a totally appropriate way to talk to someone you just met; but sometimes, you just know the kid's a total dick, and I've had one of those incidents recently.

Keep in mind that I used to be a pretty hot-headed person, and would go off at the first sight of idiocy or ignorance, irrespective of the guilty party's age. I soon realised that this was a rather extreme way to act, and while I still cringe and curse when I see people asking dumbarse questions in YouTube comments or personal messages that Google could answer in a godforsaken millisecond, the cursing is only heard by the walls in my house -- now, I simply tell them to "look it up" without going apeshit. There was this one kid this week who sent me 4 or 5 PM's on YouTube asking "where do you get [sticker]", "where do you get the tool bag for create mode", "where do you get the clank level i have the game of the year edition and i cant find it". It's not the absence of spelling or grammar that gets me; it's the fact that research skills are seemingly lacking in today's young. I doubt it was this bad before computers -- I betcha anything that kids back then weren't this empty up top. They knew: wanna know what a word means? Dictionary. Wanna know other words for that word? Thesaurus. Wanna know the capital of the Dominican Republic? Atlas. Wanna speed this shit up and get with the times? Google. That, however, is pretty excusable; what I'm about to recite is not :P

Somebody sent me a friend request on the PSN: "I want to be your friend" or something to that effect was in the message. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, I get those from time to time, but I don't add anyone on the PSN. I don't really care if he knew or not, and there's nothing to be angry about, so I just tell him what I tell everyone else who sends me a friend request on the PSN:

"I don't add anyone on the PSN, sorry."

That is word for word what I send as a reply to anyone who sends me a friend request and is nice enough to write something in the message space (empty friend requests are just sad -- at this point, the kid is in my good books). His reply:

"i'm ur fan and you say this to me"

...yes, I do say this to him, and to everyone else who sends me a request. I don't owe him anything -- I have fun making videos and getting some attention, he gets free entertainment. It's a more-than-reasonable exchange. No need to bring that shit up with him though; I'll just explain my response:

"i say this to everyone who wants to add me -- i can't add everyone who asks, and i don't have the time to play with you, so there's no point in me adding you"

Seriously: there isn't. I'm on rarely as it is, and when I am online, I opt to play alone more often than not. His reply:

"then why did you add luisbravo1?"

Perfectly reasonable question, deserving of an answer:

"that was years ago back when I wasn't busy, and it was to make a video with him"

His reply:

"please add me Bludgaboy i want a friend that is cool. just plz add me i'm begging u :("

...a-a-a-and here's where it all starts going downhill :P  This implies that any existing friends this kid has are, in his eyes, not cool. How rude is that, man!? Kids say shit like this all the time, but wow! Gotta end this quickly:

"why should i add you and no one else that asks? that's not fair. please just accept the fact"

This is part of my reasoning behind my decision not to add anyone, regardless of who they are: one stranger gets rejected because there's no point in me adding them, so does everyone else. If I pick and choose which random friend requests to accept and reject, it'll just serve to piss the rejected ones off. This way, it's nothing personal.

He left me alone for about a week, then sent me this cavalcade of irritation:

"Plz add me Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz Plz"

For those of you too lazy to count: 32 instances of the abbreviation collaborated on that project. What does copy/pasting "plz" go to show (they wouldn't all be capital P's if he didn't copy/paste... or at least tried to cover his tracks :P)? It's just silly, right?

"you can beg all you like, it's only making you look immature"

Harsh, but true. His reply:

"its not fair to be friends with venemo X luisbravo1 and everyone else"

1st: I am not friends with "everyone else" -- way to exaggerate :P

2nd: How is it not fair to be friends with Persons A and B, and not Person C? Maybe I don't like Person C! I am under no obligation to be friends with everyone who talks to me! If this is true, then one of two things is true: either I have to be friends with everyone, or have no friends at all!

3rd: Much like Luis, I added VenemoX a while back, and we knew each other on YouTube ever farther back. We were actual friends, so I added him (or him me, whatever :P). I've said this before, and I'll say it again: someone you know being in a "friends list" does not mean they are your friend. Also, I'm not friends with Luis; more of an acquaintance. We never speak to each other; how does that constitute friendship?

Kids think a "friend" is just someone they know, and I'm not gonna fuck with the kid's head for the sake of a label correction, so once again, I just tried to get this over with once and for all:

"i added those people *years* ago, before i stopped adding people. i have hardly any other people on the PSN i'm friends with. please, *please* stop this, or i'll just block you"

A-a-a-and now, the moment you've all been waiting for:

"f*** u"

WOAH WOAH WOAH Woah woah! F*** me? F*** me!? Hot diggity damn -- someone's gonna f*** me! Come on, people -- if you're gonna get down and dirty with the English language, at least have the balls to say the word rather than letting a bunch of asterisks do the work for ya :P

"calm down, grow up, and get over it, dude. i wouldn't want someone so rude and immature in my friends list even if i *did* add people"

Note how I'm yet to crack? No need to: he already has :P

"shut up u fuckin ass hole ADD ME!"

No "f*** me"? Is that girl still up for it? I know I am... *drools*. Anyways, enough perversion. Apart from the fact that "ass hole" is one word and not two, do you notice anything else wrong with this message? Anything at all? I sorta noticed something, might not actually be something, but, um... see how he called me a "fuckin ass hole"... then, right next to that, he demands that I add him? Do you get that? I don't.

I don't add people because I don't want to be obliged to add every single person who asks; I also don't add people so I can avoid future contact with anyone like this :P

EDIT:

"i dont want to be in your vids i just want to add u"

-and I just want this kid to get the message, but it would appear no-one's getting what they want. I don't think there's any hope with this kid. Just send his resume to Taco Bell and get him the fuck away from the PlayStation :P

EDIT 2:

More kids sending me friend requests? Yes, more kids sending me friend requests.

Some other kid kept asking me to be his friend and sent me a friend request every time I rejected the previous one. Eventually, he asked me to give him DLC; all became crystal clear from that point onwards :P  Go buy your own DLC, stingy prick.

I had another kid send me a friend request just saying "add me", which I responded to in the same way I always do. Logged on this morning to find another "please please please please please" marathon. Kudos for using the full word rather than the contracted version, but it doesn't give you that much credit :P

Assemblies: Now With Added Relevance

Picture this: you're standing in front of 800 people, about to address them. No one knows what you're going to do; they know you're going to say something, but only a select few have any real insight as to what you plan to spout. You're nervous, and rightly so; you could get in trouble! You could fall in to a hole too tall to climb out of! You could fall so far that any hope of seeing daylight again would be totally and utterly destroyed by the inbound darkness! You could get in to some deep shit -- real deep shit -- but you are determined to get up there and speak. The previous speaker gives you the microphone, and the audience expects just another message, only to be met with an unusual and seemingly random comment about a linguistic folly, then a joke about a fence. The audience is now laughing and cheering harder than you could ever imagine (you didn't think it was that funny) as the big boss takes the microphone from you, proceeding to talk for 5 minutes about how it's wrong to waste people's time.

This was me at 11:15 this morning.

To make that a lot clearer for those of you who don't attend my educational facility, what I've just described was this weeks installment of our weekly assembly, and it differed from the norm in the fact that I got up and made a political comment regarding our (Australia's) indigenous culture and its acknowledgment, as well as a crack about a fence that's being installed all the way around the facility I attend. This was met with an incredible and seemingly unbelievable reaction from my audience, as well as disapproval from our facility's head honcho. 15 seconds of applause and a 10 minute one-on-one talk with the aforementioned honcho is a fair price to pay for a minute of stage time :P I'm a (wannabe :P) comedian: when I see 800 people sitting and listening to the reproduction of the sound traveling in to a microphone that it seems just about anyone is allowed to use for a minute or so, what the fuck do they expect me to do?

I'll put the two comments in context; the first comment deals with indigenous relations in my country. At each public gathering that any government body oversees, a representative reads aloud the "Acknowledgement to Country," a passage that (supposedly) recognises the former sole residents of this country -- the British colonised the country in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and needless to say, the indigenous people didn't have much fucking input :P  This is all well and good -- at least, in theory, provided the intention is to advance indigenous reconcilement rather than just being a doohickey that relieves the government of guilt -- and I support this acknowledgement, however, its wording is poor. The expression I question is the part where the indigenous people are referred to as the "owners" of the land, which, according to documented history, they are not; they believed the land to be an entity that they were one with, not a commodity to be bought, sold or exploited. Ownership is a European term and a European concept; thus, I see no place for it in such an acknowledgement -- to quote George Carlin: "...we do think in language, and so the quality of our thoughts and ideas can only be as good as the quality of our language." This comment go no reaction, just as I expected, for it actually made the audience think for a goddamned second! They didn't see it coming, but it wasn't just to get the brains in the audience rolling; more was to follow :P

Comment two: the fence. As I mentioned before, there's a fence going up all the way around our little facility: the "vertical bar" variety in a nice shade of black. I think this too is stupid; not so much because of the fence's purpose -- to "keep out unwanted guests" according to the officials the project has been mandated by, but it's there just as much to keep students in; believe me :P -- but because of its look. No, the facility isn't an art project, but it looks shitty enough as it is: we've got this dull grey paint covering the buildings (installed after I started attending, covering an otherwise tolerable navy,) all the students are (expected to be :P) in uniform, and there are even bars covering some of the windows; does this place need to look more like a prison? It was this line that sparked my implicit dismissal as I was relieved of the microphone to the tune of uproarious applause; I hate to mention it repeatedly, but it was fucking insane! I expected a chuckle here and there, but nothing like what actually happened! This too probably spelled the end of my little tirade; God forbid the students hear and share the opinion of someone they can relate to :P

This was followed by head honcho going on about how the assembly isn't a platform for political commentary, and that such banter is a waste of time... what the fuck? I see people get up there week after week and spout all kinds of shit about women's rights and the third world -- important issues, no doubt -- but I can't take the piss out of a fence!? I can't comment on something more relevant to these people? Not to mention the fact she rambled on about this for five times the amount of time I spent with my little crusade; is that hypocrisy, or is that hypocrisy? Wanna make it clear that the assembly's time isn't to be wasted? SHUT UP AND GET ON WITH IT! I'd speak of the 10 minute conversation head honcho and I had afterwards... but we'd be here all day :P

What amazes me is the plethora of attention this has sparked in not only me and my "balls of steel," but the presented issues themselves. My friend tells me that Facebook is alive with conversation; mission completed! That was the whole fucking idea: to get people thinking! I won't lie: it was also an ego trip, and a damned good one -- it's not everyday you have students coming up to you telling you the materials out of which your testicles have been constructed in their metaphorical world :P If you're gonna get up and speak, I feel you should be proud of what you have to say and embrace it, not to mention stick behind it, even if your views have changed. Take it in -- you only live once! That, however, was just as much a goal as the discussion was, and if people are talking about these issues and taking an interest, my work is done. I don't want to tell people how to think; I want to encourage people to think, as well as make people laugh. Views need to be challenged to be developed, and that goes for me as much as anyone else. Got a problem? Speak up; something cool might happen!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a few drums of insta-dry rainbow paint to acquire :D