Found in the postscript to today’s story about the 27-year sentence for 270 Sniper Charles McCoy:

Another Franklin County jury might still hear about McCoy’s crimes.

Miami lawyer Jack Thompson stood beside Brent Knisley yesterday and said he plans to file a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of the family against the makers of violent adult video games, the kind that McCoy often played in the basement of his mother’s home.

Many of them involved shooting at cars and innocent victims; some were confiscated from McCoy’s Las Vegas motel room.

As part of the plea, McCoy has agreed to talk with an FBI profiler and members of the central Ohio task force that hunted him to discuss his crimes and the effect, if any, the video games had on his conduct.

Hooray! Let the witchhunt begin! Of course it was the video games, don’t you see? There’s no way that it could have been the result of McCoy’s admitted failure to take prescribed medication for his long-diagnosed mental health problems, or his (dare I say it) family’s reluctance/failure to keep, y’know, tabs on their mentally troubled son who had bought guns the year before. No, clearly, the guys who were coding up MAX PAYNE at Rockstar back in 2002 and 2003 should have KNOWN that those particular algorithims would someday force a troubled young man to fire a gun off of an overpass, striking and killing a woman riding in a passing car! Rockstar’s nefarious plan to destroy American civilization is public knowledge, after all, since Senator Clinton’s stunning revelation that kids could find out about sex from video games they shouldn’t have been able to buy without parental consent in the first place! It’s so clear! Rockstar Hates America! To the ramparts! Boil the oil! Bring the pitchforks! Litigate! Litigate, I say!

…

God, I hate lawyers. [/irony]

Thanks to my wonderful aunts for putting together such a great Ware/Pyatt reunion. The Wares were my Grandfather’s family and the Pyatts were my Grandmother’s family. As both reunion’s numbers dwendled we merged them with great success.

It was great to see everyone and to see all the kids together. My Aunt Marsha (at the far right of the picture) put together games for the kids (and adults) and although Carl and I didn’t “win” I think he gets my prize for best effort with the shortest legs!

Thanks ladies, it was a great event and lots of FUN!
More pictures here.

The first I heard of cornhole was two years ago at my friend Amy’s wedding in Cincinnati. She had planned a festive outdoor reception, complete with lawn games–including the aforementioned sport.

Who knew throwing little corn-filled bean bags at a wooden board could be so much fun.

I got to play a little cornhole again this summer when I went to Cincinnati for my friend Mya’s baby shower. Our little group attended a cancer fundraiser for her family, and they had a cornhole tournament set up. After practicing for about a half an hour, my friends Amy and Fork entered and were promptly knocked out of the tournament by two cornhole sharks.

Anyway, when a friend sent me a notice about the Congressional election in Cincinnati today (which, sadly, I knew absolutely nothing about until he sent it), I headed over to the Enquirer webpage to get the skinny.

Except the headline that caught my eye wasn’t about politics at all.

Turns out cornhole is about to get some national attention.

So the question is: Is the nation really ready for cornhole?

Photo above: my friend, Fork, takes a practice chuck at the cornhole board as a warmup for the tournament while Amy (left) and Mya (right) heckle.

Welcome to the family Cloe Louise!

Born 7/29/05 just after 1:00 in the afternoon.
7 lbs. 6 oz. (same as her aunt!) and 20 1/2 in. long

She was born with her eyes open and is a very content and very good little baby girl. Mommy & Daddy are doing well and getting adjusted to their new job.
More photos here.

Following Sarah’s lead, here’s a set of our photos from the great May/Dahlberg Hilton Head Vacation of 2005. It was a wonderful week, bookended by four looooonng days of car travel, which is the kind of hardcore traveling I haven’t done in I don’t know how many years. I really thought that two back to back days in the car would be too much for Carl, but he came through with flying colors — at least until the blanket-and-juice-related meltdown forty-five minutes from home on the way back to Columbus on Sunday.

As it turns out, Hilton Head is HOT in the summer. Who knew? (It’s not like it’s hundreds of miles closer to the equator than Ohio, or that it’s on the coast, or that’s it’s JULY, or anything.) The one day that I played golf, Matt and I were making like the Wicked Witch of the West on the front nine. I’m pretty sure I filled and drank an entire cup of water on every hole. Kind of killed my enthusiasm for doing anything outside of the air conditioning, after that — I had wanted to rent and ride bikes at some point, but between not really having a schedule conducive to extended bike rides and the sheer physical assault of going outside to slow roast, I don’t really feel like I missed anything.

Well, except for the beach. We went on Monday morning with the kids, but that was all for us. Carl seemed to enjoy the beach part of the beach, but not so much with the ocean. Don’t know if it was the size and scope of the water, the sound of the waves — which were barely knee-high at all, but to a toddler, might as well have been mountainous walls of water — whatever it was, he was Out, and we didn’t get another chance to try again. Next time, maybe. The backyard pool was much better — he wasn’t completely comfortable with it, but he didn’t mind it by the end of the week. I’m half afraid he’s going to look at me this week and say, “Swim in the pool?”, and I’ll have to figure out how to tell him that Mommy and Daddy don’t exactly have an in-ground heated pool and jacuzzi sitting in the backyard…

So yes, wonderful week, sorry to see it end, but I think we’re all happy to be home and getting back into our normal routines.

Mostly.

(And there’s more photos of all sorts of other stuff from the last month or so right here.)

*Sigh.*

It was a very good vacation, at least, if too short.

Hilariously bad English-to-Chinese-to-English captions on a bootleg DVD of STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH. Some foul language, but OH MAN are these funny.

Looks like the first trailer for V FOR VENDETTA is up.

It looks nice — I know that V writer Alan Moore has basically turned his back on this one, but I thought I saw most of the original’s story beats in the trailer, so if it goes far afield from the source material, it’s deeper into the script than the trailer reveals. The problem, I’d say, is with the Wachowskis, who crashed and burned faster than I thought possible after the cultural high of THE MATRIX — who knows if they’ll be able to reign in the impulses that turned RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS into hopelessly talky and noodling snoozefests?

And of course, this is probably my favorite thing by Moore, so I hope it’s not doomed to join SWAMP THING, FROM HELL, and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN on the scrap heap of poorly-translated Moore comics (not having seen CONSTANTINE yet, I can’t say if that would also be found on the pile or not.) If the collective voice of the Internerd is to be believed, it doesn’t look good.