Start 2004 Right
<div class="IPBDescription">By bashing video games!</div> <a href='http://www.nypost.com/seven/12292003/business/14640.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.nypost.com/seven/12292003/busin...iness/14640.htm</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->December 29, 2003 -- IN this season of ecumenical brotherhood, here's a suggestion for how to advance the cause of peace: Sell your stock in Take-Two Interactive Inc.
In case you can't quite place the name, New York-based Take-Two Interactive is a Nasdaq-traded company in the video game business.
Over the last couple of years, the company has been one of Wall Street's hottest stocks, climbing by more than 500 percent to a high of nearly $42 per share earlier this year.
But Take-Two has lately gotten knocked around a bit, both in the market and on the regulatory front, as a long-smoldering Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the company's accounting looks to be coming to a head.
Yet that's not the only reason to stay away from this stock. Some long-overdue questions are also being raised about the nature of Take-Two's unusual product line, which is coming under attack by local and state legislators around the country.
SO before turning to Take-Two's other problems, let's first pause for some thoughts on the core question of what this company actually does - which is to produce and market video games of such luxuriously violent and disgusting content as to leave one simply speechless.
The latest installment in the company's best-selling "Grand Theft Auto" series - "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" - has been on the market for a little over a year now and has already sold more than 5 million copies.
Lately, the game has been in the news quite a bit - though not for any reason Take-Two would have wanted - as leaders in the Haitian community and elsewhere have gotten noticeably torqued up about a line of dialogue that consists of the following: "Kill the Haitians."
The offending line has brought public rebukes of the company from both Mayor Bloomberg and the Anti-Defamation League, and Take-Two has responded by saying it will remove the words from future editions of the game.
But trust me when I tell you that considering what else goes on in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," that phrase is nothing.
HERE'S the game's basic bit: You're a cocaine dealer, see, and you get ripped off in a drug deal that goes bad. So your mission is to get your drugs and your money back - by committing as many violent, homicidal crimes as you can possibly think up.
You can pursue your goal by killing Haitians, of course, but you can also kill anyone (or everyone) else. You can machine-gun them, beat them with baseball bats, chop them up with machetes or run them over with stolen cars.
And when you do, everything will look incredibly and shockingly real, with blood spewing everywhere.
You can kill a cop, steal his gun, and then use it to shoot someone else. Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death - or shoot her, bludgeon her, whatever you want.
In fact, "whatever you want" is what the game is all about. Thanks to its artful and complex programming and its incredibly realistic graphics, the game creates the impression of being inside a totally unscripted, live-action drama in which you can manufacture your mayhem as you go along.
People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands.
And trust me when I tell you, Mr. Mayor, what Take-Two Interactive is blowing into your face every day is a whole lot worse than second-hand cigarette smoke.
Out of that company is spewing the glorification of mass murder and the celebration of death. And the fact that the game supposedly can't be sold to anyone under 17 years of age is completely irrelevant and changes nothing.
FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it. And cases surface constantly in which "Grand Theft Auto" has been linked to violence and killing. In Tennessee last summer a motorist was killed and his passenger wounded when two boys - aged 14 and 16 - played "Grand Theft Auto" and then decided to go out and take sniper shots at cars, just like in the game.
Besides: By what preposterous reasoning can one argue that once someone turns 17 years of age it magically becomes OK to glorify mass murder? Are we saying that it would have been OK for that Beltway Sniper guy - who was apparently in his 40s - to have been allowed to play "Grand Theft Auto" before going on his killing spree, but it wouldn't have been OK for that young teenager who went along with him to have done the same?
This whole age-cutoff thing is simply garbage - just like "Grand Theft Auto" itself - and sooner or later, I would imagine, we'll come to our senses and ban these games from public commerce, just like we ban child pornography and entertainment spectacles such as **** fighting and dwarf throwing.
Meantime, Take-Two is milking this product for all it is worth: Next year the company will even be introducing a Gameboy version of the thing, so that kids can carry it around with them wherever they go. This way they'll be able to get re-stimulated, whenever necessary, with some of the most menacing messages known to civilized man.
WHAT would be left of an outfit like Take- Two Interactive if its bizarre version of digital snuff porn were outlawed?
Frankly, not much. The company's latest three-month and nine-month financial results, covering the period through July 31, show "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" and an earlier version of the same ghastly program ("Grand Theft Auto III") to have accounted for just under half the company's sales.
Take-Two was founded in 1993 by a young fellow named Ryan Brant, who was apparently raised in a family steeped in its own Vice City values. Ryan's daddy, Peter, a polo-playing fop from Greenwich, Conn., did time in federal prison for tax fraud after trying to write off $1.5 million worth of massages, jewelry, scalp rubs and what-not as business expenses.
Last spring, Dad was hit with more tax woes when federal prosecutors filed a suit against him and his partner - art dealer Larry Gagosian - alleging that they owe $26 million in taxes on fine art sales dating back to 1990.
Dad was an original investor in Master Ryan's excellent adventure, and currently collects $474,000 per year from the company in return for leasing it some of the New York real estate he owns. That lease is set to expire in the new year.
THE Securities and Exchange Commission got interested in Take-Two last year after the company restated its financial results for most of the previous two years. The restatement followed reports that the company had been claiming revenues from fictitious sales.
Now the SEC seems ready to act. Earlier this month it issued the company something known as a Wells Notice, which amounts to a "your time is up" letter; its purpose is to inform the target of an SEC investigation that fraud charges are about to be filed against it. Ryan Brant received an additional Wells Notice himself, as did two former officials who the company did not name - meaning that the SEC plans to include all three as defendants in its complaint.
Bottom line: Stay away from this stock - far, far away - and you'll be doing both your wallet and your fellow man a favor. Happy New Year.
* Please send e-mail to:
cbyron@nypost.com<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ugh, I can't even think up a witty remark to poke fun at the stupidity in this article...
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->December 29, 2003 -- IN this season of ecumenical brotherhood, here's a suggestion for how to advance the cause of peace: Sell your stock in Take-Two Interactive Inc.
In case you can't quite place the name, New York-based Take-Two Interactive is a Nasdaq-traded company in the video game business.
Over the last couple of years, the company has been one of Wall Street's hottest stocks, climbing by more than 500 percent to a high of nearly $42 per share earlier this year.
But Take-Two has lately gotten knocked around a bit, both in the market and on the regulatory front, as a long-smoldering Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into the company's accounting looks to be coming to a head.
Yet that's not the only reason to stay away from this stock. Some long-overdue questions are also being raised about the nature of Take-Two's unusual product line, which is coming under attack by local and state legislators around the country.
SO before turning to Take-Two's other problems, let's first pause for some thoughts on the core question of what this company actually does - which is to produce and market video games of such luxuriously violent and disgusting content as to leave one simply speechless.
The latest installment in the company's best-selling "Grand Theft Auto" series - "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" - has been on the market for a little over a year now and has already sold more than 5 million copies.
Lately, the game has been in the news quite a bit - though not for any reason Take-Two would have wanted - as leaders in the Haitian community and elsewhere have gotten noticeably torqued up about a line of dialogue that consists of the following: "Kill the Haitians."
The offending line has brought public rebukes of the company from both Mayor Bloomberg and the Anti-Defamation League, and Take-Two has responded by saying it will remove the words from future editions of the game.
But trust me when I tell you that considering what else goes on in "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," that phrase is nothing.
HERE'S the game's basic bit: You're a cocaine dealer, see, and you get ripped off in a drug deal that goes bad. So your mission is to get your drugs and your money back - by committing as many violent, homicidal crimes as you can possibly think up.
You can pursue your goal by killing Haitians, of course, but you can also kill anyone (or everyone) else. You can machine-gun them, beat them with baseball bats, chop them up with machetes or run them over with stolen cars.
And when you do, everything will look incredibly and shockingly real, with blood spewing everywhere.
You can kill a cop, steal his gun, and then use it to shoot someone else. Or you can pick up a prostitute and have sex with her in the back of your stolen car, then beat her to death - or shoot her, bludgeon her, whatever you want.
In fact, "whatever you want" is what the game is all about. Thanks to its artful and complex programming and its incredibly realistic graphics, the game creates the impression of being inside a totally unscripted, live-action drama in which you can manufacture your mayhem as you go along.
People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands.
And trust me when I tell you, Mr. Mayor, what Take-Two Interactive is blowing into your face every day is a whole lot worse than second-hand cigarette smoke.
Out of that company is spewing the glorification of mass murder and the celebration of death. And the fact that the game supposedly can't be sold to anyone under 17 years of age is completely irrelevant and changes nothing.
FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it. And cases surface constantly in which "Grand Theft Auto" has been linked to violence and killing. In Tennessee last summer a motorist was killed and his passenger wounded when two boys - aged 14 and 16 - played "Grand Theft Auto" and then decided to go out and take sniper shots at cars, just like in the game.
Besides: By what preposterous reasoning can one argue that once someone turns 17 years of age it magically becomes OK to glorify mass murder? Are we saying that it would have been OK for that Beltway Sniper guy - who was apparently in his 40s - to have been allowed to play "Grand Theft Auto" before going on his killing spree, but it wouldn't have been OK for that young teenager who went along with him to have done the same?
This whole age-cutoff thing is simply garbage - just like "Grand Theft Auto" itself - and sooner or later, I would imagine, we'll come to our senses and ban these games from public commerce, just like we ban child pornography and entertainment spectacles such as **** fighting and dwarf throwing.
Meantime, Take-Two is milking this product for all it is worth: Next year the company will even be introducing a Gameboy version of the thing, so that kids can carry it around with them wherever they go. This way they'll be able to get re-stimulated, whenever necessary, with some of the most menacing messages known to civilized man.
WHAT would be left of an outfit like Take- Two Interactive if its bizarre version of digital snuff porn were outlawed?
Frankly, not much. The company's latest three-month and nine-month financial results, covering the period through July 31, show "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" and an earlier version of the same ghastly program ("Grand Theft Auto III") to have accounted for just under half the company's sales.
Take-Two was founded in 1993 by a young fellow named Ryan Brant, who was apparently raised in a family steeped in its own Vice City values. Ryan's daddy, Peter, a polo-playing fop from Greenwich, Conn., did time in federal prison for tax fraud after trying to write off $1.5 million worth of massages, jewelry, scalp rubs and what-not as business expenses.
Last spring, Dad was hit with more tax woes when federal prosecutors filed a suit against him and his partner - art dealer Larry Gagosian - alleging that they owe $26 million in taxes on fine art sales dating back to 1990.
Dad was an original investor in Master Ryan's excellent adventure, and currently collects $474,000 per year from the company in return for leasing it some of the New York real estate he owns. That lease is set to expire in the new year.
THE Securities and Exchange Commission got interested in Take-Two last year after the company restated its financial results for most of the previous two years. The restatement followed reports that the company had been claiming revenues from fictitious sales.
Now the SEC seems ready to act. Earlier this month it issued the company something known as a Wells Notice, which amounts to a "your time is up" letter; its purpose is to inform the target of an SEC investigation that fraud charges are about to be filed against it. Ryan Brant received an additional Wells Notice himself, as did two former officials who the company did not name - meaning that the SEC plans to include all three as defendants in its complaint.
Bottom line: Stay away from this stock - far, far away - and you'll be doing both your wallet and your fellow man a favor. Happy New Year.
* Please send e-mail to:
cbyron@nypost.com<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ugh, I can't even think up a witty remark to poke fun at the stupidity in this article...
Comments
It's realistic, I swear.
Totally.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->December 29, 2003 -- IN this season of ecumenical brotherhood, here's a suggestion for how to blah blah blah blah satanism blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah "murder simulators" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah "killographic" blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Nonsensical religeous statement blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah MY OPINION IS RIGHT AND IF YOU DONT AGREE YOU ARE EVIL blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. BLAH. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ugh, I can't even think up a witty remark to poke fun at the stupidity in this article... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hear you Duff-man.
*sigh*
Another one. No, it does not "magically become ok to glorify violence" once you hit 17, but by then you are hopefully old enough to realise that going out and shooting cars on the freeway is a pretty bad idea. If not then let's sue the game company because they made us do it with their killographic murder simulator game (YES! KILLOGRAPHIC!).
I really cant be bothered to go on with this, i've seen far too many letters like these.
Yeah, too bad that part of the game takes place in the part of the city populated by Haitians and their rivals, which you work for. Instead it should be "kill those people in the place".
"And when you do, everything will look incredibly and shockingly real, with blood spewing everywhere."
As realistic as a cartoonish video game can be ;/
" And the fact that the game supposedly can't be sold to anyone under 17 years of age is completely irrelevant and changes nothing.
FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it"
Oh, I see. So the law isn't enforced and that's why video game makers have to make every single game for kids, even though it's 17+. Sure, it's wrong to kill, but that law isn't enforced either ! Everyone knows it.
Anyone up for sending him an email saying how "we're appalled that you suggest that sexually abusing children is an acceptable practise. We do not take kindly to any advocation that molesting minors under the age of consent is comparable to such small things as graphically depicted violence."
waii... it completely misses the point and shows massive amounts of ignorance, just like the article. That'll teach im <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Gah! I was never much of a fan of GTA, but still.
YES! Totally, hand him his arse on a silver platter[SP?].
This guy's a total moron. Someone say in a previous thread, "I didn't know games rated M were for 10 year olds." or something along those lines. 17 year olds should know that it's not right, if they don't they shouldn't be playing Video Games.
1. The amount of violence displayed in the game is completely controlled by the player. They make the conscience discision to murder, maim, hijack, rob, steal etc. No where in the game does it force you against your own volition to commit any of those acts.
2. There has never been a recorded case of violence directly influenced by video games, violent or no (Hollywood is a different story).
3. It should be up to the PARENTS to monitor the content displayed in the games their children play.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
You have seriously got to be the most ignorant person I have ever heard. The story on Grand Theft Auto insults my own intelligence, as well as that of the American people. Quite frankly I'm tired of idiots like you trying to blame poor parenting on video games and movies. Do you realize the majority of people who play games are 28 or older? Grand Theft Auto 3 is intended for an adult audience. It is not "Teletubbies story time", its "Grand Theft Auto", what are you expecting? To quote your own story:
Out of that company is spewing the glorification of mass murder and the celebration of death. And the fact that the game supposedly can't be sold to anyone under 17 years of age is completely irrelevant and changes nothing.
FOR one thing, the age cutoff is totally unenforceable, and everyone knows it.
Yes I suppose the legal age limit on tobacco, firearms, and alcohol don't change anything either. Those age limits are unenforcable, and everyone knows it. Following this statement you say:
In Tennessee last summer a motorist was killed and his passenger wounded when two boys - aged 14 and 16 - played "Grand Theft Auto" and then decided to go out and take sniper shots at cars, just like in the game.
How about instead of blaming it on Grand Theft Auto you ask how two kids got shotguns, and lacked the mental capacity to distinguish real life violence from killing pixels. As I've said before I'm sick of idiots such as yourself. If you don't want your kids involved in such things, stop being such a lazy parent, and find out whats in the products youre buying them, or that they are buying. Now on to more of your idiotic views in the New York Post:
Take-Two was founded in 1993 by a young fellow named Ryan Brant, who was apparently raised in a family steeped in its own Vice City values. Ryan's daddy, Peter, a polo-playing fop from Greenwich, Conn., did time in federal prison for tax fraud after trying to write off $1.5 million worth of massages, jewelry, scalp rubs and what-not as business expenses.
Last spring, Dad was hit with more tax woes when federal prosecutors filed a suit against him and his partner - art dealer Larry Gagosian - alleging that they owe $26 million in taxes on fine art sales dating back to 1990.
Dad was an original investor in Master Ryan's excellent adventure, and currently collects $474,000 per year from the company in return for leasing it some of the New York real estate he owns. That lease is set to expire in the new year.
Really this is some of the crappiest reporting I've ever seen. You've got no material for a story, so you resort to attacking a person's father? Last time I checked my own actions were my own actions, not my fathers, and his actions were not my own. I'm glad to see the Post has some common decency not to go slinging mud. How you ever got past junior high Journalism classes, and into a paper such as the Post is beyond me.
Anonymous
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Thank you for turning what could have been a perfectly reasonable article about the shady business practices of Take-Two Interactive into an ignorant rant about video game violence.
To begin with, you have obviously never, ever played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Your poorly researched description of the game's introductory stages goes beyond mere hyperbole and into outright fabrication, and I for one was rather insulted by it. I would go into detail about each and every one of your false statements, but unfortunately I do not have the time to rewrite your entire article for you - and apparently neither does your editor. Allow me to quickly go over a few main points for you:
-Your in-game character's mission, as you put it, is to "commit as many violent and homicidal crimes as you can possibly think up". In fact, your mission is to follow the game's story line. Does this storyline involve violence? Of course. That's why the game is rated Mature. Is eccessive violence and slaughter encouraged? No, unless you consider having legions of police, FBI and military officers gunning for you to be "encouragement".
-"This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy". If you think that, then there is something terribly wrong with your moral scale. The fact that something in an imaginary video game world could be worse than anything - anything at all - in real life is wrong, and to state otherwise is ridiculous.
-"And the fact that the game supposedly can't be sold to anyone under 17 years of age is completely irrelevant and changes nothing." Again, your argument is fundamentally flawed. These restrictions are enforceable, if parents and stores would actually decide to work with the video games industry in order to keep these games out of the hands of children. Instead, articles like yours perpetuate the myth that the industry is the one responsible - the industry's self enforced ratings system, and the fact that the vast majority of gamers are above 18 and therefore capable of making their own decisions, shows the truth in that matter.
Your article is a textbook example of ridiculous extremist propaganda, something which will only inflame the soccer moms and the religious right and do nothing to solve the true problem, the fact that parents refuse to take responsibility for the raising of their own children.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hehe, the vigor with which you guys are responding is a bit surprising, but cool. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Hehe, the vigor with which you guys are responding is a bit surprising, but cool. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
To quote Empire Records, one of the best movies ever, "DAMN THE MAN!"
I hate people. <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Gah! I was never much of a fan of GTA, but still. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
HAHAHA
grand borrow auto! (rated E!)
Damned idiots. Even my dad, who HATES video games, thinks its just stupidity that these guys have.
As for saying that a <i>GAME</i> <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> is 10,000 times worse than child molestation! I think that this reporter needs to have his head examined and maybee undergo theropy of some kind.
If a kid goes with a gun shot a person then steal a car and crash into a wall and dies, people call that a big tragedy. I say natural-selection
Say <i>what?!</i>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->December 29, 2003 -- IN this season of ecumenical brotherhood,blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah <b>cbyron@nypost.com</b><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ugh, I can't even think up a witty remark to poke fun at the stupidity in this article... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
What a biased-assed article.
Hurry! Everyone send the editor hate mail lol <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The company's latest three-month and nine-month financial results, covering the period through July 31, show "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" and an earlier version of the same <b>ghastly</b> program ("Grand Theft Auto III") to have accounted for just under half the company's sales.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
At this point I started to smile...
--Scythe--
Oh great, now I'm ranked down with Micheal Jackson. First, the snobs at the restaraunt claim they haven't vacancy for me and my girlfriend, and now this. Just what I need.
My God, Skulkbait. I do believe that is the wisest thing I have heard all day!! (No sarcasm intended)
Now that <b>that's</b> out of my system, give me a sec to stuff my pillow in my mouth, so that my laughing doesn't wake everyone in the house. I have to agree with the rest of you - this man has never played GTA (III or VC) in his life. If this is the standard of US reporting... God (or Allah, Buddah, or whatever deity you believe in, if you are religious) help us all. (Not that it will help much... stupidity is an overwhelmingly powerful force)
<span style='color:red'>Let it be known that bombing threats, no matter how playful, should NOT be alluded to on such matters.
-Rob</span>