85 Year Old Pistol-packing woman forces intruder to call 911
August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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An 85-year-old woman boldly went for her gun and busted a would-be burglar inside her home, then forced him to call police while she kept him in her sights, police said.
“I just walked right on past him to the bedroom and got my gun,” Leda Smith said.
Smith heard someone break into her home Monday afternoon and grabbed the .22-caliber revolver she had been keeping by her bed since a neighbor’s home was burglarized a few weeks ago.
“I said ‘What are you doing in my house?’ He just kept saying he didn’t do it,” Smith said.
After the 17-year-old boy called 911, Smith kept holding the gun on him until state police arrived at her home in Springhill Township, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh.
The boy will be charged with attempted burglary and related offenses in juvenile court, Trooper Christian Lieberum said. He was not identified because of his age.
“It was exciting,” Smith said. “I just hope I broke up the (burglary) ring because they have been hitting a lot of places around here.”
War on Terror boardgame branded criminal by police
August 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It may not be fun for all the family – well, not in the same way as Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit or Mousetrap, say. The themes of empire building and terrorist-style attacks on opponents would probably provoke an outbreak of spluttering over the Christmas sherry.
It is rare, however, for a board game to be seized by the police. This week that distinction befell War on Terror: The Boardgame; a set was confiscated from climate protesters in Kent.
Following a series of raids on the climate change camp near Kingsnorth power station, officers displayed an array of supposed weapons snatched from demonstrators: knives, chisels, bolt cutters, a throwing star – and a copy of the satirical game, which lampoons Washington’s “war on terror”.
For the game’s creators, Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, web designers from Cambridge, the inclusion of their toy was a shock.
“When I saw the pictures in the papers I was absolutely baffled,” said Mr Sheerin, 32. “I thought: surely no member of the public is going to believe that a board game could be used as a weapon?”
You won’t find the game in high street stores; retailers have all declined to stock it. The high street chain Zavvi bought 5,000 sets but strangely withdrew them for sale after one day, citing “poor sales”. But since its low-key launch two years ago, War on Terror: The Boardgame has sold 12,000 copies online and through independent stockists, prominently featuring in student bedsits.
Distribution deals have been set up to sell the game in Europe and the United States, where war fatigue has ensured a keener reception than in Britain.
Much like games such as Risk or Diplomacy, War on Terror revolves around players creating empires that compete and wage war against each other for resources and land. The controversial twist allows them to “train” terrorist cells that either attack your enemies or, if you’re unlucky, turn against you – like some anti-Western terror groups have done.
There is an “Axis of Evil spinner” intended to parody international diplomacy by randomly deciding which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word “Evil” stitched on to it.
Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava “could be used to conceal someone’s identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act”. Mr Sheerin was unconvinced. “That’s absurd,” he said. “A beard can conceal someone’s identity. Are the police going to start banning beards?”
The game’s slanted political overtones were fostered in the build-up to the Iraq war. “When we watched the news there was this endless sense of frustration and disbelief that, despite the mass marches and protests, we were off to war,” Mr Sheerin said. “We thought it was a ridiculous process that needed to be ridiculed.”
After two years of tinkering Mr Sheerin and Mr Tompkins were ready to find a producer; friends helped raise the £30,000 needed to order the first 5,000 copies from a factory in China.
Most high street stores and toy fairs declined to stock the game; those managers who expressed initial interest were overruled by head office.
“The manager of the local Borders bookshop in Cambridge thought it was a great idea and wanted to trial it,” said Mr Sheerin. “A day before it was due to appear, head office said not to stock it. That happened time and time again.” Zavvi was on the verge of becoming the first major high street store to stock the game and ordered 5,000 copies last year. But a subsequent decision was made to withdraw it, forcing the store to return the order.
A spokesman for Zavvi said the group had bought the game when it was part of the Virgin Megastore network. “We don’t censor our products. The game just wasn’t selling.”
Rules of the game
The game is for two to six players.
All players begin with fledgling empires on a world map which they expand through the acquisition of land, oil and cities. At any time players can abandon the “pursuit of liberty and oil” in favour of becoming a terror state – or they are designated a terror state by a random “Axis of Evil” spinner.
Empires can also train their own terrorists to target rival empires, although these groups often turn on you later in the game. Terrorists can use special cards such as “suicide bomber”, “plane hijack” and “WMDs” to advance themselves. Empires rely on tactics such as “espionage”, “regime change” and forcing other empires to sign up to the Kyoto protocol to bankrupt their competitors. “The idea is to encourage the sort of short-term, selfish thinking that led us into war,” says Andrew Sheerin, the co-creator of the game.
Parents Let Kid Drop Out of High School to Focus on Guitar Hero
August 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I realize this pours gas on the bad parenting flames of yesterday, but holy crow, I can’t not show you this story. Yesterday reader tooji tipped me off to the story of Blake Peebles, a 16-year-old in Raleigh, N.C., whose parents have let him drop out of school so that he can focus on a professional gaming career via Guitar Hero.
Blake convinced his folks (that is, “We couldn’t take the complaining anymore,” said his mom) to let him drop out last September. They hired in-home tutors to continue his education there, at least, but there’s no doubt priority number one is Guitar Hero. There’s a vaguely defined goal of Blake playing it professionally, either through Major League Gaming or by winning prizes in a national and international competitions. But so far he’s only made about $1,000, most of that value realized in meals and other freebies won at local competitions. The other pro gamer the reporter contacted for this story said he’s cashed in about $25,000 in his entire career.
The description of Blake’s room, his interests (or lack thereof) , and his folks’ decision to let him do this just … well, the don’t make anyone look good. It would be one thing if the guy was a bona fide music or athletic prodigy. However quixotic a career in either field might be for the majority who pursue it, at least there’s a long history of it paying off if you are that good enough. But Blake’s never touched a real guitar (cue up the get-a-life bait). He didn’t seem interested in much of anything in high school (a Christian academy where his parents had enrolled him) and wheedled his way out of going by complaining that it was a waste of time. (That line should sound very familiar to my folks. If only playing Master of the Lamps on the Commodore 64 could have won me some free Chik-Fil-A. I might have had better luck.)
Here’s the article in full:
It’s a small plastic thing, resembling a guitar in basic appearance only.
But Blake Peebles brings energy to the room when he slides the strap over his skinny shoulder and steps atop the wooden box that serves as a stage.
As the music begins, Blake quickly presses buttons on the guitar in time to a speed-metal tune blasting from the giant TV. It is an odd sensation, to watch a young man control the sounds of a rock song with a toy instrument, but this is “Guitar Hero,” one of the most popular video game franchises in recent memory. Blake is one of the better players in the country.
Other than his fingers, Blake barely moves while playing. His feet are set in place and his eyes are locked on the screen as he peers through a mop of curly brown hair. Gaming for him is serious business. It’s his job.
Among the prizes he’s won playing “Guitar Hero” tournaments: gift certificates, gaming equipment and chicken sandwiches.
Blake is 16, resides in North Raleigh and lives to play video games. On this night, he’s at the Fox and Hound in Raleigh’s North Hills shopping district. It’s the restaurant’s regular Sunday “Guitar Hero” night, and Blake and his family have come to watch and play. His brother and sister are here, as are his mom and dad, an aunt and an uncle, some cousins and some friends.
But in the end, it’s not the people related to Blake who confirm his plastic-guitar prowess. It’s the group of 20-somethings sitting at a nearby table, who applaud when Blake finishes playing along to “Through the Fire and Flames,” viewed as the game’s toughest song.
“It’s pretty sick,” says Andrew Gambling, 27, who describes himself as a casual player. “He’s talented.”
Blake is appreciative of the applause and grins shyly when it is mentioned to him. But he’s not very happy with his score.
“That’s probably the worst I’ve ever done,” he says, which seems impossible. The game moves at warp speed, so Blake’s fingers do too.
This is not a competitive environment, so the score hardly matters. But his attitude about it underscores some Peebles family truisms: Blake is so dedicated to gaming that his parents let him quit school so he can better concentrate on it.
They pay for home tutors instead. Mom and Dad do this, even though there are very few people in this country who make their living playing competitive video games.
Blake very much would like to be one of them, but a boy cannot live on chicken sandwiches alone.
Leaving school
Blake is the middle child of Mike and Hunter Peebles. Tucker is 18, an honor-roll student who plays football for North Raleigh Christian Academy. Caramy is 13, a dancer with a congenital disorder that causes developmental disabilities.
Mike and Hunter do not believe in one-size-fits-all parenting.
That is not to say that it was an easy decision for them to let Blake leave school last September. They would have preferred that he stay in high school with his brother. But he bugged them until they let him quit.
“We couldn’t take the complaining anymore,” says Hunter. “He always told me that he thought school was a waste of time.”
Blake never gravitated toward sports or drama or any of the other traditional school-based activities. Just gaming.
So they made a deal. Blake could leave school but would have to be tutored at home. In one respect, the arrangement is similar to what parents of gifted child athletes and actors have done for years.
In another, those careers can bring big money. Competitive gaming is still growing. Major League Gaming, one of the field’s top sanctioning bodies, holds tournaments in cities across the country.
The company has more than 125 players signed to management deals. Top players can earn more than $80,000 a year, plus outside sponsorship money, says an MLG spokeswoman. The average pay is in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.
Blake has done well in local tournaments, including one held at a Chick-fil-A that earned him 52 combo meals. By his account, he has lost only once since “Guitar Hero III” was released late last year. Some of that time was spent playing online, against players from all over the world.
This is how he knows he’s good. It wasn’t that long ago that kids who excelled at some activity, say basketball, would only have to go to the next neighborhood to have their dreams crushed by some older, more accomplished player.
Today, on Xbox 360, players use the system’s online component to compare scores with players all over the world. Blake, who goes by the online name “Dreminem,” figures that he has top-10 scores on 20 or so of songs on “Guitar Hero III.”
He guesses that he’s probably one of the top 15 or 20 players in the country.
Blake so far has won about $1,000 in prizes in the months since he began competing in “Guitar Hero.” His biggest challenge will come in mid-August, when father and son travel to California for the U.S. regionals of the World Cyber Games. Blake qualified to appear there after performing well online.
If Blakes wins the regional, it’s on to the national championship. The best “Guitar Hero III” players there will earn the right to represent the U.S. at the world tournament in Germany.
Blake is happy with his success. Mom and Dad are happy with his grades. Since he’s gone to the tutoring arrangement, she hasn’t once had to tell him to do his homework, because he does it on his own. They got plenty of grief from family and friends about their decision at first, but they’ve also watched Blake, who is shy and disliked school, become a happier person.
Set up to play
Inside his upstairs bedroom, Blake’s environment is set up specifically to make him a better gamer. There is a PlayStation 2, a Nintendo Wii and an Xbox 360. He also has a stack of plastic guitars, but no real ones. Blake doesn’t play an actual guitar, a skill that doesn’t really transfer to playing the virtual kind, anyway.
The frame for his bed is on the back porch, with the box springs and mattress on the bedroom floor. That puts his bed at a more comfortable level for sitting to play “Guitar Hero III” for extended periods. At the moment, he plays just a few hours a day, but that number will increase as the California competition nears.
Blake seems happy with his home school arrangement, as you would expect from a teenager who is allowed to stay up into the wee hours to play video games. Sometimes, when Mike heads to the gym before 5 a.m., his son is still playing video games. Blake calls it working “the late shift.”
He didn’t enjoy school, he says, and especially didn’t like the rules associated with attending the Christian academy. Shaggy hair is more his style.
He’s good at video games. “I wasn’t really good at anything else that I liked.”
His “Guitar Hero” skills certainly have impressed the local gaming community.
“He’s amazing,” says Mike Gibson, the good-natured owner of two local Play N Trade Video Games stores. “I can’t have tournaments for that anymore. I might as well just give him the prize.”
Blake dreams of making a living playing games, and scoring a contract with Major League Gaming.
But Terry Lindle, aka Terry15, knows how tough it can be to make it. Lindle, 23, lives in Illinois and has been a competitive gamer for about eight years. He won the national championship for “Halo 2″ in 2005 and traveled to England earlier this year to compete in a world championship for the game “F.E.A.R.”
Lindle came in sixth and won $4,500. He estimates that he has earned about $25,000 in his years of gaming.
“When you want to go somewhere with this gaming stuff, you’ve got to be in the top 1 percent,” he says.
Lindle is impressed that Blake qualified for the tournament in California. But in gaming, coming in third or fourth doesn’t mean much.
“You’ve got to win these major tournaments, otherwise you don’t get noticed by advertisers and sponsors.”
Lindle believes there’s a future to competitive gaming, one in which more people can make more money. He points to Major League Gaming’s recent deal with ESPN, which includes live-streaming tournaments on ESPN360.com.
Right now, Blake is concentrating on “Guitar Hero,” working to get the “Dreminem” name out there. “Guitar Hero” isn’t a big money game on the tournament circuit, as most of the cash goes to the people who play “Halo 3.”
Blake is biding his time to the next big thing, so he can get ahead of the curve.
“The next big game that comes out, I’m just going to focus on that one,” he says.
And why not? The guy is self-employed. He sets his own hours.
Buy evidence of my husband’s adultery on eBay
August 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
An Australian woman has taken revenge on her cheating husband by putting a photograph of his lover’s underpants up for sale on the auction site eBay.
In the listing the woman says she is selling a picture of a pair of lacy black knickers and an empty condom wrapper “size small” found in her bed after her husband had an affair with another woman.
The seller — identified on eBay only as annastella007 — provides a rather unflattering description of the knickers.
“They are so huge I thought they may make someone a nice shawl or, even better, something for Halloween perhaps.”
The eBay listing, entitled “Empty condom packet & a photo of ‘The Tart’s’ knickers,” also includes a detailed account of the events leading up to the discovery.
The woman says she returned from work after receiving a romantic text message from her husband of 22 years that was clearly misdirected to find him at home watching a DVD and discouraging her from entering their bedroom.
In the room she found the empty condom wrapper under his pillow and “the Tart’s knickers … at the foot of the bed.”
The woman said this was not her last sale on eBay.
She says her husband’s Harley motorcycle is “the next item that will probably be sold on eBay at a start price of 99c and, of course, with no reserve!”
Inessa Jackson, a spokeswoman for eBay said that the listing almost did not make the site because it originally included the actual panties for sale and had to be taken down due to eBay’s policy against selling secondhand underwear.
“We let her know about the policy and instead she’s now selling a photograph of the offending knickers,” Jackson was quoted on the news Web site www.couriermail.com.au as saying.
“This is obviously very therapeutic for this woman and it must be a great channel for her views on cheating and the sanctity of marriage.”
by Belinda Goldsmith
Anime Look Extra-Wide Contact Lenses
August 11, 2008 | 1 Comment
Anyone who’s seen Japanese comics, cartoon videos or anime art is instantly struck by the common look of the girls - big eyes that, by making the rest of the face look small, add the cuteness and sex appeal prized by many Japanese men. Since no amount of cosmetic surgery will make actual human eyes larger, some girls are trying another way to up their cute quotient: extra-wide contact lenses!
These are no ordinary contacts - they’re not only tinted, but tinted prominently in the extra-wide outer ring. The result is the appearance of a bigger, wider iris.
To quote the sales copy, “Wanna get big, watery shiny eyes without any surgery? CRAVE AND ENVY NO MORE!”
The extra-wide contact lenses are made by a variety of companies including Geo and Dueba, and cost in the $30-$50 per pair range. It seems they’re not just cosmetic - send in your prescription and the lenses will be made to order.
