Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mock-mock

11:19am: Manhunt 2 rating wank
Rockstar Games, home of the Grand Theft Auto franchise and Jack Thompson's most reliable meal ticket, is no stranger to controversy. If it's not the hidden "Hot Coffee" minigame with CJ and Woozie one of his girlfriends getting it on in GTA: San Andreas, it's a stock scandal at parent company Take-Two Interactive. This time around, the controversy is centered around recent actions being taken by game rating agencies in the UK and the US for the upcoming Manhunt 2 (planned for release on the Wii and PS2). The original Manhunt centered around the practice of making snuff films and was highly controversial, so these developments shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise.

Cheap Ass Gamer (aka CAG) is one of the more level-headed large gaming forums, but still gets wanky from time to time, especially when it comes to the actual practice of buying and selling games. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when Manhunt 2's ratings becomes a hot topic, with a fair number of SHAQ-FU emoticons (CAG's way of censoring "fuck") being thrown around.

The ESRB's rating of the game as "AO" (Adults Only) and the BBFC's banning the game for sale in the UK are the starting points of this particular thread. The thread starts out fairly normally, with people saying that its a shame, but also an inevitability considering how the first Manhunt game was received. However, things devolve once the word "censorship" begins being tossed around, and MarioColbert first points out that Nintendo doesn't support AO-rated games.

There's also suspicions of a PR conspiracy on Rockstar's part, comparisons drawn between games and movies, debate over what an AO rating means, discussion about Rockstar's relationship to Nintendo, and key points repeated over and over and over and over. And of course, Godwin's Law is violated.

There's a lot to go through here (17 pages worth as of this writing), and the splooge is still flowing...

1:42pm: Who wanks? I said everyone wanks
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070616.BAUER16/TPStory/TPNational/Television/

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Canadian Justice Richard Mosley get into it about Jack Bauer. Also giving their opinions on 24: Lord Carlile of Berriew, an independent reviewer of Britain's laws on terrorism, Stanley Cohen, a senior counsel for the Justice Department, and Maher Arar's attorney, Lorne Waldman.

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

(...) "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said.

Sadly, Judge Scalia does appear to be aware that Jack Bauer is a fictional character.

During a break from the panel, Judge Scalia specifically mentioned the segment in Season 2 when Jack Bauer finally figures out how to break the die-hard terrorist intent on nuking L.A. The real genius, the judge said, is that this is primarily done with mental leverage. "There's a great scene where he told a guy that he was going to have his family killed," Judge Scalia said. "They had it on closed circuit television - and it was all staged. ... They really didn't kill the family."

6:40pm: Slash fans who are (maybe, kinda, who knows) against gay rights.
It all starts when m1ssannethrop1c writes a fic where House and Wilson get gay married. This would all be well and good, if not for the author's note:

Oh and this fic is not in any way, representative of how I feel about gay marriage in general. I'm too young to be making political statements. This is just a dialogue that my muse wouldn't let me let go of.

hry2007 asks: "So you're not sure if you're homophobic?".

Cue much tl;dr about gay marriage, the definition of homophobia, and religion. If your eyes haven't glazed over, it all continues here.

I knew we were due for another "slash and gay rights" fight.