...for love of video games?

Five teenage girls from Portage County (Ohio) face potential criminal charges after attempting to play a real-life version of Super Mario Bros.:
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/14239923.htm

Actually, the latest news I saw on this is that the girls will NOT be charged. And of course, the blogs have had a fine time with this story...do a Google search for "Super Mario" and "Ohio" and you'll pull up quite a few.

Apparently prosecutors in Ohio have nothing better to do with their lives than harass teenage girls for basically doing nothing!   The current news is the girls are not going to be charged, because people realize they did nothing wrong, however they have to write letters of apology (even though they did nothing wrong...hmmm).  If this is the level of intelligence of our anti-terrorist units, people should demand their tax money back because obviously these guys are useless!!  (Do they really think terrorists are going to leave pretty decorated bombs where anyone can see them!)

-avatar!

LOL! I have family living in Ravenna! I'll have to ask them about it next time I talk to them.

And I agree - much ado about nothing.

Heh, yes, because of course not only are terrorists going to leave their bombs in shiny question marked shaped boxes where everyone can see them, but people assume they're going to bomb middle-of-nowhere, Ohio.

Boxes are dangerous, they could hold ANYTHING that fits inside!

*snicker*

I love one of the responses to that news item:
"Thank you, Police! But the Terrorist is in another castle!"

It's not like they made some bomb-oms or anything - now that could cause a scare...

I just find it sad that no one recognized the boxes for what they were trying to emulate. I mean, come on! Mario!

This seems less dangerous than when my friend and I emulated Soul Edge in his back yard using serrated steak knives and plastic garbage pail lids.

f---, we were retarded back then.

Really?  I did the Metal Gear Solid 2 stealth-sneak mission on the Tanker myself on the Staten Island Ferry one stormy evening.  Mind you, I wasn't bungee-jumping from a bridge to get there, but the day's mood did coerce me into acting out the fantasy.

Was Schala saying something funny about me being a Metal Gear fanatic?  What was I, about twenty-two back then?

I forgot to mention that we were, at one point, throwing the knives at each other.

In any event, acting out MGS2 on a stormy evening is awesome!! Actually, the image I have of you pretending to tranq guards is hilarious. You pantomiming the whole thing, making a "Psh!" sound when you 'fired'.

That's a really funny mental image. *is laughing*

I ride that ferry every day and I've never once thought to do that. I'd try it out myself, except the police presence has been rather high lately, and I doubt they'd much like me sneaking around.

Personally, I'm itching to try out Pac Manhattan: http://www.pacmanhattan.com/

I just have to laugh at that myself, because while I wasn't making any tranq gun noises, I do have the tendency to make that 'wind' whoosh noise, every time I turn my head in quick alertness.  A very Metal Gear-ish trait, if I do say so myself.

Pac-Manhattan looks crazy-cool.  Maybe I'll wait for the "Ms." edition. ;)