War All The Time: Chapter 17

I have marked my age with a candy-colored pop-culture yard-stick. But I am getting older and the yard-stick…well shit, I have no idea where it went. I lost it. Last time I saw it, it was being used by an attention deficit youth who wielded it like a sword upon my wrists and ankles. Hell, I’m surprised I lasted this long actually. There were those last few Star Wars movies that I didn’t understand and frankly didn’t go see. I guess that was the start of my slide into clueless old person. But now it seems really pronounced. Or is it pervasive. Maybe ubiquitous is really the right word.

It’s kinda sad when we begin to realize that our time of dominance and hold on the pinnacle of youth culture is no more. Maybe it was watching VH1’s 100 Greatest Metal Moments last night and realizing for good or ill that that was my time. That was many years ago. Oh the nostalgia for the uncynical years of Metal.

There are two things currently that my aging cynical mind just doesn’t get: obsession and the acquisition of ring tones for your mobile phone and the predominance of violent first person shooter video games. My video gaming begins and ends with Astroids, Donkey Kong, Mrs. Pac-Man. Innocent, abstract, easy to learn and easily dismissed. A novelty really. Enjoyed with others over pizza at the arcade. But the new crop of games leaves me baffled. Maybe it’s stories like this one about robots fighting in Iraq controlled by Gameboy type controllers that feeds my hyper-paranoid sci-fi mind about the increased use of games that both train us for, and dull our senses against, the real violence of war. I begin to envision a not-too-distant future where West Point is replaced by an Xbox and all wars in the future are fought by 11 year-old kids who control the instruments of killing from the confines of their bedroom somewhere in Omaha. Armies are nothing but linked up kids playing some real Matthew Broderick type Wargames. Medals of honor are replaced by gift-certificates to Best Buy for the kids who kill the most. That shit’s inevitable but will those kids ever know the power of a George Lynch speed arpeggio or a Rob Halford vocal firestorm. Me thinks no.