By now most of you have probably heard of the so-called "Hot Coffee Scandal". For those uninitiated, basically in the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, if you download a mod/patch, you can gain access to some sex minigames (omg Google please don't pick that up). After this was discovered, the ESRB made Take-Two (the publisher of GTA) change the rating to AO (Adults Only, the equivalent of an NC-17 movie), from M (Mature, the equivalent of an R-rated movie.) What has followed has been one of the most awe-inspiringly stupid public/media/government uproars, resulting in a federal inquiry and $5 million class-action suit, where a woman claims she was "damaged" by learning of the unlockable content in the game, after buying it for her grandson. Her 14-year-old grandson.

I don't even know where to begin. One the one hand, I do think that it was monumentally stupid for Rockstar to keep that content in the game. Working in the games industry, I know it's a pile of bull poo that they didn't know that content was still in the game when in shipped. But on the other hand, this whole debacle is just another example of people not wanting to take some goddamn responsibility for themselves. Parents nowadays seem to want to rely on a ratings system to take care of their kids rather than, you know, actual parenting. This game, which already has strong violence and sexual content, shouldn't be played by kids anyway, hence the M-rating. If your kid is playing this game already, some heavily-pixellated nudity isn't going to turn him into Charles Manson. If you don't want your kid to play the game, get off your butt and don't let him play the game. Stop the goddamn fingerpointing and just raise your kid. And for all you politicians (ahem Hillary), there are many more important things to focus your attention on. Please.

For the past week or so, a few of us had been trading e-mails, trying to figure out what to do for May Ling's (surprise) birthday. We eventually settled on a day at Raging Waters, which we planned for Sunday afternoon. Babs (the compulsive liar,) came up with a story about us going swimming at her apartment complex. Florence even told May Ling about a non-existent afternoon tee-time (that's golf, not the drink) to throw her off. Everything was going swimmingly (har har) until May Ling dropped the bomb to Walter on Saturday evening that, you know, she didn't really care for water parks. (I don't know how the topic came up, but thank goodness it did.) What ensued was a frantic series of secret phone calls, e-mails, and text messages trying to come up with an alternate plan. Finally (around midnight Saturday night) we decided on a picnic at the beach.

Sunday morning Florence bought a whole bunch of food, and brough it to my place to do a bit of preparing before heading back to her apartment ("after church.") Around 1:10 I loaded up the car and headed to Babs' place, where I was supposed to meet Walter to transfer the food into his car. Unfortunately, Walter was running late and May Ling and Florence were already on their way. So I got there just before the two of them arrived, and we tried to distract May Ling until Walter got there. Walter called me when he did, so we all headed outside.

The afternoon was spent playing at the beach, where I gorged myself on yummy food, and I discovered that I do indeed throw like a girl. (But May Ling throws like a boy. ) I got my cotton candy, and Babs got her Dippin' Dots (which I discovered hurt my tongue) so we were happy. We had 8:30 reservations at Sundance, so we sped on home and threw on a change of clothes before arriving 15 minutes late, covered in sand and sunblock. The prime rib was excellent, and we also shared May Ling's free birthday mud pie. Afterwards, it was back to May Ling and Florence's for more cake. I thought I was going to explode. In a good way, though.

Other than that excitingness, my weekend was low-key. I worked a full day on Saturday, then had pizza that Florence made on her cool pizza stone. I also finished watching Scratch which even more made me want to learn to DJ. I'm really tempted to buy a set of turntables, but since I've never actually touched any, I figure I should find a friend's to try before dropping money on them. But come on: "DJ Sha" already has a ring to it.

Finally, at May Ling's birthday dinner, I got some fantastic news. A couple weeks ago at dinner, a friend made an off-color joke to May Ling about her mother. He immediately regretted it, and apparently IMed Walter later that night to ask if May Ling was mad. Walter responded, "No, it's fine. She's mellowed out a lot since she started hanging out with Sha."

Sha Sha Chu: Corrupting minds since 2004.

This weekend I went with May Ling, Matt, and Walter to see Les Miserables: THE MUSICAL THAT SWEPT THE WORLD. Or something like that. It was really good, and all of the singers were excellent. It made me all nostalgic-like for when I played in the pit orchestra for our musicals in high school. Yeah, I was a nerd. Ah, who am I kidding. I'm still a nerd.

Speaking of "miserable", I've been working a lot. (Hee hee just kidding omgpleasedon'tfireme.) But 'tis true that many of my waking hours are spent in front of that Infernal Machine known as the COMPUTOR. And actually, some of my sleeping hours as well; last night I had a dream about work. But 'twas not an ordinary work dream; I was dreaming in actual code. It was sad. See above re: I'm a nerd. Man I am rockin' the semicolons.

I've just started playing God of War and it's pretty much as fantasmic as people say it is. The graphics are unbelievable for the PS2 (when I first saw Buddy and Marc playing it, I thought it was on the Xbox) and the gameplay is solid. Plus, all y'all know my weird obsession with Greek mythology, so that's a Super Bonus (tm). Might be one of those rare games I actually finish.

Anyway, here is a list of things I think should be banned:

• clogs
• black licorice
• use of the word "hella" as an adjective rather than an adverb. e.g. "There were hella people at that party!" It's bad enough the word exists at all.
• rubbernecking
• walking around stark nekkid in the locker room. (It's just weird! Especially if they stop to talk to you.)

Had a simultaneously very active and very lazy weekend. Friday night I saw Fantastic Four. Though not fantastic, it was sufficiently entertaining. I suppose "Sufficiently Entertaining Four" just doesn't have the same ring to it. I think it must be suffering from the bandwagon effect with all the really bad reviews, because it definitely wasn't as bad as some of the reviews make it out to be. On the other hand, my expectations were so low, they could have done the whole movie with Barbie dolls and crayons and I wouldn't have minded.

Saturday morning I ran with Buddy while May Ling and Florence biked. It was my first run in a couple weeks, and I definitely felt it. Afterwards Buddy and I watched the National Scrabble Championships, which I had DVRed for him. After that, I "acted" (and believe me, I use that word generously) in May Ling's project for her film class. Later in the afternoon I "played" (and believe me, I use that word generously) volleyball with some friends, and we had dinner at Olive Garden afterwards. In the evening, I Remote Desktop-ed into my computer at work, and ended up doing work until 3am. Oops.

Since I stayed up so late the night before, I didn't get up until close to 1pm on Sunday. I went to the mall intending to buy new jeans, but discovered the Gap was under renovation. Curses. Instead I ran some other errands. I cooked spaghetti sauce while I watched the deplorable Hackers, then watched the much better Kill Bill Volume 2 over dinner.

Work will likely be crazy for at least a couple more weeks. The car is still in pieces, but at least all the parts are in the same country.

Had a pretty good long weekend. I could definitely get used to these 4-day weekend things. Friday afternoon, Buddy, Jess, May Ling and I went down to San Simeon to check out Hearst Castle. The drive down was pretty quick, even with the random (and sudden) stops for photo ops along the 1. Friday evening we had a mediocre dinner, and I finally watched an episode of Six Feet Under, which makes me feel lucky that at least my family's not that screwed up. Saturday morning we had brunch and played a rousing (i.e. I got my ass whupped) game of Scrabble, before heading to the Castle for the tour. It was a nice, sunny day, and the estate itself was pretty cool, if not totally opulent. Pics are on the way, but I'm having some issues with my webserver (it got "compromised" last week, and they had to reinstall everything.)

Saturday night, Yar and Rahul came over to watch Labyrinth, which Yar had never seen. It was the first of our 80s movie nights, given that all of the classic movies of the 80s seemed to have skipped young Yar over. It was as awesomely bad as I remember, and as a bit of trivia, Gates McFadden of Star Trek: TNG fame was a choreographer for Labyrinth, but as Cheryl McFadden. The three of us had an interesting time figuring out whether it was actually her, or some bizarre previously-unknown twin sister.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly relaxing and sleeping. Besides Labyrinth, I watched Dodgeball, Kill Bill vol. 1 (my first Tarantino film), and You Got Served. They were all good, except for You Got Served, which was only saved because of the dancing. Monday evening I had dinner with my neighbors, then headed up to Foster City to watch the fireworks. I was happy because they had the smiley face ones.

Other tidbits:

• Huge congrats to those crazy kids, Brendan and Diane!
• Enzo bonked his head on the doggy door when I closed it this morning.
• We all work too much.
• Cable TV will be the death of me.
• If you haven't already, you should watch Mulholland Drive. It's insanity