Yeah, I hear you on the personal preferences thing, which is why I won't say they are simply bad. One person's entertainment can easily be another's torturous boredom. The thing that bothers me is that games are marketed in a very manipulative way to very young people. I think it was one of the big auto makers that got embarassed by some internal memos that stressed the company position that marketing starts when their customers are 6 years old, not when they are ready to buy. McD's does the same thing, marketing to 3 year olds so that stopping for a quarter pounder and a large fries as a teen seems the most natural and logical choice in the world. Like the song says, It ain't rebellion when you're drinking what they're sellin. I know, bad analogy since nobody said anything about rebelling.

For a really great read about the distortions we accept as normal and how the media (specifically TV) influence in ways that can hardly be imagined, check out a book titled The Age of Missing Information. It's a great reality check on what's important in life.

So you live in a city without parks? Even as recent as 10 years ago, when I lived in Phoenix AZ, all I had to do was walk to the park. There were pick-up games of all sorts most hours of the day or night. Maybe things have changed that much?

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley