John McCain to pick Joe Lieberman as his VP?

You know... I kind of hope that John McCain does indeed pick Joe Lieberman as his VP running mate.

Because that would give me yet another reason to vote for Obama in November.

I don't think I've ever told this story yet on LJ, so here goes: Lieberman is the singular reason that I voted for George W. Bush instead of Al Gore back in 2000. Lieberman was my Jack Thompson, back in the day. Admittedly Lieberman is nothing as bad as Jack Thompson is now, but back then it seemed like he was one of the leading guys as far as displaying the most retarded Jack Thompson-like opposition to video games was concerned. I was pretty clueless as far as politics goes back then, and "This guy's VP hates video games? Well, I'm not voting for him then!" seemed like a good enough reason to vote for the other guy. This is a decision that, in hindsight, I regret to this day, given that "the other guy" turned out to be one of the worst, if not the worst, presidents this country has ever had (my opinion, obviously, YMMV).

But in the end, it really doesn't matter if McCain picks Lieberman or not since I'm not going to be voting for him anyway, but it would be delicious irony if he did pick him, given the above.

(EDIT)

The only reason this post survived my purge of political posts and still exists is because it is a lead in for and partial explanation of this post, which I will not be deleting.

(/EDIT)

I received a call on my cell phone today from Jack Thompson.

Let me repeat this with red, blinking text for emphasis:

Jack Thompson called me on my cell phone today and left a message on my voice mail.

Yes. THAT Jack Thompson.

Oooh, where to begin.

I'll start with a semi-amusing anecdote. A couple of years or so ago, I banned a guy from commenting on my journal (the one and only banning I've felt the need to do, so far), because he kept making annoying comments about the contents of my journal and why was I wasting my time posting about such things and so on and so forth (as though I were forcing him to read it or something). Well, one of the things he said before I banned him and deleted all of his comments was in response to one of my Jack Thompson posts, and was something like "Jack Thompson does not read your livejournal." To which I replied along the lines of "No shit, sherlock. Do you think I'm that deluded that I would think that he actually does?" Well guess what, guy I banned! It looks like both of us were wrong because he apparently does! Suck it! Or, at least, he did read it once. I hope it was and will remain only once and never again, anyway, though who am I to stop Jack Thompson if he really wants to read my LJ for some reason. o_O

Anyway, fast forward to today. Around 11:30am or so, I was on break at work and just surfing Google News, when I came across that story I linked to in my previous post. I wrote that post about it, figuring it would be a little throw away post that people would either read and agree with or read and roll their eyes at, and then just go on about their day in either case.

Well, fast forward to 2:00pm. My cell phone buzzed. I didn't recognize the number so, as per my usual policy, I didn't answer the phone. Out of idle curiosity, I plugged the number into Reverse Look Up, as I usually do.

Imagine, for a moment, my surprise when it returned with the name "John B Thompson" in Coral Gables, FL. (I'm not going to post the number here because I think that would be kind of a dick thing to do, but I do think it has already been leaked elsewhere, regardless. For reference, it has 666 in it. Just do a Google search for "Jack Thompson 666" and I'm pretty sure you'll find it, if you really want it. ¬_¬)

No way, I thought. There's no way that is right. But, just then, my phone buzzed again, indicating that there was a voice mail message. After a bit of hesitation, I called my voice mail. Sure enough, it was indeed Mr. Thompson who had left me a message, the full transcript of which is here:

"Uh, Mr. Plummer, this is Jack Thompson. I've read, with interest, your post at, uh... gamepolitics. Um, I am... despite what you say, I am not retarded. My view is that adult rated games shouldn't be sold to minors and I'm uh, roughly 90% of the American people agree with me on that.

So, if anyone is retarded I would say your sector of the, uh... not you personally, but your sector of the, uh, public opinion... on this issue is, uh, somewhat, uh, behind the times.

So, uh, Joe Lieberman is a friend of mine and he's, but he's not going to be the nominee, by the way, so don't worry.

Thank you.

By the way, next time get your facts straight will you? Thanks."

Okay... first of all, I have never, to my knowledge, ever posted to gamepolitics, so I don't know where he got that from. I even checked there to see if someone else may have linked to my LJ for whatever crazy reason, but I didn't find anything. My only guess is that he was perhaps confused by the "politics" tag I used on the last post, which is the first time I've ever used it, in fact. I'm normally uninterested in discussing the subject in any serious manner. (Heaven forbid he ever find my "jack thompson" tagged posts. ¬_¬) It wasn't until he mentioned Joe Lieberman that I even had a clue as to what the hell he was going on about or why he was even calling me. How, in god's name, he managed to find my LJ in the first place I'll never know. Yes, it's public, but he'd have to have been sitting around plugging his name into Google or LJseek or whatever to stumble across it. But given that I figured out it was because of my LJ post and not some mysterious gamepolitics post that I didn't actually write, that answered my second question of how in the hell did he get my cellphone number, since that iswas found in my resume on my personal page, which iswas linked to from this LJ.

Second of all, yeah, I know I have a bad habit of using the words "retard" and "retarded" in a derogatory manner, in much the same way that others use "gay" and "fag" and such. When I use these words in a derisive manner, I am only tangentially relating them back to the original meanings of the words. To me, when I use them, they are the equivalent to words like "asshat" and "douchebag" and the like. It's not very nice, I agree. I know a few people who are somewhat mentally handicapped (I don't keep up with PC trends, so I don't know what the current PC term is), and they're good people. For me to compare them to Jack Thompson is a grievous insult, even if it's just indirectly and unintentionally through my poorly-advised use of the word "retard", and I would like to apologize for doing so. To them. Not to him. I don't give a shit about Jack Thompson, aside from the fact that he continues to be an enormous source of morbid amusement. If I wanted to use more appropriate words to describe Jack, they would be words such as "asinine" and "inane" and "ludicrous" and such.

And now, about his view. Look. Nobody that I know disputes the idea that M-rated games should not be sold to minors. To me, it's pretty much common sense that this should be the case. Granted there's a large group of really vocal (on Internet forums and gaming sites, at least) teenagers who are probably really pissed off that he's trying to keep them from playing Grand Theft Auto or whatever, but they're not the majority (you know, given what the average gamer age is now, and all). Nowhere have I ever said that adult games should be sold to minors, and certainly not in that last post, so it looks like he's the one who needs to get his facts straight. Knee-jerk reactions like this, among other things to be listed below, are one of the reasons people hate him so much.

No, the reason why I, and many others, dislike this man so much has little to do with that view of his, and is actually because of things like this, to which I already linked above. The fact that he often blatantly and unashamedly outright lies and otherwise makes utterly outlandish claims about the video games he so likes to demonize is one of the biggest reasons people have such a dim view of him. Also, the fact that he is only rarely able to have a civil conversation with someone who is an "enemy" (i.e. a gamer) is another good reason he pisses so many people off. A modicum of common decency when speaking with someone would be good, even if you don't agree with them, but it's apparently too much effort for him to bother with. If he's on TV or something, that's one thing. That's his public mask. But when one gets him into an email exchange or a phone conversation, apparently he likes to take the gloves off.

As such, no, I will not be calling him back. I am not even slightly tempted to do so. I may well be all too eager to talk about him, some may even say that I'm a bit obsessed with talking about him, but I have no interest whatsoever in talking to him. I've heard of too many headaches coming from such attempts at communication with him to want to wish that upon myself.

Also, he tells me to "get your facts straight." What facts?! I wrote a post saying little more than that I don't like Joe Lieberman and mentioned Jack only in passing (mostly as a point of comparison and to say that I don't like him even more than I don't like Lieberman). There were no "facts" to "get straight." It was purely my opinion, and I, unlike Jack apparently, don't mistake my opinion for fact.

Oh, and since I'm sure that some of you reading this are calling bullshit on it, here is a mp3 of the voice mail. Get it while you can, because if he calls me back threatening to sue me over it or some shit, I'm taking it down. It's fairly well known how giddy this guy seems to be at the thought of hitting people with frivolous lawsuits at the drop of a hat over trivial stuff.

But, seriously, let me just say this one more time: Jack Thompson called my fucking cell phone. What in the hell, really? Does this man really have so much free time that he seeks out and calls people who talk crap about him on the Internet? If so, that's incredibly, horridly pathetic. If you had asked me before today, I would have told you that the likelihood of Jack Thompson calling me because I said he was retarded in my personal LJ was about as high as the likelihood of George W. Bush calling me because I said he was the worst president ever (EDIT many years later) until Donald Trump came along, anyway (/EDIT) or Will Wright calling me because I said he was a genius (EDIT many years later) until he got into the NFT shit anyway (/EDIT). Should I start expecting calls from George W. Bush and Will Wright now? >_>