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This lady rules. Janice Turner of The Times—they have a decent football podcast—goes into the familiar “new technology is scary and stupid and I wish the Old Days were here again when I didn’t have to know what a Web site was and how to dial a mattress” crutch in a recent column entitled “Xbox is crack for kids” and subtitled “It’s an impossible task to police our children’s multimedia addiction.” It’s exactly what you would think it: a working woman trying to keep her kids from getting fat and lazy (or “common,” as the English call it) with all sorts of “a recent study says” justifications for her take-no-guff sass.
The kicker:
Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan’s Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain…. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators’ brains. And they play them – beepety-beep – on journeys, over family meals, any minute in which they find themselves unamused.
How can you not love her? We’re all crack cocaine addicts who play Satan’s Sudoku all day. Checkmate, Janice!
Please read her entire column. It gives such an insight to English (or British when it suits them to lump the whole island together) parenthood and English motherhood. With overbearing parents like Janice, it’s no wonder England produces so much deadpan comedy.
Xbox is crack for kids [The Times]