http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23261938/

Ah hah, some dumb kid tried to order a hit on his parents, but it didn't work because neither Golgo 13 nor Agent 47 will work for the paltry sum of $260.

$260 for 2 hits comes out to $130 per hit. Besides for the fact that amount of money is really paltry in this day and age, that's not even enough cash to replace the murder weapon if the hitman was supposed to shoot them. Unbelievable. Kids these days have no critical thinking ability.

Besides for that, apparently he was hiring 2 men, so cut the share of each man and half, AND he gave them handguns he wanted them to use. Now, think about it. If you were a hitman, would you really want to use a murder weapon supplied to you by your employer? If you got caught by the police, that would just be more evidence linking you to the employer. Of course you'd want to come up with a hard-to-trace weapon on your own in a weird way, like buying it off the street or something on the other side of the country far far away from the actual site of the murder.

If two guys seemed so eager to accept $260 for murder it should have been really obvious to the kid that under the circumstances they probably would just take the money and run.

I think this points to the serious social problem that kids these days don't play enough Shadowrun 3rd edition. If the kid in question had been a serious Shadowrun 3rd edition player he would have contemplated imaginary hitmen with statistics written on paper long enough to realize how ridiculous he was acting. No Johnson would even bring up paying ~75 UCAS dollars (not even nuyen) per runner for anything.

Play more TRPGs, kids!

Some kids are born with the words sucker stapled to their forehead like a bad toupee, and this kid's was the flashing neon version. Seventeen and still thinks killing his parent will solve all his problems, a cigarette stuck in his mouth like he's been smoking hunched over in a bathroom his whole life. I should kill his parents just for not smothering the little bastard in his crib. "Put the stick back in your pocket, kid; never lay money on the table before a deal's done, got it? And take that damn cigarette out your mouth, you look like an idiot." One eye watering, the other shut. "I'm tempted to ask how you got my name - shut your mouth - but then I'd just have to tie up more loose ends after I dumped your body in the Sound." Angsty shit pile can't keep his act together, "And pick a fucking attitude, flipping from sulky to tough guy ain't gonna cut it - some advice, don't go with tough guy, you can't pull it off with that haircut." Indignant, yeah, that too, kinda punk you have to shoot anyway because their mouths work days faster than their brains, "Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna kill your parents, and your dog, and your ex-girlfriend, and that cute girl you never had the guts to ask out, and I'm gonna do it using your body. Then, I'm gonna invest the insurance policy in some black bank and then I'm gonna walk your flesh off some old deserted dock. How's that sound?" Ah, shit, I killed him before I finished talking. Aw well, this body was getting old anyway.

man!

260 for a hit?

Life is cheap but not cheaper than rent.

Let me say it. THANK GOD THEY WEREN`T GAMERS! I´ve seen enough falsehoods on RPGs in the news.

You know I haven't heard an RPG related media disaster recently. I'm sure they happen all the time though. Heard any good ones?

the kid gave them
$260 cash
3 handguns ($1,000 worth of merchandise, $550 ata pawn shop)
and ATM card with PIN ID (couple thousand in the account)
and the security code for the house.

the two men just took the legal $260 that the kid gave them and ignored the illegal items offered.
its not as idiotic as you are making it out to be.

After the way the media tried to link video games to the Virginia Tech shooting and got completely screwed, I doubt there's going to be a big media push against gaming any time soon... unless Jack Thompson somehow keeps his license.

I thought we were saying the KID is stupid?

And I do guns really pawn for that much money? You can buy a pretty nice used handgun for 550.

He was saying 3 handguns for $550 at a pawn shop, so 550/3 would be the per handgun amount.

Oh, there's still been a few attempts to blame NIU and other recent shootings (not just VTech) to violence in the media (video games included). Because, well, that's becoming the new way to handle this sort of thing. You have to blame the gun, the movies, the tv, the music, the video games...anything but the crazy-ass killing people, because nothing can ever be someone's fault, we're all precious snowflakes with a right to do what we want, it always has to be something's fault.

Nah, it isn't that. The problem is that we're sitting at a dinner table with the dead corpse of God and expecting the rotting thing to make a brilliant toast, as if we were Norman Bates and the slain deity was mother. Like Norman Bates with his mother killed God ourselves, we poisoned it with our own minds. Yet, we cannot accept the eternal consequences of our irrevocable actions and pretend as if it were still around.

While many teenagers today are deluded into believing that the deity is alive and vibrant, like their parents, being unable to smell the putrid bloated dead thing for what it really is, many more are fully aware that there is no such thing as morality and that the conventional values that we hold onto are as dead and useless as the deity that they spring from. But many young people can see this. The expanse of the information superhighway has made it impossible for people with curiosity and thirst for experience to understand this. The contented drones isolated in their self-delusional bubble worlds closed to both truth and beauty, the fundamentalists who still believe that God is relevant and the humanists who cling to the painfully absurd notion that human existence has some sort of intrinsic value, cannot provide this young people with the skills and support that they need to form their own values from the vacuum of nihilism. Thus, those that should become Übermensch instead fail, remaining lost and rudderless in a sea of meaninglessness because they are unable to create their own meaning for themselves. And those simpletons who cling so tightly to their dead and worthless morality must make up excuses for why their values don't work, why these aberrations occur, because if they did not then they would have to discard their tattered security blankets and accept that human existence is pointless and arbitrary.


Of course, the plan is far worse than the boy not playing enough Shadowrun. He also hasn't seen enough Hitchcock. If you're a poor kid with no mafia connections, then the best way to pay a hitman is with a Strangers on the Train. You kill his guy and he kills yours. Simple, effective, and he can't get cold feet and turn you in because even if he does he is still liable for the murder that you commit for him.

If you're rich you can just hire Blackwater to do it.

Yeah, I went through a "God sucks and only I'm smart enough to know it, not like those idiots" phase, too. Of course, I was fourteen at the time, but, hey. Whatever floats your boat.

It isn't that God sucks so much as rationalism makes it impossible to justify the existence of such a deity or the validity of any moral doctrine and the existential crisis that tends to spring from the initial comprehension of this can easily lead to destructive nihilism if not properly channeled into creative self-determination.

I think you got a point there hyz but I say rather than lack of perspective I find a big challenge nowadays lies more in constructing your own moral ideals when you are bombarded with conflicting standards and role models in the media that apparently everyone demands you to fit.

This is exactly why I think they should show Conan the Barbarian in school, along with assigned reading in "A Critical Appreciation of John Milius' Conan The Barbarian".