Sports & Play
No Guitar Hero this Christmas for Pothead Son
If you were in high school, and your dad came home to find you and your buddies smoking some cheeba in your backyard, what would he do? Ground you? Take away your allowance? Sit down and smoke with you?
Or how about sell your copy of Guitar Hero III?
Well, that's exactly what one Toronto man did after coming home to find his son getting high; he sold his son's Christmas gift, the popular and hard-to-find Guitar Hero III for the Nintendo Wii. The videogame, which retails for about $100 in stores, was bought by an Australian for over $9000, and the oddball auction has been getting coverage from around the world.
In the eBay auction, the boy's father proclaimed:
"I know smoking a joint isn't the end of the world, but if you can convince me that he deserves the gift, then I will end the auction. You will have to be very convincing."
I'm sure the fact that the man made a 9000% profit on this auction was enough of an incentive to sell the gift. There are very few things that are more convincing than a stack of hundred dollar bills in your pocket.
Further in his letter on the auction page, the father went on to say:
"While I doubt this will keep him from ever smoking pot again, I think it will make him think twice before doing illegal (well I think pot is still illegal in Canada) drugs on my property."
Which, in the end, brings me to a few questions:
- What kind of lesson will this kid learn from his copy of Guitar Hero II being sold by his father?
- Will the kid actually care, or will he just head down to Burrito Boyz to feed his munchies?
- What kind of person would spend $9000 to buy a copy of Guitar Hero III from a random stranger in Toronto, over 15,500 kilometers away?
In other news, I'm selling my Nintendo Wii because I've been a bad boy this year: bids of less than $20,000 will not be entertained.
(Photo of token toker by Chris Orbz, taken at the Toronto Marijuana March)
Discussion
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It's hard to get even here. look at those ads on Tv man, you have to reserve that shite. Is this actually the kid who smoked the pot in the picture?
And hhh, I wouldn't be too critical of Guitar Hero: I'm sure there are a few people (Ryan, where are you?) that are big enough fans and would be willing to challenge your assumptions.
To the detractors: sounds like you guys are rhymically challenged, as that's all it is - a rhythm game. And to boot, it's just a game anyways. You think most kids got time time and money to spend on a guitar, music books and then get lessons from some kinesiology grad who wants to teach you the better points of some stupid ZZ Top/Billy Gibbons wankery solo? Get over yourselves, and go back to trying to learn how to play the solo in "More than Words." Love it by the way. Nuno!
(Sorry, I just had to say that.)
Wii > life.This story is pretty funny especially considering the kid would probably just end up smoking again. This is canada, this is normal.
HHH, you need to get with the times.
Either way, it's just a vid'yuh game, and it's just a father trying to discipline his kid in his own way...I'm curious what some here would do if this were REALLY their kid. it's easy to say, "Yeah, I'd let my kid sit around and play games and get high...it's no big deal."
And anyone who pays 9 grand for a vidoe game has too much money on their hands.
As parent and household owner, doesn't the father have that right?
Will it work? Maybe not. But I don't see anything wrong with giving consequences for breaking the house rules.
I have to agree about Guitar Hero, before I actually realized what playing it physically meant, the way everyone talked about how amazing they were getting because of it, they totally made it sound like it actually taught you to play guitar... not taught you something similiar but totally useless. South Park nailed it.
I'd say something about pot, but that's not really the issue here. It's about a parent setting down rules and his kid breaking them. The fact it was over pot is, to me, pretty irrelevant.
Also, here's another vote for GH being hella fun.
Its ok to smoke pot at 15,
Then it must be ok to buy alcohol at 15,
Then it must be ok to buy smokes at 15,
Oh, yeah same drug dealer that sells pot could sell you some ecstasy,
Then it must be ok to do ecstasy at 16,
Or he could hook you up with some cocaine,
Then it must be ok to do snay at 18.
Where do you draw the line? How do you protect your kid from what he/she doesn't know better?
The kid is 15, not a responsible adult yet, that's where a lot of his personality is forming. Using drugs at that age is equivalent to playing Russian Roulette. For most people it stops at one joint, but for some, its one, two, three and down the roller coaster for life.
The problem with pot is that it just doesn't stop there - the money that you give your drug dealers for "harmless weed" is used to branch out and produce ecstasy, import cocaine, and etc. Canada is one of the largest ecstasy exporters now, thanks to all the marijuana money.
Look at Vancouver east side, there is a glorious example of timid drug policy and oblivious parenting gone wrong.