Otherwise, we love movies.

I remember as a kid being mortified by the advertisement for the movie “Magic” starring a very young Anthony Hopkins. The trailer along freaked the crap out of me so badly that I had nightmares nearly every night for a time. But nowadays, this sort of stuff seems to be par for the course. Horror is mainstream. Or perhaps I should say Gore, because that’s what much of today’s stuff really is. I shy away from that stuff, and so do my kids. There’s no thinking involved, just frame after frame of CGI madness.

We have a group of guys locally that still do 40k. I never got into that . . . not talented enough to paint all those tiny figures . . .

Dorkside! I love it!

Turkish

A lawnmower called Bloody Skull? Now that’s disturbing.

Tysdaddy

I also used to game. Started of with AD&D and used to play 40K (Eldar). One thing I noticed when playing 40K was that kids loved playing chaos with all it’s satanic iconography and evil ethos. My concern is why are kids so attracted to such dark stuff? I’m fully aware that most kids know what fantasy is, it’s just that I find the childish fascination with evil, gore and death so unsettling and mysterious.

As for now having cable, I’m with you on that but probably for a different reasons. We get 7 free to air stations here in Sydney and 4 of them are very good plus, and let’s face it, cable might give one over 100 stations but 99% of what it offers is crap and I don’t think it’s worth the subscription fee.

And yet none of my kids are all that warped. They have imaginations and completely understand that fantasy IS fantasy. And except for Hermione Granger, none have ever wanted to dress up as something so ugly for Halloween.

Kids are going to gravitate to images and characters they see. Sometimes it’s because their friends are doing it, and other times it’s because they see it ad nauseum on TV. Another reason we don’t have cable . . .

Offer alternatives. Teach them to read. And their minds will take off . . .

The five year old boy across the street came over to show my son (age 3) and me (older the that) his new toy lawnmower. Gleefully, he informed us that it’s name was “Bloody Skull.” I had no idea what to do with that… and thankfully, neither did Short Stack. Some kids are just drawn to it for some reason. Personally, when I was a kid, skulls freaked me out. I wanted nothing to do with them and avoided any images of them as best i could. That being said, I loved a good ghost story. Go figure.

Excuse me for a second whilst I swing my butt up onto this high horse..*oomph* There. Ahem…

There is NO WAY I would buy this crap for either of my kids. (Dismounts)

We’ll see how I hold up over time with that resolution.

-Turkish Prawn

… but I think this former child has gone over to the “Dorkside”.