Editorial: Casual Fridays 10/7

Call of Duty: Payback

Here’s a new Call of Duty challenge: Avenge your… Call of Duty: Payback

Here’s a new Call of Duty challenge: Avenge your simulated deaths in real life. Mark Bradford, a singularly competitive 46-year-old from Plymouth, England, grew so incensed after a 13-year-old acquaintance murdered his character that he stormed to the boy’s house and grabbed his throat, British newspaper The Mirror reports. Although the victim, while unharmed, was probably traumatized, we encourage readers to look on the bright side: Adults are finally taking video games as seriously as kids.

Come on Baby, Light my Fire

Although certain Los Angeles firefighters will not be disciplined for allowing two of their engines to be used in pornos, we believe the films themselves committed grave crimes of uncreativeness. According to NBC4, an actress in one of the movies climbs onto a truck and, while exposing herself, says: “Look at this truck. Isn’t that nice?” Had the woman graduated from Pitt’s prestigious creative writing program, she would have doubtlessly thought of sharper lines, including “Now I’m standing on a truck,” “There’s a truck in this shot — isn’t that unusual?” and, once the sequence concluded, “Time for the sex.”

Walking Dead: Eurasia

Finally, our irrational phobias have prompted costly legislation. Officials in Malatya, a city in eastern Turkey, have equipped their local morgue with motion detectors and alarms to ensure no one is indefinitely mistaken for dead, Reuters reports. Although this is a commendable precaution, we believe such technology can have other useful applications — namely, monitoring the vital signs of students in large gen-ed lectures.

Vicious Cycles

Those who maintain that criminals can reform themselves should take a long hard look at the case of Donald Gartner, who, less than two hours after being released from jail following a drunken disturbance, was sent back for trying to break into cars in the facility’s parking lot, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Clearly, this is proof that prisons are dysfunctional: Gartner committed a worse crime when he was freed than before he entered. When he’s let out a third time, who knows what he’ll do?

Cat Burglar

Let’s paws to think this through: Was it the purrfect crime? British newspapers are littered with headlines about the wife of an member of Parliament who broke into her husband’s lover’s home and, as Reuters reports, whiskered away her cat. While this in itself is enough to make your hair stand on end, we’ve only scratched the surface: She’s now been charged with a feliney.