Step Away From The Console

Boy, 16, 'attacks mother with claw hammer before cremating her in oven'... because she took away his Playstation

A 16-year-old son has allegedly confessed to killing his mother because she took away his Playstation games console.

Kendall Anderson attacked his mother Rashida with a claw hammer while she slept, bludgeoning her 20 times, police say.

When the hammer attack didn't kill her, the South Philadelphia teenager dragged the 37-year-old downstairs and tried to 'cremate her' in the kitchen oven, according to a court report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

When that failed, he grabbed a chair leg and beat her around the head, before dumping her body in an alley behind the house, it is claimed.

'The victim's body was found under debris,' a police source told MailOnline. 'She had suffered a blunt trauma to the head.'

Wearing a blue striped polo shirt and casual trousers, 5ft8 Kendall appeared in court today, where the alleged confession was read out.

According to his police statement, he spent three hours trying to decide whether he should kill his mother after she removed his computer games on the day after Thanksgiving, November 26.

'I couldn't stand the arguing,' he said in the statement, after apparently killing her at around 9pm.

The 11th grader has now been ordered to stand trial for murder, possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of a corpse.

Philadelphia police homicide Det. Thorsten Lucke, who read out the confession in court, said Anderson had expressed remorse for the crime and told him: 'If I could, I would not do it again.

'I really miss my mom... she was the only person who cared for me.'

Original Article

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure. You know fine well where I got this story from and why it was linked there. But that's not what I want to talk about - really. I've got that out of my system so to speak, call it a brief (~8 month) detox after 15 years of politically correct brainwashing. It is what it is.

Two Hours of Gaming = One Line of Coke? (I think this concept is misleading, as there is no withdrawal from games. But anything involving a TV set does have effects on your brain comparable to drugs, see here.)

No, I'm discussing videogame dependency, which is something that I know about. Like most of what is promoted in today's corporate technotronic era of flashing lights, endless nothingness ritual is all I can describe it as. Oh but I was very good at it. You ask what it is that keeps people playing, I have never heard a good answer to that question from anyone. (Sort of like asking a drunk why they keep drinking.) I don't have a good answer. But my, it took a lot of time out of my day. Several times I stopped playing only to resume again within weeks. In the end what settled it was when I gave all my games to mother and told her to hide them, and that was the end of that.

Now the point here is not that I am comparing videogames to drugs. No, actually, not at all. Drugs are physically addictive (okay, most drugs). What we're talking about is psychological dependency (thank you Jeremy Kyle and that Graham fellow for the clarification). In other words, the 'substance' is a mental crutch. This may surprise non-gamers, but I would suggest videogames, while billed as fun, actually supplant work in the human psyche. Because, they generally revolve around repetitive tasks that often aren't fun, at least IMO. I didn't keep playing CoD because it was fun, but because it was like earning things, like work. I am not very surprised that some people would be willing to work for nothing but made up online currency; see here.

I would recommend keeping your children if you have any, away from these things completely (lest they end up like this fine hyperactive young gentleman). I was a lot better off before having anything to do with them. Same goes really for the internet, as it shatters your attention span. Although we are here to learn and to teach, right? Yes that means *you*, close that pr0n! I can see you from here! lol