Call of Duty is Responsible for Connecticut Shootings, Assassination of JFK, Crucifixion, and Original Sin.

Guns don’t kill people. Video games, the media and Obama’s budget kill people -NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre

Squint a bit, and Britain and America could almost appear quite similar. They say everyone is beautiful if you squint a bit. But open your eyes, and America is like a garden party BBQ, while Britain is the conceptually pleasant, but climatically shit picnic. The American BBQ chef will invariably be some alpha male with a funny apron and erection problems.  The English will dine on potted shrimps and custard tarts, and have their real conversations in the cold silence between words. It’s the little differences.  Over there the date comes second. Everything is still measured in feet, gallons and pounds. Strong patriot and puritanical values. Privatised health service. Jaywalking. Candy. Driving on the right.

And the ability to buy a gun at the cultural equivalent of Tesco.   

On 14 December 2012, a twenty year-old man shot and killed his mother. He then went to a suburban Connecticut elementary school and opened fire with multiple weapons, killing twenty children and six adults. Adam Lanza then turned one of the guns on himself. On 15 December 2012 certain news networks salaciously rubbed their hands together and showed us in bafflingly unsubstantiated detail the mechanics of the massacre.  The upshot of this was a renewal in the long-dormant national debate about gun control, and sparked a complementary- and in some cases diversionary- discussion about mental health funding and treatment. But it’s also revived another old conversation, about whether video games are too violent, and whether they play a role in encouraging, desensitizing, and even preparing mass killers for their rampages. I just watched the head of the NRA (Neanderthal Redneck Association) - one of America’s most powerful and influential corporate lobbying groups (though they play at being a citizen's rights outfit for gun owners, of course) - hold a press conference to say, effectively: Guns don't kill people, video-games and Hollywood kill people, and have created a Culture of Violence.

This is not a new argument. It is a tired, reactionary cliche we've seen trotted out time and time again, completely lacking imagination. If NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre was trapped inside featureless room with a single, solitary tea cosy, he wouldn't even be tempted to try it on. It isn't just the NRA though. A Jay Rockefeller introduced legislation in the Senate “to arrange for the National Academy of Sciences to study the impact of violent video games and violent programming on children.” That’s right, videogame legislation beat gun control bills to Congress. I understand why some people don’t like violent video games. I also understand why some people don’t like violent films or TV shows. But before you start talking about censorship, I want to see some proof (of which there currently is none). I worry that if you decide (with no good evidence) that you don’t like my video games, and want them gone, then next you’ll come for my films. Then, maybe, you’ll decide you need to come for my books. That will not do.

Dad Diaries: The Sandwich Faux Pas, and Batman.

In which I commit sandwich etiquette suicide, ­and the most meaningful party conversation I had was an imaginary exchange with a 15 month old baby.

Today my partner and I are attending our son Frank’s first Christmas party. You know, for babies. In a way I feel sorry for them. They’re only here after all by the grace of a thunderous male orgasm followed by a painful vaginal expulsion. And yet a mere twelve months after this terrible ordeal we dress them up in elf costumes, feed them sugar and fill their periphery vision with psychedelic lights and tinsel. They don’t have a clue.  It’s clearly more for the parents, a chance to have a natter and some nibbles. A nice small scale affair- just four Mums, their respective offspring, and me. It’s a Saturday, but presumably the other Dads are either at work, or doing Something Else.

The Walking Dead: How Videogames Are Stupid, But They Don’t Always Have To Be

I love gaming because basically I love buttons. Everyone loves buttons. We live in a world obsessed with buttons. What does this button do? What happens when I press this? - Mike, House Party Pill Head

Videogames are stupid aren't they?

I love games, I really do.  But it’s hard not to get a little self-conscious as my better half sits and quietly watches me stab a bad guy, brutally garrote another and deliver a shotgun coup de grâce  to a third party’s face. Context is everything, I remind myself. There’s a perfectly valid narrative reason for all this wanton slaughter, and I will inform her of this once I’ve finished eviscerating this guy with a chainsaw. My character, ever the wordsmith, yells ‘SUCK IT, BITCH!’ as he steps through a puddle of shiny HD giblets.  My fiancé’s eyes glaze over. I stay quiet.

Thing is, video games are the fastest growing form of mass media, teeming with all sorts of exciting and emergent ideas. The passivity of reading a book, or watching a film, stands in stark contrast to the wonderful interactivity games can offer. The unique stories that could be told- the sheer potential. And yet the only games that find traction sales-wise are variations on pixelated men running around a pitch and/or pixelated men running around shooting each other.

So I don’t entirely blame my other half for her indifference. At £40 games are expensive enough to be self-indulgent. The AAA titles that get all the budget and press are, let’s face it, a sausage fest. Some of the better written videogames are still about as emotionally resonant as an episode of Hollyoaks, trotting out tired character tropes, and big titted exposition-machines passing off as women. Their idiosyncrasies and esoteric logic can only really be understood with experience. Give a newbie a game pad, with its 14 buttons (and that’s before you try explaining that pressing down on either of the two analogue sticks counts as a button too), they will freak out. Who can be really be arsed with all that?

That’s why it’s nice to play a game that defies all of this, and is my personal 2012 Game of The Year:

The Walking Dead

Choice Is Good, Right?

All of Time and Space. Everywhere and anywhere, everything that ever was ... where do you want to start? – The Eleventh Doctor

Don’t ask me. I don’t bloody know.

I flick through the early morning Sky channels and heartily scoff at the choice of programmes before me. I could play into the stereotype and watch Jeremy Kyle give deluded human fecal matter a platform to advertise the virtues of oral hygiene. There’s always Come Dine With Me, which will no doubt still be on when the universe enters a temporal collapse and the second Big Bang occurs. Early primordial soup metabolism will no doubt be narrated by Dave Lamb. What else? Dog the Bounty Hunter, pah. Catchphrase, Teen Mom, Mother Truckers, Four Weddings, Miami Ink, Friends. I don’t have to stand for this, I remember! I’m not a slave to channel providers- I’m in the 21^st century and I can watch whatever the bloody hell I want.

So I put on Netflix, the streaming service that tries to tailor your tastes to its large back catalogue of film and TV. I flick though and I’m thinking this is much better. What shall I watch? It puts everything into handy genre categories for me. Am I in a TV Comedy, Gory Drama or Cerebral Thriller kind of mood? Its 8:20 am, a bit hard to tell really. Netflix even recommends programmes based on what you've seen before. Liked Sherlock and Luther? Here, you’ll probably like Spooks, lucky we have 85 episodes for you to enjoy isn't it? Isn't it?!

Ten minutes later I still haven’t chosen anything.  I count easily 10 TV shows I’ve been trying to get around to watching, several films that got rave reviews I’ve had my eye on, the new Werner Herzog documentary a friend recommended; but I just can’t make a commitment.  I glance over at a shelf of unwatched DVDs. The penultimate seasons of The Wire look forlornly back at me. Never did get round to watching Band of Brothers, nor Mad Men. My shiny super-dooper box set of Blade Runner: Final Cut remains unopened, gathering dust and remorse. There’s too much stuff. Without leaving my seat I can access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, download any film ever made, order any book ever written. And the end result is that I hardly experience any of it. It's too much.

TV: The Age of The Male Anti-Hero

Walking into a multiplex cinema can often be a depressing experience.  Do you want standard seats, or premium seats? 3D, IMAX, IMAX 3D, or silly old 2D? Do you want a Regular or Large vat of carbonised sweetener to go on along with your inordinately expensive popcorn? Don’t forget the zombiefied child staff, the half hour of targeted trailers and adverts, the irritating piracy notices, the smug celebrity endorsements. When FINALLY the film of your choice is on, fellow audience members (here purportedly to experience the shared magic of cinema) are either slurping nosily, talking, texting, or snogging. The real scrotes excel at doing them all at once.  And what have you all come to see? Whatever gives you the most bang for your £15 of course. You want to be taken to worlds you haven’t seen before, you want big ideas and great characters given the budget to come alive. You want a RIDE. You’re more likely to get Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which no one wants (ironically of course, PoC started out as just that, a themed ride). Sometimes you get The Avengers, other times you get Battleship; it’s like playing Russian Roulette, with the roaring crowd of focus groups, marketers and studio executives urging you to blow your head off.

 Meanwhile at home on your unassuming small screen (unless your penis size is determined by 50’’ HD TVS), there has been a renaissance in long form dramatic storytelling. More so than ever before viewers can follow intricate plot lines and nuanced character development when they want, how they want- DVR,TiVO, Sky Plus, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, online catch up services and um, Pirate Bay. Smaller channels like HBO, Showtime and AMC have made a name for themselves by developing ambitious, higher tier programmes.  We’re in the first decade of the 21^st century, and by popular consensus  we’re in the Golden Age of TV. The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad bloody Men are usually cited (more or less accurately) as The Unmissables.  I’d also include a second tier of critically acclaimed but less consistently masturbated over shows such as Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire, The Shield, Six Feet Under, Game of Thrones, Deadwood etc. Characters and genre aside, certain commonalities emerge: sex, high production values, sex, a greater investment in acting talent, more sex, and complex plotting that assumes the viewer will not miss an episode. All these shows share something else too.

Anti-heroes.