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Haiku, Twitter Insufficient to Contain Jack Thompson

Jul 2, 2009
By .
Effluvia, Gaming

Some people save lives. Some people succor the weak. Some people defend the downtrodden. All of these people bring goodness and light into the world.

And then there's the people who bring happiness into the world by being entertaining, by which I mean "a big sack of crazy." Here I'm thinking of our old pal and frequent blogging subject Jack Thompson.

Thompson, as our readers (and gamers, and people fond of Fox News) know, is a disbarred lawyer who has spent the last ten years freaking out at judges over video games. Prior to video games, he spent a career freaking out about rap music and hating Janet Reno for the wrong reasons.

What's new with Jacko, you ask? Well, there are still people who are freaked out about video games, and still people who like watching train wrecks. So Jack still gets invites to speak and columns and such. And recently he agreed to appear at a gaming convention in Texas and debate a gamer/lawyer named Mark Menthenitis. And then came more crazy.

* he objected to a one- or two-line introduction ("I have never been introduced with 1 or 2 sentences. Nobody can be introduced in that fashion…")
* he objected to a user-created parody video posted (and since removed) on the [gaming convention] site; Thompson may have believed the video, "Questions Not to Ask Jack Thompson" at SGC," was official [gaming convention] content

So now maybe it's on again. Or maybe not. Right now apparently he's pissed about another post about him. And it's not clear if anyone can agree on an appropriate number of sentences to introduce what Jack Thompson is all about, or if the parties can agree upon an introduction that is accurate without using terms that Jack won't like ("Thorazine" "vexatious" "otherworldly"). There's certainly no way that any group of gamers is going to refrain from making fun of him. So it may remain uncertain, right up to the moment of the debate, right up to the moment of any future debates, whether or not Jack will be there. Jack Thompson is the Schrodinger's Cat of crazy — you can tell where he is, or what he'll be doing, but never both at once.

Last 5 posts by Ken White

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3 Comments

  1. Patrick  •  Jul 2, 2009 @6:17 am

    Actually it would be fairer to describe Thompson as the Electron of Crazy. The Schrodinger's Cat metaphor describes not primarily the behavior of electrons, but the effect of observation on dual state wave functions.

    If Thompson were the Schrodinger's Cat of Crazy, that would mean that at any given time, there is a fifty percent probability that Jack Thompson is crazy, and a fifty percent probability that he is sane. In fact, until Thompson is observed, meaning he appears at the convention, he may be simultaneously crazy and sane.

  2. Ken  •  Jul 2, 2009 @6:55 am

    You're right, of course. I mixed my silly Schrodinger's Cat analogy with my silly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle analogy. That's the downside of late-night blogging.

  3. Brandon  •  Jul 2, 2009 @6:00 pm

    I've always been fascinated with quantum phenomena, even as my sophisticated understanding of them has been limited by my intellectual liabilities.

    Having said that, I'm suddenly uncomfortable with the logical conclusion of a universe in which the quantum superposition of Jack Thompson's relative level of sanity is repeatedly collapsed at "insane" through observation. If Schroedinger and Copenhangen are right, that must mean all potential observers of Jack Thompson's relative level of sanity are occupying the same eigenstate. So…it's our fault that Jack Thompson is insane? :)

    Also, what if C-A-T really spelled "dog"?