About four days ago, I received my very first game from GameFly for my XBox 360. Having recently purchased said system, I had to wait four whole days for my first game to arrive and, needless to say, my head nearly exploded on several occasions.

First game on my queue? "Ninja Gaiden II." Having played the last game on the original XBox, I was ready for a brutally difficult but fun time. I popped that bad boy in the tray and fired her up. That's when I found what they're using all those fancy new graphics for.

Yup. Body parts.

No joke. You can sever three of four limbs of your enemies and they'll still come at you. I had one enemy with no legs and one arm (I named him "Bob") crawl across the floor and nearly kill me with shuriken. Apparently if an enemy isn't stabbed through the heart or decapitated, death is not guaranteed. They're like vampires or something.

As I played the game, fought the first mob of enemies, and butchered my way to victory, I found myself going through a frightening cycle. At the first decapitation, my reaction was the standard "Awwww, SICK!", a mixture of both genuine disgust and amusement. At about the hour-and-a-half benchmark, my attitude seemed to change. After using a pair of hand-held claw weapons to completely slice apart an enemy, I didn't even flinch. Believe me--in any real-life scenario, the graphic nature of this death would have caused the most hardened homicide detective lose his goddamn lunch.

Yet here I was, dispatching dozens of enemies without so much as a batting of the eye. I started to wonder if I was truly desensitized to real-life horrors, or if it was only toward the game. So I pulled up a news page, saw an article on the RNC, almost threw up, and nodded satisfactorily. Nope, still human.

Now to the nitty gritty. Where the hell is the love?

What I mean by that is that all forms of media are bloated with violence. Don't get me wrong; I watch violent movies, play violent video games, and read violent books. Violence is a naturally occurring part of human existence. What isn't natural is the excessive levels, particularly in the news.

I'm not going to get into whether the general media is liberal or conservative (I'll save that can of worms for another hub). What I do know is that it thrives on violence. People flock to it. That's why we have rubberneckers. We slow down at the pile-ups because we want to see dead bodies. Even when, like me, genuine violence and blood causes us to become faint-headed and physically ill. We still want it; it's as if it's encoded in our DNA.

What?? Who said I have answers? I just like to complain.

Okay, okay. I'll give you my opinion, since that's really all I can do. You can take it or leave it as you see fit.

First off, we need to stop going to war with everyone and everything. We have been in twelve major wars and/or conflicts since the birth of this nation, including the Revolutionary War and the Spanish-American War (but not including lesser conflicts and invasions like Grenada or Panama, and not including asinine conceptual wars spawned by our leaders for media fodder--such as Reagan's "war on drugs" and the more recent "war on terror"). Did you know most people still think we're in Iraq because of 9/11? The two incidents are completely separate from one another, yet the Bush Administration's spin on it was so potent people think they're connected without an official source ever making that claim.

The Iraq War started with Bush claiming Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Of course, none were found, but that wasn't going to stop ol' G.W. We came in there to "liberate Iraq." (Read: completely destabilize the government and take their oil.) There was no good reason to go in there except to make money.

Afghanistan? Wait, we're still over there? Oh yes. We sure are. This one, I honestly have no clue on. Maybe we have good reason to still be occupying that country, I don't know. But considering who's decision it was, I highly doubt it.

The point of all this is to drive home the fact that if we don't like something, our immediate response is violence (in this case, war). The drug problems in the 70's, 80's and beyond? Should we seek solutions? Nope! Go to war with it!

... Really? How do you go to war with inanimate objects? If you said you were going to war with drug cartels, that would make sense. But there was no battle with drug cartels. The only people punished were the poor and underprivileged that had an addiction. By the way, are we still fighting that war? No? Oh, okay. Just checking.

How about the "war on obesity?" Anyone remember that? Probably not. Obesity is not a very exciting adversary. We're losing that one, too, by the way. Still one of the most obese nations in the world.

I simply believe we need to think of solutions instead of detonating any problem in our path. I won't even tell you what my solution would have been to the Iraq War, because I guarantee at least 90% of you would leave a slew of scathing comments. Hell, I'm going to get plenty already, I'm sure.

In Bowling For Columbine, Michael Moore brings up a pretty legitimate point. We have more violent deaths in this country than any other country in the world (including China, who has nearly triple our population). Many of these countries have access to the same violent video games, loud rock music, and violent movies that we do. So how is it we churn out about 10,000 violent deaths a year? (That statistic is a couple years old now, mind you, and may have risen or lowered since then.) Regardless of how you feel about the filmmaker, his question is valid. Sadly, I have no more answer than Moore did.

Perhaps it's because violence is so pervasive in everything we do. Even our lingo is sprinkled with referrences to violence and destruction. When we did well on a particular task, we "kicked its ass." When we have a rockin' party, we "bring down the house."

I could tell you a dozen other sources that I blame for these problems but I won't get into them today. This rant has already gone on long enough.

The bottom line is that while we can throw blame every which way until we're blue in the face, it's up to us to change things. Do not trust in anyone else to do it for you, especially those in power--be they Red or Blue. When violence is sensationalized on the news, switch it off. When a candidate promises to "destroy our enemies," vote for the Other Guy. When COPS comes on.... throw your damn TV out the window. Now there's an acceptable channeling of anger.