"If he's innocent why doesn't he turn himself in...?"

The title of today's piece is heard pretty frequently, but it's brought to mind by the calls from protesters of Julian "WikiLeaks" Assange. The UK courts have determined that he can be extradited to Sweden to face charges of sexual misconduct (or whatever they're calling it). He doesn't want to go. I don't blame him, innocent or not.
Let's look at it from the perspective of the 100% not-guilty-of-the-charges standpoint (and here's where I say that I don't have an opinion on Assange's guilt-or-not. I'm not saying this guy's a saint, clearly he's not. But I'm also saying that apparently one of the women who are bringing these charges was or is a prostitute, so there's a lot of sin to go around...) Anyway, If I tell you that the second you step out of your house I'm going to arrest you, put you in jail, and put you on trial for murder- would you leave your house? Regardless of how innocent you are, regardless of how frivolous the lawsuit is, I guaran-fucking-tee you that you're at least going to think twice before setting foot outside. Why? Because NO ONE, no matter how innocent, wants their liberty revoked for any period of time. Even if it's like six hours before your mom can scrape together the money to pay the 10% to the bondsman (who then keeps like 10% of that anyway). So if you're Julian, and the courts even grant you bail, it's gonna be on the order of at least a million bucks, so mom has to put together $100,000 and then you know she's gonna lose at least $10,000 of that- all because I'm making some shit up and have had you arrested.   And in Assange's case, I'm willing to bet Sweden is pursuing the sexual misconduct (we'll just stick with that term) under pressure from other international bodies to get Assange in jail for something, anything, while there's a case built against him for being the mastermind at wikileaks.

So the next time someone goes spouting off with the "well, if he's innocent then why doesn't he just turn himself in" line of bullshit, slap 'em in the face with a nice, juicy bass and then explain how stupid they sound.

On Penny Arcade, PAX and Dickwolves

Last week (I believe) the Dickwolves T-shirt was pulled from the Pennay Arcade Merch page. Gabe states that this is in response to a vocal minority who felt that the imagery would "make them uncomfortable" if they saw it at Penny Arcade Expo. My gut reaction was that this was an overreaction on their part and was contribution to the hyper-sanitation of PAX. I'll need to link back to my previous rants about cosplayers and booth babes, but suffice to say that while I understand the core concept of this convention is video games, there is a strong sexual undercurrent in said genre and ignoring it or wishing it away does not make it so. I did refer to the Dickwolves strip in my posts as evidence that people who find this sort of thing offensive might be better served by visiting Disneyland rather than occupying space at WSCTC.

But I decided to not say anything about this recent affront on yon blogzor. Partly becasue it's a T-shirt. Partly because while I understood that the -point- of the strip was the meaningless, endless grinding that takes place in MMORPGs can lead to some moral issues (whether it's not rescuing miners from dickwolves who rape them nightly or the wholesale slaughter of a population of "monsters" that resides in the mountains to the east) there are people who would be offended by the out-of-context dickwolf. Note I said -would- not -might-, this is a topic that people WILL get offended by.

So why am I writing about this now? Becasue of this update. I'm an asshole and I can say some pretty awful things when I'm riled up-- things that may have, at best, a tenuous grasp of the reality of a situation and that I by rights should be ashamed of under any circumstances. But I am shocked to hear about death threats made toward the families of the writers of a comic. Read that again: death threats made toward the families of the writers of a comic.
The people making these threats are exactly the same as muslim extremists who threaten editorial cartoonists and the offices of Comedy Central for daring to publish an image of Mohammed (as if we actually know what he looks like.) I can't possibly be as disgusted as Mike, Jerry, and their families and friends are, but I'm appalled that people even think this way. I really hope they can all soon forget about the ramblings of that jackass and that nothing further is made of it.

[EDIT to add this which is epicly awesome if you a) agree with me that the PA guys are being pussies about both the dickwolves shirts AND sanitizing PAX and b) you like zombies]

[EDIT 2: I wonder, if they had said "pummeled" or "bludgeoned to sleep every night," would we have similar accusations that PA promotes a culture of violence, or promotes a culture of abuse? I have my doubts.]