I'm once again reminded of what an out-of-it old fuddy-duddy I must be, because playing an organized adult game dedicated to stalking and "killing" people with water guns strikes me as pathetic and disturbing. Given the leisure time to spare, I'd really rather just take a hike, a walk, or do something with my wife and kids. But in the advanced stages of a workaholic, consumerist leisure society, the "work hard-play edgy" ethic grows. Para-sailing is sooo 1994, I guess. Hence....."Street Wars," an urban extreme sport for dolts. Or, as the L.A. Times (last link) puts it:

...a bizarre game of squirt-gun assassin designed to help adults get in touch with their inner hit man.

The game, called StreetWars: Killer, is an elaborate version of hide-and-seek, an update of older assassin role-playing games. It is played on city streets by scores of participants armed with water guns. For weeks, they stalk, pursue and ambush in the hopes of being the ultimate — and dry — hit man. The game is poised for the leap from the margins to the mainstream: Earlier this month, a "CSI: NY" story line intermixed real murder with a fictional StreetWars-type game. And...the game's co-founder, says he's in talks to steer the game into a reality TV show.

...Cincinnati-based Parents of Murdered Children criticized the game as an insensitive mockery of violence in a society that has one of the highest homicide rates in the industrialized world. "Murder seems to be the only tragedy that we make a game out of," said Nancy Ruhe, the group's executive director. "We don't play rape. We don't play cancer. We don't play airplane crash…. If you stop to think about it, would you play Clue if Professor Plum was sexually assaulting Miss Scarlet in the Billiard Room with a pool stick? Then why is it acceptable for Professor Plum to murder Miss Scarlet?"

After "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," there's got to be a new frontier. And the wives and girlfriends of the guys playing "Street Wars"? How much you wanna bet they're all pushing the envelope, too....by having a very, very special kind of elective surgery?

TECHNORATI TAGS: STREET WARS, MURDER GAME, EXTREME SPORTS, SOCIETAL DECAY