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Brandon Crisp's Family Sets Up a Charity For...Sports?

The grieving parents of Brandon Crisp plan to set up a charity in their son's name. If you're familiar with the life and death of Brandon Crisp (and if you're not, welcome to Earth), you might be curious about this. It's not unusual for loved ones to set up charities in the names of those loved and lost, though the cause usually relates to the deceased's death. Parents who lost a child to cancer might set up a charity that benefits research, for example. Or a wife who lost her husband to a drunk driver might solicit donations for other victims.

Brandon's charity is meant to raise money for underprivileged children who wish to play sports. It's an odd choice, to be sure. If it were me, I'd want money put towards research and cures for addiction. Still, it didn't strike me as completely off the mark: organised sports cost a lot of money to play. This is especially true for heavy-equipment games like hockey, which (true to the stereotype) is enormously popular in Canada among boys Brandon's age.

The person who alerted me to the story thinks the charity has a different, though unspoken, purpose. Namely, "Get kids away from video games and into sports."

Boy Addicted to Call of Duty 4 Found Dead

Phillipe, a five-year-old otter who resides in Achewood often tortures himself by asking his friend, LieBot, about sad occurrences in the world.

"LieBot," he says, "what's the saddest thing?"

LieBot is always obliging with an answer, usually something to do with a simple man crying over a cracked chicken egg and promising this egg that one day it will be a real chicken capable of a loving friendship. I felt as helpless as Phillipe when I read about the death of 15-year-old Brandon Crisp, a boy who ran away from home when his parents made him stop playing Call of Duty 4. It's especially bad news for his parents, who called his bluff and helped him back when he threatened to run away. Ouch ouch ouch.

Crisp's disappearance brought to light a lot of discussion about video game addiction, some of it enlightening and a lot of it negative. There's been a small surge of "Look what games do to our kids" chest-thumping by alarmists who (as usual) ignore the core problem: addiction. Addiction has few prejudices. If Crisp hadn't become addicted to Call of Duty 4, he could have just as easily fallen into alcohol, drugs or monkey-sniffing.

I do feel badly for his parents because they noticed a problem and tried to tackle it with good old fashioned discipline. Taking away the source of the issue makes sense, but fighting addiction is not like straight-up behaviour correction. I'm not a psychologist or even smart, but I believe the generation gap also played a part in the conflict.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

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