Games. We all play them. Even the old stodgy bastards in Congress who are trying to ban them have played Monopoly. I suppose that gives us every right to try and prosecute them under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but I digress.

Games are a fundamental part of human life. It allows us to stop focusing on the world where time is money. There's nothing like sitting down for a nice game of solitaire with your beat-up deck of 52, and looking up seemingly only seconds later and it's in reality half an hour. The same applies with a game. Play a game of Civ IV and before you know it, it's two hours later. You haven't even finished researching iron working!

All I'm trying to say here is that games provide a release. And they most certainly do not cause violence. How do I know this? I RESEARCHED IT! SUPRISE! Unlike many politicians who blindly quote the same sources over and over again (David Grossman and Jack Thompson to name a couple) you'll actually find that games have a wide variety of uses.

• Relieves anger and stress - killing and maiming pixels on screen allows us to exercise agressions that we accumulate in real life. People thought in the 1950s that the hedonistic and repetitive sounds of rock and roll would turn our nation into a bunch of Satan worshipping Communists. The same in the early 1900s with comic books. "Oh no!" said many parents and politicians, "there's far too much violence in this trashy book!" We've had violent games now for a little over 15 years, assuming you count Wolfenstein 3D (1992) as the first truly popular shoot 'em up. By 1965 rock was here to stay. Jimi Hendrix didn't have bills presented against him to make his heavy acid rock stop completely. Why try to present bills against Rockstar Games?

• You can actually learn things from games. A history teacher took a bunch of below-average minority students and taught them how to play Civilization III. Their grades sharply improved once they found out they could build an African-American or a Native American empire. Do any of you readers remember a pissy little game made a decade ago about a guy in a little green suit? And he went around solving age-appropriate math problems? That's right. Math Blaster! It taught an entire generation that learning can indeed be fun. I used to get a huge grin on my face every time I navigated the twisting caverns and destroying the evil something-or-others in a brilliant display of my basic mathematical prowess. (Now only if they made an Algebra and Trigonometry Blaster...)

• We can use it as a means to escape the present reality we're stuck in. It's the same mechanism as going to the movies. If I watch Spider-Man and believe that grabbing a spider off the side of my house and making it bite me will give me superpowers, I could theoretically sue Marvel and Universal or whoever the hell owns movie rights for giving me false impressions. But I know that isn't real. Just like our video game characters who walk around, withstand impressive amounts of bullets hitting them, and double-fisting rocket launchers, we know it's fake. Most of the people who play games wouldn't even know the ass-end of the tube and probably end up splattering themselves all over the side of a building. And it's not like we can walk down the street to the local Shootin' Shack for all your explosive needs. They don't have a sign outside that says "Vietnam Stories, Malt Liquor, Firearms, Lapdances, and Rocket Propelled Grenades sold here!" And how many bullets does it take to kill somebody class? That is correct! The answer is one!

In conclusion Congress, I'd like you to stop poking your asses into where it doesn't belong. The internet is not a series of tubes. It's an ever-increasing highway, and your information is indeed transferred on a big metaphorical truck. I love it when old people like you smile and think of the good old days when tuberculosis was considered a minor inconvenience and polio was the 20th century equivalent of the bubonic plague, but stop nosing into our business. I'm setting an age restriction. You have to be born in 1955 or later to be able to talk about computers, the newfangled internets, and video games. And until I see all you old crusty seniors playing a few hours of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with a sprinkling of Call of Duty 4, I don't want to hear about it. I suggest that if you want to be able to prove your worth, you better go and buy some Aspercreme for that arthritis of yours.