For the record, this was a cautionary tale. Never get between the artist and his morning coffee. Only you can prevent Forrest fires.
Heh.
In the tradition of being way behind in my video games, I managed to con a Playstation 3 out of a local retail outlet using naught but a huge sum of money. Perhaps I should back the story up just a smidgen, there’s some kind of point to make here.
So a few weeks ago we had a professional photoperson take some professional/adorable photos of our son, professionally. The cost for the prints was a few hundred bucks, so Danielle put it on her crediting card and I figured I’d just email her my half. Instead she told me to keep the half I was going to pay and put it towards a certain game console I had been drooling over for months as a birthday present. Not only did I finally have an excuse to go nuts on my wallet and step into the “exciting, ever-changing world of next-gen gaming” but because it was technically my money I was throwing down, she had also offered me a loophole in the usual birthday-guilt system that I installed innumerable May seconds ago. A thoughtful and ultimately cunning gift. She knows me all too well…
Returning from such digression, the real reason I brought up the Playstation 3 is to offer some of my impressions of the thing. It is quite a thing. Now I could go one about CELL processors, HDMI cables, and USB support until your ROFLcopters run out of gas, but I’d not come to a single island of thought that has not already been reached, and exploited to inhabitability by more popular media. Thus the topic is wireless controllers. Oh, crap. They’ve been here, too. Well, I’m throwing down my beach towel anyway.
I didn’t really notice the wirelessness of the controllers so much until Danielle walked out in front of the TV while I was playing for the first time. Now, our TV is pretty far away from the couch. If I were too lazy to pull my Playstation 2 out of the TV stand, the cable couriering my mad skillz to the device that translates them into pwnage would make a rather effective trip-wire. So naturally I leaned forward to put some slack in the cable and save her life. Instead I realized the truth. There is no cable. I had even been sitting on my usual perch at the very edge of the cushion trying not to yank the station of playing from its shelf.
It dawned on me just then that I had been playing console games since the NES was cool, and that I had grown up managing the controller cable for the safety of those around me. I suddenly remembered all the times I had lost at Dead or Alive 2 because I had become momentarily distracted lamenting how twisted my cord has become, the hours of my life that I had lost untangling up to twelve controllers at a time on my bedroom floor trying to clean it up. I still catch myself flicking the controller to get the cord offa my leg, like some kind of phantom-limb syndrome. These are reflexes deeply ingrained in my character, trained almost every day for almost twenty years.
Now freed of these distractions by the wise and noble gods of next-gen, my whole gaming experience is enriched in a subtle yet very real way. Now even more of my concentration can be invested to being in ur bace, kiling all ur giez nuub.
Beware.
Ja.