Before I begin, this song makes me giddy beyond all recognition of the serious husk I’ve managed for myself.  That’s fair warning.

The fast is over and I am like an adolescent boy in a garden of virgins.  Yes, I’m playing video games again.

It’s a dangerous leap to be sure. Whenever I spend too much time in the other world, shotgunning zombie floods with my brainless cohorts, hearkening back to the days of Ninja Turtles for more cartoony-slaughter, listening to castles of the evil come crashing down. I acquire bliss like a lab-monkey or an enslaved Gelfling.

When I unplug, shut down, the world slows, the people become more bulbous with little imperfections, blemishes, hair on their skin. All of a sudden the goals seem distant with unmarked obstacles between, and no colorful flag that drops with sweet music with the ensuing applause of 16 bit fireworks. Our here it’s bureaucracy, gray areas. There’s no go there, kill that. The real world doesn’t seem to fit quite right most days. Video games gives you that straight path and makes the hurdles and intricacies downright addicting.  No wonder there’s a pandemic, video game rehabs sprouting like mushrooms. At one point I had a good friend who was addicted to video games and a girlfriend who was addicted to crack. When I told one about the other, they both had the same reaction, “Who would want to waste their lives that way?”  Funny, that.

I may have mentioned my, ahem, affliction and unassailable skills with the man what twirls candy-colored pills at microscopic demons. I sat pasted to Dr. Mario for about five hours the other night. I was like a mad scientist, the world outside of the gleaming jar needlessly complex.  Why live when I could just as easily flip pills and eradicate evil. A hundred years ago this would have been reason enough to put someone away for a long time, now it seems it’s become the bog-standard. The year of learning an Everest of languages, decoding wordpress, studying for the GRE, faded in the light of steering yellow pills to yellow monsters, red to red, blue to blue. The simplicity of it so beautiful it made the rest of the world seem ridiculous. How can I be expected to do anything else when there are demons dancing, nay, mocking me?

The question is, where do I draw the line? I can sit down for a quick game of inevitable germ-murder, but that may turn into a slaughter, which will eventually snowball into a massacre that makes my Wii Dr. Mario points rack up so sweetly.

Complete brain gratification. Right there. Two buttons.  I can see them white and polished.

I could finish this blog or I could

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Rez Sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.