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Angry Rants

Getting a really big tax return is not something that happens to you every day. Hell, if you find yourself in the same tax bracket as me, (or what I lovingly refer to as the ‘Buttfuck Tax Bracket’) you probably won’t see one every decade. So when you do get a return, you find yourself in a precarious position: sandwiched awkwardly between the need to do something constructive with your newfound wealth and the desire to piss it away on something useless. Unfortunately for all of mankind, desire often trumps need. This has been confirmed by many philosophers throughout history (or at least the really cool ones who always bought the next round). When I received my unexpected tax return I was not a calm, level-headed Plato. I was a sloppy, drunken Nietzsche who blew his cash on a shiny new Xbox 360.

Like nearly everything I do, it seemed like a good idea at the time. My sleek, black, ubermensch Xbox 360 Elite had opened the door to a whole new world of next generation gaming that had been previously closed off to my limp, flaccid PlayStation 2. My Xbox afforded me three whole years of entertainment speckled lovingly with the occasional racial slur uttered from the mouth of a thirteen year old. All was well in my little world and my decision seemed like a wise one.

That was until the fucking thing broke.

I’ve always wanted to play a game where you shoot people and take their guns – and then use those guns to shoot other people so you get marginally better guns that you can use to shoot other people, and then you fight Cthulhu – so naturally I was really excited when Borderlands came out. After a long day of helping grandmothers email pictures of their cats to their grandchildren, I came home weary-headed to what I hoped would be a marathon of firearm hoarding. As my Xbox booted up, I was prompted for a dashboard update.
“No problem,” I said to no one in particular. “I’ll just run this quick update. What could possibly go wrong?” I concluded, “Nothing, that’s what.” The update installed and as my Xbox rebooted, I saw a sight I had heard of only in legend. The reviled Red Ring of Death. After poking and prodding haphazardly at my Xbox like a first year gynecological student, I resigned myself to the cold fact that my Xbox was now in a permanent vegetative state. I wiped a single tear from my cheek as I stretched the pillow over my Xbox. “Hush,” I said as I wept softly. “Your pain will be no more.”

If you want to be an Xbox Live employee, I can only assume that they ask you during the interview if you have ever been dropped on your head as an infant and, if so, a rough number of times in which this has happened to you. If your answer is five or more, you are instantly hired. If it exceeds fifteen, you automatically get promoted to management. I don’t have any supporting evidence, but this is the theory I formulated when I found myself on hold for thirty minutes when I was escalated to management for being ‘angry’. The frustrating thing about this is that I wasn’t actually angry; I had called for a new shipping label. You see, I used to live downstairs from someone who is (and I mean this in only the most endearing sense) a shit-eating retard. When this particular shit-eating retard moved out, he took all my mail with him including the shipping label I needed to have my Xbox serviced. Apparently, he could not visibly differentiate between our names even though they only share two letters in common. When I told the Xbox Live representative my story, he told me that I was upset with the service I was getting and told me he was going to transfer me to a manager. I emphatically told him that I was indeed not angry; actually quite chipper and was maybe even about to hum an upbeat little tune to myself while I thought of a kitten in a little bow-tie playing with a baby lamb in a picturesque meadow on a pristine summer afternoon. My pleadings tragically fell on ears that were not actually connected to a brain, so I was transferred anyways. After the first fifteen minutes of being on hold, my mood drastically changed. When the manager finally picked up, I had only a few words for him:

“Just send me another label you fucking cretin.”

I eventually received my second label, but never had the chance to use it as I didn’t ship it quick enough. You see much like Xboxes themselves, service shipping labels have an expiry date. I opted to not call back for a third label.

Months later, I got a new Xbox. My father had received a new Xbox from an ISP for signing on for their services. No longer needing his old Xbox, he gave it to me. I was thrilled when this happened, since you can only build so many giant cocks in Minecraft before it starts to get boring. Before I knew it, I was streaming B-grade Netflix horror movies and having garbled voice party conversations like a pro. Of course, this happiness was fleeting.

I’m not really sure what was going through Detective Cole Phelps’ mind when his entire world froze around him, but I’m sure it wasn’t anything truly profound since he was driving on a crowded sidewalk at the time. I decided to remedy this situation by rebooting my Xbox. As it came back up, it made a subtle chirp not unlike the death rattle of a white tailed antelope squirrel. To my dismay, I was once again confronted with my old enemy: the Red Ring of Death. Like Satan’s fiery anus, it pulsated obscenely in front of me. Poor detective Phelps was forever trapped in Arson after being demoted for eschewing his Betty-esque Marie for a more Veronica-ish Elsa and I was left without my primary form of entertainment. It’s worth noting that I had this fine piece of hardware for a full week and a half before this happened.

I thought about a lot of things as I begrudgingly reinstalled Diablo II on my laptop. I thought about how I’ve been through two Xbox 360s in a single year while my ten year old Playstation 2 still works perfectly fine. I thought how inefficient it must be to run a company that produces hardware that is destined to break and then provides its customers with a servicing helpdesk that is completely fucking balls-in-mouth incompetent. I also thought about food and breasts and tapirs for the briefest moment. Mostly, I thought about how gaming is an expensive, time consuming habit and that perhaps I should pick up a hobby that’s more constructive. Then I thought about how awesome it will be when I build a new top of the line gaming PC in a few months so I can play Deus Ex: Adventures in Cyborgtasia.

Ultimately, it seems that I’ve learned nothing.

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