Back in January, I was looking for an Xbox 360 and scouring and scraping to get one.  I got screwed around with tremendously, and with a lot of false leads, ended up without one.  Finally, thanks to Lt. Cpl. James who was shipping out to Afghanistan, I managed to get one.  I didn’t have games — only Uno — and he said prior to shipping out, he’d send me a few from home.  True to his word, he did.
     And thus, I ended up with Call of Duty: World at War (he’d said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but hated World at War, and send me that instead).  And, of course, our friends decided to send me a lot of their old games, as well.  So I’ve ended up with quite a collection…
     Working in and around military for so long, I’ve met a lot of good people like that.  And getting back in touch with a lot of those guys has helped me get through some of the shit-in-my-head that’s been bugging me for so long.

     Last month, I came upon a weird opportunity, whereby I could basically “trade” my Xbox 360 Pro (the one with the 20-Gig hard drive) for an Xbox 360 Elite and not have to shell out any cash for the upgrade.  I jumped on that like white on rice.
     Unfortunately, even though it was new in the box, the damn thing red-ringed on me after two days.  Iit wasn’t a 2008 Holiday Bundle, but one built in July 2008, but still, yeah, yeah, my luck.  Fortunately, I called Microsoft, and they shipped me an empty box, which I dropped my Xbox in it and gave to the UPS guy.  They shipped it back in under a week!  The “bad” ones are so few and far between now that the repair center just rocks the party — especially given that they extended my Xbox Live account, to boot.

     Even though I enjoy playing a lot of different games on there, I still end up playing Uno.  This is especially true if I’ve been drinking so much that manual dexterity falters, something which happens quite a lot lately. It has the alternative positive effect of keeping me from blogging while smashed.

     Now, playing Uno should be pretty sedate, right?  It’s a relatively passive game, so you end up chatting a lot.  And if I turn on the Xbox Live Vision camera, then it’s always mildly amusing.
     “Dude, you’re that guy from Crank, aren’t you?  You the fuckin’ Transporter man?”
     “Ahh, no.  I’m just some old, psycho bald fucker.  At least that’s what someone I cared about told me in December.”
     “Ahh, man, you’re not old.  What are you, 25, 28?  Nah, whatever, man, you’re cool!”

     Some days, I admit it … I need that kind of validation, because I feel like a right-royal ass most of the time any more.  And I definitely feel old.  And I am bald.  And sometimes it’s nice to hear, “Nah, man, you’re alright.  That guy was an asshole,” because … sometimes, playing Uno, chatting becomes a bit of a chore.
     I mute, kick and block communications from an innordinate number of people… usually after I put up with their shit to critical mass and tell them exactly why they don’t deserve to have an Internet connection, and perhaps that they are the perfect argument as to why Abortions should stay legal.

     At around 5PM, the drunks start coming home from their UK pubs and acting like pricks.  At midnight, you start ending up with drunken Americans and Canadians.  By 3AM, the west coast of the US and Canada are purely lit, and they end up coming in with so much off-the-wall insanity that you end up having to jab a spork in your eyes and ears.
     When the asshats show up, it’s usually for one reason: To be disruptive pricks and attempt to garner some attention that they obviously didn’t get in whatever bar they were in.  I’m constantly amazed at how many otherwise introverted, perhaps even awkward, people go completely and totally insane over Xbox Live.  It is even *worse* than the way they act on the Internet alone.

     It seems Xbox Live also adds incontrovertible proof to John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory… And as the link says, “Be glad for the anonymity; it’s why you still have teeth.”

     Although, I sure many do not…