At 5:00AM on this particularly and unseasonably wet-cold morning, a solid half-million people were on the roads in Knoxville, TN in search of elusive, and oft-sold-out, rock-bottom prices for their Holiday gifts in the shopping phenomenon known as Black Friday.
Fortunately, this blogitude.com staff member was there to make fun of them.

     After scanning the Gamestop Black Friday Deals website and finding nothing that couldn’t have been purchased for the same, or slightly less, cost at Walmart up to six months ago, I visited two local Gamestop locations to find masses of people lined up in front of the store, huddling together in the cold, attempting to keep warm.  Unbeknownst to them, their waits would be rather long, as Gamestop didn’t open at 5AM, or even 6AM, as it did in many other areas.

     As there was clearly nothing special to be found, I decided to attempt another ruse to get a great deal from Gamestop.  At 5:20AM, I stood in the parking lot and yelled, “Playstation 3 sucks!” loudly.  The response was only minimal, but overwhelmingly positive, in fact.  Apparently everyone knows that Playstation 3 sucks, and I thought that perhaps it might be best to try another location to scour for a Gamestop deal.

     At location two, the crowd was a bit rowdier.  And so, at 5:45AM, I yelled, “Playstation 3 sucks!” as loudly as possible.  Unfortunately, this resulted in a good-natured, “Hell, yeah!” and a few people raising their hands and shooting invisible laser guns in the air, complete with sounds effects.
     After scouring other stores in the area for Black Friday malady, I decided to return to Gamestop at 6:12AM to find an even larger crowd gathered in front of the business.  Since my logic had failed in insulting the Playstation 3 (I won’t insult the Xbox 360), I decided to try another tactic.

     “Jean-Luc Picard is a fag!” seemed to be the magic phrase.  The Gamestop employee guarding the front door (easily identified by the rockstar-groupie style badge hanging around his neck) zinged a white Xbox 360 Wireless Controller at me, clearing a distance of nearly twenty feet!  Who said spending the majority of your life pushing buttons on a gaming controller doesn’t count as physical activity?
And so, I returned home happy, with yet another Xbox 360 Wireless Controller, courtesy of Gamestop!  What an incredible Black Friday Deal!

     Black Friday Shopping like this makes it all worth it.  Yes, it’s the one on the lower left.

     Please note that when taking advantage of this deal, your choices of controllers may be limited.  Controller may have minor-to-medium cosmetic damage.  Controller may or may not have a battery pack, whether standard or rechargeable.  Gamestop is not responsible for any medical bills directly or indirectly caused by taking advantage of this deal.  Other restrictions may apply, so please check your local Gamestop store!

     At 12:01AM Tuesday, November 10th, 2009, Infinity Ward’s much lauded video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, was released with much fanfare. Retailers such as Gamestop, Walmart and Target have reported record post-midnight sales, with regular sales expected to increase throughout the Holiday season.
     White House economic analysts are baffled at the sudden, unexpected increase in consumer spending, however, the Obama camp is taking credit for the situation nonetheless.

     When President Obama was interrupted during this morning’s back-door meeting with other White House smokers, he was asked how a Video Game manufacturer has managed to stimulate the economy moreso than any amount of Presidential tactics used since his election.
     An obviously perplexed Obama replied, “Umm…”

     Despite this unexpected economic upturn, the Federal rate of umemployment is expected to increase sharply during the next few weeks, especially in males between the ages of 35 and 45 who own an Xbox 360.

     We will attempt to keep you informed of more important economic updates here at blogitude.com.

     So I’m sitting down to play another friggin’ boring game of Call of Duty: World at War on the Xbox 360.  I hate that game.  I truly do.  I play it because a few friends drag me in, and tonight, I decided try and improve my gamer score a little. 
     But no bones about it, I hate the game.  It’s laggy-slow.  It commandeers bandwidth worse than the porn-hungry neighbor who “stealz ur internets.”  The glitches and screen artifacts pretty much screw up any chance of having a decent experience playing the game in multiplayer mode.  The bug reporting mechanism to the manufacturer, Treyarch, pretty well leaves you open to be bashed and belittled by the game’s developers for even having the balls to open your mouth about their precious turd.
     And if friends would stop playing it, so would I.  Which is why I’m looking forward to Infinity Ward’s release next month:  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, because Treyarch, and their patheticly overdone World War II scenarios, can suck my left nut, right nut and anus.  Or, better yet, Brandon’s anus…

     So anyway … About an hour ago, I was abruptly disconnected from Xbox LIVE for an update.  It took a several minutes. 
     “Okay, WTF?”
     My Xbox restarted, downloaded a few more updates.  Restarted again.

     By 10PM EST, I was back online, with a new tab in my dashboard.

     “Xbox Preview.”

     Ahh, looking around… Facebook? Check.  Twitter?  Check.  Zune Video Marketplace?  Check.  Xbox LIVE News?  Check.  MSNBC?  Check.  Dillbert?  Check.  The New Yorker Cartoons?  Check.  last.fm?  Well… if you can call it that.

     Yep … all working … trippy … so I send out a couple of test messages on Twitter, update my Facebook status, browse friends and leave a couple comments…
     Then I start screwing around with the absolute worst interface ever:  The last.fm app seriously sucks.  I can’t even explain “why” it sucks, except to say, you’ll have to experience the suckiness yourself to understand.  Basically, if you’re looking for something easy to use, sensible, start a channel and add music to it, you’re pretty well going to be in “WTF?” land for a while.

     That aside … It’s still a bunch of neat new toys.  If you’d like to sign up for the “next generation” Xbox 360 Dashboard, go and register.  And get one of these, because you’re gonna need it…

     Why, now, I can see when this Brandon twit decides to Tweet that he’s going to take a crap … without having to log into my PC … *rolls eyes*

     While I’ve been spending practically the entire weekend trying to finish up a bunch of a music that’s been sitting around as unifinished projects for a few years, my music taste through the week has gotten a little … well, “Weird,” is what everyone tells me.

     Some of it came from playing a Fallout 3 on the Xbox 360, which features a rather kickass soundtrack from the 1940’s…

     Ya know, it’s pretty safe to say I would’ve bought the game for the soundtrack alone… but listening to it while scouring post-Apocalyptic Washington, DC makes it more than a little haunting.

     It’s even nicer when you get to do it for free, because someone hated the game and mailed it to ya…

     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…