wasting time

ive been wasting a lot of time lately. well, for a guy that holds eighteen jobs and is getting three PHd's, actually having any time to waste is a feat unto itself, but the little time i do have lately, has definitely gone to waste. see, i got a new video game.

let me say, i dont play many video games anymore. i used to when i was a kid, a lot. and there were short periods throughout my early adulthood where i obsessed over a new video game or platform, but they were, as i said, short, and usually involved a concurrent obsession with a new method of intoxication. these days i usually get excited for a game, play it once, and never touch it again. i had a PS2 that i gave away, and currently have a dusty X-box that never gets plugged in, and a Ninetendo Wii, which i got for christmas, played christmas day, and immediately got bored with.

until recently.

a few days ago, as i was getting ready for work, i told my girlfriend that i was thinking of trading in my once played copy of Madden '08, for the new Super Mario Galaxy game. She never played Madden, even though she is a football fan, and had fond memories of playing Nintendo's revolutionary Super Mario Bros. when she was a kid, so thought it was a great idea. And being the awesome gal she is, she remembered that she had promised to buy me Super Mario Galaxy for christmas and offered to pay whatever the difference was in the trade. a deal was made, and while i was on the way to work she went to the video game store and picked it up for me.

this was at 3pm. at 3.30 she text me: this game is fun!

and so it began.

she texted me throughout the night. updating me on her progress. every time she got a star. every time she opened a new galaxy. each planet she conquered. all the wacky apparatuses she had to jump over, slingshot from, or ride on. this went on and on until my shift was almost over, at midnight. she'd been playing the game for nine solid hours. finally she text me and says her hands are cramped up, that she needs to take a shower. she was putting down the joystick, but she didnt want to.

this amazed me. my girlfriend is, by no means whatsoever, the type of person to play video games. she teaches pilates. she jogs around the park. she goes for bike rides to the harbor and back. takes yoga class. reads exercise magazines. for fun she zips on her vespa to bars on the far west side for margaritas with friends. or puts in a few good hours of cadio at the gym. she does not play video games. ever. so when i got home at 3 that morning i decided to see what all the hub bub was about.

i was up playing until 6am.

this game is awesome. and we have been OBSESSING over it. every second of our free time is spent either playing the game or waiting for our turn to play the game. its all i can do just to break myself away from it only to type this. because this is considered free time. and free time, these days, gets wasted. if i could, i would marry this game and have freaky half video game half human babies with pixilated sexual organs and weird gloved hands with only 3 huge fingers on them. if this game smacked me i would know it was only because it loved me and that i probably deserved it. if i got AIDS from this game i'd be all, "its ok, i love you baby," and petting it and shit.

jesus christ i love this game. its a great time waster.

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