Well, it finally happened to me. You know how you see those ads of cancer victims, etc. or read those heart wrenching true life stories, all the while thinking that it could never happen to you? I was just like that, living my life in a blissful shell of self imposed ignorance.
But life has a way of catching up with you. Despite all the worrying statistics, you believe that you're going to be exempt somehow, as if those random numbers didn't apply to you directly as a person. Sure, it may happen to others, but not you. After all, you're different, special, right?
And then it happens... Your Xbox 360 gets E74.
For the uninitiated, E74 is a variation on the red ring of death general hardware failure that has ailed Microsoft ever since the 360's launch. Simply put, in their rush to dominate the next-gen console market, MS released a faulty system, with a myriad of problems, be it inadequate amounts of heat sinks, dodgy soldering or overheating scaling chips.
So as I sit here typing, listening to pearl Jam's "Last Kiss" and perusing all the happy photos of me and my beige lovebox with a faint tear in my eye, I feel compelled to introduce the figurative ass of Microsoft to my hot spicy boner. It's been less than two weeks, yet I am so bored without it, the process of shipping the console off to the service centre has been harrowing, to say the least, and I'm constantly taunted by this little voice in my head that snidely runs through the 360's high failure rates, all the while sneering that I've become but a mere statistic.
The fact that the console was less than a year old (Yet, strangely, my yearly warranty only lasted 355 days, and my console crapped out on the 360Th day... Cowinkydink?) is kind of a strike against MS. Most of my friends crow about the PS3, but I always stood behind my little beige box of hugs, solely because the games are oh so good. But now I'm at a crossroads... Do I really want to invest anymore money and time into what is, effectively, a failure of a product. Instability in the console market is a death knell. Why, I still have consoles from twenty years ago that still run strong, but my 360 can't even last a year? C'mon!
Do I really want to eschew great games and a stable online service for a more reliable machine?
Do I want Bill Gates to give me a blow job with a mouthful of pop rocks so my dick can feel like a sparkler?
I think I know the answer to the final question, but the others...
I've read up on the precursors for console failure, and don't recall having experienced any of them, so maybe it was just a freak occurrence. I had got the RROD twice before, both times after a power surge, but the 360 righted itself and powered on.
Who knows? All I know is that seeing that dreaded failure message and red blinking light was like staring into the twinkling crimson browneye of Beelzebub himself.
Oh well, at least I finally finished Zelda -Ocarina of Time, after ten years, so some good has come of this tragedy.
Better days with my baby...
Now, before I vacate this pedestal of self declared wisdom, I must comment on something I saw the other night. I went to a drive in cinema for the first time in my life, which was a pretty great experience, the atmosphere is more "street-party" than "cinema".
But the film itself was awful, almost beyond words, but since I'm describing it via prose, obviously not quite.
The perpetrator in question was X-Men origins: Wolverine.
Now, should I be surprised? No, but yet I am. X-Men 2 was alright, and even X3:Last Stand had some redeeming qualities to it, lame attempt at an edgy sequel name notwithstanding. Wolverine should have been something more.
Someone stole my shirt!
Now, coming from a bit of an X-men fan boy background (It was the only comic series I truly loved as a child) maybe I expected too much, but was it too much to hope that they wouldn't expose Wolverine's naked, quivering buttocks and forcibly penetrate him with a broom handle covered in razor blades for the better part of ninety minutes?
Was it then too much to hope that they wouldn't take two of the gnarliest characters in the Marvel universe (Deadpool and Gambit) and resort them to polesmoking cameos and complete bastardisations of their character's ethos?
Clearly.
"Hey bro, don't try to cut my lunch." Here's a quote for the movie posters: Wolverine touched me in a bad place. It was sticky.
Gambit had no trace of a French accent and spent most of his screen time as the cheerful ferryman, ferrying Wolverine from one lame set piece to another in his magical, mystical Gambit-copter. Mmm-Hmmm. Deadpool, easily one of the mouthiest and wittiest characters this side of Spider-man, had barely two words in the entire film, despite constantly being chastised for being a motormouth. After a pointless montage of mutant powers in which the SFX guys get to go nuts, Deadpool's relegated to the background until the grand finale, in which he reappears as some mega-mutant Baraka looking motherfucker, which gives Wolvie and his estranged half-brother Sabretooth (And what the fuck is up with that? Just completely rewriting the lineage of characters IS NOT ON.) the opportunity to team up and make manly fuck-faces at each other.
"I've seen that look before... on the faces of a thousand male porn stars."
As evident by the vitriolic synopsis above, I hated the film. Comic geek aside, it was just a mishmash of redundant action set pieces that even the brainless actioneer inside of me found hard to retain interest. And I'm still trying to work out the point of Hobbit-guy and WILL.I.AM's presence in the film.
Lame.
***Kumquat Turtleloaf has flicked his whingeing switch to OFF and is now experimenting with forks and power outlets***
