Where childhood goes to fuckin die, man!

I went to the mall. Weird, right? Yeah, so I had to pick up a new memory card for a camera, and went to Best Buy. When I arrived, I realized that my tummy had the rumblies, and I needed to satiate it or else I couldn't focus on even the simplest task of buying a memory card. And so I hit up the food court. I browsed the food, still unable to concentrate or even make up my mind. It is often that when I am too hungry, I can't think clearly, as well as makes me rather moody. Pizza? Ice cream? Pretzels? Subway? Sure... Subway.. and then I realize that Subway has Coke and Panda Express right next door has Pepsi... I'm really thirsty too, and Pepsi>Coke, so Panda Express it is (You stfu with your Coke vs Pepsi argument right now, I don't care). My fortune cookie had no fortune in it. Rip off artists! Their chow mein sucks. I like the orange chicken though. OM NOM NOM NOM.

And while munching on my terrible Americanized Chinese food and staring blankly at the stereotypical logo of a panda (it reads "GOURMET Chinese food"), I look up to see that the old video game arcade has been replaced with a new.... video game... arcade thingy. It's covered in curtains, so I stroll over and peak inside. What I see is both astounding and repulsive.

It's dark, with some faint blue lighting. There are reclining chairs everywhere. 40" flatscreen HD televisions in front of each of them... and teenage boys all over the place with surround sound headsets and... get this... they are all playing XBOX Live in their own stations, on their very own online accounts.

(I didn't take this picture, but it's exactly what it looked like, dark room and everything)

My quarters are useless here. No more Battle Toads. No more Pac-Man. No more pinball. Not even prizes for winning tickets from kicking ass at skeeball! It was mind boggling. My mind had been boggled!

It was devastating. I was livid. It is a waste of valuable realty and an immoral business that caters to the growing stupidity and laziness of American children (though I admit, it is a clever idea for a business, but that's besides the point here). I quickly packed up my Panda Express, chugged the crap outta my Pepsi, stormed through Best Buy, grabbed the cheapest 8GB card I could see, and stomped up to the cash register. And on my way, I noticed a little boy playing a tester XBOX game.

I snarled, "Read a fucking book!" as I shoved passed him rudely. I refuse to apologize. I wont even look back at him and acknowledge it anymore.

If you are interested, the place is called "PLAYlive" right next to Best Buy in the food court of the Westfield Capitol Mall. They describe it as a social gaming environment, but I have my suspicions as to how social a place can be when all I heard was the clicking of buttons and the occasional frustrations muttered through quiet profanity. To me, it looked like the Twilight Zone of puberty. A place where childhood goes to die... and adulthood never begins. *DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUNNN!!!*

But whatever, who am I to complain? As soon as I got home, even before I started writing this, I logged onto an MMORPG to play and waste a couple hours on... Oh wait, there IS a difference. I'm not a fucking business that makes money off my own gamer habits and sets up "stations" for people to exit reality.

On a lighter note, the place does offer console repairs, and actually does sell games and other XBOX related merchandise. That's cool. Even if I did have an XBOX though, I probably wouldn't go there to buy games... It's too creepy.

I'm just a bit sickened by the majority of the place being a bit of a warp zone that I can easily see kids fleeing to after school (if they bother with school at all, I think the drop-out rate is getting higher) and spending all their allowance on and slipping away into space forever. At least with the old arcades, you got fun prizes like over-sized clown glasses and plastic noise makers that you would eventually break after a few laughs.

Holy crap, I forgot my own medicine.

So I haven't written in a while. There are several reasons for that; A) My computer decided to call it quits, B) My best friend came to visit from out of state, and C) I have just been in a bummer mood and didn't want to write anything negative. There are other reasons, but they really aren't important.

What is important is remembering medicine. I don't mean pharmaceuticals. I haven't been taking my own "medicine."

What I have come to terms to recently is that certain things, as minuscule as they may be, can contribute a great amount to attitudes, moods, and feelings. This is an epiphany I have realized many times before, and have forgotten many times before.

It's that thing that can reverse your bad mood in a split second, and you don't even mean it to. That thing that just happens to make everything better, even if just for a temporal moment.

Tonight, I was given a dose of my old medicine. I went to the bar for a single drink, in a crappy mood, and planned to leave as soon as it was done. And I did just that; I went in a bad mood and had one drink, and then just before I left, the bartender did something awesome. He put on some Iron Maiden. It was like a switch in me, I went from bad to good just like *snap* that.

It was like I was reminded of the things I love the most. I love heavy metal, but I haven't recently been listening to it. And maybe, JUST MAYBE, that has been one of the reasons for me being bummed out; forgetting the things I like the most.

Either way, I have a few beers in me, and I have a mix of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Saxon, Tank, Diamond Head, and more playing, and I really doubt it's the beers that are making the difference. (If you know me, you know.)

Tonight, my medicine was listening to the music I always loved but had neglected for a while. It truly helped me feel better. Tomorrow, maybe my medicine will be something else. I might even bake the cookie recipe I have been wanting to try out, and that might be my medicine for the day. I haven't been baking recently either. I haven't even been painting! It comes in different forms, you know. But I have what I need for now.

I dare anyone, everyone, to backtrack to the last time you were excited about something. Something that doesn't correlate to another person. A reason you were happy on your own and why. Not because of a job, or a new apartment, or a date. Like the last time you really got excited by yourself. Was it discovering a new band? Was it finding a new place to eat that suited your dietary needs? Was it finding that album that you haven't been necessarily looking for, but were super stoked on finding by chance? Feel that again.

Feel this again!