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.