Thursday, August 6, 2009

The New Idiot Box

"Stop staring at the idiot box!" were my mom's recurring words in the early 90's whenever she would catch me spending hours on end just watching TV. That was in early grade school. By the time I reached grade 4, computer games had surfaced (nintendo, atari, sega, etc.) and I had developed a worse vice than simply watching TV. Things only got better upon reaching high school with the entry of the game cube, playstation and the xbox.

I was a dweeb. A nerd. A certified game-addict.

Undying was my love for TV-gaming that I never really cared for PC-based games. Red Alert, Starcraft, and the like were appealing (and I was good at them, too), but nothing quite compared to the exhiliration that grasping a console controller brought. The "up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start" codes ran through my veins.

Then came the familiar scene of reality crushing one's childhood. I had to learn the ins and outs of using a PC -- this time, not for gaming, but for academic purposes: research, encoding, creating presentations, and work. For a guy who loves gaming but isn't quite into DOTA, nothing could be worse.

It wasn't until recently that I learned I could download my old favorites (contra, mario, mortal kombat, zelda, etc.) through P2P sharing sites! Of course the familiar controller is gone, but who cares? I've got a new idiot box to stare at the whole day. And when my mom (or boss) enters, I can always say I'm working!

Hail the internet! Hail file-sharing! Hail the modern idiot-box!

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