The cost of an augmentation

I know a friend of a friend whose in laws, one weekend, bought him a new jet ski and his wife (their daughter) a new pair of silicone c cups. How much more fun must his life be now! He got three new toys and didn’t have to pay for any of them. Its interesting how a little money spent can make life a lot more enjoyable.

“She's got an awfully large chest to be going to church.”

“Well, all chests are equal in the eyes of God.”

Last weekend I bought an Xbox. For those unfamiliar with today’s video gaming systems: remember the Nintendo-type home video games of yesteryear… an its like that, only Xbox is to the Atari VCS (remember Pong?) as the Mercedes SLR McLaren is to the Ford Model T—sure the idea of a horseless carriage was beyond awesome in its day, but it had always been the good lord’s intention for automobiles to be so much more.

The Xbox has really augmented the enjoyment I get from life. I don’t really know anybody where I live, and for me, the getting to know new people is not a quick process unless you are thrown in the mix together—work, roommates, etc. I am making efforts to make new friends, but I’m not so eager that I’m willing to do things that don’t sound fun just to make friends. So there is plenty of down time between fun friends-making activities.

The Xbox is my companion during these times. Previously I’ve watched movies, tried reading books or some sort of creative project, but TV is often so passive that I fall asleep and books are so active that I tire of reading. But video games both relax and engage. I sit in the same positions (I’ve got about four of them around my living room) to play games as I do watching movies, in other words, it’s just as comfortable. My hands and my brain solve problems, develop plans of attack, and anticipate challenges, so you can see that it’s as mentally and as manually engaging as a reading a book or a fiddling with a project.

“When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone. Do you hear me? I’M LIVING ALONE!”

Living alone can be a lonesome road at times. Don’t get me wrong, I love having time and space to myself, but sometimes it hurts when you want to share with someone and no one’s around. That’s where the Xbox comes in…

“Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall all you gotta do is call and I’ll be there; you’ve got a friend. Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend?”

I don’t think that it’s a mere coincidence that they call this black and green box a “Game Console.” Console the noun (kŏn'sōl') is described as “a central control panel for a mechanical, electrical, or electronic system”(dictionary.com). And console the verb (kən-sōl') is the action word meaning “to cheer in distress or depression; to alleviate the grief and raise the spirits of; to relieve; to comfort; to soothe” (dictionary.com). How ironic, that this electronic control panel is so adept at raising spirits and alleviating grief. Those days when I’ve got nothing going on and I wish I had, I’m okay, because I’ve got my console to console me.

“I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

My friends have been involved with the Xbox for years (which is obvious by how brutally they wallop me in HALO), but I’ve put off getting too deeply involved in such an addictive, time wasting, socially debilitating infernal machine. Even at the outset of this purchase, I’ve felt a little apprehensive. Sure video games are fun, but too much fun is not a good thing—remember poor Lampwick from Disney’s Pinocchio? On Pleasure Island, he was so consumed by having fun that he turned into a jackass, and poor Pinoc almost lost it too. I’ve worried that diving into the sea of virtual oceans and electronic landscapes would numb my social awareness, I don’t want to be a jackass—and a lot of the jackasses that I know, have become such due to way too many video games.

It wasn’t until this summer, when many of my weekends were spent with my good friend D$ Glazier that I realized that the Xbox doesn’t hamper socializing, it augments it. Dustin (D$) is a rare type of friend with whom I can enjoy doing not only cool activities, but also simply doing nothing but talking—bouncing ideas off each other, relating to each other’s dilemmas, and laughing at the similarities between us—but even with a bosom buddy like that, there are times when you still want to hang out, yet neither of you have the emotional stamina or the marathonic attention span to start another deep conversation.

Enter Xbox. This black and green machine brings another element to the friendship (common goals, teamwork, unbelievable kick returns for touchdowns to laugh over, and disappointing defeats over which to mourn). The Xbox is a great way to add a change of pace and a new dimension to hanging out: one minute we’re hanging out on the curb outside 7-11 conversing over our anthropological theories on the mating customs of contemporary Mormon sub-cultures, the next minute we’re in Seoul, Korea reversing the soccer ball back to our midfielder in a Tunisia-Costa Rica World Cup grudge match.

“Now you understand the magic of the rock. You bring back.”
“Yes, I understand its power now.”

My Xboxian conclusion is this: the Xbox is a companion in times of forlorn and an augmenter of one’s social defaults—meaning that if a guy is a jackass at heart, the Xbox will really bring it out of him, but if a guy is an excitable social creature who enjoys the camaraderie of competition, its an enjoyable alternative group activity. Does it cost a lot? Sure, but again: its interesting how a little money spent can make life a lot more enjoyable.