So my determination "not to open the XBox 360 until I finished my month's work" lasted about 24 hours. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, for heaven's sake! A holiday! Heck, I wrote 700 words in the morning. Only 3,500 to go before next Wednesday. I'm cruising, for heaven's sake.
The first thing about the XBox 360 experience is that it really, truly is the ultimate culmination of really annoying plastic sealing material. I thought that the finger-slicing material on the box itself was the pinnacle, but then when I got to the wireless controllers? Oh man! Unbelievable! The plastic, with its scissor-defying ridges and turns is right next to the controller, so there is just no angle of approaching this they haven't thought of, and defeated!!!!!
And what they do is seal a piece of cardboard inside, too, so you can't use a "cut a slice with an exacto and then run the razor along," trick! They've totally outfoxed that!
Then there's the famous power transformer, which is big enough to place a cushion against and lean against. But boy, wait until you turn this puppy on! It's unbelievable!!!!!!
You really can't get that kind of white noise without dedication. The roar of the fan reminds me of the time me and Sharon Sibley did it in between the air conditioning units on the roof of the Boston Museum of Science! (Good times.)
So then you press the button on the front and it makes that "clunking" sound that CD players make when they die. You know the one I'm talking about. And you do that a couple times in increasing panic before you realize that they've got a strip of transparent sticky tape over the tray in order to fake you out. Oh those guys!
Then, when you pop out the tray, it's like the most feeble-looking array of "oh, you'll be breaking this soon" struts and rails. I haven't broken it yet, but I'll get it soon!!!!!
And then you play some really great-looking game, like Project Gotham Racing 3.
And so then, you go online to XBox Live, because they have this thing called "TruRank" that matches you against people of similar skill -- killer feature. And because they have "zones" where players with different 'tudes are supposed to hang out. And because the thing's been out for, like, 24 hours, so how good can anyone be in the game?
Oh man!!!! In my first race, the TruRank puts me up against the guy ranked 21st overall. And I don't know if it was him or the other people, but they were all, like, swearing at each other and me, which was great, because when you play a game for the very first time online it's [super]{.underline} motivating to have Al Swearengen on the other end of the line.
Ay yi yi.
XBox tag: KonaKoder. See you online.