Mrs
Fuseball writes:
“You’re All Bastards!”
Where Ian (aka Fuseball), his games, and their
joint place in our house are concerned: my philosophy is the culmination
of a series of questions: ‘Can we afford it?’ ‘Where
are we going to put it?’ ‘Are the cats going to chew
it?’ and ‘Am I going to fall over the wires?’
I’m pretty tolerant – which is why we’ve ended
up with three pinball-machines, three games cabs (including two
that are in our bedroom – very restful!), we have numerous
‘must have’ consoles littered about (and please note
that the N-Gage isn’t yet considered one of those so that’s
pretty much the only one that we don’t have), and we have
countless pieces of games software in the house.
Ian and Tina’s actual front-room,
yesterday.
The games range from shoot-'em ups (from where
I’m usually sitting, in the bedroom, much hilarity can be
heard emanating from the ‘other room’ when these are
in-play), to role-playing games (but always between two consenting
adults so you don’t need to know any more on that), and
to platform games (time-after-time, I hear the sound of the joypad
hitting the wall after Ian has flung it in disgust, that sound
is always then closely followed by a scream of “cunt”).
Hmm…
I don’t play videogames – well I
do but only rarely. I like the tennis thing – ‘doubles’
is great fun. I like Animal Crossing, or I did until the time
when I didn’t log-in for a couple of weeks and then all
the stupid animals started having a go at me. Stuff like criticising
me for failing to deliver a handkerchief they’d left at
the lion’s house or something, and we had a neighbour from
hell (a psycho duck that nicked Ian’s bells), and we ended
up carrying-on a hate-campaign against her - by sending her tin
cans and rubbish in the mail. I liked Pikmin too, from a watching
point of view, but couldn’t cope with seeing the little
creatures being eaten by the frog thing.
And there it ends, unless you include Pong (my
first gaming experience), and Star Wars, and Outrun, both of which
I enjoyed but was crap at. My problem with games is that I have
an absurd lack of skill in the spatial awareness department –
my instincts are all wrong, and they are badly wired. A good example
of this handicap is to be found when I play Rogue Leader. I should
have loved that game, being a bit of a Star Wars freak in my younger
days - “Ootatooto Solo, sumpitchaley, maratantak tunilla”
(Greedo) etc, yes I could quote the film word-for-word but I’m
sorry about that now and my therapy has since gone well.
“I also make chutney. Ewok
Chutney.”
I should have been great at Rogue Leader, because
my fear of the Imperial Probe Droid knew no bounds. Was I good
at it? Was I fuck! I fucking chased some droid all over the screen,
only to veer left, instead of right, at a critical time - a manoeuvre
that I then repeated soooo many times. I had started out elated
at the thought of what lay before me, but ended up grouchy-as-fuck,
and abjectly miserable, for being truly crap at something. Not
fair – I want my money back for being a ‘woman with
no idea where she’s going’ (I can parallel park though
- contrary to popular beliefs about women and spatial awareness).
Are videogames designed for the normal living
space? No. While I love the idea of wireless-stuff (no tripping
over controller leads), you’ve still got endless other things
to plug-in and you get that ‘messy wire thing’ going
on. And that’s all very ‘un Feng-shui’ you know.
Do I believe that every bit of kit Ian has in the house, has to
be out on display all the time? No. Trouble is his console cupboard
is pretty chocca at the moment, so machines are creeping further
and further into the lounge. Do I believe in storage? Abso-bloody-lutely.
Real men ride hippos.
Men, if you really want to keep your ladies
sweet, here are a few tips:
- Do pack things away after you’ve finished
with them.
- Do flick whatever switch you need to flick
on the TV afterwards – that way, when your lady turns the
TV back on, she can immediately see UK Style without having to
think about it, and without her accidentally undoing all the TV
settings by pressing every button, on all of the 47 remotes in
the house, while she tries to get it back to the way it was.
- Do only have consoles that are attractive
on display – I like the one with the blue and green lights
on it (fits-in with the cushions), and a purple cube is always
easy on the eye, but a Japanese Famicom is only ever going to
be classified as ‘ugly’ - so bloody well hide it.
- Don’t be really great at playing videogames
– it really pisses your ladies off that they can’t
do anything even as remotely clever, oh and don’t ‘let
us win’ as that pisses us off too.
- Do—instead of being immersed in what
you’re doing to the exclusion of all else—pay attention
when your loved one is talking to you from another room - you
too can multitask. If you put your mind to it.
- Do give us lots of money, so we can go shopping
(and you can game in peace).
- Do rotate and recycle. If you don’t
like something in the collection, get rid of it - sell it, give
it to charity, just get it the fuck out of the house.
And finally: ‘Yes you can have it for
Christmas – but you can’t have it until then. Now,
look me in the eye and tell me you love me.’
tina, December
2003
---
‘Hippos’ clearly means something
else in Finnish.
Reduce cable clutter
– FOR EVER!
Spatial Awareness dancing.
Should be fun.
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