The Rental Problem

I've talked in the very recent past about the lack of places to easily and affordably rent a video game in this town, and well, just about everywhere else as well.  I thought for about 12 minutes this morning that I had heard the solution, which it very well may be in certain circumstances, I guess.

Without going into detail, just know that here where I work, we have Wii games that we sign out to people when requested.  Anyway, someone came to me and asked if he could get the game that was rented from a Redbox so he could return it.

...eh?

Yes, apparently you can rent video games from Redbox.  I was thrilled!  This is great news!  It totally solves my quandary of where to rent video games from.  I have never used a Redbox for movies before, but I considered it.  Rent video games from them?  I might just have to try that out.

But then I looked up the details.  It's $2 a day.  But is one day enough time to fully enjoy a video game?  Very rarely.  If you only spend one day on a video game, it must not be very good.  No you need a lot of time with a good game. Days at least.  So at $2 a day, if you keep it for five days it'll cost you $10?  Gamefly offers $10 a month, and you can keep that game out for that entire month.  Yet I don't even really want to spend money on that plan. I guess if it's like, a sports game where the demo sucks and you want to play more than one period of hockey or 6 innings of a baseball game using only the Twins and the Yankees.  Then this is a good idea.  But let's say you rent, like, Halo or something?  You're gonna need more time than one day.  If you're like me, you're going to need more than five days.

Maybe I'm just not that committed to gaming, since it's too fucking expensive and I have a hard time finding the time to play anyway.  I thought I had the answer with Redbox, since they rent you movies for a dollar a day, but after thinking about it, it's shitty.   I can see it getting mighty expensive in a hurry.  Forget it.  I'll just play the couple games I got, I guess.

I Miss OP Video

I'm about 99 percent sure that you cannot rent a video game in Nashville, Tennessee.  Do you realize how crazy that is?  I spent most of my life renting games, not buying them.  Buying games is like buying movies or books.  Once I'm done with it, I'm done with it.  No need for it to sit around my place.  These things have very little replay value to me.  That's why I like sports games, because it's sort of different every time.  There is no story that will end (mostly).

I explained before, but I can't find the post after looking for a minute, but I explained that the closure of movie rental places makes sense because of the proliferation of On-Demand, streaming content viewing.  This makes sense.  You don't have to go to the rental place to get a movie anymore.  So you just hit go on your thing, weather it's through your cable company or through any number of other services such as Hulu, Netflix or now, Amazon.

The unintended consequence of the closure of movie rental places is the disappearance of the video game rental. Video games are pretty expensive to buy, if you didn't know.  Most PlayStation 3 games are $60.  That's steep.  Wii games are typically cheaper, but can exceed the $50 range themselves.  I'll tell you, paying $6 on a five-day rental makes a lot more sense to me.  There is less commitment there.  Sure, eventually the money adds up, but it's not all at once.   Places like Play n' Trade and GameStop offer a way, if you're savvy, I suppose, where you can trade in games for new games.  I bet if you traded in a great game, got good money for it, bought a new game, traded that one in again, got money for it, bought a new game, traded it in, and so on and so forth, it would accomplish the same thing as renting games at Blockbuster, but you have to buy the initial game, and then progressively lose money until you're out completely.  Either way, you'll lose money, whether it's to Blockbuster or GameStop.   All I'm saying is that this play and then trade business model is going to take some getting used to for me.  I don't know if I'll ever be into that.

You cannot rent a video game in Nashville anymore because the very last Blockbuster video store in town closed sometime in the recent past.  I just noticed it the other day.  I mean, it's not like I ever went into that Blockbuster anyway, but still, it was an option.  There may be other rental places in other outlying areas, but I don't think there's any left here IN town.

You can't stream a huge video game.  Not yet, at least.  Someday, sure.  But not yet.  In the mean time, we'll all have to trade in our games for new ones if we want something on the affordable side.  Yet even though I just said I don't like leaving games with no replay value around the house, there's this collector inside me that says "Don't ever let these go.  They have value that can't be measured with a dollar amount."  That's why it will take time for me to get used to the trade-in business model.  But sometimes, you just have to let it go.

Just Another Lazy Day Afternoon

So I'm sitting on my couch, right? And I'm downloading a massive update for a video game I got called Burnout Paradise for the Playstation 3, which is a racing game in the series that involves racing, but also wrecking other cars as spectacularly as possible. I bought the game pretty much when I got the system, but when I hooked the system up to the internet, it required a massive update in order to play it. In other words, I never felt like waiting around for that update to happen, so I haven't played the game since November. I'm also streaming some weird hipster indie music from this site. Pretty neat. Well, I didn't know what else to do on the internet while this stupid update downloads so I figured I'd stop by and say hey.

Try THIS LINK and if it works, that's specifically what I'm listening to.

So the Music City Brewfest is this weekend and I'm not going. I'm not going not because I don't want to. I love beer, but it sold the fuck out real quick, therefore, I am out. Nonetheless, I will drink beer in Music City this weekend, just not in a festival atmosphere.

Useless information? Check.

Anyhow, there are times when I want to be preachy and high and mighty, smart, and educated. There are other days when I want to listen to music and play video games. Today is a day where I want to do the latter. I try to focus on one or the other, without knowing it, but on a day like today, it's a day I wish I did more often, even though I'm being pretty lazy and unproductive. Ya know what? It's my day off. I'm going to relax. That's what it's for.

The Waiting Game.

So I'm sitting on the couch, waiting for a carpet cleaner guy to come, and I'm not happy about it, folks. Not that I don't want our carpets to be cleaned for free, as part of our re-up on our lease, but I just don't like when someone I don't know comes into my dwelling. I just feel uneasy about having someone come in here. He tried to come last Tuesday, but I was about to go to work, so I told him to come back today. I asked how long it would take, and he told me about a half hour, but that still doesn't make me uneasy about the whole situation. I just don't like it. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm going to do my best to ignore him and just hang out. I'm not that kind of guy though, so I hope he just comes in, does the damn thing, and gets out.

It's affecting me in other ways as well. I want to start playing video games or whatever but I don't want to get into the middle of things and then have the guy show up, making me have to stop. Then there's that awkward situation where I don't know what to do with myself. Do I continue doing what I was doing? I don't think I do. You don't play Call of Duty while someone is cleaning your carpets. What do I do with myself? Do I hang around him while he works? Do I help him?

No, I'm not helping him. I'm not moving anything else out of the way at this point. I got a lot of stuff off the carpets, but this is all I'm doing. So I don't know, I guess I'll just hang out, and do nothing while he works.

It feels like when Ricky Bobby is being interviewed in Talladega Nights, and he doesn't know what to do with his hands. That's how I will feel.

Another thing driving me crazy about it, as I touched on above is that I don't know exactly when to expect him. It's supposed to be "morning" and it's currently 10:07 a.m. CDT, so that could be anytime in the next hour and a half. So I just wait. I want this to be over.

I hate people, but I love gatherings. This is very, very true.

Meandering Thoughts of a Lazy Bastard

When I get around to doing things that I feel I should be doing to make myself happier, sometimes I go forth and make it reality, and sometimes I just totally forget about it and put it off. I have currently set myself up with entirely too many things that theoretically should make me happier, but now I've gotten to the point where I'm stressing myself out with the amount of fun things I want to do. My main problem is that I've got too many things to do with not enough time in the day to do them. A normal day during the week would include sleeping in till around nine, reading the newspaper, making/drinking coffee, then playing Modern Warfare 2 until it's time to take a shower and eat lunch so I can go to work and make money. Somewhere within there, I open my computer and check my social networking sites, and also try to see other interesting things scattered about the Internet, but I usually just look at the clock, think about how little time I have to be fiddling around with the Internet, and get moving on to the next thing. There is never enough time in the mornings to do the other things I want to do.



I have set myself up with too much reading, to the point that I feel I have to go out of my way to read them. I get a newspaper daily, Sports Illustrated weekly, and Alternative Press monthly. I've found that reading the paper in the morning is becoming a headache, because there are so many other things I would rather be doing. So now the dilemma comes in where I don't really want to read the paper anymore, but I feel an obligation to read it so I'm at least somewhat informed. People will say "that's what the Internet is for." And to them I'll say "but the Internet is killing the print news, which I like." So do I continue my subscription to the paper, which is about $16 a month? Or do I cancel it so I can do other things I want to accomplish daily? There is so much to read already, with the magazines and the Internets...I don't know what to do.



I also have some very expensive video games currently collecting their weight in dust as well. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has absolutely DOMINATED my attention for the past month and a half. I own Madden 10 and NBA Live 10 as well and I know I would seriously enjoy playing them, but right after I get done with CoD...which never happens because I run out of time every day. "I'll play Madden tomorrow" usually turn into "I'll play Madden tomorrow" the next day as well. I paid good money for that to just sit there. And I enjoy it! I just need to quit my job so I can play more video games.



Additionally, there are millions of songs that have been recorded that I have never heard. I am on an announced mission to listen to damn near every one of them. But guess what? I don't have the time to sit there and really listen to any of it. Why? because I'm reading the paper and playing Call of Duty. Believe it or not, as I sit back and think about it, I'M BITCHING ABOUT ENJOYING MYSELF AT HOME ON MY COUCH. So I take back everything I just said.



Which brings me to my next part. I daydream at work about heading back to the FREE fitness center at my apartment complex because I have gained 1o pounds in the past few months from my increased laziness. Defenitly no time for that.



Thanks for reading, I'll be playing Call of Duty if you need me.