Latest TODAY column is: The sad lot of adult gamers
Excerpt:
I AM thinking of starting a new charity to help individuals who have been sued by a charity. I am thinking of calling it National Kena-Sued Fund.
Ok, ok, joke only, ah? Joke only. You can put down your lawyer hotline phone now. I will now go back to discussing safer topics, like how to make fun of Singapore politicians, or how to light your fart with a flame or how to tell your wife she is fat.
OK, maybe something safer than that.
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Full column:
The sad lot of adult gamers
I AM thinking of starting a new charity to help individuals who have been sued by a charity. I am thinking of calling it National Kena-Sued Fund.
Ok, ok, joke only, ah? Joke only. You can put down your lawyer hotline phone now. I will now go back to discussing safer topics, like how to make fun of Singapore politicians, or how to light your fart with a flame or how to tell your wife she is fat.
OK, maybe something safer than that.
One of the secrets to a lasting marriage, I recently discovered, is that you need to be quick about noticing the little things about your wife. Like when she just had her hair done.
The correct response, is, of course, to say “Wah, cut and rebond your hair, ah? Looks good, makes you look slimmer, sexier and younger.”
The best time to say this is preferably as soon as you can, like maybe 30 seconds after she left the salon and came home. Try not to notice three weeks later. It will dilute your effort somewhat.
The incorrect response is to say, “$200? You spent $200 on your hair? My haircut only cost me $10 at that 10-minute place. What did they use, scissors made of gold?”
There is no good time to say this. Trust me. Saying this at any moment, be it 30 seconds or thirty years after the event, will only cause pain and misery to you and your sex life. It will be brought up every time you fight, or every time you buy your latest Xbox game. And you will always lose.
So if you want to still come home with your latest Macho Commando Warriors game, you had better learn to encourage her wise, er, investments in her hair. And shoes. And clothes.
We adult gamers are a sad lot. We can now afford the games we like, but we now cannot get away from work, to play them.
Having a family also makes it harder to game. Usually, the Married-with-Kids among us have to wait till the wife and kids are in bed, before we can play.
I mean, there is no feasible way you can effectively assault a band of terrorists entrenched in a building with your elite team of soldiers when you are trying to fight off your daughter yanking at your controller cable.
Sometimes, I steal a game or two while the missus is taking a bath. Having a console means I can turn the thing off quickly when she is done, something I cannot do with a PC without damaging it. You can tell I am a very well-trained Stealth Gaming Husband/Father.
I own a Sony Playstation 2, a Mac iBook, a fairly souped-up PC (used as a doorstop), and two Xboxes. The official reason why I have two Xboxes is that I wanted one in the room so that I can play away from the kids.
Unofficially, I was “Tony-ed”. Tony is a good buddy of mine who had the dubious honour of being the first guy in my gaming circle to have his Xbox console banned by the Xbox Live online gaming service. When you are detected with a modified console, it gets sent into digital exile. In his honour, we named this banning process after him.
So now I have a second Xbox, without any modifications, and a bunch of original games, so that I can continue playing with my friends online, in my underwear.
Playing online is a great way to make friends. I introduced a friend from one circle of card gamers, to my Xbox friends from the office. So he is now part of our merry band, and everyone knows his name, even though they have never met him in person.
So fellow adult gamers who are married, remember my advice if you want to continue making friends and playing games. The next time the wife starts to chide you for spending time and money on your games and second Xbox, tell her “But honey, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and gee, your hair looks really good today. Here’s another $200 to buy some shoes to go with that great hairdo.”
mr brown is the accidental author of a popular website that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997. He thinks there is nothing sadder than a gamer who has to excuse himself from the digital battleground because “my wife wants to watch the plasma TV”.