Game Rage

My Name is Brianna and it has been 7 days since I last shot a stream of expletives at my television screen and even less time since I last sat on the couch in full pout over the spilled milk of an unmastered video game level.

I like to think of myself as relatively level headed. I rarely yell at G even though he is constantly spitting loogies in the sink and/or not buying me presents. Even more impressively I have managed to not kill a single person despite 30 years of being surrounded by idiots. And yet video games which should be only inconsequential dalliances all too often leave me foaming at the mouth.

Last weekend G and I spent most of our time obsessively playing Little Big Planet the remaining few weekend hours were spent on whining. I'm embarrassed to admit that we got stuck on one of the earlier levels (the last one in the Day of the Dead theme). The first thing you need to understand is that this level was really hard. It has this stupid part where you have to jump from platform to platform over a sea of deadly noxious gas followed by more platforms hanging by bungee cords from the ceiling that you have to make bounce in perfect rhythm in order to catapult your sack person across more poisonous fog. Expecting any video game player to rely on rhythm is overtly cruel -- there is a reason I am sitting on the couch with a controller in my hand not out shaking it at the club. The second thing you need to understand is that I might wrap a bit too much of my ego up in video game performance.

I created this flow chart to explain the common progression from "This is SO FUN!" to "I accidentally threw the PlayStation down the stairs."