Slacker, pt. 5 — Slackass

Since I've become gainfully unemployed — I quite recomend this route to anyone who's fed up with spinning the giant wheel that doesn't exist in any meaningfully good way (Of course, I suppose you could be more succinct in your writing than am I, but whatever.) — I think I've actually become busier than I was when working full time. Sure, at work, I was "at work" eight or nine hours a day, but I could schedule all the things I needed to do and give myself the time to get them done. Now, almost everything that's not "at work" falls on my shoulders.

This is disturbing because I had carefully choreographed my unemployment into discrete phases. There was a "Relax, Recover and Forget" stage, a "Look for Work Online" stage, and a "Look for a Local Job" stage. Of course all that was blown to hell almost immediately.

So I've been taking my RRaF stage whenever I can find it. And anyone who knows me knows there are two things I do to shut out the rest of the world: read and play video games. Lately, video games have taken precedence. I've battled my way out of a triple-max security prison of the future in "Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay," I've kicked serious zombie butt in "Hunter: The Reckoning," and right now I'm working on my lightsaber technique in "Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy." Next up are "Fable," something I've long anticipated and am going to test drive from Mr. Movies next week, and "Halo 2" which I *will* own as soon as I can find a copy (and maybe after the price has dropped from the initial ofering and ensuing feeding frenzy).

I love the sense of story, of getting better at things as I go along in the story, the scenery, the music, and the fact that each game world is controllable to some degree. There isn't any completely open-ended game yet (except maybe the Sims). And heck, before you call me up and start raving about me getting a job and what the hell am I doing with my time with a baby on the way, check this out: The video game industry (that's right folks, it's big business these days) shuffles around a couple billion dollars a year. And there aren't a whole lot of great writers out there, being involved yet (although whoever did the script for Jedi Knight gets huge kudos; I've never played a video game with a sparkling dry sense of humor before.) so I'm working on making a niche by doing my hands-on research.

OK? OK. So to help me make this niche happen, any one who has A) contacts in the video game industry or B) a Sony PS2 for give-away, please step forward.