Ode To The XBox 360

I recently wandered into a Circuit City. I had no particular expectations. I thought I'd drool over the Phillip PX50 plasma displays again, maybe drop twenty bucks on some blanks DVDs.

But then, as I looked up from the bitchin' 12-megapixel Nikon DX2, I was stopped dead in my tracks. What's this? There, before my very eyes, was a sight so amazing, so arresting, it shook my values to their very foundations.



It was Call of Duty 2, on the XBox 360, in Hi-Def.

It was beautiful beyond description. The scenery, rendered with details which make life itself pale by comparison. The motion, smooth as my first lover's touch. The blood, flowed like water from the fountain of youth.

And pixels, oh the pixels! There millions of them! Millions, I tell you. Millions of glorious hi-def pixels.

This was no mere game. This was an experience ... in Dolby Digital Surround Sound with 5.1 channel matrix encoding.

I watched it. Mesmerized.

I watched it and marveled. I watched it and felt a peace my troubled heart has never known. I watched it and felt ashamed at the hubris of desiring to posses something so exquisite. Truly a filthy wretch like me could never defile something so delicate, so sublime with a heathen's touch.

It brought the disgrace of my countless sins into stark relief. My fragile, feeble human mind was overwhelmed. I could bear its radiance no longer. I had to look away.

I staggered from the temple of the object of my desire, gasping for breath, clutching my pathetic substitute purchase. I looked at my dual-layer 16x DVD+RW media with Lightscribe technology hoping some for comfort. But it brought me no solace. How could it? Cast from the garden of the most holy, I began to realize ...

I would never feel joy again.

As the moment passed, I was filled with a deep sadness of this new and terrible knowledge. The universe grants each of us what seems a gift ... but becomes a curse ... one single moment of perfect beauty in a lifetime. Mine came without warning and passed in an instant.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, my life has been a hollow existence ... a vain search to touch once again that all too brief, wondrous moment which, in my heart of hearts, I know will never come again.

So heed this warning, please I beg you. Satan lives at Circuit City, dressed as an angel!

Seek not to view the face of true beauty and true perfection ... lest ye be left as I am ... a shadow ... broken and empty.

Oh yeah! And dude, the explosions totally rocked.