ben is on the inter.net

Oh god I want this, originally uploaded by bburbank.

I went by the local vespa dealer today. They had one of these in stock, in the color I wanted. Out the door price was kind of high, but I could probably cover it. It was beautiful and the guy said they don’t think they’ll get any more of that model and definitely not in that color. This thing would do 75MPH on the highway, was fully automatic, and was slightly more comfortable than the really expensive chair that I’m sitting in right now.

My ad slogan: “I just want to kill myself and ride a Vespa LXV150 through heaven.”

So Metal Gear Solid 4 is coming out in 3 weeks and I’m more excited for it than I’ve been for a game in a long time. Seriously I’m frothing like a thousand blue planets here. This might just be residual excitement*. It also might be my very real fascination with a possibly perfect ending to the series**. I’m not sure, but in honor of it, I’m playing lots and lots of metal gear. I’m about to finish off Snake Eater, which I’ve been playing on Very Easy so that I can really mess with people. I bought a copy of VR Missions on ebay because it’s apparently one of the best puzzle games ever made. I’m finally going to open up that copy of Portable Ops to give it a try… Anyway, Metal Gear. Or should I say “Metal… Gear?”

* For the record, the game that I was the most excited for pre-release (of all games ever made) was Metal Gear Solid 2, a game where I watched the trailer probably hundreds of times over the course of the way-too-long wait.

** In the first trailer for MGS4, there’s a section where Snake puts a gun in his mouth. I’m hoping the game ends with him doing that, and then a hint appears at the bottom of the screen “Press X to Kill Yourself!”

Here’s some stuff. Some stuff that my kid will not understand that I understood as a kid. Some stuff that, should I mention it, will probably sound like somebody saying “color television” or “talkies” or “programming with punch cards.” It didn’t occur to me how much of this there was going to be.

• Command Prompts (mostly DOS here, but probably Unix too)
• Standard Definition (NTSC) versus High Definition (also, “widescreen”)
• 2D Fighting Games
• Point and Click Adventure Games
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
• Polaroid (RIP)
• C++ (it’s gotta’ happen some day)
• the Gameboy
• Games without tutorials (PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG, VIDEO GAMES)
• The USSR and the Cold War
• Racism (this is pretty nice, actually)
• Compact Discs
• Drive-in Movies
• the Space Program
• Star Wars?

It just occurred to me that Happy Meals will probably be fine, though. They will be the last thing that God destroys before shutting off the lights on his way out. The last bits of life on the earth (probably crabs and bugs) will make their homes in discarded Happy Meals on the beach, the only proof that once I was a child.