Reader, I gibbed

Would you like to know what I am not thinking about right now? I am not thinking about having frogged that fucking hat AGAIN. In fact, the hat is on hold. I'm going back to either Skully or Tank Girl, one of my SUCCESSFUL projects, for a while. Actually, I'm going to make up an exam before I do anything. But even before that, I'm going to bore y'all with tales of gibbing.

Yesterday, my spouse (aka the Dogfacedboy) and I agreed to meet the King of the Hill People for some solstice shopping. Although we got waylaid by a headache and a snowstorm much more extensive than the weatherbitches in these parts had led us to believe it would be, we actually made it to the mall. Eventually. Even better, most of the suburbanites had fled from the horrible SNOW, thus confirming my diagnosis that they are evil robots built from evil, non-rust-resistant evil parts, built to do evil as weather permits.

We trounced around for a bit, had a bite to eat, and then went our separate ways. TKotHP had a party to go to and the spouse and I thought we might take in a film. We arrived at the theatre at a somewhat awkward time. Although our choices were many (provided we were willing to wait at least 40 minutes), we decided on Aeon Flux on the grounds that it would likely be disappearing soon.

The arcade games at the theatre seemed to be slim pickings. We tried to race one another at a NASCAR game, but my machine ate one token, fucking up the timing. I went to get another and a surly teen tried to slide in and steal my three lucious credits. "EXCUSE ME!" I said in my best soccer mom voice, and he trembled in fear. Driving games are never my favorites, and since I couldn't even try to kill my husband, there was little fun to be had.

Mi esposo likes driving games, so he picked the most metrosexual big rig in the county to drive in another game. The bouncing tassels in his cab were a particularly nice faux!realistic touch. They would have been helped significantly by the ubiquitous generic Asian cat bouncing even a little bit on the dash, but alas, no.

While watching him drive his manly big rig, I developed a desire to shoot things, cooperatively, if possible. The two Time Crisis consoles next door seemed to fit the bill. (I make no comment on the pink and blue guns except to note that the grand Pottery Barn Kids conspiracy has spread farther than I'd feared. Initiate Fuck You, Male Oppressor Protocol.) My shooting things career was short lived, however, partly because I was unclear on how to reload.

Having exhausted our game options (or so we thought), we still had about 35 minutes until movie time. We were wandering theatreward when we looked up and realized that there was a much more extensive collection of games upstairs. We trotted up there to check it out, but there wasn't much that seemed tempting. The spouse was eyeing up Offroad Thunder (at which he knows he could kick my ass with a flick of his powersliding pinky), but surly teens were hogging it.

I was drawn to a generic Namco game with two back-to-back consoles in the middle of the floor. It was so nondescript, I could've been in the CIA. Even now, coming up with Namco taxed the slippery parts of my brane where the memory of this game is stored. It was only one token to play, and in this capitalist world, what does THAT say about its desirability?

However, on closer examination, it proved to be My Kind of Game. First of all, it was a fighting game in the style of Soul Calibur or Marvel vs. Capcom. These are what I like to call Button Mashing Game. I excel at BMGs. Second, it had this bizarre character in a red leather dominatrix outfit with a pointy red witch hat who appeared to battle for the honor of her family by rocking out on her guitar. I HAD to play this game.

Although my spouse could already taste his failure, he gave me a dollar and we got tokens to play each other. Of course, I fucked up immediately and did not choose my axe-grinding, fashion-challenged dominatrix. I wound up playing some bland anime boy. My spouse chose this bizarre shape-shifting guy who seemed to have some cool powers. This, as always, worked against him. He has the "what's that do?" approach that slows him down while I MASH! CRUSH! DEEEEEEESTROY! The matchups were best of 5 and I took him 3 in a row. He did, occasionally, turn into a little boy and hit me with a baseball bat, though. Good for you, honey.

I was happily crushing computer opponents for a while (pussies all), and gearing up to take on hentai hair chyck when a teenage girl cut in on the other console. I destroyed her handily the first time, then dismantled the chyck with the feeble hair tentacles. She cut in again with a character that, tragically, exploited my big weakness: my muscley katana boy had shit for weapons with any kind of reach. This character had Cousin It hair and a bitchin' spear. I still took her to 5 battles and only lost by a hair (but not a disturbing hentai hair tentacle, a winsome flop of hair secured by the bandana of my grandfather [plus three against hygiene-challenged hopping vampires]).

As I hauled myself off my now-stiff knees (these consoles were clearly intended to have chairs in front of them, but did not), my spouse looked at me fondly and said, "You're like a fighting game savant!"