adventures in extreme homoerotic sado-masochistic bonding | 7:46 AM >

Once upon a time (the mid-nineties), in a land far, far away (Japan), a tiny man in a tiny cubicle came up with a nefarious plan: "Let there be a machine with a red and black screen, which must be affixed to the head of the player, and which will make the player sick to his stomach!" So it was written, and so it was done. Thus, the Virtual Boy was born. Evening passed and morning came, and all over the nation little children were sick as if they had massive hangovers. But they didn't. Fast forward to the present. John had the nerve around my birthday to suggest that he was going to buy me one of the accursed black and red monstrosities. He never got around to it. So, after tricking him into heading to Akihabara under the guise of a scavenger hunt, my true purpose was revealed: we were to find, purchase, and force him to play a Virtual Boy as punishment for him suggesting that he'd get me one in the first place. The sequence of events happend as follows: 1) We entered a house of ill-repute, the so-called "Super Potato," a shoppe selling vintage goods of all shapes and sizes. 2) We procured the accursed box and two of its accursed games. You can't see it in the image, but John's hands are actually smoking and turning black. 3) We inspected the evilness that is V-Tetris. 4) We had our last meal at Denny's. You know, just in case. 5) Upon entering John's home the thing lept from its plastic and began stalking about like a Tripod. Had we been unsure of our damnation at that point, the sight would have disabused us of any notion of hope. 6) John peered into the box, hoping to align the two screens so as to not make us terribly sick. He came away, Babel-style, spitting and uttering a mishmash of ancient Aramaic. 7) The machine totally, utterly destroyed me. Damn you to hell, development house that made Red Alarm. 8) We summoned the help of Chibi Futago-Hime to help rid us of our awful curse... 9) ... and she set off to free my friend from the Collosus. All in all, we nearly killed ourselves on red pixels. That, my friends, is a weekend worth envying. Happy birthday one more time, John.