If you are an avid Xbox 360 gamer, like myself, you may find yourself with a bit of a cash flow problem in the very near future. Since the sales of the Wii are going up and up and the PS3 is starting to get a little bit of a toe-hold, some of the long-expected titles for the 360 are starting to be churned out at a very quick pace. As a father of 3 (and 1 on the way,) how am I going to be able to afford all of these new games? Well, I’ve asked some friends and some folks online, and here are a few of the suggestions that I just don’t think will work, in no particular order.
- Get a job. Yeah, but I already have one. I have one that drains a lot of energy that I would be able to spend on another job. I thought about getting part-time work at GameStop or something, but then I’d just be cutting into my gaming time, which is already precious little. (Right Rex?)
- Make my wife get a job. Excuse me while I laugh at this one. Ha! For one, she already works by keeping up with our 3 little monsters (that I love more than anything, but they are monsters) and being pregnant, I think she’d kill someone if we let her out in public more than necessary. Anyone who is married knows that making your wife do anything, is pretty much like making a cat take a bath.
- Make my kids get a job. Unfortunately, the kids are still too young to work in the US, and I can’t afford to ship them off to a country where they could work. When you look at it economically it just doesn’t make sense. A new game runs $60, I doubt the $.50 an hour pay they would raise overseas would build up fast enough to get more than a couple of games a year.
- Cash in on someone’s talent. I could, I suppose do more freelance writing, but looking for gigs isn’t usually worth the effort for me. Besides, when I’m writing, I’m not playing video games, so there goes that one. However, I do have adorable children, and maybe I could take advantage of…err…foster some sort of acting or modeling talent that could bring in a little more money for the household. The oldest is playing more games than me these days, so I’m sure he’d love to use his money for that.
- Sell stuff. I’m kind of a pack-rat when it comes to things people give me. Unfortunately, no one cares enough to give me anything that other people would consider valuable. I tried eBay, but you can only sell so many ‘Ghost in a Jar’s before people catch on and stop bidding.
- Sell some sort of bodily fluid. No. I tried this in college once, and it didn’t go well. I will not speak of this again.
- Sell a kid. Believe it or not, this one was mentioned more than once. You have enough, just sell one of them. It isn’t like they are old enough for you to actually miss them or anything. I couldn’t sell one of my precious babies. It would kill me to part with any of them or any part of them. And there’s the fact that my wife would kill me. She said she wasn’t making any more because the market isn’t that robust.
- Commit to a life of crime. Again, this would take a lot of effort and time that I just don’t have. To be a good criminal, you have to be able to invest yourself into the business or you’ll go to jail. I don’t think they let you take your 360 with you in prison. If they did…nah, it still is wrong to steal and such.
- Ask for a raise. There is some potential here, but money that comes into the household through the primary source of income must go towards the general Armstrong budget. I’ve heard this more than once from the person mentioned in #2. Is it fair? Maybe not, but it is her rule, and I don’t want to have to raise 4 kids by myself if I run her off.
- Vegas, baby. A friend of mine suggested I take what I have and do a whirlwind Vegas trip. I could take the red-eye to Sin City and gamble all night. Then, if for some strange reason I don’t win enough to afford a hotel room, I could just get the red-eye the next night back to the ATL. Out of all of the suggestions above, this would have the least probability of success. To some, this may seem like a lot of fun to just give it a try, but to me, it would be absolute torture. Part of the reason I love video games, is that I don’t have to be good at them to have fun. I put in my $60 and I know pretty-much what I will get out of it. To gamble with success, you have to be either really good or really lucky. I am helplessly neither. The last time I was in Vegas, I won $40 in a penny slot machine. Lucky, right? Well when you consider that all of my friends who were with me, all won over $1000 on their first $10 investment on the craps table because one of them ‘got hot.’ In the 5 minutes I decided to just walk around and waste quarters, my friends were hitting it big on a stupid $5 table. I came back almost with enough to get a new 360 game and they came back with enough to get a new PC.
So there you are. 10 suggestions from people who either don’t know me, or don’t care enough to give me real advice that just might work. Friends, who needs ‘em? I’ll go back to my one free rental at Blockbuster and the game that I can save up for about every 3 months. On the bright side, I did see this weekend that if you turn in a Blockbuster Online movie, you can get a game for about half price. At least that way I will be able to write some reviews again and maybe be able to keep this blog going.
Filed under: Being a Geezer
