This week is my favorite of the year. Many people love December and all its holidays. Others love Thanksgiving and the chance to eat lots of food, shop and be with family. Others love Valentine’s Day (just kidding, no one loves Valentine’s Day, ironically). Some love the summertime for sun, sand, good weather and time for outdoor adventures. Not me. In fact, I love this time of year, not for the fact that the weather is nice, but because I get to stay inside MORE. I love video games because the enhance my laziness to the extreme that not even TV can manage. And this week of the year is the biggest (or at least the most famous) gaming expo the world. All the biggest gaming companies (both hardware and software), except this year when Playstation decided to skip.

As with every great thing, there is also a downside. The excitement of seeing new games, new consoles and fancy new programs, continues the whole week. The problem is right after the conference is over. Just like when you come home from an awesome vacation, there is the letdown of it being over. Lots of games go away for a year or more, many won’t see releases for a couple years or more, and all the excitement fades in the summer months. Then you are stuck with the old crappy games you’ve been playing for months, knowing you won’t have anything to look forward to until next year when E3 comes back to save you from your early summer slump. Nothing can replace the excitement of E3(Electronic Entertainment Expo), but Bitter Friday Giftures are just going to have to do for now.

If I wasn’t a grown up…

…you know this is what I would do all summer.

Sometimes games are broken…

…sometimes legs are.

Video games…

…make everything better.

As video games teach us…

…doing nothing is always better than doing something.

No matter how bad things go in video games…

…they are always better than real life.

In video games, there is always another chance…

…in life, not so much.

Ping pong as a game…just painful…

…video games, much less so.

Who knew telling someone you were pregnant in a video game…

…would be so charming and non-grammarlike?

Only in video games…

…can a plumber swing a giant spiky turtle.

Only in video games…

…would you befriend a wild electric mouse.

Only in video games…

…would you hit a question mark above your head and expect money.

Only with video games…

…can you always be in control(er).

Today is pretty much the saddest day of the year. All the exciting announcements are being put to bed. All the biggest games are going back to the lab. All the biggest game makers are getting back to work. All the gamers are going back to the old sad games they have been playing that only have regular HD graphics and we have to suffer for 364 days until life is worth living again. Guess it is time to whine about how life sucks again and throw fits like little kids.

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Video Gaming Time of Year Ben