It worked! It actually worked. In the hours before the release of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, I was pacing around. "How am I gonna get my hands on a Playstation 2?" No one would loan me one, and I surely couldn't afford to buy one. Then I remembered the words of some budget filmmaker. Kevin Smith or someone. "Buy your cameras on credit card, then return them when you're done." Hey, I thought, I have a credit card.

So I did some research. Gaming stores have draconian return policies designed to prevent people from doing what I wanted to do... try the product without fear of having to own it and its steep price tag. But I remembered from my days as a Wal-Mart stockman that Wal-Mart is really fair to customers with regards to returns. So I went there and dropped $351 on the system and a memory card. Step one.

Step two was actually getting the game. So I went and stood in line with cultural observer Tistofer Tickleson at the Software, Etc store in the College Mall. I had really wanted to buy the game from Electronics Boutique, which has been my release-day software source since the Street Fighter II: Turbo Edition was released on the SNES. What can I say, even though companies have proven time and time again that they want brand loyalty to be a one-way street and that they will abandon their customers and employees whenever it behooves them, I still believe in loyalty, probably because I'm brainwashed. So I did want to buy from EB, but the Bloomington store is staffed by the least knowledgeable employees that I have ever encountered. Previously, I had gone to the same store to find a copy of bleem! for Dreamcast, Metal Gear Solid edition. So I asked the worker if they had it. "Uh... no." he said not even looking up from counting the money in his drawer. Greed, I tell you, prevented him from providing customer service. And the sad thing is that since EB is the only store in America that carried bleem! for Dreamcast, I had to hunt around the store on my own to find the product and still buy it.

But I digress. The important thing is that I waiting in line to buy this game. It was the first time I waited in line for a game since Legend of Zelda: Ocrarina of Time was released in, uh, 1999 or something. It had been awhile. You know, I don't know exactly how I feel about this whole idea. The fact that the culture molds me to the point where I feel like I need to consume these products on the day they are released, yet also put such an economic premium on that consumption that it makes it difficult for me to do. It's just not right, I think. Granted, I am anti-greed and pro-freedom of information, but I've always been told that with great power comes great responsibility. And I think that when you wield power over your fans, such as you have a group of people who will line up to buy your game, see your movie, read your comic, etc, you have a great responisbility to make sure that this material is available to those fans without being excessively costly. As close to production cost as possible, with just enough of an incentive to keep the next installment or whatever being made.

But I digress again. Step two was get the game. This proved to be of minor difficulty because the managerial entity of Software, Etc insisted that I also buy a stupid stragety guide with the game, otherwise he wouldn't sell it to me. His reason? His district manager wants him to do that. "You know what, cheif, you are a tool. Why in the hell," I wanted to ask him but am ultimately too timid to actually do so, "do you care what your district manager wants? You're a person, not a job." And then I had to jump through a number of hoops in order to return the book to another store, the third store I tried, incidentally, because the retail world seems to be populated with people who mysteriously, take their retail jobs seriously. Now, brace yourselves, because I'm going to say something very important. I'm going to put it in bold type. No retail job is worth taking seriously. Your existence is just to serve as a cog in a money-making machine. Especially worthless are jobs at the wage-earning, customer-interaction level. So please, people, wake up and smell the pointlessness of your position and the lack of value that your employers actually place on your and toss that lack of value right back at them. You'll probably end up being promoted, incidentally.

Step three was beat the game. I did that, and the review of the game will be seperate, incase any of you find my musings on capitalism to be interesting but my review of video games to boring. So, we'll skip ahead to step four: return the Playstation 2. Needless to say, I was nervous about this. But man, I'm patting myself on the back. Sony puts this seal on the box, theoritically to prevent people from opening the box and passing it off as unopened. I carefully cut this seal to open it and carefuly used tape to seal it up again. Here comes the beautiful part. When I took my box with taped seal back to the return counter, the woman violently tore the seal open in order to see into the box. EVIDENCE DESTROYED! I was so excited that my return had gone off without a hitch that I in advertantly left my empty Wal-Mart sack right on the floor in front of the return counter.