Soda Fizz - Volume I

Soda Fizz is an idea that Pickle and I had a few months back. Regular visitors to the site know that I am easily annoyed and generally an irritable person. Something in the brain chemistry of dumb and annoying people in this world causes them to gravitate to a person such as myself. With that said you can imagine what a usual day in my life is like. So I'm starting this column as a way to vent some of my frustrations I encounter on a day-to-day basis. I'll do my best to keep everything game related, but occasionally something will piss me off so much that I'll have to share. Those of you who are visiting the site for the first time, I am usually not this disgruntled, but this is my forum to blow off steam. I hope everyone enjoys.

Late night trips to Wal-Mart are a Snackbar ritual. Cone and myself are two people infamous for never getting enough sleep and being up all night wasting time. Being awake and bored at 4 am usually calls for a trip to good ole Wal-Mart. I mean hell, where else can you buy a new video game, a DVD and underwear in the middle of the night? Unfortunately every other freak in the world has the same idea. The only thing more bizarre than the patrons of Wal-Mart at 4 am is the cashiers and stock-boys. Without fail some idiot always decides to try and strike up a conversation with the SB crew every time we go in there. Idiots! It's 4 in the fucking morning and I'm looking at PC games, do I look like a person you would want to try and kick off a friendship with? Leave me the hell alone and go back to looking up Barbie's skirt or whatever the hell it was you were doing in the girl's toy aisle.

One night after several hours of getting our asses kicked while playing WarCraft III on Battle.net Cone and I decided that we were never going to be any good at this game and it was time to head the Wal-Mart for a new one. To the Cone-mobile we go. Little did we know what awaited us at the store this particular evening.

When we first got there nothing seemed amiss. The cashiers all looked cracked out and pissed off. Several people in line were buying very strange items for this hour of the night, such as Windex. There was that family that thinks it's a good idea to take their 5 year old and their 3 year old to the store at 4 am. Cone and I immediately passed all this and headed straight for electronics. Same overweight, shabbily dressed, toothless, white trash cashier was working in electronics. Nope, defiantly nothing out of the ordinary, typical late night Wal-Mart crowd.

We then proceeded to browse around some of the game display cases. We were having a pretty typical conversation that two friends would have when video game shopping; talking about games we've played, what we liked and didn't like about them. We ended up stopped in front of the PS2 display case. I can't even remember what game it was that Cone mentioned, but my immediate response was "man, the graphics on that game were terrible though."

Had Cone and I been paying attention to anything other than what our next purchase was going to be, we would have noticed that we had picked up a straggler who had deemed us his next target for friendship. He decided that my comment about the graphics was his chance to jump in on the conversation. Cone and I are both in our early twenties, both pretty slim, basically your cookie cutter college student looking people. So picture with me if you will our new friend hopeful; mid 30's, balding, overweight, greasy, nasally voiced, obviously lives in his parents basement where he wanks it to Asian porn and plays D&D all day and night, short guy. Not that I'm one to judge someone strictly based on appearance, but if he had chimed in to our conversation with something insightful or at least useful to say he may have become friends wit h our Snackbar duo. But no, he drops this nugget on us; "You know guys, graphics aren't everything. Have you played Spyro the Dragon? It's fantastic! And it's only a fraction of the cost of the newer games!"

He then pointed to the PSOne section. Cone and I were so stunned by this that we could do nothing except give him blank stares for a minute or two until he went away. Obviously once he was out of sight Cone and I burst into hysterics. Our chubby, greasy friend was never to be seen again.

So the moral of the story is this, I'm sure Spyro the Dragon is a quality game. Not that I ever have or ever will play it, but it was obviously was one of his favorites. Now come on man, there are more ways to get your point across than that, and for future reference you may want to keep your repressed fantasies about Spyro to yourself. Thus concludes another chapter in the SB History Book, thanks for reading everyone.

Mar 20, 2003 - 12:00 am | 0 comments
Shane Quast