"True! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?"

My ever-slackening grasp on lucidity has recently been paired with a mounting sense of paranoia. Everyone from store clerks to infants seem to be lurking just around the corner, vying to enact their most gruesome of justice. Who is it this week? Why none other than the management and maintenance staff of my very own apartment complex.

In a move intended, so far as I can grasp, to illuminate the piss stains on the carpet, they've installed a new light in the hallway. To anyone else, this would seem innocuous. What danger could come from a light? But this is no ordinary light. This is the Aston Martin of fluorescent glows. An oppressively bright wave of metallic rays, steadily sapping my spirit. With my apartment lights off and a full reclining of my trusty man throne, a single beam of light finds it way to the side of my face. Add a constant stream of visitors to my ethnically-ambiguous neighbor and you have an illuminated form of the Chines water torture, a la Poe. I swear, if I start hearing heartbeats, I'm bound to start pushing down the elderly...

This is How "Wii" do it....

First and foremost, television, along with my pun making ability, has reached an all time low. When Howie Mandell, the illustrious voice-over talent from Bobby's World gets his own hidden camera show, the time to escort TV producers to concentration camp style showering facilities has come to pass. But that's not the point of this post.

Over a year ago, my wife browbeat me into the purchase of a Nintendo Wii. Pretty awesome, right? Let it be known that my loyalty has always been with Nintendo. Bring me someone incapable of enjoying the original Super Mario Brothers and I'll personally deliver a swift kick to their brown-eye. And I'll admit, the first few months were fantastic. We purchased Guitar Hero and spent many an hour trying to master the complimentary Wii Sports disc. But after awhile the novelty wore off. I reached the pinnacle of my rockin' abilities and my wife grew tired of the monotany of Mario Party. Now it sits, slowly gathering dust, waiting for whatever TV gameshow turned boardgame, turned DVD boardgame, turned video game might catch my wife's eye.

Perhaps I've become overly sentimental. I miss the Super Nintendo more than I care to admit. I recall many an hour spent playing games long forgotten: fighting crime with SpiderMan and the X-men and I was once 25 minutes late for a JV football game (hard to picture me in pads and a helmet, right) becaused I refused to stop playing Star Fox until I had achieved cosmic dominance.

At least it's not all bad. I hear retirement homes have utilized the console as a physical therapy device. Just picture it...thousands of blue-hairs, hell bent on crushing eachother in a virtual boxing ring. Who knows? Maybe one day the masterminds at Nintendo will release a game devoted to the simulated ass-beating of a certain game show host...