HAHAHA MAN GO BOOM.

Some bastard stole my soul. Just like that. One day I’m incredibly excited about finally being able to play Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the next I’m sitting on my sofa, in an almost pitch black room at 4 pm, staring at my Xbox with an odd mixture of regret, fury, and emptiness. Now obviously there could be a million reasons for this, but this time it’s NOT real life, it’s gaming’s insane attempt at real life. For those who don’t know, Flashpoint is a tactical shooter, a game in which you control your squad, go around a ridiculously huge map, solving objectives. And also if you take one bullet you die. And your squad members belong in a special home. And the enemy soldiers have more health than you, BECAUSE IN REAL LIFE, ENEMY SOLDIERS ALL HAVE MORE HEALTH. Now I’d hate to turn this into a game review and all, so I’m basically going to point out how I spent ALL of today playing the same part of the same mission, over and over again. Also not only was I on the easiest difficulty, but I also was only on mission 3…out of 11.

It was like as if someone had punished me for all my game-related sins and forced me to play it. If hell does exist, I can imagine it’s being restricted to sitting on a sofa made of really itchy fabric, and having little demons laugh and jeer at you as you desperately try to complete that one level, and if you get even vaguely close, the controller blows up, so they hand you a new one, which you have to control using your feet, considering your recent lack of hands. But seeing as I’m wrong (a usual thing), I would genuinely rather be in hell then play that bit of the level again. It was bad enough for me to actually contemplate suicide, and when it comes to thinking of suicide, I usually have much bigger fish to fry than a video game (It’s a metaphor, there aren’t actually fish called Video Game). Main problem with this is, for me to kill myself, I’d have to actually have balls, or be incredibly stupid. So I’d need someone else to kill me. Of course no one would agree, while the majority of people hate me, people usually aren’t too keen on the whole prison thing, so I’d just get beaten up a lot, which is the last thing on my agenda, next to playing Modern Warfare 2. Therefore, I’d need for it to be ‘an accident’. Getting someone to accidentally kill you is easy really, jump in a road, wear camouflage and lay down in somebody’s garden while they mow the lawn, or simply slip on a wet floor down concrete stairs (caretakers are used to taking the blame). But to be honest, I wouldn’t really want to go out like any of the above. I would want to go out taking one the nation’s worst ‘holiday days’ with them. I’m talking, of course, about Bonfire night.

Now fireworks, they’re a mere contraption entirely to amaze retards, strain your neck, and make you stand in the cold for torture’s sake, (I’ll probably end up writing something about bonfire night someday, so I won’t go too far into it),but they also happen to be a deathtrap in the disguise of a colourful geometric broccoli. The perfect tool for accidental euthanasia. I would do it simply like this; while the crowd of easily amused people gathers around to indulge in their pyromania, I sneak past them like the subtle man I am, and make my way to the fireworks. Once there, I blutak the biggest firework available to my back, and lay in the grass (stealthily, of course). After a short while, my unsuspecting victim will light the firework, and lean back in horror as I start screaming because I forgot that the fuse went on fire before the firework took off. Then, it shoots off, and to my dismay it goes without me. I curse at the sky about blutak’s incompetence, and sheepishly walk off back home to play Operation Flashpoint. The same level. Again. And again. And again.