The Moral of the Story

There is a story about a man who encounters a salesman, hawking a potion that can make anyone instantly in love with you beyond any human comprehension. The potion will sculpt whomever you use it on to be exactly what you want in a partner/lover/soulmate, whatever. The man buys the potion, surprised that it only costs a few pennies. He uses it on the woman of his desires. To his dismay, she becomes like a leech, always jealous of his time and needy. A few years later he desperately tracks down the salesman and demands a cure. The salesman says he has an antidote that will make the person detest them for life. But it will cost the man his soul/most prized posession/life savings...whatever. There are several versions of the story.

Now on to an "entirely unrelated" post.

I love sleek, geeky toys (do I have to tell you this? You read the blog) and I bought a nice one in December: a shiny, pixel processing, high-powered gaming console known worldwide as the Xbox360. It was a smooth little piece of hardware. The graphics it was capable of rendering were stunning (see photo at top). My computer is pretty amazing but I think the Xbox still had it beat. Part of that is because, since all of the consoles are the same hardware, game developers can optimize their product to run perfectly on a single system. They don't have to program for the lowest common denominator.

Anyway, before I descend into geekspeak, let me get to the point. I don't have a television in my house. Why? Because of how much time it wastes and what it brings into the home. It's nonstop, always-on trash that quickly infiltrates your mind and sucks away your spare time. Some of my friends ask me "How do you get so much done?" because I work on so many projects and hobbies. Easy. I don't have a television that is waiting at home to entrap my mind.

The line between television and computers is getting blurry. BitTorrent, YouTube and company, DVD players and video games are waiting to eat your life if you have a serviceable computer and broadband internet. Digital entertainment can be a subtle trap that makes people drift apart even as they seem to be together.

So, my XBox360 brought me to a moral dilemma, one that I should have thought out more carefully before I even bought it. I looked forward to getting back into whatever game I was playing as soon as I got home from work. At the end of a particular week I realized that I had spent the VAST majority of my spare time playing through a very immersing game. I also had spent a substantial amount of cash on something (albeit cool) that only had one capability: entertainment. (Actually, that's not entirely true. I used my XBox to chat all the time with Coal in Missouri but that's beside the point)

These thoughts had kinda nudged my consciousness a few times and then today a coworker was asking me a few questions about how I liked it. I said I was actually thinking about selling it because I liked it too much. Suddenly several coworkers were in the market for a high-power gaming console and I just like that I had my antidote.

So, my save games and gamer profile have been deleted (that was tough). The system is carefully repacked and sitting by my keys and phone. There is an eager coworker waiting, check-in-hand to enjoy the system. And I am sad. But in terms of lessons, this one was relatively cheap.

Will I still play games on my computer? Of course, now and then, but I also enjoy things like programming, designing websites, even blogging and other (at least somewhat) productive pursuits on this machine. The Xbox360 was exactly what I wanted and exactly what I didn't need. I almost didn't post this, scoff at what I enjoy or post smug comments if you like but beware of getting exactly what you want.