Over the last 3 days, I have made approximately 11 physical store visits and another 40 phone calls to Game Stop locations, Best Buy stores, Walmarts, Targets, Shopkos, ToysRUs, shopping malls, and anything else under the sun I can think of that might sell gaming systems.  Not one, not a single one, has the Nintendo Wii for sale and 95% of them claim they have no idea when more will be coming in.  Two of the Walmarts I spoke with said to come in at 7am tomorrow (Sunday) and they "should" have 3-4 but taking that claim and putting it up against the "no idea" I got out of all the other stores, I somehow doubt the Walmart employee manning the electronics counter on a Saturday afternoon really knows much about anything.  

In fact, the same claim came from my local Best Buy during one of my calls yesterday..."We've got a truck coming in tonight.   Get here when the store opens and I'm sure you'll get one."  So 8:30am rolls around today, I bundle up my 1-year-old as momma and the 4-year-old were still sleeping and off to Best Buy we go.  Surprise....I arrive, the spot on the shelf that is supposed to hold a massive 2 Wii boxes is empty, and I hear from the girl running that area stacking Guitar Hero boxes literally to the rafters "No, no idea why she told you we'd have some today....we never really know what's on the trucks."

Question, why are there 800 Guitar Hero boxes if there's not a freaking Wii in this city to connect them to?!?!  UG! 

My frustration level with finding a Wii a week after Christmas has just reached it's tipping point.  I am a 32-year-old guy, nostalgic about Nintendo, excited for a Wii, and I've even got my wife and 4-year-old daughter on board with the $250 purchase (amazingly!).  But what is a man to do when he has $250 cash ready to plunk out for a gaming system and 40 phone calls and 11 trips to the store later, I have no Wii to show for it? 

Even alternatives like eBay and Craig's List are netting little results, though oddly if I were so inclined I can find a 400lb man on Craig's List to punch me repeatedly with chicken livers while singing Black Flag's "Who's Got The 10 1/2?" that appears to be no problem.  *shrug*  At best, there are Wiis listed on Amazon $100 overpriced, on eBay $300 overpriced, and the most promising post on Craig's List from Dec 24th for my area had the Wii up for $700.  Riiiight.

So I am Wii-less, yet don't want to be.  I find this a very odd situation.  I want something that I can not have, yet I know there are countless bratty, spoiled, snot-nosed 12-year-old ungrateful boys just down the street in every direction, in my very own neighborhood no doubt, playing their Xbox or Playstation 3s while their new Wiis sit left unattended to and unloved.  The world, it appears, is unfair.  What will I ever do for fun?!  Maybe I'll call up that guy and let him beat me up with the chicken livers...

As a recovering gamer addict, 3 years straight playing Everquest, I am well aware of what it is like to take gaming a bit too far.  I may or may not have been guilty of skipping school to raid Fire Giants, ensuring an empty Gatoraide bottle was close at hand for long spawn camping, and constructing a cone blanket apparatus hovering above my head and vented the tip of the cone out the apartment window with PVC pipe melted and bent with a series of Bic lighters in order to have a cigarette every now and then without having to leave my gaming chair.   Extreme is one thing, physical harm is another.  

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a co-worker, J, about how her holiday weekend went.  Her excitement about receiving a Wii for Christmas could not be contained.  As she described the glorious moments of bowling and tennis, I swelled with jealousy.  I've been trying to talk my lovely bride into a Wii for our family for several months, to no avail.  J went on to describe how she had purchased for herself and her fiance the acclaimed "Guitar Hero" just after getting their new Wii.  As she mentioned this, I noticed that one of her eyes looked as though she had been assaulted with a fork, perhaps a rock slung from a distance.  To avoid being rude with the "Your eye looks like hell, what did you do?", as I'd prefer to stay on her good side because I thoroughly enjoy her occasional visits to my otherwise droll cubical, I left well enough alone and didn't inquire about her apparent injury.

As our conversation continued, she began to detail an account of a 5-hour Guitar Hero playing spree she and her hubby-to-be went on just days before.  As she described rocking out to the various tunes, mastering the easy and medium levels, discussing thrashing with GNR's Slash, and demonstrating not only her whammy bar action, but also the guitar neck horse reigns motion (my only possible description for how she illustrated wrenching the neck of the guitar in Marty McFly fashion circa the Enchantment Under The Sea finale guitar solo from Back To The Future), she gestured to her eye, bloodshot like it had escaped a drunken sailor and crawled into her socket looking for respite.  

She stated that during their 5-hour rock session, she felt something a bit funny in her eye and began to get a migraine headache.  It was shortly thereafter that her man, B, noticed her eye suffering from what appeared to be some form of inner explosion.  J had rocked so hard, so long, that she had burst a blood vessel in her eyeball.

When I asked how in the hell she managed to cause a blood vessel to explode while playing a video game, her response was simply, "I think I just forgot to blink....for 5 hours." 

Her sight turned out not to be a casualty from the holiday weekend and the Guitar Hero rocking, though the same could not be said for the entire bottle of Visine eye drops she continuously applied one drop at a time to her suffering socket dweller in order to look presentable for work on Monday post Christmas.

This is indeed a true story.  Guitar Hero nearly blinded my friend, J.

-Corby-