Holding it over my head

Forgive me for dwelling on this point, but last night's Playstation 3 mania was a real test for the species. Not only were people encouraged to abuse their bodies and abandon their lives for a week to camp out on city streets, there was an alarming amount of violence exhibited in the chase for a video game system:

HARTFORD, Conn. - Two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people waiting for the new Playstation 3 game system to go on sale in Putnam early Friday and shot one man who refused to give up his money, authorities said.

Have people taken leave of their senses? Is it not crazy enough to replicate the homeless experience (making mockery of true disadvantage and suffering) for a material bauble, or beset violently upon your fellow man for said bauble? How is it that the same species who bakes pies and donates bottles of water en masse to World Trade Center rescuers easily finds in itself the ability to act downright australopithecine toward each other, over meaningless circuits?

Yes, I'm awful upset that I wasn't able to score one myself. But, as I deliberated my course of action last night, it occurred to me that I would have had to have been camped out for over a week to have scored one of only 100 available Sony boxes. What kind of ugly math is that? People want millions, and Sony only produces 400,000 -- good move. Or, we can listen to the doushebag in charge tell it:

Jack Tretton, executive vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said retailers will be receiving new PlayStations daily — expedited by plane rather than ships. "At some point we want to get to some degree of normalcy, but that remains to be seen," Tretton told The Associated Press, adding that seeing all the people camped out and lined up for the console "kind of makes all the effort worth it."

Kind of makes the effort worth it? Fuck off, you Marketing 101-washout motherfucker. You enjoy seeing people miserable out in the rain for a week, just for your widget? What kind of Kozlowski-Tyco shenanigans are going on over at Sony anyway?

The final word, for me, comes from one of the greedy cretins on line for the thing in San Francisco:

Edgar Alcala, 18, who grabbed one of the first spots in line at San Francisco's Sony Metreon Mall on Wednesday morning, said he was looking forward to a warm, dry bed and a hefty profit. "When I get home, I'm going to take a quick picture of it, slap it on eBay and go to sleep," Alcala said minutes before the store's doors opened at midnight Friday.

You waited that long on line, just to hold it ransom online for a vastly inflated figure? Edgar Alcala, are you the guy who pees on the toilet seat in restaurants, bars, and movie theatres? Is there a jagged piece of anthracite coal where your heart should be?

Again, angry that I was denied a PS3 by fools like Jack Tretton and Edgar Alcala, if that needed to be clarified.