3/24/2006

When homeless attack



I've grown up in cities my whole life, having spent my childhood in Philly, my college days in Syracuse, and now living in Brooklyn. So, one would think that interacting with the homeless would not be an issue, and up until I moved to NYC is wasn't. In Philly I even got to be friendly with many of the fixtures of South street, saying howdy to those folks who pan-handled on that dirty little strip since I was in diapers. Then somehow, in my first year in New York, I got some crazy homeless hex. I was marked by the dread street urchin curse, causing one to be randomly targeted for homeless abuse. Granted it has only been 3 minor incidents, the worst of which was a kick in the ass (yes a homeless man literally kicked me in the ass.) But, after this last incident I became extremely self conscious and had paranoid delusions of some homeless conspiracy.

I was able to eventually get over my anxiety and put this homeless fear behind me. Then I made the mistake of buying an XBOX 360. More specifically I bought a game 'Condemned'. This game puts the player in a creepy, gritty, hyper-real world, with rooms created with real photographed textures and lit like the movie 'Seven'. And, then it sends wave after wave of dirty, psycho HOMELESS MEN at you. So, you spend hours creeping along with a flashlight through burnt out buildings bashing crazy bums in the head with pipes. Fantastic. Needless to say my homeless fear has reemerged. I can't pass by a poor unfortunate street person and think that they might suddenly try to attack me. Thank you Atari and thank you XBOX. Granted I'm a wimp with a hyper-active imagination and most folks wont suffer any paranoid delusions from playing 'Condemned'. But, if games keep getting more and more realistic I feel that there must be some impact on our mental state.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

see i told ya those video games would rot your brain!