Grand Theft Console

As evidenced by my previous post, I have kids. Three were present at last roll call so I'm going to stick with that number for the sake of brevity.

I feel my kids pretty are well adjusted considering the deluge of craptastic advertising in the media around the holidays. They are happy with what they have, they don't nag us for stupid things, and they have a sense of economy when it comes to presents and toys. It's nice to be able to say "I don't have that kind of money to spend on a toy" and have your 7 year old understand it. This is good, because I'm pretty much a cheapskate when it comes to nonessential spending. I'm the guy who buys last years model of just about everything, with the notable exception of food.

All that being said, we do sometimes like to splurge and pick up family gifts that all of the kids can enjoy. We bought a Gamecube from a friend a couple years ago and we got a Playstation 2 after it was found collecting dust in the bottom of my WoW-addicted brother in law's closet. We usually buy older games for them, or newer ones with gift cards, but the kids have plenty to play with and enjoy both of the systems.

This year my wife and I were discussing moving to a new system. With all of the major systems out for about a year we figured they price should be palatable, right?

Um, no.

XBox 360 is $279 for the low end version. The full system is around $400.

PS3 40gb version is $400. 80gb for -- dead serious -- $500.

Wii is the "consumer friendly" price of $250 for the base system. Any of the bundles will run you $380-ish.

Seriously... WTF? Who has the kind of money to piss away on this stuff? Add $60 bucks for the hacked-together-30-day-shelf-life-ADD-fodder-du-jour, $50 a year to go online and help set intelligent discourse back a decade, and countless dollars on memory cards, controllers, etc, and the net would cover the cost of my daily commute for the next couple of years. Which is an important juxtaposition, because the same dumb fucks buying this crap for their kids are the ones who are seen on the morning news "appalled" about the cost of gas.

My kids will enjoying Scrabble this season, thanks.