PSP = Ow

Lately, my conspicuous consumption gland has been kicking in. I think it's been stimulated by the overwhelming barrage of iPod, Gameboy and cell phone (It's got a camera! It's got text messaging! It has bits that will make you look so cool!) I've been craving, nay, jonesing for a portable electronic device so I can be 'hip'. Which is the best I can do, despite that 'hip' is a term used by those who have had one or more replaced via surgery.

First obvious choice is a cell phone. Now to most this would make sense, as it has a practical use: you can talk to other people equipped with similar devices wherever you go. The downside (for me) is that other people similarly equipped can contact me at any time. Although I've deleted my previous rants on the work situation, the summary is that, if my cell phone number was ever released to certain parties at my place of employment, the damn thing would be vibrating into the next universe, DC’s The Flash-style. That, in itself, would be cool but then I would have to actually pick up the damn thing, as they would keep on calling, sending me to the next universe. And so on. Eventually I would end up in a world devastated by a cataclysmic struggle by those who worshipped the Three Stooges and those who revered the Marx Brothers. Scary.
My second choice was going to be an MP3 player (or isotope thereof). However, I'm not one of those who feel the urge to have music piped directly into their lobes 24/7. There was a significant portion of time in my life when this was certainly the case (call them the Rock 'n' Roll years). The means of delivery was a very large set of speakers (a wall of them you could say), several socially dysfunctional, hygienically questionable young 'musicians' and four or five hundred drunk and disorderly teenagers who paid $5 a head at the door, of which I took a 25% cut. Besides, a very sure way to summon someone who wants to ask me a question is to put an earphone on a lobe, so that's out.

So I reached down, way down deep into the very essence of my being and questioned what shiny thing should I get to parade around with. The words "you play games you idiot" resounded from the abyss.

Of Course! Portable Gaming!

I had seen ads for the PSP etc and debated weather I should get such an insidious time-leecher. The price was a tad out of my comfort zone and the line up of games is currently mediocre at best (at least to my tastes). However it does actually play games, you can listen to music on them and, if you really went hardcore, watch movies on them.

So I hummed and hawed over this. For weeks, the debate consumed my very soul. I surfed around for information, opinion and outright lies at work when I should have been punching code. Which is the same thing really.

A solution came when I mentioned the internal fracas to a work mate, who said he had acquired the gizmo in question and loved it. Do I want to try it out?

The next day, after I came home from work, I fired up this little black lozenge, with its ever-so-cutely shrunken controls. I only had one game, Wipeout:Pure. Now the game itself was a joy; great graphics, a challenge to race and enough variation in gameplay to keep me entertained for hours on end. And this was only one game!

The problem is, after about thirty minutes of play, both my hands cramped up so bad I couldn't even operate a mouse to check email.

Now I do not have gorilla-like mitts by any stretch. Due to a genetic mutation, my feet and hands are disproportionately small for my height. The machine's sleek design may be a detriment in this case. I found my hands constantly slipping on the shiny black plastic casing while trying to keep the weighty block steady. The controls are too close to the sides to use my palms on each edge to brace the thing. So the resultant effect was turning my hands into grotesque, twisted claws. Lord knows what long-term effects it would have on my body parts.
Other than the sinister unergonomics of the Playstation Portable (which could be resolved by creating and deploying a framework matching a normal PS controller, making it into the Playstation Luggable) I found the machine to be quite enjoyable. The unit price I'm sure will go into a comfort zone where it would be (with the sizeable memory card and accessories) slightly less than my monthly rent. I'm also hoping that someone at Sony, when faced with a class action suit brought about by thousands of wretched, crab-like creatures waving their grotesque mockeries of pincers in the air, may consider a more comfortable design rather than something that looks good in ads for the next deployment.

So it looks like I may be delving into the MP3 player world. Or maybe I’ll just purchase a set of white headphones and plug them into a block of mozzarella taped to my belt. It’s cheap and, unlike an iPod, a nutritious snack any time of day.