Well we had nothing else to do and there was nothing on TV apart from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and some gardening…

…and it was still another seven days until we had to go back to work and we were already bored of life, the internet and Kate’s Playground, so decided to GO OUTSIDE and see if anywhere in fashionable London had Xbox 360s in stock. If they do, we’re getting one. For Geometry Wars, and Xbox 360’s other entertaining launch game — Setting Up Your Wireless Network.

Our best score on Setting Up Your Wireless Network is 42 minutes! Setting Up Your Wireless Network comes free on every Xbox 360!

Anyway. This is GAME in Oxford Street. You can see two things (1) They have no Xbox 360s, and (2) they’re trying to charge fifty quid for Quake 4 for no one to buy because they haven’t got an Xbox 360 to play it on. That’s very optimistic of them.

This is HMV in Oxford Street. It’s where people like us go to buy things we want. It’s HUGE and sells EVERYTHING you could ever need. It’s the shop that always opens at midnight when games launch. It is the THE official shop of men in London.

Except it hasn’t got any Xbox 360s. This is REALLY BAD.

This made us happy though! Ha ha! Stupid Sony fucks! It’s not just Microsoft that can’t get its most important thing, ever, into the shops for when people want to buy it.

This is GAME in Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf is London’s new financial district, full of posh buildings and businessmen in suits. The sort of men who would happily spunk away three hundred quid on an Xbox 360 in their lunch break. Only they can’t, because they’re all out of stock here too.

FAT OR PREGNANT? For about three years, ever since first getting a phone with a camera on, we’ve had the idea of doing “FAT OR PREGNANT?” — a joke quiz about whether women we see on the London Underground system are pregnant, or just fat. The reason behind this is this. If she is PREGNANT, then OF COURSE we’ll give up our seat to let her sit down. We are gentlemanly like that, despite how it seems on the internet.

If, however, she’s JUST A BIT FAT, offering her a seat would horrify the poor woman who would think she’s so FAT AND DISGUSTING that she looks pregnant. She’d be devastated, her self confidence would be SHATTERED and she’d probably go home and cry and comfort eat, which would make things even worse. That’s a dilemma we face almost once a week because we get on the train at a part of the line where you usually always get a seat going home. So, is she FAT and therefore the standing up is probably doing her good, or is she PREGNANT and are we being a bastard in not offering up our seat? It’s hard being a modern man and having to sometimes worry about women’s feelings :(

This is Computer Exchange. We were going to describe Computer Exchange as “where heroin addicts go to sell mobile phones and laptops they’ve stolen off businessmen” but that might be libellous, so instead we’ll say it’s where people go to exchange secondhand games for money and other games and hardware. Here, a SECONDHAND CORE PACK costs you THREE HUNDRED POUNDS! In American, that’s 527 US dollars or, to put in another way, BLATANT PROFITEERING!

Incredibly, we went back to CEX on December 30, and they’d whacked the price up to 325 quid! It’s more proof that the only winners in the Xbox 360 launch are the people that bought ones to sell on at a profit. Sorry the photo’s a bit blurry, it’s because our shoulders were HEAVING WITH LAUGHTER.

And now the Virgin Megastore. No Xbox 360s. The man on the till said “February mate” when we asked if they had any.

They haven’t even got the high-def cables. Not that we need one, apart from to hang ourselves with to escape the boredom.

Oh god. Even on December 28 the shops are gearing up for the next event where we have to spend lots of money buying things for people we don’t like :(


Anyway, so we went home and spent the evening of December 28 2005 watching the Tomb Raider movie, having failed to find an Xbox 360 to buy in all of London. After Tomb Raider finished we had a wank and some mince pies. Or some mince pies and a wank, it’s a bit of a blur.

These are the mince pies. If you want to see photos of the wank, email in and ask.

THE SUMMARY
You couldn’t buy an Xbox 360 in the most popular bits of London on December 28 2005. Which is pretty bad when you think about how important it is, and how the machine supposedly “launched” five weeks ago. It’s the worst hardware launch ever! Looks like lots of people will be waiting for PlayStation3 or Nintendo Revolution, not out of choice but out of necessity, thanks to Microsoft’s over-ambition.