The morons came out to play...and made the beans sad.

It seems like some days the public as a whole decides that their mission for the day is to be as obnoxious as possible which typically involves getting in the way of everyone nearby. Well, today was one of those days. For those of you who don't talk to me about video games, you probably don't know that I've been waiting for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates to come out for a couple years now. Yes, years. It's been on my Christmas list (yes, I still make them even though I'm 23 now) for the last two years and each year my parents have said "We wanted to get you this game, but we can't find it. Are you sure it's out?" After finally playing through the entirety of the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube (thanks Jim!), I couldn't wait for the sequel to come out.

Well, after a long waiting period and too many release date changes that always moved the release date back, the official release date is today! John and I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pick up copies of the games. I found the copy of Smash Brothers okay, but we couldn't seem to find Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the game I was most excited about. I found a sales person and asked where the copies of the game were located (assuming that since it's the release date, that means it will be in stores on this date). He looked up the inventory and told me that the games had shipped today, but they wouldn't have any copies till Thursday or Friday.

To all of the brilliant marketing people, I have a request. When you publish a freaking release date, how about you give the public the actual date when they can expect to have the game in their hands? Would that really be so hard to do?

Okay, so I couldn't get my video game. I was planning on buying Smash Brothers anyway, so I went to check out. Failure at every single open check-out lane. The first lane apparently didn't have the correct change, so the guy was asking the 2nd lane for change. However, the 2nd lane had multiple people in line, and didn't want to give change until they were done with all of their customers (of which there were three). The third lane only had two people in it and they were checking out with one item. The fourth lane apparently knew the customers and had no interest in doing any more work until they were done with their conversation. At first I got in the first lane, but when the change problem came, up, I went over to the third lane, assuming that it wouldn't be that difficult to check out with one item. However, after letting the cashier scan the item, tell them the total, handing over their credit card and signing the receipt, THEN the customer decides to complain that the price of their ONE item isn't what it said on the shelf. You would think that if you only have one freaking item you'd notice that the total doesn't sound reasonable and say something before handing over your credit card or at least notice the total on the receipt before signing the thing. Anyway, after more wasted time, the guy needing change had finally gotten his change and his line was empty so I checked out there. The people in lane four were still talking when I left and the cashier and security person were trying to figure out what to do with the people in the 3rd lane who'd already signed the receipt. The 2nd lane was checking out it's last customer in line after taking a break to provide change for the first lane. Regardless, it all too longer than it needed to and I wasn't satisfied because I didn't get the game I actually went to the store to buy.

I'm looking forward to getting out of the store after the combined annoyances. As John and I are walking towards the doors out, we ended up behind a woman who decided the perfect spot to stop and examine her receipt is directly in front of the door to get out. One second, she's walking, the next second she's just standing there causing congestion. The people next to us almost ran into her.

So we finally escape Nebraska Furniture Mart and we're heading to get food. I want Chipotle and John wants Runza, so we're trying to get to Chipotle because it's closest but we run into even more morons. There's a long line of cars trying to get into the poorly designed parking lot, causing a small traffic jam in the street outside the little strip mall. The way that the parking lot is set up is there is one row, barely wide enough for two cars with parking spots on either side. Adding to the mix is that on one side the parking ends so that cars can essentially do a U-turn to go through the Starbucks drive-thru. So, there isn't much room. And who's at the front of the line? Some lady who has decided that now is the perfect time to back her SUV into a parking spot after making a four-point turn. John is finally able to pull into the parking lot and we see a spot, but the giant extended-cab truck in front of us decides that they want to back into their parking spot too. We wait five minutes for him to get his truck turned around and by some miracle, the spot is still there. I ran inside and go my burrito.

We managed to make it to Runza without any significant problems. Then back to my apartment. Unfortunately, John had to go back into work to do an upgrade so I didn't have a friend to play Smash Brothers with. After he'd finished the upgrade, he got online to talk.

John: how is smash brothers?
me: haven't opened it
John: sad
wait
if there can be cool beans
there can be sad beans
so my reply is actually "sad beans"
the beans are very sad because you haven't played yet.
do you want the beans to be sad?

So, after too much ranting, the moron count for today is: hmm...we'll say 100 for the marketers who don't give you an actual release date (but that's probably low), five for the people in the various check-out lanes, one for the lady stopping in front of the doorway, two for the people backing into the parking spots, and I suppose one for me making the beans sad by not opening a brand new video game until a day after I bought it. So, that brings the total to 109. That's a lot of morons.