The Russians Haven't Given Us Much, But...

You know, when I think about it, I'm not really sure there's a lot the Russians have done to contribute to our way of life. Well, if you are a drinker I guess there's vodka, but I'm not much of a drinker. So I try to think about what the Russians have done for me. Let's see... I guess they were good as a "rival" to push our space and military programs throughout the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark was um, pretty cool as birthmarks go, I guess. Other than that, what have they given the world? I can think of nothing but burly women with thick eyebrows, words with 17 consonants and maybe one vowel, and commies.

However, I can forgive the Russians for all of their shortcomings for one glorious video game they thrust upon the American public: Tetris. This game, even some twenty years after its initial release, stands up to the test of time. I played this game on a green-screen white brick of an original Game Boy. I played it on Super Nintendo. I played it on TI-86 calculators in high school instead of paying attention. I play it today against insanely awesome Japanese kids on my Nintendo DS and routinely get my butt kicked. But hey, it's all part of the fun. The game is seriously addictive, and if you've never played it (to which I would have to wonder the location of the rock you've been under most of your life), you owe yourself to give it a try. If it's good enough for Peter Gibbons in Office Space, it's good enough for you.

For those wondering, the inspiration for this blog comes from the fact that this past Saturday night (3/14), a gathering with four of my friends turned into a ginormous double-elimination Tetris tournament on their old SNES. You know you have reached the peak of geekdom when you are a single guy that spends a Saturday night playing Tetris until 2:00 in the morning. Oh well. FWIW, I finished third out of five people and have to admit that us three guys were all beaten by the two women we were playing against. I'll try to live with this by telling myself they were secretly training against some of those damn Japanese kids.

Now excuse me while I go get humiliated again by somebody with the screename "ラドクリフ、マラソ".