So… anybody get a Wii over the weekend? I tried. Oh, how I tried. Saturday night c. midnight: Drove past the Hollywood Fred Meyer at around 11:30 pm, which had like 200 people in line. “Fuck that noise,” I declared to myself, and skipped across Broadway to hit the the NW Fred Meyer, which only had five people in line. Score! I kicked it there for a bit but then… uh, apparently, that Fred Meyer wasn’t going to open at midnight. Thanks, assholes. At 12:05 one of waiting kids split for Hillsboro, where he claimed all the stores had astronomical numbers of Wiis just waiting in piles to be claimed, possibly for free. I left him to his starry-eyed delusions and I went home. Then, at entirely too early of an hour for a Sunday morning: Hit that same NW Fred Meyer around 9 or so; already sold out. Went and revisited the Hollywood Fred Meyer, knowing before I even went in it was a lost cause. Had considered going to Sears (Sears!) but intelligence provided by the Mercury’s fine web editor, Christine, was that Sears only had two Wiis to sell, and there were four people in line. Fuck. Decided to spread my focus a bit: Hit a Kmart (a Kmart!) on NE 122nd or some such bullshit; no dice. (As a corollary addendum, the Kmart on NE 122nd or whatever is probably the single most depressing place on the planet, aside from maybe like Sudan.) Found myself out by the Best Buy near the airport, where the managerial staff apparently decided that instead of stocking enough Wiis, they’d simply hire a truly ridiculous amount of blue-shirted and incredibly cloying sales clerks. Put in a text message to the Mercury’s fine art director, Demo, who had camped out in order to reserve a Wii at Toys R Us; Demo reported back that there were no more to be found when he picked his up. Had an ex-girlfriend visiting her family in Jantzen Beach check Target and Circuit City. Nothing. I gave up. And then, shortly before bed, my friend Karlton, rolling deep down on I-84, called and told me there was one Wii left… at the Fred Meyer… in The Dalles.

Was I driving to The Dalles? No. I was tired. And angry. And all I wanted was Twilight Princess. Thanks, Nintendo. Thanks for nothing.