Last night was my sisters 23rd Birthday dinner. I say birthday dinner and you probably immediately imagine some shitty gathering of relatives at a restaurant… I know, fucking awful. People ask how school is, you say you're in Uni now, they say that's what they meant. It's nearly as boring as going to the hairdressers and when dinner finally arrives, you end up only eating half your meal because you eat excruciatingly slowly. Ok, perhaps that last one is just me.
But this evening was quite different for we gathered at my Sisters new house, ate some pizza off plastic plates, and watched my sister unwrap her new Nintendo Wii. That's right, 23 years old and getting a Nintendo Wii. The strangest thing for me though was that it came with 1kg dumb bells that are specially designed to take the Wii remote, and then the player is able to 'work out' using the weights.
Call me old fashioned but in my good old year 7 days before I had accepted the fact that the skinny wimpy pale guy was my look, I couldn't afford weights so I just lifted a brick that I found in my back yard. I can now freely admit this without fear of embarrassment knowing that there are people around the world lifting Nintendo controllers and claiming to be 'pumping iron'. Apparently you can buy any number of attachments for the Nintendo Wii controller. You can buy tennis rackets, nun chucks, cricket bats… CRICKET BATS? Surely everyone has one of those just lying around the house, left over from the Shane Warne is cool and isn't yet a text sex addict era. I'm wondering why people would pay for a plastic attachment, rather than just duct taping a real wooden bat to the control? For free! But then again I'm a thinker…
The Wii also came with a plastic board that tells you how unfit you are and I wondered if their was a weight limit for the board. And if there was did it just break when you stood on it? Or did it actually tell you "YOU ARE TOO FAT FOR THE BOARD! GET THE FUCK OF THE BOARD!" No one seemed to know…
My sister had to run off for work at 8pm because she's a Nurse and she was working night shift. She's also going to Thailand on Thursday and before she left I managed to slip $50 into her hand and asked her to buy me some 'cheap' X-Files DVDs.
Here's where the moral dilemma comes into it. I know most people wouldn't even think twice about the potentially morally questionable practice of buying pirated DVDs. The biggest objection most people would have is "I can download the X-Files for free. Why would I pay $4 for all 202 episodes? What a rip off."
But the thing for me is… I don't download movies or music or, anything really. I just feel bad about ripping off my favourite artists, actors and writers. Being really shit at technology comes into it a bit too I suppose, but most of it is that I am opposed to stealing. Stealing from your local Milk Bar, stealing from your family, stealing from The Man, stealing a camel… Its all stealing. At the end of the day you're taking something that isn't yours. Something that you didn't work for and don't deserve to have. I mean sure if you need to it to live then that's very different, but not many people that I've met need movies or the latest Lady Gaga single to live. (And if you do rely on Lady Gaga singles to live you're fortunate because there's about 8 trillion of them now.)
But now I'm starting to think that perhaps I've been brainwashed by that anti piracy add that plays add the start of many DVDs with that awesome rock out music.
"You wouldn't steal a car!" No I bloody well wouldn't. I wouldn't know how!
"You wouldn't steal a handbag." No I wouldn't, and not just because I don't even use handbags!
"You wouldn't steal a movie!"
But perhaps I would… Do I feel ok about buying pirated DVDs from Asia just because it has the potential to put money into the hands of people much worse off than me? But another anti piracy add told me piracy funds terrorism? Perhaps I'm a terrorist now?
This is just too much to think about. I just want to watch Scully, and I just want to watch Mulder. What a dilemma…
