Why I will never buy an xbox 360

So, yesterday was Valentine's Day, and my darling Cathy and I wanted to do something romantic to celebrate. After pondering the question for a little while we both thought, "what could be more romantic than brutally murdering quasi human alien dudes together?". Nothing, that's what. Therefore, we decided to rent the lovely "Gears of War 2" from our local video rental shack, having already played through the first one. Oh, and we rented "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" too. Brimming with anticipation, we raced back to Cathy's house to play our alien murder simulator. I popped open the game case, expecting to see the "Gears of War 2" DVD staring back at me. It took me ten seconds to realize that it was not the Gears 2 DVD at all, it was just Gears 1. Awesome. So back to the video shack we went.

After finally getting the REAL game in my hands, I eagerly awaited the bloodbath that Cathy and I would be participating in. With the DVD in the Xbox tray, we stared at the TV screen, waiting for the awesome to assault our senses. What greeted us was certainly an assault, but not an awesome one.

"The disc cannot be read."

What the fucking fuck. It was already too late to return to the game shack so we were essentially stuck with our scratched up shitty disc until the next day.

After the initial rage had subsided, we consulted the Internet, mecca of all answers. A few minutes later, we came upon our solution: it involved toothpaste (paste not gel), double sided toilet paper, warm water, and a soft towel. No joke.

Step one is to squeeze some of the toothpaste onto the the toilet paper and rub the paste into the DVD until it is completely covered. Step two is to run the DVD under warm water and rub all of the paste off in an up and down motion. Step three is to dry the DVD with the soft towel, making sure that you do not rub, only dab and press. Once the DVD is dry, pop it into the Xbox and see if it works.

Turns out it did not work for us. Many of the visible scratches were gone, but it was not enough to get the game running. We even tried the toothpasting again, and again, but to no avail.

We ended up just watching Nick and Norah's for the rest of the night. Not nearly as romantic as massively burly men shooting chainsaw machine guns at other equally burly aliens, but still good I suppose.

The lesson here? It sucks that "next generation" sixty dollar video game media can still be ruined so easily. Get a better media delivery system Microsoft, especially if you plan on charging customers so much for a DVD.