It’s been a tough couple of weeks. My wedding is in a month, I still have loose ends to tie up, I just had my gallbladder removed last week, I’ve been only able to sleep sporadically, I’m on a forced diet due to aforementioned gallbladder, I’ve been on Vicodin, and it’s been two weeks since I’ve had a cup of coffee.

This is going to be an interesting post.

This morning I decided I couldn’t sleep after 3 a.m. My inner five-year-old said, “It’s my birthday! Stuff to do! Whee!!!” and that was the end of blissful slumber in my big comfy bed.

What better way to piss away a few hours than to do my nails and play Pain on the PS3?

I haven’t played Pain in awhile. It’s a neat diversion, but after awhile, the novelty of lobbing a character at a finite backdrop of stuff that breaks loses its luster. Sure, they add some fun games to mix it up, and I’m enough of a drooling idiot to have been amused by a good physics engine for quite awhile, but even drooling idiots move on to the next shiny object eventually.

But, my fiance being the good man that he is, downloaded the latest character to be released for Pain – Nigel. As with all the Pain characters, he has a gimmick. He’s a punk rocker, complete with mohawk, leather, and attitude. Cute, let’s try him out and see what his special moves/bitchiness is all about.

Since I hadn’t played Pain in awhile, there were updates. Oh, were there updates, and those of you who have PS3s undoubtedly have encountered the pain that is waiting for anything to download from the Playstation Network. There is thumb twiddling involved, sighing, maybe a few scratchings of the ass. After the Pain update download, it threw an error letting me know there was a general system update I would need before continuing on with my game. Fair enough, I sit through another update download, wait for it to restart, install update, restart again. Ok, can I play my game now?

Nope! Whoo boy there were updates. I think I counted nine or so. Then it finally started, and I thought I’d give old Nigel an airing in the general Paindemonium area.

Oh, Sony. Oh oh oh. You filthy little whores.

The downtown of Pain has a few billboards. In the beginning, these hawked nonsensical products, and the billboards were funny. The side of the bowling alley, I believe, had an ad to try out Pain bowling for multiplayer. That was acceptable.

But this newest update…

There’s a billboard for Hancock. There’s a billboard for “Step Brothers.” There are two ads for Sony cameras. And that’s just what I’ve been able to catch so far in my sleep-deprived state. I’d love to smack the crap out of the genius at Sony who decided this was a great idea. These are ads for products I have no intention of putting any money towards (The movies look stupid as hell, and I’ll never even wipe my ass with a Sony camera), and now I just want to find the nearest Sony office and set it alight.

I’d understand if they were billboards for products that weren’t as visible, but you really can’t go anywhere without being bombarded by ads for these things. Isn’t enough that I have to watch the trailers for that crap when I go to a movie I paid for? I get that this is a cheapie little silly game with cheap character upgrades, and it’s gotta pay the bills somehow, but if that’s the case how about introducing me to something really cool?

Wait, no, that’s not right either. How about keeping your filthy ads out of the game entirely? How about not saturating my every waking moment with advertising? How about letting me doing something pleasurable, for once, without bombarding me with your marketing slop?

Maybe that’s too much to ask from a place that is obviously filled to the brim with shameless whores.