Will you take one if I give you secks?

Dear retail shopping community,
I have a bone to pick with you. Now, I work in a store, and we sell goods. These goods are not necessarily essential to survival, but we get a lot of business anyway. This is because the goods we sell are classified as entertainment, which means they are things one wants, but does not need. In economic slumps such as the one in which our country is currently holed, people decide they need entertainment even more. Maybe it's because they're depressed and need to escape. Maybe it's because they feel putting money into the economy will help it recover. Maybe it's because they're among the upper class and just want to spend their money on superfluous items in front of poor people. Whatever the reason, we have more customers now than we did two years ago.

But one thing bothers me. This company has a member card. It's not one of those member cards you pay a monthly or annual fee for, it's free. FREE. In case you didn't know, retail shopping community, free means you don't have to pay for it. And guess what? Just by having this card, you will get FREE things. Awesome things. And yet, AND YET, I still get people who say "No." Why? Well, here the top 5 excuses I get from my customers.

1. "I don't come here that often." NO. SHUT UP. Are you never going to come to not only this, but any store in this company? Really, never? Because the card doesn't expire. Ever. So if you ever, in the rest of your stupid, stupid life, find yourself in one of these stores, you might have a little free present waiting for you. Would that be so bad? WOULD IT? Apparently, it would.

2. "I have too many cards already." Are you serious? How rude could you possibly be? That's just basically saying to me, "I said yes to plenty of cashiers before you, but I don't like your face enough." Now I'm gonna have a complex. Thanks a lot. What makes you decide, all of a sudden, to reject me? ME? I hate you.

3. "I don't like to carry cards around with me." Hey, fuckface. This is a computer in front of me right here. I can look up your phone number. Do you know how long it takes for someone to recite their phone number? Not even as long as it takes me to ring up three items. So don't gimme that shit.

4. "I am an alien and am fatally allergic to rewards cards." No, really. I get this one all the time.

5. "No, thank you. Not today." This is, by far, the most annoying response. First, I lose respect for you, because you must be an idiot. Second, you don't even have the decency to GIVE me an excuse. Instead, you're just like, "Fuck you. I don't need a reason. Let me pay for my shit."

. . . Okay, maybe I like that last one.

Anyway, if anyone reads this, and then you go to a store and they ask you if you want a free rewards card, say yes. Even if you throw it away afterward. Because odds are, the cashier will get a compliment from their boss on getting a sign-up. And maybe, just maybe, that will keep them from getting fired.

Also, did you guys know that facetious is the only word in the English language that has all the vowels in alphabetical order? Unless you count Y as a vowel, in which case it's facetiously.

Whatever happened to local co-op?

Lately, I've been noticing a disturbing trend in video games: no local cooperative play. This is something that, as far as I know, started with 2007's much-anticipated Crackdown for the XBox 360. My best friend Sean and I went out and bought this game hoping to take it right back to my house and crank out some destructive, city-leveling, rocket-launcher-to-each-other's-faces co-op.

And what did we see when we turned on the game? Well, at least on my tiny non-HD clunk of a high school TV, the first thing that caught our eyes was the gorgeous panning city in the background. Unfortunately, this just got our hopes up even more for the beautiful explosions that awaited us. After we'd wiped the tears from our glossy eyes, we looked at the actual menu. But something was missing. Where was multiplayer? There was Campaign. There was XBox Live. But no multiplayer option.

I immediately scurried over to the box (which I had casually tossed on my dirty laundry) and looked at the back. Sure enough, the little white box with the green font (which indicates no internet required) stated in heartbreaking lower-case letters: players 1. And while my brain scrambled frantically to process this data, the little orange letters underneath the green laughed at me: online co-op 2.

This was my first experience with this disgusting caprice, and I wish I could say it was my last. Unfortunately, however, local co-op is something that many game companies have decided isn't worth putting in their games anymore. In fact, shooters seem to be the only games that feature local co-op anymore. The Halo series, Left 4 Dead 1&2, and Resident Evil 5 come to mind. But where are my offline Red Dead Redemptions, my local Team Fortress 2s? It seems that local multiplayer is only included in so-called party games these days, i.e. games you play with a big group of people, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Rock Band. Games with a dedicated story rarely have co-op at all, let alone local play.

This is something that game developers need to consider more often. Not everyone has every system, and it would be nice to be able to have friends over to play through a good session of Crackdown, if only to shoot each other in the back every five minutes.