Why videogames just aren't worth it to me anymore....

In June 2011, I will celebrate my 40th birthday. When I hit human odometer rollover moment, I will have been gaming--videogaming, that is--in some fashion for more than 3/4s of my life. I remember being 8 or 9 years old and utterly enthralled by my 14-year old cousin's ability to dominate one of the first Asteroids machines to arrive in Pennsauken, NJ.  I've shoveled quarters into a Spy Hunter stand-up [raise your hand if you never saw an episode of "Peter Gunn" in your life but can somehow hum a 4kHz-quality of the that show's theme song damn near note for note], dismantled an Intellivision controller to try to figure a way to make the nearly-worn-through contact traces work just enough to get one more game in before begging Dad to order a replacement part, delicately untangled tape that wrapped itself around a spindle [or fumed because a friend's dumbass brother...or was it a classmate?...confused the game with some junk tape, taped over the punched-out "record tab" holes, and TAPED SOME FUCKING LOGGINS & MESSINA LP RIGHT OVER MY GAME], and spent hours, christ knows, swapping some 10,000 floppies, CDs, and DVDs, one after another, to install something that I just HAD to play that night, no matter how long it took.