Space Invaders was one of the first video games I played growing up. If you’ve never played it, it was a super basic alien invasion game. A bunch of pixelated aliens (about 55 of them) march across and down the screen shooting lasers at your little square battleship. If they destroyed your battleship, or made it to the bottom, they ended civilization.

In the early days of video games, Space Invaders was one of the biggest games of all time. Four years after it came out, it made $3.8 billion, which adjusted for inflation, would be about $13 billion. Compare that to Avatar, the highest grossing movie of all time, that made $2.8 billion in 2021. Avatar had way better graphics, lasted 3 hours, and took 10 years to make, and somehow Space Invaders took one year to make and made way more quarters in 8 less years.

I didn’t particularly love Space Invaders, nor did I spend a whole lot of time playing it, and never got very good at it, because I’m not a competitive person. I use video games to relax. Tonight, after a stressful week of work, and hauling my boy all over creation, I’ll sit down for a nice, chill video game session. I will stab, shoot, maim and destroy a bunch of aliens, zombies, or vampires, while yelling at the screen when the cheat me from a cheap death. There is nothing more relaxing than raining destruction and terror on well-designed, 4K rendered pixels and screaming at the TV like a banshee. Pure bliss.

The reason why they called the game Space Invaders is because aliens from space are invading earth. That makes sense. Most people don’t like when aliens invade from space. Even I would have a hard time with it. But what I would hate even more that aliens invading, is when people invade my space.

A few things you should know about me. I’m an introvert. I’ve never lived anywhere but America. I grew up in South Dakota. I grew up with 4 siblings. I’m claustrophobic. I hate MRI machines. I hate being locked in trunks. I hate going to Walmart on a Saturday, or the mall anytime in November of December. I’m not a hugger. I dream of living in a mansion with multiple hidden rooms, doors and hidden passageways.

In other words…(what do all these things have in common?)

I like my personal space.

I DO NOT like my space being invaded.

The kids in my neighborhood don’t seem to understand that. They think it’s okay to come to my house on days that aren’t October 31st, and request candy. Salespeople think it’s okay to come to my house and sell me something I don’t want, for money that I don’t have, and take away my precious video game time.

People at work think it’s okay to enter my cone of silence, make me take my headphones off, and take up what little brain power I use to focus on me, and focus it on them. “I need help doing this,” or “Can you stop scrolling the internet, that” or “Why are you playing video games, when we called you into a meeting an hour ago?…”

My extended family performs this strange ritual whenever we are in the same dwelling. They penetrate my invisible personal space forcefield and get way too close to me. Then, they spread their arms as wide as they can, and as they inch closer, they close their arms around my chest and back. I’m not sure what I do to upset them, but it appears they want to suffocate me to death. They always release their death grip on me right before I run out of breath. I think they are warning me…Don’t annoy me with your bitterness, or one of these days, I will accidentally not release you from this death grip a second before your death. No wonder I’m so tense and paranoid around these people.

I would call the Cone of Silence and Invisible Forcefield companies and demand a refund, but I hate talking to people on the phone too. I can’t seem to find a website for them either. I wish my mom would have kept the paperwork for these two items when she bought them for me when I was younger. I’m starting to think that she was lying to me when she told me she bought them. Maybe she just got me a cheaper brand that didn’t really work.

While I can’t trust these flesh creatures, there is something YOU can trust. That every Friday, I will provide medium to horrible quality Bitter Friday Giftures…

Those are some high quality…

James Cameron is pretty bitter that Avatar took 10 years and millions of dollars…

They were even the same concept…

And destroying…

Maybe James Cameron should focus on making Avatar…

He probably should have learned that when you watch movies…

And everything has to go…

Instead of video games allowing us…

Like in life…

So we can avoid…

Or we can avoid kids…

But most of all…

Yes, aliens invading from space can be a horrible thing to think about, because it could actually happen, but it’s even more horrible to get one of those death squeezes from a relative because they are happening all the time, and you never know when they will perform your final squeeze.

ARRRGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Space Invader Ben