Random Acts of Nerdness: Hot Slots

There are times in a guy’s life…

I’m going to pause with that chilling statement, which should be a red flag for any women readers who have experience in the psychology of the guy. The following might cause you to roll your eyes so far in the back of your head that you’ll never get them back to normal again, and you know nothing good will come of this. While you’re staring at your own brain, who knows what the guy in your life could be doing? If you ask him to watch the kids, he could be downloading porn off of the Internet while little Billy explores to possibilities of combining the bug zapper and the swimming pool.

So for the sake of your children’s lives and the electric bill, if you don’t think you can handle this random act of guyness, I recommend exploring other fine parts of this site, or go download porn off of the Internet, which should be pretty easy if you check your husband’s Internet history. And with that, I continue…

There are times in a guy’s life when he just has to do something guy-like, despite minor risks like third-degree burns or death, just to feel that surge of guyness. What sets off the feeling of guyness varies from guy to guy. Some guys get it from tuning cars to the point that the engine revs cause permanent hearing loss. Some guys enjoy counting how many women they’ve slept with and seeing how many diseases they can collect (“Dude, you’ve got chancroids! I’ve been looking for that one!”). Some guys enjoy shooting space shuttles into space, despite the risk that they may re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, causing thousands to die if it crashes into a populated area.

Okay, so it doesn’t look good for random acts of guyness. I’ll assure any concerned readers that the act of guyness that I committed isn’t so obviously destructive. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the destructive aspects of guyness just as much as the next guy, like smashing stuff, shooting stuff, blowing stuff up, and beating stuff with a stick (that last one is totally literal, by the way). This one, however, is relatively benign.

It was a Saturday afternoon. I decided to bike around for a while with a vague goal of finding garage sales. I know it would have been more efficient to drive around in a car, but I was in the mood to do something manly, and if it’s not harder, pointless, sweaty, and/or destroys something, it’s probably not manly. I had three of those going.

I raced down a neighborhood where the street pavers were obviously being paid by the foot. I pedaled down the street as quickly as I could manage, snaking around the street, avoiding cars blindly sailing around the corner, pedestrians and traffic be damned. I was searching out a single sale that was conveniently located a quarter mile or so down, so after traveling fifty-seven miles, I happened upon a squalid sale that contained maybe twenty individual items, including a few obsolete computer parts, worthless knick-knacks that no one in their right mind would pay money for or accept as gifts (which doesn’t say much for the sellers), and children’s books that probably engaged the previous children for an amazing three seconds before they went back to watching Spongebob Squarepants.

Overall, if I glanced at this sale while driving by, I would never have stopped. This assumes I was driving a car and the sale wasn’t located deep within the garage where they could have killed me without anyone knowing and sold my organs on the black market. Hey, it takes all kinds, but the worse kinds were in charge of this garage sale, which was filled with worthless junk that I didn’t give a second glance to, with the exception of one item: a slot machine.

Not just any slot machine, but a Japanese slot machine. It should be obvious to any one who knows me that I’m a huge anime’ fan, and this slot machine, called King of Minami, had enough River City Ransom-like Japanese teen delinquent style to it that I knew I had to have it. Plus, I found it at a garage sale of all places, making it even more of an unusual find. I decided to buy it.

If you read my article about a trip I took to Casino Windsor, or have had the pleasure of trying to convince me to hand over my money to a casino, you’ll know that I detest gambling, at least for money. I hate slot machines the most, because there is little I can do to affect the outcome besides put my money in faster. So it may seem odd that I would buy a slot machine. You clearly don’t understand men. It’s a SLOT MACHINE. I OWN IT! IT’S BIG AND HEAVY AND LOUD AND SHINY! COME ON!!!

The price was $175, but I managed to get them to go to $125 using a shrewd bargaining technique that involves me asking who low they will go on the price. It turns out, after doing some research, that $125 was about the average price for one of these, but considering I was getting it NOW, that made up for it. Apparently desperate to get rid of it, the seller agreed and offered to deliver it, because, let’s face it, it would be next to impossible bike the slot machine fifty-nine (or, geographically, two and a half) miles back to my house. Sure, it would have been a really manly thing to do, but just because I like being manly doesn’t mean I’m completely brain dead to try a stunt like that. I could have damaged the slot machine.

It was over a half hour after the machine was supposed to be delivered before I got a call from the sellers informing me that they couldn’t deliver it and I should come pick it up, which wasn’t a big deal. What’s a fifty-nine mile trip? It was at this point that the seller asked me if I was over eighteen, because apparently it’s illegal to sell slot machines to minors, even if it doesn’t accept money. Keep in mind if I had my car on hand, she probably wouldn’t have asked, and I could have drove off with it, a minor in possession of an illegal gambling device. The woman who sold it could have gotten life for that.

I got the machine home and set it up in my room, which is already brimming with so many physical possessions, it would make Paris Hilton feel embarrassed. I looked over the machine in more detail and was content with the purchase. I went off to take care of other things, but that lingering desire that all guys suffer when they get a new toy panged in the back of my head, the same desire that has been panging in our heads since we were born: the desire to play.

When I sat down and looked over the machine, my first instinct was to go at it without reading the instructions, because, let’s face it, instructions are for women. I plugged in the machine and soon realized that it needed resetting, so the obvious thing to do was open it up. I put in the key and turned it in the most logical direction, which was the way that seemed to give the most. Problem.

Something I failed to realize was that the hinges on the door were supporting the weight of a variety of lights, panels, metal objects, circuit boards, latte dispensers, speakers, calculators, cheese shedders, and whatever else they put on the door, so it was weighed down more than I expected. The lady who sold it to me had some trouble opening it, so I assumed it required some special trick, so I put on my Sunday dress and looked over the instructions.

I should point out that the instructions are not exactly for this particular unit, but for a series of units that vaguely resemble mine. So while the manual divulges basic guidance, it gets a little iffy on the details, like where certain key buttons and switches are located. The book gives, seriously, about six different possible locations for the volume adjustment knob alone, and also confesses that once you do find it, it may not affect the volume that much because the machine is meant to be loud. This is perfectly acceptable, because that’s good and manly, and I have yet to locate the knob. You’d think that there couldn’t be a whole lot of creative places to hide switches and buttons in a slot machine, but you’d also be an idiot. At least the vagueness of the instructions makes reading them a manly task in and of itself.

Thankful, the system reset instructions were in plain view. Good thing, too, because in an effort to prevent users from cheating and somehow altering the slot machine settings so they win every once in a while, the machine is equipped with an extravagant reset sequence that is required to be entered before you can do much of anything with the machine besides insert token and watch it be rejected. The series is, really:

1) Shut off machine

2) Turn reset switch to “on” (yes, it’s an on/off switch)

3) Turn on machine

4) Jiggle slot handle three times

5) Turn reset switch to “off”

6) Close door and have fun, dammit!

Keep in mind you have to repeat this procedure every time you want to adjust the skill level, and probably some other options that are controlled by switches that are in Japanese and the book makes no mention of. Right now, my machine demands three tokens to play at all, which isn’t such a big deal, since I can just open it up and get more, but it tends to burn through a lot of tokens without paying out at all.

You would think that adjusting the skill level to an easier level would pay out more, but, again, you’d be a moron, and probably not able to read any of this article. I should mention now that the slot machine lets you stop each reel in any order you want at any time, but considering that they’re moving at about 1,697 miles per hour, you’re better off simply blindly pressing buttons over squinting at the blurring reels, trying to make a strategic move. This assumes that the reels actually stop when you press the button, and the feature isn’t just to fool you into thinking you have a shot at winning.

But this isn’t the point. The point is that I own a slot machine, and it’s big, shiny, and manly, and that’s all that counts. Of course it’ll be a conversation piece, and who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to exploit my guests and steal their money as the casinos have stolen it from me! It’ll be for the best, since I might find a Donkey Kong arcade machine at a garage sale some day, and even though I can play the game on any number of systems, I still want one, because it’s big and manly. I’m not too concerned about paying the cost of the unit, but rather the potential hospital bill, because at that point, I’ll be so manly I’ll take that sucker home on my bike.