Because really, I could be doing something productive today. You know -- schoolwork, sorting out my finances, maybe cleaning up -- any of that sort of stuff. But really -- wherez the fun in that?

On the other hand ... I can waltz out of my mansion, hop into any of my cool cars or onto my crotch rocket, and go speeding around town in fully insane fashion -- and hey, it's okay if I smash up my vehicle, because in such an emergency all I need to is yank someone else out of theirs' and off I go. Cops bugging me? I can shoot a few, then outrun the rest. Ah, how we can love some GTA.

Ooh, and a much less popular game, yet oh-so-fantastically perfect for anyone who has a true love of silly superhero comics: Freedom Force. Oh, but is that a time-sucking, what-the-hell-happened-to-my-Febuary kinda game. Seriously, much like FFVII and the first Megaman Legends (and, way back in the day, Tetris and Zelda: A Link to the Past) FF is a game that sucked the majority of several months of free time out of my life -- and I have absolutely no regrets about it.

In this game, you get to design costumes, powers, the whole shebang. Not just your own -- throw the X-Men in, hell throw the JLA in for kicks. Have a battle-royale between your own team of superheroes and those who've been kicking ass in the funnybooks for many ages now.

Though really, at this late stage in the game, my Most Fun task seems to be pitting a single hero against scores and scores of others, and finding all the different ways that hero might somehow come out with his/her skin intact. I really don't know when all the varieties this game offers to me will get old.

So sure, as far as the impact of it on your daily life, spending hours playing computer games is about as productive as sitting staring at a blank wall.