Look upon my keyboard, ye Mighty, and despair!

Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention. For me, it's the absentee father of trips to Best Buy (along with its friends Irritation, Boredom, Malaise, and Wednesday).

Today's necessity? A new keyboard. I've had a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for about six years now. The rechargeable battery in the mouse tops out at about 20 minutes of use per three hours of charging time, but I have mice spilling out my desk drawers. The bigger issue is the keyboard, which is noisier than D-Day and therefore no good for insomnia-fueled late-night browsing, as the office is next to the bedroom (insert surfing-for-porn joke here). Also, the keys have to descend what seems like six inches into the keyboard to register anything, so typing for half an hour is more strenuous than giving someone a deep-tissue massage.

I've been wanting a new keyboard for a while, but I woke up this morning and realized that A) keyboards are not that expensive, B) I'm a fully-employed adult with disposable income, and C) it'd been at least three days since I'd been to Best Buy, and the employees there were probably starting to worry about me.

So off I went. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the buzz I get from being in a whole store full of New Electronics Smell to be replaced by growing annoyance at the general keyboard-buying population. Apparently consumers are clamoring for bizarrely-shaped ergonomic "wave" keyboards with... really noisy keys that travel a great distance before registering. They're shiny, pretty, futuristic-looking, and 100% not what I want. I was close to yanking the keyboard off one of their floor model HP computers, stuffing it in my pants, and charging out the door, but I ended up with a "gaming keyboard" instead.

I've written about video games in this space before, but I'm almost exclusively referring to console games. I lack the money and patience necessary to upgrade my computer hardware every six months, which takes me out of the PC gaming market. However, I've clearly been missing out on the "game-themed computer peripherals" phenomenon. My new keyboard (in addition to its tacky rubber finish and ninja-esque quietness) features "slim keycap structure with Hyperesponse technology" and "1000Hz Ultrapolling / 1ms response time" and "Gaming cluster with anti-ghosting capability."

Motherfucker is also backlit with blue LEDs. So there's that. Also, the opening panel on the (fashionably all-black) box is labeled "Nexus of Dominion." Inside, there's a message from something called RazerGuy claiming that "You now have the tactical advantage on every terrain, and your enemies' fates are in your hands. Let the hunting begin."

It may surprise you that there's a photo of RazerGuy on the box as well. It will not surprise you that he is pale, skinny, and has a bitchin' wafro.

Finally, the box also boasts a Certificate of Authenticity that says, "There's no turning back... You're now officially part of the Cult of Razer (tm) and you own a page in the history of gaming."

So if this blog post seemed a little more menacing, a bit more intimidating than normal, well, now you know why. After re-reading it, the only difference I can see is that I've shattered my personal record for hyphen usage, but I might be immune to petty intimidation now. I guess today's lesson is that you should always be wary... you might walk into Best Buy looking for a regular old keyboard, and walk out a certified, bad-ass member of the Cult of Razer (tm).