With the possibility of major gaming news outlets pulling out of E3 in protest of SOPA/PIPA (at the urging of Penny Arcade) I’m beginning to get seriously mopey at the thought of not being able to go because, duh, I stand in solidarity with my video game brethren and also no one will pay me to go. In a probably futile effort to cheer myself up (and maybe some of you who are sad about this prospect, too) I’ve made a list (I know, lists are lazy but I never said I wasn’t) of shit I won’t miss about the industry spectacle that is E3:

1. The weird mushy carpet. It’s like quicksand, only not as fun, especially if you are carrying 20 pounds of camera equipment and nine coffees you had to get for everyone because there is only one Starbucks at the convention center.

2. There is only one Starbucks at the Convention Center.

3. The noise and blinking lights. It’s like Tokyo in there, except I’ve never been to Tokyo, so everything I know about it comes from jokes about how overcrowded and noisy and blinky light-y Tokyo is. /complaint ouroborous.

4. The sad, empty Konami stage. Cue tumbleweeds. God, just thinking about it makes me depressed. Excuse me for a sec while I stare out the window at the rain and listen to The National.

5. Booth babes. For real ones. Everyone thinks the booth babes are at Comic-Con but that’s really a fallacy. They are all at E3, and while I want to hug every one of my gloriously pretty lady sisters, I also want to throttle them for making a mockery of what I do.

6. Okay, there are six things. There is only one bar and I couldn’t bring myself to get a drink there because it seemed so weird and out of place and anyway I had a broken foot last year so I was pretty high on Vicodin anyway.