윤

A belated tribute to this most versatile actor, who frightened me with a revisit so long ago and like Laura Palmer, I would see again long after I settled down and stopped rooting for the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange.

I didn’t think my words would hew so closely to the original (and I did want to get in how much I hate cutting my fucking nails every week), but they are what I have in mind when I hear the Ramones version.

When I’m trying to get outta bed
I don’t want to grow old
Nothing good seems up ahead
I don’t want to grow old
How do you last another year
In a world made for younger things
Makes me think the dog’s got the right idea
When I see the price I’m paying
I don’t want to grow old
It’s all going the way I’m saying
I don’t want to grow old
Folks might hope that time will bring
Everything they want
Living isn’t like how they’re portrayin’…
I’m gonna post on the Internet
I don’t want to grow old
Stock up the medicine cabinet
I don’t want to grow old
I don’t want to say no to fries
I don’t want to hide my hair with dyes
I don’t want to be told I’m wise
I don’t want to wear the wrong shirt size
I don’t want to occupy my mind
I don’t want to leave the most behind
No I don’t want to grow old
Well when the pain puts up a fight
I don’t want to grow old
Get up to pee five times a night
I don’t want to grow old
I’d rather GTFO here
Than stick around when the end is near
I don’t want to leave dust ev’rywhere
On my seat
When I look into a mirror
I don’t want to grow old
Nose’s only hair getting longer
I don’t want to grow old
Picture me in an old nightgown
I don’twanttobe afraid of falling down
I don’t want to be all groans and moans
Saggy skin and brittle bones
I don’t want to become deadweight
Break my hip and accept my fate
How the hell is it already too late
No I don’t want to grow old

Not the ₩100 blue baseball ones I remember from the 80’s (the sticks would tell you what you hit, single, foul or struck out), but these fucking things kept me from succumbing to the heat earlier this summer, or it was the A/C at all the 7-Elevens and (Nice to) CU’s I got to duck into for them. I mistakenly bought the squeeze pouch version first, but comparing them now I find myself preferring it, maybe less for environmental reasons than for my ever-regressing dexterity.

The product announced today has me tempted to capture one of my 全力坂 runs before it’s too late, even if it may already be, ironically, for my own vision.

Update: I don’t think it’s particularly creepy or Black Mirror-dystopian to record with one of these on, any more so than using a giant phone or iPad camera, but I did wake up screaming at a swarm of bugs hovering above us last night, only to realize that it just might have been the kind of nightmare AR will make possible.

…My 386/33 couldn’t run Doom with a playable framerate without shrinking the screen down to the size of, well, things clever people have been putting it on since. (The Ultima Underworlds required I read text.)
Used the AGE category on this entry but it’s more “Things Have Come” (as in a long way), isn’t it, though that’s probably a better acronym for another subject and as much as I like the riff on Wells, it’s not really something one notices or appreciates until there’s far enough to look back upon—not that a whole lot still can’t change, and for the better, but holy shit, there’s Lego of Korean boys.

I preferred how the characters in the original served their purpose and didn’t reappear, much less intermingle as archetypes, but despite these and other changes, how can I disparage Ishiguro’s reliable eloquence:

I wonder, Mr. Wakeling, if I may now turn to matters you may consider more personal. I have no wish to belittle our playground, but I put it to you that it was, all the same, a small thing. And that it will, before long, go the way of most small things. It may fall into disrepair, or be superseded by some grander scheme. To speak plainly, we cannot assume to have erected a lasting monument. Should there come days when it becomes no longer clear to you to what end you are directing your daily efforts, when the sheer grind of it all threatens to reduce you to the kind of state in which I so long existed, I urge you then to recall our little playground and the modest satisfaction that became our due upon its completion.

Sexagenarian series seems only good for reminding us how old we are anymore, what with all there being to the new stories hyperkinetic visuals and characters who run around trying to explain them, surely not the stuff of later fan service …Of course I’m being a hypocrite, as I’ve criticized the lackluster serials during Janet Fielding’s tenure, even if it was very nice of them to bring her and her Doctor back for their latest Master+Daleks+Cybermen+kitchen sink special. Honestly, Baker’s including “The Invasion of Time” and afterward were hardly memorable, either, so maybe it was a drop in quality that accompanied the end of the seventies among many peaking creatives; see also Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd.

I’m not sure what exactly kept me from playing the follow-up to one of my favorite early gaming experiences and the lead-in to an even more memorable time-sink: strict adherence to the Britannian Virtues prohibiting the Avatar from pillaging towns for loot; my feud with Henry, who had the jump on its release, pre-Apple ][c, souring any appeal, but would also become the sole fellow member of my many Loser’s Clubs with whom I’d eventually reconcile and keep in touch, for whatever the origin of our disagreement, no one else was involved so it subsided with our stubbornness; oh, and college presenting itself as anything but a time to settle down and make maps of the Stygian Underworld on graph paper.

It was a free download on the GOG service (whose annoying interface I’m betting can be circumvented) but wasn’t long before I not only realized they allowed mobs to traverse chests, ruining the prospect of recreating those safe lanes between points of interest I had in the last game, but that retracing the familiar series path of equinumerosity, however meticulously constructed, loses its nostalgic luster around the second of the eight cities, companions, shrines, dungeons, etc. Maybe a patch will make it more interesting? Grinding on headlesses in Despise certainly won’t be the same in this horrible day and age.

I looked through the doorway and saw a young person’s bare arm suspended unnaturally high above the room, undulating slightly and the fingers wiggling to show that someone unseen was behind it. Suddenly I was attacked by a dozen gray fists, but I fought them back, defiant and insistent that they weren’t getting to me, even as the image of my aggressor in the back changed shape and color.

In quite the change of setting to an anime convention, my friend and I (I think it was Frank Hsu, because he was tall, thin and decked out in motorcycling leathers) were admiring the life-sized mechs on display, and when we learned we could actually climb inside one for photos, queued up thinking that we were first in line. Turned out it already stretched around the display and the others were full-on cosplaying as sentai pilots, so the Shoei or Arai helmet and riding gear looked philistine in comparison. Nearing the end of our wait, a woman with a baby approached and we let her cut ahead of us, but she then tried chaining in a fat relative who waddled up and we objected vehemently. I don’t remember taking any pictures because the very next thing, my buddy looked more like that fucker Steve Bannon and was thanking me; such an abrupt edit in my timeline frightened me that Alzheimer’s had struck and this was how my perception would continue, jumping from one moment to another, unaware of what happened between them.

It’s how I reconcile Severance and Navillera. (Although the former will probably be revealed to be mad science like Dr. Brain, the Trojan Horse implant that has to be “macrodata’d” to override memory or willpower conflicts.) Bread-winning aside, what good are we to our loved ones if we don’t know who they are anymore? What good are we to ourselves?

Missing the $10-off deal at Target somehow Even-Steven’d itself when the Amazon support lady was able to defy the information online and swap the music service to the new device (or the fortuitous price drop on the Katana Mini), but watching the boy casually request a rundown of his flitting favorites starting with Len’s “Steal My Sunshine”, which must have made its way back to him on Spotify after a brief run as one in the small pool of tracks in the car’s 90’s Electronic set, without so much as the press of a button, reminded me again how far we’ve come. There are volume controls on top to accommodate his restless fingers, of course, though nothing like camping the radio with them on Play and Record, or waiting on the Space: 1999 end theme only to realize you’ve hummed through it, a story that shall surely be included in Chris’s eulogy for me.