윤

“Have you been in Five Guys, Callum?”
“Oh, at least.”
I suppose it is funnier that way, so I’ll give [Inside No. 9 writers Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton] a pass, as clever as their writing usually is. Plus, the use of the River Styx mythology in [latest series opener] “Merrily, Merrily” reminded me how each go on the rower could be my last. I had always imagined achieving a threshold S/M to cross over into dream-life, but maybe it’s more like the Flash outrunning the Black Racer. What happens when Charon can’t pay me? One thing’s for sure, if I can’t cough up the fare, it might very well be because Five Guys cleaned me out. Over $20 for a single burger, small fries and a drink?!

[Title and meme from this new track for old people like us.] Actually, I’m quite enjoying my daily visits to the am/pm down the street, where I would stop on my way to work 9-10 years ago for that refill of crunch ice and Mountain Dew on dispenser lines that must be corroded with just the right chemical buildup it’s borderline toxic and intoxicating. The rewards app helps, and I can’t help be amused that I’m charged 3¢ for tax on my free drink.

Define it as the perception of sound without a corresponding external source, and I’ve had it all my life, that noise I’d just assumed was from the pressure exerted upon my skull I could hear in the silence, caused either by the tides within or the radiation that’s only become more pervasive since the Zenith in the other room. But last week I woke and it was louder, I couldn’t yawn it away, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid the cracks were finally starting to show… What am I saying, they’ve been here all along, it’s the damn burst I should be expecting. The soundtrack I had always imagined to be from Curb Your Enthusiasm (or Joker) was instead replaced by the low hum of machinery in the background at a deserted facility, designed by David Lynch. It’s let up somewhat, I’ve noticed it dissipates almost entirely after exercise or orgasm, or I’ve grown to accept its symphony with the computer fan, cracked skylight, WiFi and what I presume are the reverberations of my crumbling reality.

健-san says “Headsets are simply annoying”, and I totally agree with him, even for audio. At least in PlayStation Home everything was accessible from the controller, though even there I had to wonder what was the benefit of donning an avatar to participate in real-world simulations. If I wanted to see an exclusive movie clip, couldn’t I just click on a link without any of the lag? Unless they really think it’d be fun to kill 20 rats for the ticket? Were the emphasis on interaction than immersion, then again, I can’t see how that’d surpass what’s long been available to chatters or streamers to boost their presentations with all the hypertext and media the Internet has to offer. Recently I was trying to impress upon our Generation Z/Alpha scion the sheer amount of time we used to spend on voice calls with each other, limitations like busy signals and long distance charges, and the impacts from advances in technology, but despite as much as hemming and hawing may have added to our hours, our connections didn’t rely on emojis or canned memes. One might argue it was a communication golden age, similar to the art of letter-writing that came before, where the value lie in the effort to overcome the struggle to express. Seems to me struggling in VR will instead be to try to get something out of the pinnacle of human achievement.