윤

It’s been rumored for years, and the technology is brilliant, something that harks back to my fascination with this one of the more innocuous pieces of standard crime-fighting equipment. And while Apple’s compromised on privacy concerns to alert anyone nearby, I bet there’s still enough time for a swing through the city to find out where the girl of your dreams lives your stolen bike is.

I was seated at the bar of an open food court-like restaurant, pre- or post-pandemic, and still very drowsy, rested my head on the counter. and overheard the Korean proprietress telling her co-worker about my indiscretion. Imagining it from her perspective, I couldn’t help but agree that a dirty mop head like mine against the plexiglass was hardly a sight conducive to a smart dining establishment like theirs. She brought a bowl of what appeared to be 짜장 sauce with meatballs to a lady patron and a separate one with 라면, and I knew what to order. It was then I realized that I had left my wallet on the table where I lied, but to my back; it came as quite a surprise, therefore, that no one had taken it or the crumpled-up bills strewn about while I was asleep. My mother appeared with a young lady and told me she had to make it to a movie at 11pm, so we got into her large white BMW and raced through the parking garage. The speed at which we deftly spun down the circular single lane without worry made me assume that some clever German engineering was at work. We navigated the unmarked stairwells and reached a lobby, where I grabbed an elevator and motioned them inside, but it seems that was where we were parting ways: Mom was off to the theater alone, and her attractive short-haired companion was leaving, bags packed for a long trip. I looked away as they noisily kissed as friends might.

I’ve set aside my disdain for the place—though not too far from my side, where I shall always keep my disdain—for certain logistical advantages it maintained during the lockdown, chief among them a consistent lower price for the 16.9-oz. bottles, but I will never not find another reason to hate going there. It’s my fault for venturing out from the grocery area after collecting the dollar-loaves of not-so French bread, It’s-It and other exclusive staples and hoping to avoid the main thoroughfares of slow-moving families to whom it must not occur to leave their children at home with a parent and reduce the crowds during a fucking pandemic… by hopping from one aisle to another, only to find them, too, each occupied with an abominable scene like Shelley Duvall encountered in The Shining. A traffic jam of fat White women driving shopping carts, masked teenagers tossing a football under the recirculated air on a perfectly fine day, a lady with her face shield cocked up to hold the speakerphone at her uncovered mouth, all horrors of the lockdown era.

Streets of Rage has been our thing, the two games (never did get the third; maybe Street Fighter II had by then relegated 2P co-op to lower priority than new controllers) being loud and violent yet playable enough for a toddler to conquer—if only I had Twitched the time he started break-dancing, trying to stand on his head and everything, to the 古代 祐三 boss theme.

I Steamed (look at me incorporating all the modern lingo in a post about a twenty-year-old game) Streets of Rage III and found it far too difficult for us, but did some reading up on it to learn that wasn’t the case with the Japanese version, which also had additional content deemed unsuitable for the US, namely, Ash:

The boy underestimated the solution: either buy the latest monstrosity (from, coincidentally, one of our prospective clients, though their recent sticker-shock at our services makes any discount unreliable), or resort to Game Genie codes.

AABT-AA5L
DJBT-AADN
RYDA-A608
AJDA-AAHA

or

2JAT-BHNR
8ADA-AAG6

Where’s a band like Midnight Oil when we need them? (2003)

Could be Peter Garrett is the marginalized Ralph Nader of Australia, the reaction the mention of one of my favorite bands got from a young LS mate down under, and who knows, in an alternate universe where they had more deservingly gone on to all the success U2 enjoys in ours, their message may have become the same commercialized crap. Still, Amazon got the sale when they finally marked down the price of their concert video (it said out of stock afterward, meaning the last one went to me—or better yet, other fans with whom I experienced a communion of mind) because his channeling Michael Berryman as some kind of electrified Frankenstein’s monster onstage was truly a highlight of my concert-going days. Could be I’ve missed out on stuff just as relevant in the interim yearsdecades, but to my knowledge no one’s put them quite as succinctly as, “The rich get richer/ The poor get the picture/The bombs never hit you when you’re down so low”.

Score one—for the consumer? The Macbook trackpad suddenly stopped depressing, and I discovered the cause was a swollen battery. I mean, pictures can’t do it justice; the bulge in the White glaze made it resemble Stormtrooper armor even more (the rounder parts thereof). Got to thinking about retiring the 3-year-old machine rather than spending $100+ on a replacement, but read that others with the same problem managed to get it free, out of warranty, by bringing it in, so I took a chance and made a “Genius Bar” appointment. I awoke from a jetlag-induced nap to ponder continuing it, staying and watching the premiere of the V remake or futilely trying to make it to South Coast in 15 minutes, but in this turn of events at least, the staff there was gracious with both my tardiness and their product defect. Still gonna go with ASUS next. Touch my heart, Taiwan.

Very un-Larry David of me not to continue my fight against a ticket I got in Laguna Beach because, after all, driving down there for the hearing, much less parking, would’ve cost me almost the same amount of money as paying the fucking fine. No wonder he owns a Prius. And has nothing better to do.

Have had a hankerin’ for chocolate-sprinkled vanilla ice cream since reminiscing about Newport Creamery, but dessert being excised from my regiment months would pass before I got ’round to satiating it. 老婆’s coupon was inexplicably good only in another town over, so the unsubsidized three scoops of their “lite” (read: tasteless) flavor and extra topping, whose appeal must be in simulating Milhouse’s ants-crawling-in-mouth moment: $7.20. My orange juice at IHoP Saturday, $2.99, and I got free refills; for the same price I might’ve bought a gallon at the supermarket, too, but the premium is better justified by the environment or occasion. And in my lifetime I have not watched the price of restaurant beverages skyrocket like they have here, gas stations or movie theaters.