윤

Redditor’s work is all the more remarkable because it was done from scratch and not with Mars money (as eye-opening and welcome as it was, on this anniversary of my last job change—what a segue to my upcoming meeting with a former employer, who’s threatening us with an opportunity to return to family office drama). And uncanny valley or no, I’ve always liked multi-angle portraits.

I admit I was also suckered by the Ride video, so instead of giving the YouTube any more views, I embedded a grainier Gfycat that doesn’t even play in Firefox. Unlike with Monster Hunter Rise, I did my due diligence before starting upon the certain path of material discontent with a console that’s hard enough to obtain, a new television to support it, the sound system I’d always promised and of course a couch to replace our aging one. If not for Nintendo’s almost anti-technology stance, I might be disconnected from gaming altogether, having been left unimpressed at the PS3/Blu-Ray generation. There’s definitely a leap to be made to 4K+ and SSD storage, but I’m with the commenter who asked for them to be used for first-person crashes, too, the experience needs to offer more.

Netflix has certainly struck gold with their Korean co-productions lately, with Kingdom (what was that last outing but another Joker), Move to Heaven and now this Parasite-cum-live-action Fall Guys, which should one-up their investment in comparatively ludicrous Alice in Borderland.Weebs claim that the concept was lifted from 神さまの言うとお, but seeing Miike’s adaptation, I realized why I let 13 years pass. Seems boredom is always the given reason for the powers that be to cycle back Adams’s course of history, but maybe we’ve reached a point in our “civilization”, too, where instead of allowing teenage superheroes overcome all the challenges it’s become more entertaining to see the players suffer and beg them for their lives—at which Koreans excel.

Dream the other night had all my usual conundrums, debilitating fear of heights, frustration with commonplace expectations, and one that a quick search reveals I haven’t mentioned much if at all despite being a fairly regular concern, my slavish observance of the bus schedule. My return ride was always around 8-ish or else I’d miss a transfer and face a long walk home, never mind modern conveniences such as Uber. (I wonder if in a few-odd years when drones will come pick you up anywhere, my subconscious will update then?) The others in my group led the way to a higher platform, effortlessly traversing the gap over a ravine of white stairwells, while I froze; the steps on the other side were so narrow, I wasn’t sure I would land on them safely before attempting another leap upward—it was a wall-jump, fucking videogames! Eventually I determined my only solution was to be forced onto the ledge, which I somehow managed by inserting myself in front of another uninhibited procession. The balcony opened into a dark hall lined with warmly lit, classically decorated sitting rooms, each occupied with well-dressed snobs who seemed offended by my inspection. Lurking in the shadows beside me was Peter Capaldi the Doctor, looking a little worse for wear, but amenable nevertheless for a selfie, but try as I might, I couldn’t get the phone not to overlay dinosaur stamps on the camera.

This morning I found myself in an office building among a band of survivors of an apocalypse. Three of them who looked like members of the high school chess club decided that a Vietnamese girl Binn present would satisfy their pent-up urges. She complied and completed her duties promptly, and I tried to find her to express my sympathies, but instead I ran into an old colleague who seemed to remember me and called out my name. He wasn’t anyone I knew from my past, but he did seem familiar, like an actor who played the role of computer salesman in the 80’s, except his hair was gray and he was missing his right arm. We sat down at a table and he explained that he had been drafted for his expertise with the “Lexor-9” system, whose pre-Internet standalone capabilities made it especially useful in these times. I left by telling him to contact me if they needed help with the modems, which was apparently something for which I myself had a reputation… but as Silver Spear reminds us, “some reputations are false.”

엄마 was more excited by the casting of 전도연 than in her new JTBC series 인간실격, but after the first week’s two episodes I fail to see the connection with the source material other than the title. Unless the story pivots back to the character who drowned (successfully, I might add) but otherwise wasn’t shown outside a few scenes to let his friends prepare his funeral, I doubt even the Cannes winner will reveal herself as Dazai’s hapless wretch.What’s more intriguing to me is that upon reading the original work—or revisiting it, I did dabble in this kind of thing in my late teens—how much I’m reminded by the narrator of 윤대섭’s own “negative man” concept; was this was his inspiration all along? Might have been Catcher in the Rye for 東大 students at the time.

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

Update: Trip to Texadelphia would now risk being shot, so no-visit list it is.