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Storm. “Shockingly bad” is right. Might as well have added a buzzer-type shock to each press of the screen. Incidentally I had a dream last night of watching an old Brit comedy show with Hugh Laurie spoofing 60’s spy shows, including the Prisoner.

Cameo. I sent an image attachment via e-mail to the display model in a 3-1 employee-to-customer ratio T-Mobile store and waited for as long as I could before the sad state of tech got to me (approximately 15 minutes), and it never showed. Neither did the picture message one of their guys tested.

Animal Crossing for Wii. Another chance for Nintendo to leapfrog Sony and Microsoft with an online world for their brand, wasted.

My thumb, after dusting off the Super Famicom with the Fighting Commander, having confirmed that the PS3 supports it through the SmartJoy. I pushed the new blister through the 8-star Super Battle, but it broke at Sagat, oozing fluid onto the pad—a new, slippery sensation, to be sure, at least for someone once protected so ably by a callous there. Like a champ who completes that last mile with a torn ACL, I kept up the fireball/dragon-punch combo against M.Bison and reached those ending credits where I used to swear to my friends I saw a beer can in T.Hawk’s hand. Didn’t you get a shot of the whole cast if you completed it without a defeat?

I’ve yet to try it myself, but with even House’s best buddy blasting the Storm, I’m at a loss what to do with my T-Mobile account. Even if I could get an unlocked iPhone to work on their 3G, I hate how it’s come, at least for me, hearing from Henry how he ran into that fucking loser Ron shopping for one, to define classlessness (and that’s -less as in “spineless” and “penniless”, not “timeless”). And after the Curve’s keypad, I’m not about to subject my fingers to the same frustrating collision detection on a Bold. Why can’t they make an interface with big honkin’ buttons that are clear so there’s no loss of precious space for the screen?

My second sleep-related self-diagnosis escalates matters, if not for the fact that I’m just dreaming them. After off-roading onto a river path in a rural area, I feared I was trapped behind inaccessibly larger rocks until I spotted a street sign. I settled in a cabin to rest, and would wake to news that I had been sleepwalking, and during the night did some ditch-digging in the rain. My flat-mates showed me a gray T-shirt which I wore while working and rendered worthless, tearing it at the collar. They also described how I chattered about not forgetting to register for Comic-Con.

The problem with watching shows like House—which, ironically, is what 老婆 occupies her time off with now—you expect the same level of ability from your own health care professional, or at least a modicum thereof. And the local Kaiser department store sure ain’t Princeton-Plainsboro: regular physician diagnoses a persistent cough as allergies, and prescribes Zyrtec; two days later it’s still there so we return for a second opinion from someone else (Doctor “Do”, I’m not kidding), who says it’s bronchitis. Any pre-med dropout with a BlackBerry and Wikipedia access can read that antihistamines thicken the mucus she’s been trying to expel all this time. This must’ve been before the half-hour mark, when the gang from pathology realizes they fucked up?

It’s snowing ash from the nearby wildfires, and I stupidly ran this morning. Good thing I‘m not on Kaiser.

There were corn-shaped egg sacs burst open on the walls, an embarrassing overlook of sanitation. Bright yellow stains surrounded them, and I could only imagine what sprang forth.

Then I swore my eyes were open, but I could alternate with those in my mind; in the dream they beheld, I held a small ironing board, maybe the counter-top kind, in my left arm, and from my lying position I had to raise it into view. My waking hand would be clenched but empty, yet I could see its contents “inside”. Had I dreamed this whole experiment, too?

I tried watching Fringe between House and SVU, but find myself tuning back into Get Smart instead, as accessible as it’s become over digital. Last night’s included the first of the great Don Rickles two-parter and before it, Max & 99’s dance-off against the Groovy Guru and the Sacred Cows. Notice how they’re sporting some less-than-hip slacks and shoes (apparently Kaos standard issue) under their stage outfits. And has anyone else connected their lyrics to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult? No cause for sensation back then, but it’s funny I prefer their sound to the pretentious wailing that’s passed as legitimate artistry since.

First try: a Visa rebate card from Staples, which wasn’t accepted because either the twenty dollars face value somehow was reduced a dollar and therefore insufficient funds for the wallet, or, as I’d learn later at a Fresh & Easy, it isn’t good anywhere. Then at a 7-Eleven, whose Indian or Pakistani proprietors had never heard of a PlayStation, much less a Network Card for one. At Blockbuster it rang up with sales tax; I could live with the extra cent for peace of mind, but $1.56 wasn’t worth not handing over the credit card online. Seriously, though, I dug up some old e-mail like this one and noticed I’d fretted over the cost of it back then, too.

From ???@??? Sun Nov 03 00:19:37 1996
To: Brother Gantela
From: jyun@concentric.net,joeyjojo@juno.com (J.)
Subject: Re: I Hate WipeOut XL
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:

I pounded the controller into the ground, this time being careful not to place my thumb between the two. There ain’t no way I’m gonna finish off that last Phantom course. Those boys at Psygnosis really have to fix that clipping problem–sure, Mario 64’s got it, too, but here you’re penalized for it, i.e., with the agonizingly long time it takes them to return you to the track. You know what else bugs the hell out of me? The way the other cars take the most difficult corners, well, every racing game’s got that, but when I bump them into the walls, they don’t come to complete stops like I do. Okay, maybe I’m just complaining because I suck.

(I wonder what those non-ASCII characters were?) Contrary to my Simon Pegg-like performance on the road this morning—which concerns me less than recurrence of the acetabular dysplasia, or misdiagnosis thereof—I impressed myself with a first-place finish on only my second go with a Feisar in more than a decade. Maybe they’ll have the original tracks available for download on the store; I remember Underworld’s “Tin There” made for some all-out racing moments.