During the game itself, the part you actually get to play, the graphics are of a far inferior quality, and occasional scenes of scripted dialogue between characters are incompetently written and amazingly badly acted....  If it's supposed to be like a film in this way, it's a film you wouldn't ever want to see.
                            --Steven Poole, Trigger Happy.

AND:
        Teaching classes.
        Every Monday, I have to teach an English class to a bunch of first year students.  I have to go over grammar, and the we talk about stuff.  It goes like this:
        I have Monday mornings, and then there are two other classes-- Wednesday and Friday-- where the professor whose English class this really is gives lectures.  I am what's known as a "tutorial leader."
        My class is only one hour a week, but I have to sit in on the other two classes.  This so I know what to talk about every Monday.
        My class is 8:30 in the morning, the other classes are at 11:30.
        So the students have to get up early Mondays to listen to me babble.
        They don't want to be there.  But at least all they have to do is sit and pretend to listen.  I actually have to fill an hour with a bunch of self-assured verbosity that's supposed to pass for observations and wit.  And then I get to grade their papers.
        Sunday nights I'm usually so scared I can't sleep.  And Mondays mornings, when I get to the university, I'm usually sick and trembling.

AND:
        Japanese teens are locking themselves in their rooms.  They just lock themselves in their rooms and don't come out.  Ever again.  Their family looks after them.  Sometimes, when they do emerge, they become extremely violent.  They're called "hikikomori," or "people who withdraw."
        Most hikikomori are male.  Usually, they're in their late teens and early twenties.
        They play videogames, or just sleep.  Sleep all the time.  Day in and day out.
        One teen-- he's 17-- locked himself in the family kitchen and refused to come out.  He got sick of being bullied at school.  He's been there for three years.  The family built another kitchen.
        Most hikikomori simply lock themselves in their rooms.
        This is the next step.  After the otaku comes the hikikomori.  At least otaku have communities.  They do at least go outside.  Hang out in manga shops.  Draw comics.  Put up web pages dedicated to their favorite idols and anime girls.
        Not to say the hikikomori don't have communities, exactly.  Some of them, sometimes, interact on the internet.
        If they have access to the internet.
        There's at least a million of them, now, in Japan.
        How long before it hits our shores?
        It's the newest thing, the coming trend.
        The Japanese are always so far out ahead.

AND:
        The weather is very warm.

AND:
        All night at the computer, staring at the screen, surfing the Web, looking at pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of trivial nonsense, peoples' lives, fetishes, likes, dislikes, loves, hates, movie reviews, favorite bands, music reviews, poetry, fan fiction, pictures--

AND:
        Went back to the store I used to work at.  I hung out for a while, chatted with the guys.  I do, on some level, sort of miss it.

AND:
        Bush is everywhere.  I have never been so conscious about an American presidency, before-- ever.  Every day I'm reminded by both the American and Canadian media that George W. Bush is in power and is scanning the horizon for any excuse to go to war.  To go to war with anyone, anything.  Anything that moves out there, it seems, is a fair target.
        When Carter was president, I was too young to care.
        When it was Reagan, I thought he was a doddering old fool, but still, for the most part I didn't really understand what was going down.  Most of my information on Reagan came from Doonesbury.
        When it was Bush Sr, he was around, sure, but mostly I still just ignored him.  Everything that happened in the 'States seemed to still be waaaaaay over there.  Except for the first Gulf War.  But even that I got used to.
        And Clinton was on the periphery, mostly.  And even when he was being raked over the coals for his blowjob it still didn't really impact on me.
        But, Bush, Jr....  He's different.  He's always in my field of vision.  He's always on my mind.  Every day I am reminded of the fact that I am living and breathing and existing in the iron grip of George W. Bush's presidency.  I have to admit, it's a new feeling.  This dread.
        And, yet, I am still stunned he's made the impact he has.  I mean, how much can one guy do?
        But, the US pulled out of the Kyoto accord.
        And there's been a "war" on "terrorism."
        And now there might be a war in Iraq.
        And there've been anthrax scares.
        And there's going to be an American missile defense program.
        And there's more surveillance and paranoia.
        And the guy still has two more years to go.  He's a powerhouse.
        And, in a way, I kind of like him.  He slows down time.  He forces me into a state of heightened awareness.
        Because I always feel like he's about to destroy the world, I feel more alive.
        So, I guess the glass is half full, after all....

AND:
OCTOBER 17, 2002:
        Kim had a dream last night.  She told me she was holding a little black kitten in her hands, and then she started cuddling it, and then its ears fell off.
        So she put its ears back on and started cuddling it again, and then its face fell off.
        So she put its face back on, and then its paws fell off.
        And every time she tried to get near it, some new part of its body would fall off.
        And so, every time she tried to get near it, it would crumble.  And she'd try to put it back together, and the more she put it back together, the more it would fall apart.
        Eventually, she was desperate, scrambling, frantic to keep the kitten together.  But the more she tried, the more it broke down.
        Eventually, she woke up.

AND:
        The American missile defense program.
        I just don't understand that one.  It's so 1983.
        It's so Cold War, so redundant.
        The Russians aren't a threat any more.  The Chinese don't really care about anything outside their borders.  The North Koreans either do or don't have nukes, but if they have nukes they can't have many.  And all the other nuclear countries could be mashed like bugs by the USA's arsenal.
        So who's it supposed to protect the 'States from?

AND:
        Still playing Final Fantasy X.
        I think I'm in love with Lulu.

AND:
        Driving around, again, listening to Endless Summer by Fennesz, again.  And Merzbow's Day Of Seals.  I'm sick of Men Without Hats and Hüsker Dü-- at least for a while.  It's time to move on.  The information comes at me so quickly and my tastes change almost daily.

AND:
        Soon it'll be 2003.
        This doesn't feel like the 21st Century.
        Nothing feels real any more.

AND:
        On the radio, an increasing phenomenon:
        When people get Alzheimer's disease they ae stripped, by degrees, of their memories.  And when this happens, older memories begin to surface.  And then these memories begin to merge with what they perceive as reality.  And then they begin living in their memories.
        People who were young during World War 2 are starting be become very old.  People who were young in World War 2, and held in concentration camps are starting, therefore, to become very old.  And some of these people are developing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
        And and their memories are being stripped by degrees, and the memories of what they experiences when young are starting to resurface.  And these memories are beginning to merge with what they perceive as reality.  And so, out of nowhere, suddenly when sitting in their homes and hospital rooms, they find themselves back in the camps.
        They become confused children, frightened of the nurses and orderlies.
        They refuse to lie in their beds because they believe them to be covered with barbed wire.
        They refuse to be bathed and showered because they are afraid of all the acid and poison gas.
        They witness the murders of their parents and friends, and the deaths of thousands, over and over and over.
        They are afraid to eat, to sleep, to move because every moment might be their last.
        Gradually, the memories of the camps totally supersede reality.

AND:
        Driving in circles, late at night.  Looking out the at the buildings, the sattelite dishes.  My windshield is like a screen.

AND:
        At my computer, working on a term paper late into the night.

AND:
        Every night, when I close my eyes, everything strobes.  I see video snow.

AND:
        Bush on tv.  Final Fantasy X, on tv.

AND:
        A few hours ago, I was driving up to my parents' place and there was snow on the ground and I was playing "Slip Away" from the new David Bowie in my new car that has sensors that keep the music at a constant level to match the driving noise and sensors that turn the headlights on and off automatically-- and suddenly because of the car and the snow and the Bowie which is cold and icy and distant and crisply sad like tomorrow all the elements converged and it actually felt-- for a few seconds anyway-- like I was living in the 21st century!
        In fact, it felt like I was living in a very specific 21st century.
        It all felt like a scene out of John Updike's Towards The End Of Time, which begins in winter, and takes place in 2020 and even though the USA has lost a war with China and has fragmented into citystates and all the money's been replaced with local scrip, nothing much has really changed.
        And it makes me dizzy to think that, what with all the science fiction being written by actual science fiction writers, John Updike-- a stuck-up WASP with a glorious prose style, a man who writes almost no science fiction at all-- may prove to be the most realistic futurist of them all.
        Then I pulled into the driveway, and I turned off the car, and there was snow on the ground and trees, and the sun was going down and the light outside was a dim, cold blue.  And then I went inside and had supper with my mom and dad.
        In the 21st century.

Next:  What's left....
 

Epilogue 27y.
Epilogue 27w.
INDEX.
HOME