Yeah but what about laserdiscs?!
Jan. 29th, 2010 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist“I need to get an HDWTFMCMLXVIII* cable,” Dan told me today.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. Admittedly I could’ve been more tactful about my ignorance, but he’s used to me and puts up with me anyway. Which is nice.
He went on about high definition, and his new PS3, and his mission to watch The Dark Knight and Blu-Ray and... honestly I tend to stop listening after anything that starts with “HD.”
“... and all these people are buying cables for like three quid, and then they break after a week. And...” And then he said, “You’re not listening, are you.”
It wasn’t really a question. “Nope,” I said anyway. “Sorry,” I laughed a little, but I was genuinely sorry. We don’t normally have the kind of relationship that necessitates this sort of filtering process between my ears and my brain. “I mean, by all means, go on talking about it, it’s clearly something you’re having fun with, and I’m really happy for you, but...”
He’s very understanding.
“Do you know why I don’t have a DVD collection?” he asked me later.
I had to admit I had no idea. It’d never occurred to me before to wonder why he didn’t have a DVD collection.
He says that it’s because ten years ago, when there were still VCRs and DVDs were the hot new thing, Dan thought that in ten years DVDs would become similarly obsolete and there’d be some new thing. And just as DVDs were better than VHS, the new thing would be better than DVDs. So what’s the point?
Technology can make a nihilist of anyone.
But now, now with his Blu-Ray-playing but-DVD-playing-too PS3, and the sexy new telly he got for Christmas, he figures he’s all set. He thinks he’s reached the top of his curve; he’s not worried about what’s going to come along in ten more years. He tells me that it sounds like it’s going to be 3D. And he insists he’s not going to wear those silly glasses. So he’s done. He’s content.
And while I think this is baffling -- while I can’t remember the name of the cable he needs to connect the PS3 to the telly, I don’t even have a telly, and I hate 3D because I have basically monocular vision so it doesn’t work on me but does give me migraines when I try to watch 3D movies at the cinema, and I think even HD is really pretty much wasted on me because my sight is poor enough that regular D is already pretty much the limit of what I’m going to notice anyway so I couldn’t care less about these Blu-Ray things that have won this generation’s version of the VHS-or-Betamax war...
Anyway, like I was saying, while I think this is baffling, I’m quite pleased in some way that Dan’s got the telly he wants, and he’s got the, um, various-kinds-of-disc player, and he’s content in this one area of his life. It’s not a huge area, mind, but it’s nice to think that if a guy wants a shiny telly with all the right wires coming out of it so he can see the sweat on Christian Bale’s bollocks, well, he can get this.
His happiness, I mean. Not Christian Bale’s bollocks. Dan wants you to know that he is not interested in the bollocks particularly but generally he agrees with me on this. He was with me there, right up until the end.
And it occurred to me that, in some ways, this is the beautiful thing about being an adult. You put up with all this shit when you’re a kid, having to do things, people telling you all the time that most fun things are forbidden, people making fun of you at school, and you put up with all of this because you are convinced that one day things will be better. One day you can sleep until one o’clock and only wake up then because your girlfriend called you. One day you can have ice cream for breakfast or stay up until all hours of the night playing video games.
And, looking at Dan I am reminded: you will never stop being excited about new toys.
* Okay, I might be paraphrasing a little bit here. I know there’s lots of letters but I don’t know what the sodding thing is called. This is sort of the point here, as you shall see.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. Admittedly I could’ve been more tactful about my ignorance, but he’s used to me and puts up with me anyway. Which is nice.
He went on about high definition, and his new PS3, and his mission to watch The Dark Knight and Blu-Ray and... honestly I tend to stop listening after anything that starts with “HD.”
“... and all these people are buying cables for like three quid, and then they break after a week. And...” And then he said, “You’re not listening, are you.”
It wasn’t really a question. “Nope,” I said anyway. “Sorry,” I laughed a little, but I was genuinely sorry. We don’t normally have the kind of relationship that necessitates this sort of filtering process between my ears and my brain. “I mean, by all means, go on talking about it, it’s clearly something you’re having fun with, and I’m really happy for you, but...”
He’s very understanding.
“Do you know why I don’t have a DVD collection?” he asked me later.
I had to admit I had no idea. It’d never occurred to me before to wonder why he didn’t have a DVD collection.
He says that it’s because ten years ago, when there were still VCRs and DVDs were the hot new thing, Dan thought that in ten years DVDs would become similarly obsolete and there’d be some new thing. And just as DVDs were better than VHS, the new thing would be better than DVDs. So what’s the point?
Technology can make a nihilist of anyone.
But now, now with his Blu-Ray-playing but-DVD-playing-too PS3, and the sexy new telly he got for Christmas, he figures he’s all set. He thinks he’s reached the top of his curve; he’s not worried about what’s going to come along in ten more years. He tells me that it sounds like it’s going to be 3D. And he insists he’s not going to wear those silly glasses. So he’s done. He’s content.
And while I think this is baffling -- while I can’t remember the name of the cable he needs to connect the PS3 to the telly, I don’t even have a telly, and I hate 3D because I have basically monocular vision so it doesn’t work on me but does give me migraines when I try to watch 3D movies at the cinema, and I think even HD is really pretty much wasted on me because my sight is poor enough that regular D is already pretty much the limit of what I’m going to notice anyway so I couldn’t care less about these Blu-Ray things that have won this generation’s version of the VHS-or-Betamax war...
Anyway, like I was saying, while I think this is baffling, I’m quite pleased in some way that Dan’s got the telly he wants, and he’s got the, um, various-kinds-of-disc player, and he’s content in this one area of his life. It’s not a huge area, mind, but it’s nice to think that if a guy wants a shiny telly with all the right wires coming out of it so he can see the sweat on Christian Bale’s bollocks, well, he can get this.
His happiness, I mean. Not Christian Bale’s bollocks. Dan wants you to know that he is not interested in the bollocks particularly but generally he agrees with me on this. He was with me there, right up until the end.
And it occurred to me that, in some ways, this is the beautiful thing about being an adult. You put up with all this shit when you’re a kid, having to do things, people telling you all the time that most fun things are forbidden, people making fun of you at school, and you put up with all of this because you are convinced that one day things will be better. One day you can sleep until one o’clock and only wake up then because your girlfriend called you. One day you can have ice cream for breakfast or stay up until all hours of the night playing video games.
And, looking at Dan I am reminded: you will never stop being excited about new toys.
* Okay, I might be paraphrasing a little bit here. I know there’s lots of letters but I don’t know what the sodding thing is called. This is sort of the point here, as you shall see.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 09:31 am (UTC)Yay for freewill:-)
And, though it's not a huge area, life is made by little victories sometimes.
I like little victories.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 11:51 am (UTC)(Though, oddly enough, he is still in bed now and it's noon.)
And also, if he looked at his life, at all the Doctor Who DVDs he has, all the strange musical instruments he's filled the house with (and only half of them have been broken the whole time he's owned them!), the sexy wife of course, and all that. And he does eat biscuits for breakfast and these other things that you get yelled at for as a kid but no one yells about when you're an adult.
Except I never did any of those things. I was sort of self-policing as a child, I wanted to be good and I was raised by people who would've never thought to forbid ice cream for breakfast because they never would've imagined that anybody could really conceive of such a thing. Not any proper person, anyway.
(My parents' inability to imagine certain kinds of weirdness has served me well in later life; most of the things I do now of which they'd so vehemently disapprove are things that aren't even on their radar.)
But that meant that when I was an adult and off on my own I was simultaneously feeling like it was just playing house and I was always half-expecting my parents to show up to fetch me and take me home, and also constantly worrying that I was getting this Being a Grown-Up thing wrong because I had no structure or point to my life whatsoever. I was always kinda looking over my shoulder for the Grown-Up Police, who were bound to turn up and tell me I was getting it all wrong.
It's only relatively recently I've managed to chill out about this at all, and I think it helps that I've gained even the tiniest bit of confidence that what I'm doing is okay, it's not all weird and wrong, it's good enough. I could still do a lot better at that but that it's finally kicking in at all is something I am grateful for.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 09:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 09:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 11:19 pm (UTC)I haven't quite made it to ice cream for breakfast yet...definitely on the "to do" list, as long as there is chocolate sauce!