A short time ago I pissed my lady off. My rig was getting kind of long in the tooth so I suggested to her that I upgrade and use the leftover parts to build her a rig that I would attach to the big TV in the living room. She asked how much all of it would cost, I said "Shouldn't be too much, I'll get all bargain bin stuff."
I lost it in the store and came back from Fry's that day with Win 7 Ult 64-bit, an i7 cpu, a 1920 x 1080 display, a GTS card that renders dragon lint x1000, and a few other baubles totaling to an amount that I cannot repeat for fear of my life.
I was expecting her to be gone when I got back, and my plan was to install everything, hide the boxes, set her comp up, then play Crysis 2 on ultra high spec until she saw the bank statement. But she was still puttering around the house when I walked in with two armfuls of epic loot and a shit eating grin that instantly morphed into "aww shit" frown. Like I said, she was pissed.
After a while she came to appreciate having access to the internet in place of regular television. And I fell into the pit of sole ownership of a computer I loved. I treat it like the one ring, no one can use it. I still disconnect my R.A.T. 3 and stow it in my bag whenever I leave the house.
She spends her bandwidth watching internet shows, surfing the net, or playing flash games for fun. Which kills me inside because PC gaming is about spending a week optimizing and updating your rig, launching the game, seeing a jaggy or single frame rate stutter, closing the game, and spending the rest of the day in bios trying to turn 3.20gh to 3.80gh without setting the computer on fire. Practice? I'm talkin' bout the game.
When my butt falls asleep I sit on the couch and watch her surf. A couple days ago she spent eight straight hours watching you tube submittions for a dance contest thrown by a South Korean pop group called 2NE1.
I had no idea what 2NE1 was, or how to pronounce it. But I ended up getting sucked into the drama after watching all of these regular people give heartbreaking testimonials about where they came from and how much they want to win if only to meet the group the idolize. I ended up nodding my head every time a new video started.
To win the contestants had to mimic a dance routine from one of 2NE1's videos. They were amazing, we must have watched thirty of them that night, but we both agreed that two crews from the same Vietnam dance studio were shoo ins to win.
I went with St. 319 because they had heart, swagger, and a street style that I enjoy, and Lyly went with L.Y.N.T, arguing that they were the most well rounded and polished group. Lyly's squad ended up winning the contest. But I still consider St. 319 the peoples champ. A while after watching the competition I realized that we had not watched traditional television since the big TV became a computer. TV had its milkshake drunk.
The 15 minutes of fame has gone open source, because fame is an internet connection away now. Telling a kid you used to run home to watch a television show at a set time because if you didn't, well you just missed it, will get you laughed at. It's in the pile with beepers and pay phones and mix tapes. Maybe everything is a mixtape now, which dosen't sound so bad, even though I still miss sitting there for hours in my room making an actual mixtape.
