Category Archives: writing

Heavy Rain

I finished Heavy Rain back in April and my experience was pretty amazing overall.  I’m still sorting out all of the emotions that I went through.

A preview

28 September 1994

Some things are just too petty to have actually worried about, but I did.

It’s crazy.

But maybe I have gone too far. Let me explain. I have a time machine.  It’s just a bankers box, not too heavy.  It is filled with books and folders. The folders are filled with printouts. Some of them are dot matrix printouts, neatly stapled. The books are a ragtag bunch. Some are spiral bound notebooks and some are honest to goodness leather bound journals.

The interesting thing about this time machine is the labeling. On it, an earlier version of me has written, “Box o’Inspiration.” Then, below that in all caps, “USE ME, DAMMIT!” Then below that in smaller letters, perhaps as an afterthought, “Stop running away.”

The Debut

My first twitter post isn’t all that exciting.  It’s not a, “Hey, I’m trying out this twitter thing” or a “Hello world” post.  It’s simply a blurb that exists and has some meaning in that moment.   Something that I expressed in well under 160 characters but in retrospect could have used more of them to place it in context.

Simply:

Sitting in Michael’s office.
2:48 PM Apr 11th, 2007 via web

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The bathroom

Let’s pretend that there is a small Japanese restaurant that you have been going to for years.  It’s nice, quiet, and they know your name.  The food is delicious and a fair price and they even make special orders for you.  Now you have been going for years, and there is something that you never noticed until recently.  It’s just that, the leftmost stall in the restroom is always out of order.

Always.

At the engagement party.   The night you celebrated your new job.  The day you had two bottles of sake with your coworkers at lunch then went back to work and no one noticed.  The day everyone was snowed in and they were the only restaurant open.

It’s just that tonight, tonight as you are washing your hands you notice that there is a new sign taped to the stall.  The paper is white, taped up with cello tape.  The letters are large and red, and simply read, “OUT OF ORDER.”

But this time you really look at the door.  The metal lock has been mangled shut and the space between the door and the wall has been taped over with black duct tape.  There are plywood panels that extend from the bottom of the stall to the floor.  There is a similar treatment from the top of the stall to the ceiling.  You think nothing of it until you notice something.

The bolts holding the plywood in place were screwed in from the inside.

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Old Tech

I threw away some old Motorola Talkabouts today.  So old that they did not even have LCD screens to show you the channel ID and the security code.  Instead, you did some strange button combination that required fingers to be in different places on your hand.

That button combination is now lost in the sands of time.

When it was performed successfully, the radio would then speak the numbers aloud, in an unsettling voice that would vary the emphasis between syllables.

Seven.  Thirteen.”

I remembered carrying them with me in my daily bag.   “Just in case,” although the cases wherein I needed them were always few and far between.

The times that I did use them regardless of whether or not I needed them were far more often.  Like grocery shopping, or running into the drugstore while another person waited in the car.  Over time, they’ve saved me perhaps two  minutes while I told someone to meet me at the storefront instead of having me walk back to the car.

I remember using them, clipped on my belt, to coordinate friend’s moving days.  I remember scheduling lunch at some of the earliest Anime conventions I attended.  Coordinating student events in college was also another use.  I remember using them, for some reason, while shopping in White Flint mall.

Now, text messaging is far more efficient and reliable.

I looked at them before I threw them out.  The rubber had taken on the greyish white tinge of decay.  One of them was missing a volume knob.  The weight of one indicated that I had left batteries inside, and I knew that opening the battery compartment was a bad idea.  The manufacturing date was June, 1998.

They had been in the drawer for probably over a decade, following me from dorm room to a house that I rented to a condo I rented to a house that I now own.  They probably stopped working two or three moves ago, maybe longer than that.

It was time to let them go, but not the memories that accompanied them.

I made a mental note to take the batteries out of the six other radios that I had, and dumped them in the blue bin that my building uses for electronic devices trash.