Buff Daddy

I’ve been watching stuff on Amazon.com. For some reason, my bedroom has been getting spotty Wi-Fi connection.

Those two things are borderline non sequiturs, but in combination they happen to make for some of the most infuriating evenings of my life.

First Amy Pohler turns fuzzy. Her crazy eyes become slightly less crazy. Her blonde coiff not so sculpted. That’s how I know the unspeakable is coming. Sure enough, within seconds, I have an image of Chris Pratt, with a goofy expression, plastered across the breadth of my computer screen. He recovers, carries on for another few seconds, lifting his eyebrows high on his head and almost getting to a punchline, and then freezes with a new goofy expression. I reset the internet connection and try again. Same sequence. A goofy face from Chris Pratt. Then I die inside. I want to find an insect in my room just so I can punch it.

It’s the discontinuity of the process. That’s what boils my bodily fluids. Blood, urine, mucus, all of them blowing by their respective vapor pressures and bubbling out of my ears. It’s that damn discontinuity.

Nothing is more upsetting, in a visceral way, than discontinuity. I would rather see Vince Wilfork in a leotard than have a streaming video freeze. It would affect much more mildly.

I hate seeing stories interrupted. After all, that’s what I log on to watch—I leech off my mom’s Amazon Prime account to watch stories. It’s the same for all the stupid things I watch online. Whether streaming a soccer game, a YouTube performance of groovy musician, or a critically acclaimed drama, I am watching because I want to experience a story.

But a story frozen right along the path of a narrative is the most gut-wrenching thing in the world. A touch and go narrative, as a product of buffering, takes a chisel and starts chipping away at all the sensibilities I've developed about how a story should play out. I can feel my soul losing piece by piece, each one falling into a cold basin of frozen images.

It’s not a matter of impatience, either. It is not frustration at being kept away from the completion of whatever it is I’m watching. Not frustration based in being deprived of the end of a story. It’s not a “Come on. Load already. I can’t wait to see what happens.” This is never the internal conversation. It's never a problem of anticipation.

It’s more “Whatever should be happening right now, is not happening right now, and that makes my soul die.” It’s more like that. The anger is not founded in anything but the desire to experience the present. To have confirmation that the present survives.

There’s meaning in this, but I can’t figure out what it is. Maybe it’s a reminder to keep going. That seems simple enough. No one cares about where I go, so much as they do that I am going.

I need to keep moving, to make the present survive as the present, and avoid it’s conflicting with the past. I don’t think people like it when present looks identical to past. It’s confusing, and it messes with how we understand a story. That’s why people can’t stand buffering. It’s why I want to punch insects when an image freezes on my computer. Keep moving. No one cares so much about where the story ends up.

Gosh, that post took a turn for the banal, did it not? I honestly thought it had a chance going in. Then I got lazy. Oh well, maybe next time.