Thoughts on Noise, Early Acclimation, and That Motherfucking Super Nintendo

The noise makes me want to rip things apart with my teeth. Horrible, repetitive, constant, meaningless sound. Patch’s new antique Super Nintendo is out to get me. The midi music, the percussive little effects, the wee squawking. Why do I sleep in the library, where privacy and silence come to die? Oh yeah. Because I’m poor. From the other room Meg suggests they play a game where they make all the sounds themselves in time with the donkey-thing. Points for vicious use of telepathy?

It’s not that I don’t love my friends, and not that I’m unused to sharing space. I’m the eldest of seven kids, including the siblings and adjacent-dwelling cousins, and have lived with innumerable pets, grandparents, and employees mucking about the house. I can handle a good deal of organic sound, though someone saying ‘Hey Erin’ when I’m working tends to slice through my brain like a hot knife. Probably a remnant of my mother’s constant lowing for me to come up to the main floor and do something or other.

But we never habitually had the television on. My roommates seem to feel much more comfortable with its droning ambient noise than without it. I’m not trying to be an anti-tv snob, but the low whine of its static when no one’s watching it creeps the fuck out of me. I never go to the tv unless I specifically intend to watch a film/show on dvd. I’ve arrived at the end of the generations that tune in for programs, I think. I bit-torrent a show or buy it, abetted by the fact that several of the shows I watch aren’t American and don’t get broadcast here ever/in a timely manner anyway.

Also, I never played any video games as a kid (anti-violence was my mother’s singular point of liberal thought). The hyper-real amount of noise generated by every action in those old games makes me want to seize. This must be what living in a flat above Akihabara Electric Town in Tokyo is like.


Except, you know, for the part where it's nothing like that.

Thoughts on Noise, Early Acclimation, and That Motherfucking Super Nintendo

The noise makes me want to rip things apart with my teeth. Horrible, repetitive, constant, meaningless sound. Patch’s new antique Super Nintendo is out to get me. The midi music, the percussive little effects, the wee squawking. Why do I sleep in the library, where privacy and silence come to die? Oh yeah. Because I’m poor. From the other room Meg suggests they play a game where they make all the sounds themselves in time with the donkey-thing. Points for vicious use of telepathy?

It’s not that I don’t love my friends, and not that I’m unused to sharing space. I’m the eldest of seven kids, including the siblings and adjacent-dwelling cousins, and have lived with innumerable pets, grandparents, and employees mucking about the house. I can handle a good deal of organic sound, though someone saying ‘Hey Erin’ when I’m working tends to slice through my brain like a hot knife. Probably a remnant of my mother’s constant lowing for me to come up to the main floor and do something or other.

But we never habitually had the television on. My roommates seem to feel much more comfortable with its droning ambient noise than without it. I’m not trying to be an anti-tv snob, but the low whine of its static when no one’s watching it creeps the fuck out of me. I never go to the tv unless I specifically intend to watch a film/show on dvd. I’ve arrived at the end of the generations that tune in for programs, I think. I bit-torrent a show or buy it, abetted by the fact that several of the shows I watch aren’t American and don’t get broadcast here ever/in a timely manner anyway.

Also, I never played any video games as a kid (anti-violence was my mother’s singular point of liberal thought). The hyper-real amount of noise generated by every action in those old games makes me want to seize. This must be what living in a flat above Akihabara Electric Town in Tokyo is like.


Except, you know, for the part where it's nothing like that.