Late fees are not the part of the ritual I honor; if I recall correctly, there is still a fee on my credit score from Hastings - "my entertainment superstore" - as the result of a misplaced Monster Rancher. I had placed it under the seat of my car so it would always be in there, maximizing the return opportunities while minimizing its attack surface. I forgot about it completely. This is the kind of fruitless, clever-in-quotes ritual I have come to call "outsmarting yourself."

Paying extra money to borrow something is not it. But! Making Something Impermanent, this is kinda hot shit. Putting a set of parentheses around it, adding a metagame. I'm about a million years old, and according to the various obelisks, fetishes, and featureless altars of our society I have occasionally managed to accomplish things that it honors, but in terms of "success" nothing has felt better than renting a game, staying two nights a friend's house, and beating it before their mom has to take it back on Monday.

It has arcade dynamics: how much entertainment can you extract from a coin? There's skill and caprice intertwined, real Vegas shit. Renting here had a further richness, because there was a scenario where you had functionally paid three to five dollars for a forty dollar game. The sun was a little brighter; some other color was now visible. Sisters became marginally more tolerable. And the pizza rolls! The pizza rolls had a toothsome je ne sais quoi.

(CW)TB out.