Day 210: Shiny Thing

I’m debating whether to buy a new gaming PC in the sales.

I know I shouldn’t. I know that Black Friday is a lie, that consumerism is rotten all the way through to the centre of its shrivelled heart, that “we buy new stuff to conceal from ourselves our disappointment about the failings of the old stuff.”

I know all this. But on the other hand, I really, really want a Shiny Thing!

Imagine what life will be like with a new gaming PC. I’ll come home from work jubilant and excited, primed to undertake important writing and photo editing, the smile on my face illuminated by the elegant glow of the machine’s tasteful blue LEDs. Within seconds Windows will have booted from the secondary 500GB solid-state harddrive, and a world of buttery smooth computing will be at my fingertips. The 16GB RAM will handle tabbing between multiple programs without breaking a sweat. The Intel Core i5 processor will chomp through data at a rate of knots. And once the work is done, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card will bring stunning videogame worlds into stark, ultra-high-setting detail at framerates of which my hoary old Sony PlayStation 4 can but dream.

There’ll be no more turning my computer on and then going to make breakfast while it loads up. What a slog. What squalor. What debasement.

There’ll be no crashes to desktop. No Blue Screens of Death. No hard resets. I’ll press a button and the sleeping giant will roar to life, instantly ready to transport me to wherever in the digital world I require to go.

There’ll be no more sadness. No depression. No world hunger. Only whirring, purring machinery, the clicky-clack of keyboard keys, the softest gentlest glow from those comforting blue LEDs.

And what’s money? It is but a concept. Grubby bits of paper, lines on a bank ledger, imbued with only the meaning we choose to bestow upon it.

An abstract, whimsical thing, money, of little note. Far better to convert that whishy-washy idea into thrumming, corporeal silicon. Glass-windowed casing. The primal twitching coils of internal SATA cables. You can’t lick the concept of money, can you? But you can lick a motherboard (although perhaps you shouldn’t). The concept of money can’t keep you warm, but a 600 watt bronze-rated power supply will heat the home all the way through the icy months of winter.

And what of the Nintendo Switch I recently bought, sitting sniffling in the corner? A paltry creature, dull and lifeless. No one cares about Nintendo Switches anymore. It’s all about new gaming PCs. That’s where the future lies. Beautiful gaming PCs, big and bold, bristling with features.

Hear the voice calling. The silken voice of the Shiny Thing, whispering in your ear. “You’re nothing. You’re empty. You’re a husk. But I’ll take away your suffering, I’ll burn it apart in the coruscating gleam of the Shine. Buy me. Buy me, and together we will ascend.”

… Hmm. On second thoughts maybe I should leave it for now. Mike dropped some homemade soup off on his way to work. I’ll eat the homemade soup, ladle it out, mop it up with my leftover brown bread roll, and let another day pass.

Consumerism is a lie. Soup is truth. Lovely, lovely soup.