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Sophie's new friend
Monday, December 27 1999
I hung out in Eric's apartment all day writing and watching VH1 while Kim was out buying clothes with her mother. We both watched part of the movie Heat on DVD before she left. It was the first time I'd ever seen a DVD movie, and I was definitely impressed. As I was later re-watching parts of the Matrix, it struck me that DVD was just another step towards being completely immersed in a world managed and simulated by technology. DVD is easily as big a leap forward as colour teevee was from black and white.
I actually paid for our meal tonight when Kim and I went out with her mother and Chuck, though all we had was chili and tea at a McBar called Cooker.
Among other things, Kim and I bought Sophie a new "friend" today. A friend is a stuffed animal that Sophie gradually destroys, starting with the eyes and ending with the extraction of the last trace of stuffing. The process generally takes several months, though Sophie's last friend, a Scooby Doo effigy, was in two equal pieces after only a month and a half. Sophie's new friend is a discounted reindeer doll we found on sale in a Rite Aid. It originally contained a little electronic gizmo with a sample of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," but I extracted it (it rather resembled the electronic bug in the Matrix) and dissected it to see what I could make it do. I found that by cutting through a timing resistor and using the conductivity of the surface of my finger instead, I could exercise dramatic control over the playback time, alternately making the singing voices sound like chipmunks on one extreme or mooses on the other.
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