The thing I hate most about crashing is not the potential harm to innocents, nor the drain on police resources. It's the sudden stop, the loss of speed, and being overtaken by the other racers.

 

It wouldn't be so bad if it all ended there. Crunch, white light, select screen. But I'm forced to continue - delayed and damaged - until the race ends. So I struggle anew with the gear shifts, weave through the police swarm, and pray that I'll catch up eventually with the other green triangles now speeding to the edge of my automap, knowing I've lost so much time that losing is almost certain.

 

What is the benefit of playing a game you know you will lose? To learn how to handle your car better? To intimate yourself with the contours of the track? Let's face it, if the scenery weren't so distracting it would be pointless.

 

So in life, the feeling of loss is so suffocating that it's less emotionally damaging to simply not crash, simply not drive, simply not play. But the crash finds us. And then we realise the race had found us too. We were on a track all along. Side streets barred, detours blocked. The moment we try to play different, flashy numbers tell us how far behind we are. (Those flashy numbers sure sound like Mum.)

 

But then there's a pile-up ahead. You gleefully dodge the twisted smoking metal that only seconds ago flaunted their tail-lights in front of you. As you speed on to the finish line, you realise that what kept you - and other losers - going was hope for news of others' misfortune.

 

(Thanks to Benny for lending me Need for Speed Most Wanted for my PSP.)

Jim and Nath come up to Shin-Baghdad (新バグダド - the apartment so named because it looked like a car bomb hit it) for some Friday night drinks and Jim starts playing with the apartment pellet gun.

Jim is Australian, never shot a gun (guns are illegal in Australia,) and doesn't know anything about gun safety. He's waving it all over the place going, "P'shoo! P'shoo!" So I tell him, point it down, or at least put the safety on because I fixed it, it's cocked, and it could take an eye out. Japanese pellet guns will break skin at point blank range. Don't ask me how I know that.

Jim doesn't believe me. The Shin-Baghdad gun's been dead for ages and he doesn't believe I could have resurrected it.

 

Fine, I say, test it out. Just don't test it out on us.

 

This is all happening around summer time when the nights are sticky and the drink of choice is beer or ice cold reishu nihonshu.  Nights like this, we just sit on the couch and watch cockroaches go by.

Our shiny brown victim scuttles from behind the bin and stops just under the kitchen table. Its feelers wave about like it can sense the compounded malice of us three. Jim sneaks up behind, aims, squeezes the trigger...

 

CRACK!

"Holy FECK!" Jim and Nath scream as pellet and cockroach bits ricochet around the flat.

Sheesh. Told you so.

 

When the screaming dies down we go to inspect the cockroach. It's lying on its back and looks smaller than before. In fact it's missing the bottom third of its body including its arse, which is now spread over a dinner plate area of carapace shards and guts. It flips onto its four remaining legs and tries feebly to crawl away. That's when Jim gets the idea to pop it with a mercy pellet.

 

But then Mike comes up and we go to karaoke. By the time we come back, we find it had made it twenty centimeters before dying.