High fidelity.

I'm sitting here in my living room, trying to do readings and write a paper that I would rather be doing in my room--but my roommate is already asleep and he needs to get up at like five to go to work so I'm not gonna bother him.

There's some dude sitting on my couch. He's not one of my roommates. He lives here in the Foreign Language Student residence like me, but in the Japanese house I think. Let me add that it is just about to strike 1 o'clock in the morning. He is not only sitting, but he's also playing Final Fantasy XIII. I would love to be focusing on my reading about how the early feminist movement in Britain was tied to and even upheld the ideological agenda of imperialism, but I can't really, cuz this gamer is controlling some girl in a cape fighting some weird-looking tigers.

I barely know this guy-- and he doesn't know me. But he seems to feel quite comfortable about playing Playstation in someone else's apartment while I sit here, struggling to get work done.

What really takes the cake is something he said to one of my roommates who just walked in.

"You know, I think Final Fantasy would be perfect for..." and he starts to think hard, looking for the right words to express his yearning. "It would be perfect for a kind of way to experience yourself the vertigo, the disorientation of the character jumping around."

"Virtual reality, you mean," I mutter.

"Well, kind of, but without the head gear, without all the tech stuff. Just pure sensation, through the game."

Twenty minutes of awkward co-existence later: "Maybe if I go into biophysics... I could help develop the technology to bring us to the next level of virtual reality."

Look, I've played as many video games as the next kid of my generation, but still. Come on. Really? The unabashed desire for a replacement of reality with a fake one through video games embarrasses even me-- and it's a little too much for me to handle right now--or to respect. Especially when it's sitting on my couch and I need to be studying.

He's not gone yet, if you were wondering.