Beats.

With the desert heat kicking into high gear this week, I needed to abandon the practice of sunset walks around the neighborhood as a form of exercise. Even though the sun is setting around 7:30 PM (1930) MST, it’s still well over 100F when this is happening and the walks are just not enjoyable for me. One of the things I realized back in 2021 when we first moved here was that summer was the indoor season here in the Sonoran Desert, versus our summer experiences back east.

I can live with it. I can easily live with it.

In order to keep my calories burned counts up I have gone back to playing Beat Saber on my Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. The experience has been good for the most part, aside from my aging headset occasionally glitching as it’s trying to update or something in the background. It’s still stuck on Chicago time because Meta offers absolutely no way to change the time zone on the unit after it’s original setup. So I play Beat Saber in the future when I’m in the present. I find this highly disconcerting due to my OCD-like tendencies, but I deal with it.

I think of Beat Saber as just an overblown version of Super Breakout from my Atari 2600 days and that’s probably why I enjoy the game. I tend to keep the same playlist for the experience; my favorite song on the platform is “Boy With Luv” by the South Korean boyband BTS. There’s one maneuver in the “hard” level that’s fun, because you get to throw the sabers in the air and then the colors change and it’s just a feel good moment. Plus, the song is written in a major key and we all need more major key experiences in the world.

Things needn’t be discordant all the time.

Graphic from a random marketing message somewhere on the InterTubes.