A number of readers of the January edition of Dorset PC Gamer Magazine as well as several silver-surfers who took careful note of yesterday's announcement of the release of Threadbone Airway's hope-giving and life affirming Airport Chaos 2 App, have been in touch. Their reason for doing so has been, in the main, [a] to welcome the new - and so far most hyper-realistic - iteration of the Threadbone Holidays Gaming experience and [b] to admit to their complete ignorance of any previous incarnation of the app - ie Airport Chaos 1.
Indeed even for the most dedicated gamer / virtual holiday enthusiast, the previous availability of this state-of-the-art role playing app seems to have come as something of a surprise. Typical of the responses we have seen are those from veteran e-player N. Joy Flyte-Simms ["I might actually have got off my arse and given the couch a rest if I'd known I could go out and buy this"* and from Threadbone Airways Executive Class Gold Card Holder Mr Ayre Miles: "The amount of time I used to waste in 1st Class airport suites waiting for delayed and cancelled Threadbone Airways flights might have been much more profitable if I'd had this little gem and my virtual feedback joy-stick".
* Our Nostalgia Editor adds: "Does anyone remember the time when you saw something in a magazine or advertisement, liked it and could actually go out to a shop to buy it? Happy days! We shan't see the like of those again any time soon".
Our Under 5s Editor adds: "What's a shop?"
However, a quick glance at Dorset PC Gamer Magazine for June 2019 confirms that Airport Chaos 1 was indeed launched in that month - and to rave reviews ["This first release of Airport Chaos 1 is the best version yet"]. Interesting to note, however, that the chaos in the title of this first iteration referred less to the abandoned aeroplanes and extreme travel restrictions now facing the non-travelling public [not to mention the empty airports that bear witness to it], but rather to the stressful overcrowding and under-capacity that once plagued the holiday season - something we once dreaded but would now welcome with open arms [see below]. As Roman philosopher Magister Perfragmen once wisely said: "O tempora O mores". And that surely remains as true today as it did back then. [Whenever [Ed].]
Meanwhile electronic game developer M T Koffe-Mugg says that Airport Chaos 2 is a huge advance on Airport Chaos 1. "For one thing it's far simpler and for another it's much more realistic. Creating believable people [aka avatars] is a complete bugger and version 2 doesn't have any. It's been a breeze".
The University of Afpuddle's Visiting "Muppet" Chair of Philosophy, Professor Havant Akloo writes:
"May we live in interesting times!" I believe - though am not entirely sure - that is was Professor Thrupiece who coined that particular phrase and with it unleashed the entire twenty-first century. As a visionary he knew only too well the fluidity of circumstance and the degree to which episodic crises could change our world and with it our entire understanding of it as well as the language through which re-cognition could be both adumbrated and expressed. So it would have surprised him not at all that so many words, phrases, indeed entire sentences have become altered in their specific meaning and more generic import simply by the re-contextualisation demanded by the current crisis. Typical in this regard is the word "chaos" which once meant an unusually confused, disorganised and dysfunctional state but has now come to mean "normal" or "to be expected" or - by extension - "life as we know it". Add the word airport into the equation and the scope for satisfactory disambiguation becomes hopelessly lost. We have rehearsed here many times and need not do so again the particular challenges already posed to etymologists, grammarians and philologists as well as experts in epistemological linguistics by the word "normal" even setting aside its sexist, homophobic, racist and majority-ist connotations in a world where "Norm" is no longer acceptable even as a foreshortened masculine name.
So when we speak of a return to "normality" or, worse, an expectation that "normal circumstances will be resumed" or, more extremely, "normal life restored", what exactly do we mean? Since for many, chaos itself is now a far more prevalent and characteristic experiential condition than non-chaos [or "organisation"] do we infer that a "normal" future is likely to be normatively organised or normatively chaotic? Who knows. It is for these reason that the prospect of "normal chaos being resumed" is both ontologically-complex and epistemologically challenging. Not to mention absolutely unlikely.
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