#243

Reading through the archive on a whim, and saw that on the first day of 2019 I made a list of stuff to be thankful for, and one of those things was "a present lack of catastrophic plagues." And so I thank God and all the saints within time and all those beyond it that indeed, we didn't have a plague then, and I had managed to be openly thankful for this before we, of course--of course!--would.

This is why we are thankful. Because living is enduring just long enough to lose it all; one or two things at a time till there's only one last thing to let go of, or all in one fell swoop. 

Sorry, guys. But I also mentioned total war in that post, and things don't look great. I mentioned catastrophic plagues in 2019 because, well, things didn't look great. People really weren't washing their fucking hands or taking anything about the concept seriously, y'know? So, I dunno. As I am wont to say: strap in. I think our current governments may well be in the grip of the paroxysm. 

The process is slow, though. We might have ten, twelve, fifteen years yet before the gunpowder's ready for the spark. And the paradigm might well shift, the momentum drain. Always we must hope.

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Also, reading your own work is always cringe, but reading your own public diary is actual pain, a pain hard to describe. You know me, though: I'm about to try.

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Whatever. What a piece of work is man, indeed. Indeed.

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Still reading Tristram Shandy, thank God. I was starting to scare myself. Maybe it's just that I read more on the computer in the mornings the last couple of days and watching more than one movie a night a few nights in a row. Watched like thirty movies in the last two months or so. Every live Batman movie ever made, for one. I can't believe, in this whole blog, how little I have discussed superheroes. Especially Batman and Spiderman. I have so much to say about them both. 

Anyhow, Tristram Shandy is so, so good, so so funny--oh, how I have lol'd! I'll finish it soon, but I don't want to. Been doing other stuff too. Loss has given me the resolve to aim for a healthier and more responsible social life. As we move "past" this pandemic, opportunities are thicker on the ground than they have been, and I have been trying to make use of them.

Other people may be hell, but heaven is a place on earth--a place you share with people. So it goes and thank God. 

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Also, I talk so little about The Legend of Zelda, even though it's one of the most important parts of my life! No mention of Skyrim all blog, or Mario! I don't mention Mario?!? Thank God I babbled enough about Pokémon to sort of illustrate how much that means to me.

When I was two years old, not long after I had learned to read confidently without help, I played my first video game. It was new, the edge of gaming--Super Mario World, on my cousin's Super Nintendo system. I have played video games my entire life since, and my blood runs Nintendo red. I got a Nintendo Switch in 2020, on which you can play Super Mario World, and Skyrim, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which is the greatest game ever made and one of the greatest works of art produced in the history of producing art on this planet), and so much else that it boggles the mind. I'm playing a little Skyrim again, along with a couple of games by the same publisher of oddities(nakana): Journey of the Broken Circle, by Lovable Hat Cult (they are Danish) and Infini, by a pack of mad Canucks known as Barnaque. They are good. 

All things are good. 

I have to take a piss.

Have a good day.

--JL