FYI: I am about to go on a family vacation, which means this blog will be even quieter than usual.
I’ve also been dealing with some rather upsetting family-related issues that I’m not going to discuss here. It is hard, when one has a blog, to not be able to talk about this stuff. But on the other hand, that’s what therapy is for. In any event, I’ve been having a hard time mustering any enthusiasm for writing about what I usually write about here, because under the circumstances it’s difficult for me to imagine that anyone gives a shit. Leaving my own personal business aside, the world is a pretty fucked-up place right now; we could all die in a nuclear holocaust simply because our President* saw something on Fox News while eating a burned, ketchup-slathered steak at his private country club and decided to fire a bunch of missiles in the direction of an accumulation of brown people.
I don’t know how else to explain why I’m continuing to play Mass Effect Andromeda. It is true that the game is not as awful at it was in its first few hours – I’m currently at level 20, I think – but it’s still pretty mediocre at best. It’s a hard game for me to binge; I can only handle an hour or so at a time before needing to switch off. And yet I am compelled to push on, for reasons that still remain unknown.
I do know, though, that despite the rave reviews, I have no patience for Persona 5. I can’t spend 100 hours playing a game with a translation this shitty. (This AV Club review-in-progress talks about the game’s dialogue issues in greater detail; I only played the first 30 minutes or so before accepting that I was never going to have the patience to get much further.)
In terms of things that are good and beautiful and make the world a better place, I would HIGHLY recommend Amor Towles’ A Gentleman In Moscow, which is one of the best books I’ve read in quite some time. It is beautiful and lyrical and its many observations about life’s little details are insightful and illuminating. As a quick example:
Surely, the span of time between the placing of an order and the arrival of appetizers is one of the most perilous in all human interaction. What young lovers have not found themselves at this juncture in a silence so sudden, so seemingly insurmountable that it threatens to cast doubt upon their chemistry as a couple? What husband and wife have not found themselves suddenly unnerved by the fear that they might not ever have something urgent, impassioned, or surprising to say to each other again? So it is with good reason that most of us meet this dangerous interstice with a sense of foreboding.
Anyway, that’s the news. Tell your loved ones that you love them. Reach out to long lost friends and tell them you love them, too. Apologize to those you’ve wronged, and if your apology isn’t accepted, well, that’s OK too. Make your heart happy.
Shouts From The Couch 