Inspired by my previous post, I’ve decided to re-read It, for the however-many-nth time. It’s comfort food, albeit a very strange sort of comfort food. But these are weird times, after all. To paraphrase a joke on Twitter from last week – I may not believe in the end times, but these last few weeks certainly feel like a dress rehearsal for the real thing.
It’s been several years since my last venture into Derry, and in the intervening years my reading habits have changed rather dramatically – being a Kindle convert will do that to you – and so even though I’ve read this book a zillion times, I was startled to discover a few details I’d not noticed previously.
I literally just finished re-reading the very first chapter – the sad saga of Georgie and the newspaper boat – and somehow never noticed that, in his desperate search for the paraffin in the dark basement (and the VERY RELATABLE terror of being a small child in a dark basement), he stumbles across a box of Turtle wax and is transfixed by the image of the turtle on the box. He feels that he’s seen that turtle before, but in a different context, and he almost loses his train of thought in trying to remember. Now, if you’ve read the book, the turtle is rather significant, but it doesn’t show up for another thousand pages. I’ve read this book a gazillion times and yet, somehow, I never connected the dots until just now.
For those of you who’ve seen the movie – is George’s brief venture into the basement filmed? I mean, the main thrust of that chapter is what happens at the end, not at the beginning, but I’m genuinely curious to see if they bothered to film that. It’s a very small detail, but it’s the sort of detail that makes the book experience so rich and vibrant.
I’m not yet ready to talk about Destiny 2. I’m only level 8, with a light level somewhere in the mid-70s or 80s. I’ve been playing solo, and as such I’m allowing myself to grind here and there so that I can be a bit over-leveled for each actual mission. And yet I’ve only completed 3 or 4. I’ve seen a very tiny fraction of what the game apparently has to offer. I think I’m enjoying it – certainly a lot more than the first one – and I look forward to getting some co-op in, as I think that’s where the game will truly shine.
I do have to share my friend Greg’s annoyance that you can’t truly pause, which is the sort of thing you have to worry about when you’re a parent. I’d say the vast majority of players I’ve run into are all level 20, and so clearly they have way more time on their hands than I do. That’s fine and good; I was never going to hop into the Crucible anyway.
I feel like I should say something about PewDiePie’s latest racial outburst, though there’s nothing I would say that hasn’t been said a lot better by people with much bigger audiences. He’s apologized, though that’s not even really the point. The reason why I don’t hop into Destiny’s Crucible or GTA V’s multiplayer or really any multiplayer is because, for the most part, playing with strangers online is an excruciatingly awful experience. You hear that sort of language all the goddamned time.
It’s just that PDP, who has an audience of over 50 million people, helps normalize this sort of language and validates it for other people. They might not consider themselves racist, but if you choose to use the n-word (or really any type of slur), you’re saying that you’re OK with racist language. And it’s shitty, and awful, and negligent. My 4-year-old is eventually going to get into videogames, and I’m sure he’ll be watching YouTubers, and while I will endeavor to guide him towards the right way of doing things and teach him not just about bad words but also about the power these words have, I’m not going to be able to hover over his shoulder forever. And at some point he’s gonna hear some jackass use these words, and he’s either going to be offended, or he’s going to think it’s cool. I only hope he makes the right choice.
Shouts From The Couch 