My brain is full. I don’t mean that in an “I’m so smart” sort of way, but rather that I feel unable to consume any more media.
As an example: I finished reading Little, Big the other day, which I very much enjoyed even if it was somewhat exhausting – and which puts me at 46 books read in 2017 – and ever since I put it down, I’ve been unable to get into a new book for more than 15 minutes. I started reading the first volume of Crowley’s Aegypt series, but couldn’t get into it. I thought maybe I could start reading Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer, except I realized I couldn’t remember what had happened in the first two books, and in the prologue he mentions a side-story that he published that takes place between volume 2 and 3, and I figured I might as well start over from the beginning. One of my “to buy” books was suddenly on sale, but after only two chapters of The Essex Serpent my mind started to wander. I figured why not go back to the classics and finally read Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and while it’s fun to narrate that book in my head with a whiskeyed noir voice, I found myself getting confused by the plot almost immediately. I think it’s my brain, not the book. (I don’t necessarily need recommendations, either – I mean, my to-read list on my Kindle is almost 12 pages deep.)
I’m still undecided about doing my year-end recaps. Several reasons for this:
- I’m feeling very lazy;
- I’m just busy enough at work to make the proper amount of concentration a bit dicey;
- My music list, which should be the thing I pay the most attention to, is a complete mess;
- All of my spreadsheets – with the exception of my books – are incomplete and I don’t know where to begin in terms of fixing them; and
- Let’s be honest, the biggest reason why I’m avoiding this is because recapping 2017 just kinda sucks. This year sucked. My mom was in the hospital for at least half of it; the Trump administration gave me a low-to-mid-level anxiety attack pretty much every day of the year; and my general anxiety and depression levels have been starting to get a little out of whack, to the point where I’ve had to up my medication dosages. I’ve basically taken a vacation from creativity; instead of making music and finishing this album, I’ve imbibed a little bit too much and eaten too much junk food. I’ve spent way too much money, and I’m angry at myself for spending money, and I end up spending more money to make myself feel better.
So maybe I’ll just do quick Top 5 lists of the relevant stuff and then leave it at that. That’s doable.
I finished Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and I enjoyed it very much – I’d put AC:O right up there alongside Brotherhood and Black Flag as a high point in the franchise – and now I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m sorta playing Wolfenstein 2, and I have to tell you – there’s a lot of discourse out there about whether it’s actually deserving of all the praise it initially received, and there’s some people who are skeptical about how the game was marketed – given that punching Nazis is cool again – but I haven’t really seen anybody talk about how batshit ridiculous the game can be. I don’t know how far into the game I am yet but the stuff I’ve done – and the stuff that’s happened to me – and the places I’ve visited – are completely fucking insane, and keep in mind that in the first game you shot Nazis on the fucking Moon. The stuff that’s happened to me already makes that sound tame by comparison.
My son and I finished Super Mario Odyssey, and we also finished Lego City Undercover, and that was maybe the most fun I’ve had playing games all year. He loves it. Every time we do something cool he gives me a big high-five and jumps up and down. Now I just need to find something else for us to play; I have a few things lined up but to be honest he’s kinda content to keep going back into Lego City and mess around, which is fine with me.
My wife and I watched Dark on Netflix last week. I’m the wrong guy to make a “Best TV of 2017” list, since I don’t watch all that much, but I loved it. It’s gotten a lot of comparisons to Stranger Things, but I think that’s a bit off the mark – it’s more like a time-travelling art-house hybrid of Lost, Twin Peaks, and Hannibal. If you decide to watch it – and I think you should – keep the audio in the original German and use English subtitles; the English overdubs are distracting.
Shouts From The Couch 