jouing

Hey there! So, uh, I've been caught up in a writing topic project that transformed from [expectation] a concise post or two into [reality] a giant (non-flying) spaghetti monster of words and paragraphs and headers and line breaks. Trapped in the Sisyphean "I'll finally post it this week!" vortex, I sorta-kinda didn't think to post anything at all. oops.

Daily life is teaching elementary school from the back of a shampoo bottle - reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic; lather, rinse, repeat. Apparently not much emphasis on grammar, though: that sentence was a disaster. I wish there were health updates to pass along, but nothing doing. Progress continues to be slow, stilted, and a little gory. Punctuated equilibrium: it's not just for evolution anymore!

Anyway, what have I been up to lately? That appears to be a good question, as I have been staring at old Blinky McCursorson for an inordinate amount of time, wondering what an honest answer might be. The usual daily stuff is there: sifting through [primarily] tech articles, studying a video lecture or two, enjoying some fake news (tu me manques tellement, faux-Stephen), and chasing my apparent quest to read every article on Wikipedia. We're in the thick of the NHL playoffs, so my TV has been glowing white since mid-April. The rest of the room, glows anything but - Hue lights cast psychedelic raveworthy excellent team colors.

Otherwise, the gamer in me has been sneaking out when he thinks I'm not looking, wasting time not-learning and not-doing. My game collection is hilariously anti-diverse, ranging from isometric (sorta top-down, like SimCity) turn-based strategy to isometric pausable strategy to isometric turn-based tactical to isometric semi-turn-based RPG. In order, those categories are essentially Civilization, Age of Empires, X-COM, and Baldur's Gate. There are a few non-isometric RPGs, point-and-click adventures and digitized board games in there, but the vast majority of my collection has me looking down at an angle, moving things around and clicking buttons at my leisure. These archetypes - the ones in the "mouse-friendly and minimal dexterity or timing required" pigeonhole - are all I can really play, given my physical limitations. If only I weren't absolutely terrible at every last one of these games. I'm more mathematical than civil (SimCity); I don't have the brain for chess (X-COM, and yes, I'm calling it glorified chess); I tend to make funny-but-ultimately-awful in-game choices (any "decisions matter" RPG); I'm a logistics-averse pacifist (Age of Empires, Civilization); and I can't even begin to understand Risk (Civ again). That's not to say I don't play these games: my Steam profile mocks me with embarrassing "hours played" statistics every time I scroll through my game list. Alas, what I wouldn't give for an hour to speedrun Megaman X4... *pshing*

Wait a sec - I'm not a gamer, and this isn't a gaming blog. Whoopsie! Come back next time for some more off-topic randobabble.