SIX FOUR (I)
Nearing the 400 page mark of Hideo Yokoyama’s much-lauded crime novel and I'm a.) pretty sure that I like it and b.) not quite sure what I was expecting. It certainly wasn't an INSIDER-esque look at the relationship between the Japanese police and the media; perhaps something more along the lines of DRAGON TATTOO or even HIGH AND LOW (a favorite film; mem: still need to watch Spike Lee's HIGHEST 2 LOWEST). Expectations aside, I know like it well enough to have picked up Yokoyama’s other books in English translation (SEVENTEEN and THE NORTH LIGHT) – I'll just be sure to never read the back or anything about any of his work before diving in. Marketing copy expectations are a cruel temptress and, now that I'm over waiting for the kidnapping part to take over, I realize that I should've known better. Even though I did write my own copy for my own book all those years ago but hey, whatever works.
HELL IS US (II)
For all of its beauty, frustration (controls, combat, inability to jump), and excellence, it's the emotional sucker punch of failing to do a good deed in time that hits hardest. In other games, these inevitable failures were oversights met with a shrug or mere frustration at not getting that bonus; in this, it's human, and with consequence: dead babies, lynched musicians, burnt bodies - I'm sorry I didn't find the milk in time! I'm sorry I couldn't find new sheet music! I'm sorry I didn't know what the fuck to do with those signal flares! I'm sorry I couldn't find your camp before because I couldn't figure out which part of the snake your leader was talking about...
me v the (autoimmune) asshole
After almost a decade of T1D, I've accepted that on my really, really bad days – like yesterday, which started off great (ok, burning through my welding glove with the laser welder and crustifying the top of my thumb kinda – and still – sucked) continued to be great, then culminated in an evening blood sugar crash while playing HELL IS US that left me on the kitchen floor in a mop-clean-up-required pool of sweat, copious amounts of sugar and glucose gel consumed, and a 330-point bg swing, a tidal wave crashing back to earth overnight – my only goal is to not let the autoimmune asshole win: nothing else matters, everything else swirling can go fuck itself. Except for learning to get cards out of my wallet without the use of my left thumb for a bit. Relieved that I took up sleight of hand and card manipulation when I quit smoking (14 years and counting and yes I miss it every day). Ambidexterity rules, T1D droolz.