currently_2025jul28

in

End of summer break inbound; whereas everyday felt, for the last eight weeks, like Saturday, now they feel like Sunday. And so it goes, through the next few weeks. Things in process:

  • Final Shed transition from writing space with tools to full-on industrial art workshop. Metal and pictures and words oh my.

  • Moving rocks around nuPond. New footpath in the works for optimal gill-baby viewing.

  • Drawing little things for a zine, maybe. Words eventually, again.

  • Reading: WE ARE WATCHING, by Alison Gaylin; LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY, by Diarmaid MacCullough

  • Watching: PARADISE, season one.

  • LISTENING: On a BRMC binge.

  • PLAYING: ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY replay on PS5 because my brain can handle only wanton awesomeness and occasional quirk; BALATRO and MARIO KART WORLD on the Switch 2.

  • Toying around with new metal ideas, though I might wait for the blazing heat to fuck off to work on something bigger.

DAYS GONE REMASTERED (2025)

in

Finished it the other night and found it to be a - sometimes by turn, sometimes simultaneously - heartfelt, involving, repetitive, enraging, buggy, fun, cacophony of more-than-occasional brilliance that delivered that unicorn of my gaming tastes: an open world that, thanks in no small part to traversing the wilds of Oregon on a customizable motorcycle (though the inability to carry a spare fuel can was, by far, the most mystifying part of the experience) and its SOA-meets-RED DEAD-meets-LAST OF US pedigree, was a distinct pleasure to explore and/or seek out growlers, polystyrene, kerosene, and cultists that needed dispatching. Thinking: while it lacked the narrative heft and clear direction of THE LAST OF US, it's that very lack of heft and direction mixed with even more interesting characters that would've – should've – made it the obvious candidate for series adaptation. Far easier to surprise and take in different directions. Alas.