EPISODE 521: THE OCTOPUS IS NOT A PET
The real twist is that when he grabbed that Bible, IT burst into flame.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Trust me when I say you will not regret starting here today. Take your time, I’ll wait. Give it until #6 or 7 to really kick in. (H/t to Warren Ellis, who posted the link yesterday.)
(Let me also say, #25 is the worst thing that has ever happened to food or martinis.)
It’s good, right?
Remember restaurants? That was a fun thing people used to do wasn’t it?
I know you won’t believe this, grandson, but we used to sit in enclosed spaces with strangers just inches apart from each other, WITHOUT MASKS.
WAIT WHAT?
And if you recognized someone, you would go over and shake their hand.
Is it me or do face masks have the potential to become the new emoji?
Like, there’s BANE: SERIAL KILLER.
MIME SERIAL KILLER.
Hufflepuff.
You’re trying just a little too hard to be Gryffindor, Hufflepuff.
Slytherin.
And SCOTTISH SERIAL KILLER.
I literally Googled “Scottish face mask” and this is what came up. It’s really freaking me out.
There continues to be A Lot of Stuff Happening right now. You know, like gassing people at churches. STUFF.
In the midst of it all I have a lot of anxiety and discomfort about not doing All the Things to Help.
But then today I was stepping back and considering some people that I admire. Are they doing All the Things? No, they are not. And I realized I don’t expect them to , either. In fact what I need from them is to keep doing The Things They Do.
That’s not to say there’s not room to Do Things. But maybe it’s not The Thing everybody is doing, or The Thing everyone is saying is the Thing To Do. Maybe it’s Your Thing.
Your mileage not only may vary, is what I’m saying, it can vary.
(Yes I did Google “can vs. may” before I sent this out. I am living my 50th birthday year in a cave filled with Star Wars action figures, don’t judge me.)
In between Intense Bouts of LIFE I have been playing a lot of Long Way Home wait, shoot, nope, that’s not right, it’s called The Last of Us, though in my mind it is called Long Way Home, which is fine, my street name was spelled Russell and Russel for decades until Amazon arrived and decided everything had to be just one thing and now the street I grew up on no longer exists even though it’s still right there.
(There’s a science fiction story in there somewhere. Can we just say I wrote it and you liked it and now please hire me?)
Long Way Home of Us – whatever – is basically The Walking Dead with a middle aged guy trying to get a teenage girl across the country. Maybe not the best game to be playing in the midst of our health situation; Say look, Ma, an apocalypse!
But I think what I’m learning more is that to love a video game I need more than Shoots Gun at Things, and Teenagers, amirite?
Having said that, I will almost certainly play the sequel when it comes out next month, because I am one of those people who HAS TO READ TO THE END OF THE STORY.
(I really do. It is just this side of pathology.)
I don’t know if you dabble in the world of the dancing pixels much, but one thing I find really interesting about video games in the modern era is that you’re often not given any sense of when they’re going to finish. I’ve travelled almost all the way across the U.S. in Home, and it looks like we’re about to meet some Very Important People.
But is that the end of the game? The halfway point? Or something else?
(Actually, after writing this section of the newsletter I was literally incapable of keeping myself from returning to the game and now I can tell you a) we’re almost definitely near the big finish; and b) I may have a video game problem.)
When I was playing Jedi: Fallen Order way back in months two and three of Shelter at Home – just started my 13th week, Boy Scouts I will need my Eagle Scout badge when this is over, please and thank you—I thought there was a lot of story left, then BAM, all of a sudden it was over.
It’s a way that games are so different than any other pop culture form. You buy a novel, you know page by page how close to the end you are. With TV shows you can know not only how much longer the series is, but how much time you have left in an episode down to the second.
In video games, at least the kind I’m playing, it’s all a mystery. When you step in you really are throwing your life into the hands of the creators and saying take me for as long as you need.
It’s uncomfortable, actually. When I get on a task I like to finish it, and a game that has no clear end point is like volunteering putting your foot in a cast. Even as I’m writing this I want to Google “How long is The Last of us and Was it ever called Long Way Home, also WHY IS RUSSEL ST.”
But surrender is good too, right?
Here’s a question: do you find you have more and more emails piling up?
I ask because I have more and more emails piling up and I don’t know where they’re coming from. I have not signed up for All The Emails, nothing much has happened in my life that would require New Emails, I am doing plenty of deleting, but somehow I am still getting all of them. Pretty soon I’m going to have to just delete everything or risk asphyxiating in the mass spam.
It could be this is a story of how I’m not reading your emails.
Weird side effect of sheltering is that for the first time I am wondering what it would be like to have a cat.
LINKS
Oh dang, he brought back Links!
Why yes I did. And they all have two things in common: 1) All of these links were referred to me by A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, which I highly recommend because they always find good things and they also take a moment to consider what makes those things funny; and 2) all of these links are in fact pretty funny.
Was that second point necessary to say? I may be getting a slight case of delirious.
First of all, if you ever find yourself trapped at home and looking for something, God ANYTHING new to talk about and you wonder to your partner, What kind of scripts does that McDermott kid want to write, anyway, This is the answer.
Second, I have some very bad news for you, and that is you are meditating wrong.
Let’s get into lotus pose. No, no, not like that.
I didn’t realize it beforehand, but I love an article that keeps referring to readers as Sharks.
This article, in which the writer explains to various institutions the precise way in which they want to be notified of things, is brilliant.
I would like to be alerted to unusual activity on my credit card via ghosts that come to me in a dream, but also send a text.
And lastly, this parody of universities announcing they’re reopening in the fall is savage and brilliant.
Please know that we eventually will all come together as a school community again. Possibly virtually. Probably on land. Maybe some students will be here?
Personally, I think every university announcement that they’re coming back to near normal in the fall should be taken with a Death Star-sized grain of salt. It’s only June, kiddos. A lot can happen. Also, check the fine print: Maybe some classes will be in session on campus. But I’ll bet you Chaucer to Cheever that if you’re studying the Great American Novel you will be doing it in your parents’ Great American Home.
July 20th is probably late for final decisions, but that’s where I’m putting my bet as to when we’ll really know what Fall on Campus is going to look like.
Someone sent me a meditation they’ve been using called Twenty Breaths. Basically it’s about just being present while you breathe.
But it had this idea that really stood out to me: Every breath is a new breath. “When the breath is over, so is that part of the practice. You can let go of any effort. Relax, and the next breath will come.”
Maybe today goes well, maybe it’s hot steaming garbage that you accidentally lit on fire. Fine. And when the day is over, so is that part of your practice.
Relax, and the next day will come.
