I’ve been playing Elden Ring on PS5. This isn’t my favourite genre of video game, but I’m playing it since it was free-ninety-nine courtesy of my sister-in-law’s excellent Xmas present. It’s undeniably a quality game, a little more story telling would have been welcome though. It’s a pretty great time regardless. I just gained a new spell that apparently conjures the moon and launches it at a target. Very excited to try it later. I WILL DESTROY YOU WITH MY MAGIC MOON!!!!!!!!

On the other hand, I paid forty bucks for Dragon Age: Veilguard a couple weeks ago. It’s a sequel to a video game I absolutely loved, Dragon Age: Inquisition. Unfortunately, Veilguard is an incredibly disappointing experience. Bioware has really ruined some great games lately. The character designs have been uncanny valley lumpy and the dialogue and writing is bland and monotonous.

It seems this game was ground zero for the culture war too. On the character creation tool, they allowed a slider to make crotch bulges big, and an option of adding surgery scars (from removing breasts) on your character. A nice inclusive move, more representation in video games is great. The weird thing is that they also completely shrunk the chest and ass sliders for women. It’s restrictive in a way that even a slightly curvy woman wouldn’t be able to recreate her likeness in the game. I understand they must have done it to try and avoid perpetuating stereotypes and creating harmful beauty standards. Doesn’t it feel weirdly punitive though? It’s a mature rated game where there are romance relationships, yet the game refuses to allow creating traditionally attractive female characters? Sexuality for me, but not thee. How about we just let everyone have fun? I wish video games weren’t ground zero for this bullshit, but I can see why the gamer-bro’s were frustrated by this.

Ehh whatever. I wish I could get my money back on that game. It’s the writing that’s the real problem, not the weird character creation tool restrictions. Dragon Age Inquisition was so much fun, I’m so disappointed they screwed this up so bad.

Hysteria by Def Leppard is pretty great.

My weight has crept up into the 170-180 pound range. Not bad, but that’s a bit heavy at 5’10. I feel better in the 160-170 range. I know that at 44 years old I’m healthy. Just want to get a bit more fit and control garbage eating.

Last night after my wife went to bed, I stayed up playing Elden Ring. After a particularly frustrating death, I got up and grabbed a handful of candy leftover from Halloween and binged probably 18 of those little single serving sour gummies and Swedish fish bags. Full blown Brendan Frasier whale behaviour. I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of this. Sometimes I’m a human racoon.

I’m pretty sure society is in decline.

I’m planning a 2025 mid-year move to Canada. The house has been bought, working on the sponsorship documents for my wife. We’re making it happen. The home is a 40 acre wooded property, just inside the city limits of my hometown. It’s on a large hill or small granite mountain. There are no sight lines to any neighbours, only forest and mountain views. The well has incredible pressure from what may be a pristine source. Microplastic free.

Is my capacity to feel joy reduced? Is it because of the accumulated wounds of life? Or is it more that I’m affected by society boiling? I think Russia has won the cold war. They did it with social media propaganda and lit the fires that are crumbling the nation from within. So many people have seemingly lost the ability to tell truth from lie. Malibu is dried out and burning. Anger and discontent. Trusted institutions are being compromised or destroyed. Wealth is so concentrated in the hands of a few.

Can I turn this noise off? Reduce my exposure? Hide in my forest house and wait for robots to solve all the problems.

I hope so… because I’m going to try.

The last post I wrote felt cringe (as the kids probably no longer say). Not the sentiment, just the one phrase, “if you can’t tell”.

Ugh gross. Who am I writing to? This is for me. Be honest. No need to be a ham.

I’ll leave it though. It’s a record of who I was and what I was feeling that day.

I wrote it a little hurried from the little barrel sauna we have in our sunroom. As I am now. Fingers dripping sweat, autocorrect on every word. I’m doing it again and it’s happening again. guess I’ll just watch YouTube instead.

This is so absurd. 2025. It’s so ridiculously far in the future. Maybe you have the same feeling? That the real year is about twenty-five years in the past, and that this reality is some sort of broken, out of control spiral of misery?

Maybe the Y2K glitch wasn’t a data storage bug. Maybe it was our inflection point of doom. DOOM. DOOooOoom!! If you can’t tell, I’ve been doing a descending slow burn into apathy ever since an Inconvenient Truth came out. Ever since Gore lost that election.

I still can’t embrace full nihilism yet though. There’s a stubborn piece of optimism that won’t die, despite the unrelenting progression of global temperatures and ecosystem decline.

It Jan 1st and it’s raining outside.

So, here I am, sitting in the sauna, post New Year’s resolution workout, once again mourning the seemingly inevitable demise of our species…. and I’m so tired of it.

Last night we watched two episodes of Star Trek The Next Generation followed by the animated movie Flow. We should have reversed the order. The futuristic show with earnest idealism should come after the beautiful crushing Dystopian story, not vice versa. (I can’t recommend Flow enough. Incredible animated film)

Happy New Year.