Hello there, it's been a while! Been sick and lazy and all that. My month's been filled with sitting in front of the television, in a sick slouch or not, and hammering away at Fallout 4, Blasphemous and Dead Rising 4. Good games, although both the first and the last swiftly deteriorated into vapid busywork. Blasphmous, though initially not really my type of game, being a side-scroller, had an art-style and a type of lore that I loved and so I stuck it out and ended up having a blast. Here, take a look at the launch trailer.
But, I've been wasting a lot of time this month, or so it feels. The truth is that I'm very out of sorts. So out of sorts that I have not much thought about blogging for these past few weeks, and on those times that I did, I had the damnedest difficulties in actually writing anything I was pleased with. Whether or not that any of this is due to not having imbibed any alcohol for nigh on a month or whether that it is because of a delayed reaction to the events that transpired earlier this year I don't know. Either way; this blog continues, I'm not here to announce my retirement. But I am saying that:... what the fuck man, why is this so difficult right now?
I'm annoyed and saddened that something that I could devote so much of my time and energy on has been delegated to a position of lesser import.
I have been reading again though. There were maybe 2 weeks where I barely read a thing because of a very annoying slow-burn cold that took root in my brain, but since then I've finished a few comics, Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence, and a whole bunch of Jules De Grandin short stories.
Of those, the one that I both want and don't want to talk about is the Imago Sequence.
You see, after a great start, specifically after The Procession of the Black Sloth, which read like a weird and terrifying Asian Silent Hill- kind of story, I was all set to proclaim Barron now one of my favourite authors, but then the last 2 or three stories in the collection veered a little too much into an abstract type of writing that is almost dis-associative free-form, and which, if you're not in the mood for it, is irritating in the extreme.
I've indulged in that type of writing myself in the past, usually in the throes of depression or some or other violent passion, and it's quite an empowering form of art-making. You feel as if you are creating something truly impressive, and it's something that seems to validate itself, even if or maybe even because some or all of the audience that'll read it won't understand what you're talking about. There's a barrier there, and not everyone can slip past it. It's a form of magic, of perception.
But, as I said, it kind of sucks when you're not in the mood for it. Sometimes the chemical brain just doesn't care to cooperate; lack of sleep, nutrition, or being at the whim of emotional circumstance.
So, though I loved Procession of the Black Sloth, and can recommend anyone to read that one, though Old Virginia, Shiva Open Your Eye, and Bulldozer were all bad-ass and very enjoyable to read, I didn't much enjoy The Royal Zoo is Closed, the latter half of the Imago Sequence short story, and though I thought that both Parallax, Hallucigenia and Proboscis were a little unoriginal, and though after all that, it seems like I didn't have a good time, I did actually appreciate pretty much of all that I read.
I'm being unduly harsh here, and I wish the stories could've hit me at a better time maybe, but it is what it is.
I also finally finished off Hunter X Hunter, which I pretty much only allowed myself to watch whilst exercising on my Home Trainer. At 148 episodes for 20-23 minutes per episode, it took me about 8 months of exercising before I'd gone through the whole bunch.
I had a good time. Hunter Hunter is a show not without its flaws but one that has some real nice emotional pay off.
Lastly, it was my birthday this month and, as you might've expected, I replied to everyone that asked for gift ideas to just go and give me books, as if I didn't already have enough to read. What can you do? An addict is as an addict does, or something. I'll give you a look next post.
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