Sometimes I think I should start posting shit again. But it always delves back into me being honest about how I feel about myself, and that answer is, always, “I hate myself so fucking much.” For 40 fucking years. This depression is never getting better.
I’m such a horrible procastinator, I realized that I’ve been putting off killing myself for years.
Suicide is always an option.
On Sunday morning I woke up around 6:00 am, smoked a bowl, and finished Saints Row: The Third, which is probably definitely the worst game I ever stuck around to finish. It was only about 7:15 at that point, so I smoked another bowl and decided to try Gone Home, a just-released indie game which I had purchased a few days ago based on a mostly-forgotten recommendation from Kotaku from last fucking year.
Within two minutes I was hooked into the story (“Where the fuck is everybody?” and also delighted that your character and I were the exact same age at the time the story takes place (June 1995). Of course, your characters is a 21-year old white girl named Katie Greenbriar, and I’m not a girl named Katie, but this is the second game I’ve played this year where I personally felt like I could, in some way, inhabit the character as if it was me. (The other game was Max Payne 3. "I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt anything but regret.“.)
The credits rolled 100 minutes later and I was sad. Sad that it was over (it is a pretty quick game), but also just sad. There’s really only one significant voice actor, the girl who plays your missing younger sister Sam, but she by the fourth or fifth audio diary I heard I could feel my heart breaking for her. Oh, Sam.
While the father and (especially) the mother’s stories aren’t quite as filled in as Sam’s, the dad’s story intrigued me enough to play another 40 minutes of it to find all of its pieces. And wow, there is something familiar and sad about finding out about the people you call Family by creeping around the house when they aren’t home. I stopped doing that when I was in high school because I got upset with the stuff I was finding about (e.g. evidence of a previous marriage and kids, ugly correspondence between my parents, any kind of porn in my brother’s room.)
In about 13 hours I’m catching a redeye to Jacksonville to see my family. It’s been eighteen years since I was 21, and in 1995 our family home was in San Diego. And really, there’s not much that my family has or had in common with the Greenbriars. But the game has me even more worried and sad (there’s that fucking word again) about my family and how everything has turned out with me and them. I don’t know, I guess I’m just sensitive to the Family Buttons that Gone Home managed to push so well.
Also: The soundtrack! Bratmobile and Heavens to Betsy. The Fullbright Company really knew how to hit all the right notes with Gone Home. Go buy this game, sayeth I to no one..
In losing sixty pounds (and trying to keep it off), I’ve been forced to drink a lot of vodka because I have to destroy my life and liver somehow. My preferred vodka is Ketel One. With the hullaboo about gay bars banning Russian-owned vodka because Russia is not liking the gays very much nowadays. If Ketel One was Russian, would I stop drinking it? (Maybe!)
Luckily, Ketel One is, to my amazement, Dutch. (Also amazing: Ketel One’s rather sparse Wikipedia entry. Why not more info about Ketel One, Wikipedia?) Anyhow, they like gay people in the Netherlands, so I will continue to drink it.
Also: A Ketel One bong can be yours for $69.99.
