Midaregami

So there’s a new Grand Theft Auto game out, “San Andreas,” best game for PS2 ever, yadda yadda yadda.

And I want to play it. Or more precisely, I want to want to play it. But I don’t quite find the idiom compelling. I think I’d get bored with the “thug life”-style of the missions, and regress to savagely beating old ladies within about 40 minutes. I’m not proud of this, but I have to admit it’s probably true.

Make me a GTA where you start out as a chinpira yankee with nothing but a sticker-encrusted scooter and a decora-chan girlfriend, and have to work your way up through the yakuza? Oh hell yeah. Make sure you get Blankey Jet City and Dragon Ash to do the soundtrack.

I saw a t-shirt the other day from a local children’s hospital. It had a slogan on it, above the hospital name:

“We be illin’.”

Yeah, I guess you be.

Herself and I enjoy our afternoons together, lately, by putting away DVDs. We finished off Babylon 5’s fifth season, and moved from there into Gainax’s classic TV series, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.

It’s so good. I’d forgotten how cool this show is. You’ve got all the usual 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea goodies—The Nautilus, Captain Nemo, and lots of underwater fun, but add to that a plot involving continent-scarring weapons, the lost civilization of Atlantis, and one of the greatest evil masterminds in all of animation, and it’s just good, pulpy fun.

(Although, the island episodes are dragging. You’ll know when you get to them, I promise. Blame NHK for deminding more from Gainax because of the show’s intense popularity.)

As I may have said (or perhaps didn’t say; my memory is not what it was) the last box from Japan arrived, bringing with it the latest Quruli album, “Antenna.” I bought it after hearing one song in a Kobe Tower Records, and my judgement did not err. This album is lovely.

I know I keep saying it—that I’m used to life out here. But every time I think “Ah, I am now accustomed to Montana,” I discover two days later that it’s merely another phase of the Process. Thus I will assume such things no more. The Process continues, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Recently I have settled into a kind of routine. It is not unpleasant, this routine, although it has certain unpleasant facets. One such facet involves routinely rising at 3 AM to get to work by 4. Another, related facet involves being in bed by 9 PM to avoid utter exhaustion.