Comic fans in a seven-mile radius are despairing, I imagine in boldface speech bubbles or something, because one of the local comic shops is closing. Obviously the best time to show your patronage is during the waning days of a store, so in I went during lunch today.
Holy Daredevil’s cowl was it weird. The store would not release me. I asked a clerk whether they had something somewhere on the shelves, which somehow triggered a detailed grilling of my taste in their wares.
“I’m not really a comics person,” I explained to her. “More of the rube who walks into the comic shop.”
Honesty is not always the best policy, apparently, because this frank admission invited a veritable survey of the fantasy landscape. Wizards, anthropomorphic animals, dystopian futures wrought in daring colors, enough spandex to keep even Richard Simmons happy. For an hour, at least. I kept nodding, because certainly I didn’t want to be a dick and sigh in outright disinterest, when really I was publishing Look at Me Care, Vol. 1, Issue 1 on the mental presses.
What I realized is passion, especially in the context of a hobby, can only be imposed in small doses. This is pretty obvious, right? I’ve enough media in my life right now to engross me thoroughly, and I’m just not ready to explore a world characterized, perhaps unfairly, by trade shows populated with unwashed people.
If I were, say, the proprietor of a Lego store, and you ambled over to me one afternoon, my approach would go something like this.
“Here is a red brick, in case you’re interested,” I’d say, shoving it in your hand. “Take it.”
You’d look at me and indicate further interest.
“And here is a bag of yellow Lego people heads, if you’re into that sort of thing,” I’d finish.
See? Small doses.
First, let’s get the important stuff out of the way.
I know what you’re thinking. Six solid days of silence can only mean I’ve purchased a one-way ticket to Gonesville, that plush vacation spot in blog country where journals go to die, fat with negligence and mimosas.
Wrong. It wasn’t a one-way ticket, in point of fact, it was a roundtrip ticket, and while I would like to move to Gonesville eventually, somewhere down the road, a timeshare will do just fine for now.
I’d like to believe you delved fully into the world of Kenta Cho and the entertainments he so willingly shares for free, one of which I described in detail a few days ago. In the likely event you haven’t tried Gunroar, however, the learned synopsis is shit explodes, often spectacularly. This is the case for most of his other releases, with the notable exception of Wok, a game suited for those more prone to peaceable activities like cooking.
Of course, explosions don’t tell the whole story of why I find the game compelling. A better reason would be the polish exuded in spades. There is a level of professionalism you wouldn’t expect in a free product, let alone some paid products, but maybe I’m simply a sucker for polish. Hell, I’ll sometimes wander into Home Depot, sit my ass down in the varnish aisle, and loudly demand service, such is my quest for calculated style.
The game is also therapeutic. There’s a sense of calm to be gleaned from gracefully negotiating your way through waves of bullets, all the while prioritizing what you need to shoot–it’s like a mutli-colored lesson in stress management. For me the lesson ends as soon as the multiplier reaches about 100, which is when I begin to vigorously sail into enemy gunfire.
The WHO claims the H5N1 outbreak in Turkey can be easily controlled. Not if you continue hugging the goddamn chickens.