More than two decades later, I still remember a particular episode from Nickelodeon’s Doug, wherein the school was abuzz with chatter about a horror movie. Everybody had the cojones to sit through the flick except for him, or so the titular character thought, and the punchline of the arc was that nobody had actually managed to look at the screen long enough to see the climax. Only Doug, with the help of his faithful canine buddy, was able to keep his eyes open to see how low-budget and tame the movie really was, in some overwrought lesson about facing your fears.
It’s been a while since I’ve braved this genre of gaming, but with Dead Space 3 set to release next week, I somehow got it into my head that replaying the prior episodes would be worthwhile, never mind the psychic toll they exacted the first time around. Those scars have since scabbed over, though, and when the draw of narrative continuity proved too strong to resist, I descended into the dark once more.
Perhaps, I thought, I need to approach this with eyes wide open. Those horrific sequences I remembered? Likely exaggerated versions of what truly unfolded on-screen. It’d be better if I faced them head-on, right? Nope! Nope. Sorry, Doug, but whatever wisdom you were peddling was horseshit, frankly, because I stared fully into the face of horror and it was even worse than I remembered. I’m about halfway through the second one, so I will overcome. The third one brings something new to the table: you can experience the terror with a buddy, which means on Tuesday, we will ascertain the proper social etiquette for screaming like little girls.
Fresh off a 10-hour bender of sleep, I will tell you–confidently–that there can be too much of a good thing. At 10:30 PM yesterday, a wave of weariness struck me, and in my best approximation of what responsible people do, I decided to call it a night. Bad decision. I kept waking in the wee hours of the morning, which I took to be my internal clock saying, “Never do this again.” It seemed like a good idea at the time, though, especially with the recent cold spell. There’s something about freezing weather that makes you want to hibernate like a bear, if bears were called to commute each morning to things far less delicious than honey.
There was even sleet on Friday, in the first true taste of winter, and it reminded me of Chicago. A few things have evoked the Midwest recently, in fact. On my drive home from work, I saw a woman pull to a complete stop in the right lane, put her hazards on, and wipe ice off her windshield with her sleeve. Now, that debacle was pure Charlotte. But there have been other manifestations of Chi-town as of late: calls from 847 numbers, for instance, what I can only imagine are solicitations for alumni donations. A headhunter–not the Aboriginal kind–based in Des Plaines, of all places, reached out about an opportunity.
Mainly it’s been the weather, and when you pair the cold with the flu pandemic, you start getting really cautious. I’ve persisted without a flu shot so far, and in its place I’ve enacted a strict regimen of not touching door handles, keeping my mouth shut outdoors and breathing primarily through my nose, and pounding back vitamin C drops. I don’t know how medically sound the drops are, frankly. I could’ve sworn someone told me vitamin C helps fortify the immune system. Or maybe I’ve been really been warding off scurvy all this time, and dumb luck, rather than vitamin drops, has inoculated me against the flu.
Secondhand Rants will return on Tuesday, January 29.