Be Forgot

I know I usually post on Thursdays, but wait, this is Monday!* And yes, it's true that I didn't actually remember to publish a post last Thursday, but think of it less as a total dereliction of my self-imposed sacred posting duty and more as FREE MONDAY BONUS CONTENT!

I'm on an extended vacation from my job. There are people, I know, who commit themselves to such a degree that they accumulate more vacation hours than one person could ever use and still be considered gainfully employed. They're the people others turn to when the cruelty of late-stage capitalism presents them with something socially irredeemable like an extended illness or a parent in their dotage and leave donations have to be secured so they might be able to attend to their human needs and not end up destitute.

I am not one of those people. I am awarded leave that I jealously guard so that I might scrupulously then burn it on an altar of my own hedonism, mostly in the form of sleeping past, like, 7 am.

I've taken two weeks off for the sake of sanity, mine and my co-workers. I've also decided to invest heavily in annoying my children by not being gone a lot more than they anticipated. One's already jettisoned, with another chambered for launch less than a year hence. I've decided the best thing I can do is make myself an uninvited constancy. They seem happy to see me, but then again I'm paying for all the food, so it's hard to tell what's genuine. I once saw a German shepherd do a backflip on command for a single slice of American cheese. I don't think the metaphor needs more exploration.

If it makes you feel any better, instead of honoring my pretend obligation to you, Imagined Reader, I spent last Thursday AND MANY OTHER NIGHTS investing dozens of hours into a video game nobody seems to actually like but I'm having a great time with. Granted, it's mostly because my youngest is up for investing hours of co-op play with me, but that's late-teenage parenting at its highest: cobbling together whatever keeps their attention, no matter how terrible,** certain in the knowledge that eventually there will be nothing that can compel them to notice you. I just got done watching the Amazon/BBC production of King Lear. Maybe now is not the best time to write about this.

It's New Years Eve, so the wise thing to do would be to phone in an entry with a Year End List, but those things actually do take a little bit of preparation and consideration. And since the inspiration for today's entry was about three hours ago when I was driving along and went "Oh shit, when was Thursday?!," I haven't done any of that. I could have done some in the intervening hours, but see about where I mentioned the pressing urgency to watch a months-old production of a centuries-old play on an on-demand service not limited by time or availability. Some things just have to get done now.

I can't really give you a list of the best books I've read as I've barely read anything all year. I started Ulysses by James Joyce and... I've been stuck at about 130 pages for like eight months. It's not bad or even that hard to understand, I've just prioritized other stuff, much of which involves using my computer mouse to aim and shoot at zombies and stormtroopers. There's reading involved, mostly in the form of lists of how many times I've died, but there's a sparse, existential poetic quality to that if you're open to it.

And I'd make a list of my favorite movies of the year, but I'm not sure I saw any that didn't have superheroes in them all year. Culturally in 2018 I've landed on things that give me comfort and pass the seconds so I don't have to contemplate the social, political, climatological unraveling of the West in particular and the world in general. It's Spider-Man cartoons or oxy at this point. So far I feel like I'm making good choices.

So no recap really as I don't have the spare well of energy to muster one. Plus 2019 is the year we begin the absolutely insane two-year journey to another presidential election, which is already well underway. I have to conserve what little I have left.

Happy New Year, anyway. I'm tempted to say "it can't really be worse than the last one," but that seems like masochism.

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*Depending on when this goes out where you live and/or when you get around to reading this, in which case it's actually vanishingly unlikely that you'll actually be reading this on Monday, but look, you're just going to have to take my word for it. I can only account for the position of the earth and the irretrievable linearity of time to a very small degree here.

**Fallout 76 is not "terrible" by any stretch, but I'm happy to lay on the anti-fanboy disdain for the SWEET PAGE-VIEWS.