"Born Perfect, I'm Not Like You"

Bloggery!

++ WARNING: THIS MIGHT GET UNCOMFORTABLE OR BORING ++

Now you're going to have to bear with me for this, because I'm not in great shape at the moment and it's definitely going to come across in what is sure to be a progressively more disconnected and ill-advised exercise in rambling nonsense. I've shredded and deleted so many potential letters and emails in the past month that even going near a keyboard is enough to make my brain drop a few gears and start frantically trying to remember the lyrics to songs and before you know it, BAM, the writing's out of the window and I'm sat down in front of the monitor, brow furrowed in disbelief and muttering, "No, no, it was 'place your hands on my own', wasn't it? Oh, why couldn't you sing properly, you cider-drinking bastards..."

 ...I'm lucky to have gotten to the end of this first paragraph, really.

Anyway, I've come to a few conclusions lately and, like all conclusions, they've opened up more and more lines of enquiry that I don't really have the strength to go into. Suffice it to say that I am only just beginning to come to terms with the idea that maybe, just maybe I should try getting a bit of serious control over my life.

So these conclusions, then.

The first is really obvious and is essentially something I've been harping on about for years. I am not happy in my work. Not just the actual job but the entire system. I don't want to work to procedures or spend twenty minutes a day listening to some poor creature explain its life story to me when all I want to do is finish the conversation so I can carry on quietly moping and wondering what sadistic genius came up with the recipe for the machine coffee, which is watery, tastes like a mid-life crisis, smells like burning hair and will only ever come in half-cup portions no matter how many times you press that Full Cup button or curse the machine spirit.

I need to be doing something I want to do, something that sees my flawed persona and says things like, "You know what? Come on in. Don't worry about the dress code, the kettle's just boiled and we're having a meeting on how to use the word "conflagration" in a sentence about bananas. By the way, what do you think about a cartoon based on weaponised fruit? Because Laura over here has some interesting mock ups..."

The rambling has begun.

Ahem. The second is that I am extremely inexperienced when it comes to matters of the heart (yes, I've been alive for nearly three decades and I shave and everything but give me a break here), and seeing as it's too late to really start getting experience this conclusion hit me pretty hard. I've had two relationships in the space of ten years. The first was a long-drawn, messy business, the story of which has been told to death. But had it lasted only a few months or a year rather than, I think it was five years, it may have been a solid, reasonably happy memory that I could draw from, but due to my next conclusion, I stretched the relationship out as much as possible and thus was essentially responsible for all the miserable memories I ended up with.

The third conclusion is that I have a considerable fear of loneliness. Not that unusual, I know, humans, herding instinct, blah blah blah, but my fear seems to be keyed more to abandonment or things I can perceive in some way as abandonment. I think it's actually why I took up smoking. I only just made this link the other day. Little side-story here;

I will say, nearly every time I sit in a pub or a beer garden, that I miss the smell of cigarettes in a pub despite the fact that when the smoking ban came in, I was not a smoker. But almost all of my friends were. So when the ban came in, my friends would disappear outside for a cigarette - I believe bag and coat duty fell to me then. But the key is, these people were (and still are) my friends, at a time when I'd only just started to form solid, proper friendships beyond playing football on a green somewhere and into the realms of lending money for beers, dragging ourselves out into a field for five days at a time, listening to deafening music that our grandparents probably wouldn't approve of and consuming idiotic quantities of narcotics. They're people who talk like I do, share a sense of humour, and most importantly, are willing to put up with me. And because smoking made them go outside, I decided I would go out too (incidentally leaving some other poor sod in charge of bags etc, win-win).

What it all stems from, of course, is the fact that my dad left, or was kicked out, when I was little. Again, not unusual, happens to a lot of kids, so on and so forth, but it stuck with me. If someone who I loved, someone who was not only my blood-relative but my progenitor for God's sake, could leave me just like that, well then, anyone could! I had to cling on to everyone I formed bonds to because they might just get up and go one day! For several years I had recurring nightmares about being left on my own (heck, occasionally I still get them), and I've never been able to shake that fear. So, on those occasions when people leave me or are taken from me, my brain tends to go into meltdown. It's pretty fucked up in there right now, and for those of you who are unfortunate enough to follow my twitter feed or Facebook, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise for my sudden emotional regression and any offence or tedium it may have inspired in you.

Fourth conclusion, and this is going over ground so well-trodden that if you were to trip and get a mouthful of the churned, sludgy turf you'd be spitting self-deprecation for a week, is that my lack of confidence is once again slowly destroying me and I can't blame that on anyone but myself. Over the last year I was at close to an all-time high, but I have been reminded that on my own, any apparent confidence is more due to my subconscious habit of trying to reflect the traits I most admire in those I'm close to. In a lot of social situations I tend to think of this as a kind of "yes man" effect.

I've been trying to get some sort of, I don't know, pep going and I just can't do it. I've decided to cave, which is to say try and pass the buck, by using work perks to get counselling. I've also managed to find a little place in Colchester that looks promising, just in case. I'm not expounding on that now. It might get a run of blog entries all to itself though.

As a final and less serious note, I have decided to follow the San Jose Sharks in the NHL this year. So that should be interesting. I used to play NHL 2004 on my PS2 all the time. It might have been NHL 2003. I can't remember; you could unlock customisations and all of my players had shark heads. It was pretty cool.

Thanks for stopping by.

Love, Odsox.

Review: Little Inferno

Welcome along! Settle down by the convection heater and let me tell you about a thing that is fun.

Little Inferno is one of those rare games that, upon reaching the title screen, offers you total reassurance that you are about to have fun.

Created by the team that offered us World of Goo (another indie marvel, as far as I'm concerned), the game's main attraction is a simple one, and certainly effective: Get some things and burn them. That barely sounds like a game, you might think, fleetingly, before you remember that fire has always had a very serious connection with our childhoods. Fire is one of the big dangers we're warned about even we're really too young to understand the concept of colours, let alone the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. So as a result, it wasn't often that we were given boxes of matches and told to go nuts.

Little Inferno gives us a box of matches and access to loads of items that are so much fantastic pixellated fuel. Not only that, but it fully ensures that neither we nor our loved ones nor our belongings will end up looking like melty-face-man and the meltlettes. It even throws in wonderfully characterful artwork and an immersive, sometimes moving soundtrack. And the sheer satisfaction from burning a stack of wooden Tetris blocks, a talking pirate doll and an exploding school bus together into a digital maelstrom of flames, detonations and a crackling "Ya-harr!" is unparalleled in casual gaming.

It's downright therapeutic. Especially as you progress and discover the oodles of objects you can set light to, not to mention some of the visually-gratifying Combos - little awards for burning certain objects together. For example, one of the first objects you're given is a little wooden doll that sings when you burn it. This thing fascinated me. And later on, I found another. Two hours later and I found the third one. The sheer glee was almost overwhelming. So I sat down and took a solid five minutes to put this together:

And that swiftly became this:

Oh, it was joyful to hear those little idols singing together as the flames merrily devoured their fragile wooden bodies. And the opportunities for rapid oxidation fun just go on and on!

 But if I'm totally honest, it's the story that I love. There's no real plot to speak of, sure, it's just buy things and burn them, but what about the reason you're burning all these things? Why does The Tomorrow Corporation keep giving you money to buy more things to burn? Why IS it so cold outside? When will that mental girl stop sending me these horrifically misspelled, grammar-starved letters? What shall I burn next?

The dialogue for the few characters in the game is well-written, and somehow, despite the near-total lack of voice tracks (the Pirate and the Gentleman Adventurer toys don't count!), perfectly delivered. And it's actually delivered, too. Virtually all of the game's dialogue is composed of letters written from other Little Inferno characters who want to make sure you're staying warm. The idea seemed a bit frustrating during my first hour of play, but the way the advances in the story are done had me anticipating the next letter with all the enthusiasm of a slightly inebriated, overweight nerd on the wrong side of twenty-five, wearing a superhero t-shirt and playing what might be a contender for his new favourite video game. 

It's way more enthusiastic than it sounds, believe me.

Little Inferno is a labour born of creative minds doing what they love and it shows. From the art style to the audio to the story and the gameplay, it's a beautifully crafted indie masterpiece. It is sweet and sinister, serious and silly, and I can do nothing but recommend it for anyone who appreciates a game that doesn't have a kill-counter or a number after it's name.

Anyway, I'd best be off to bed, so thanks for stopping by!

Love, Odsox.

P.S.