Sematic Nonsense: Now with extra nonsense

I was going to write about why you’re all fools for even getting your hopes up about a new Switch / Switch successor announcement coming this year, but I’ve frankly said what little there was to say about it already on the Discord. Instead, you can have some follow-ups on previous posts with a side helping of ennui.

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Report card

With the first third of the year in the books, I need to check my progress and share it with you, as it’s the only way to keep me honest. That honest truth is that I have mixed results so far, but the causes are not lost.

While I have technically doubled my career contributions to Quarantine Control, that’s not quite the rate I was expecting to do. This might have something to do with the fact that I’ve only gone out to the movies twice so far, and one of them was Return of the Jedi.

I must admit, there is some collision of plans happening here. Last weekend, for example, I passed up my last chance to go catch Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in order to catch up on playing Persona 3: FES, which I had intended to be done with by June, but am only now around the halfway point (either before or after, depending on if I choose to play though The Answer). The good news is it’s VERY easy to keep playing Persona 3 when I actually play it, so I’m glad I said enough was enough on not playing it this year.

Aside from 100-hour RPGs, I can at least say with pride that 5 of my 11 must-beat games for this year are already accomplished, with two of the remaining ones already factored into the streaming schedule (plus a third if I can get through Personas 3 and 4 quickly enough…). The odd one out remains Digimon World: Next Order, and it may yet end up with the short stick unless I need to cleanse my palate between the MegaTen games… providing there’s even time to.

And finally, some extra physical activity has made some progress on the battle of the bulge with help from a nagging fitness tracker. Magnus told me a joke he’d known for a while, but I hadn’t heard before: A fitness tracker is like a Tamagotchi, only the dumb animal you’re trying to keep alive is you. The joke’s not wrong.

That said, I’ll need to change things up; I was exercising by overdoing my yard work, but now the pollen, bees and 80-degree heat have driven me back inside.

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I can’t believe it’s not Aftermarket Soundtrack

I’ve watched this repeatedly in the months since its release. I still cry every time.

I do feel a personal connection to the Mother series. That led me to catch on unusually quickly to Shigesato Itoi’s intent as an author and appreciate the process behind the choices he made in producing the games. It also led me to discover the soundtrack CD to the first game more than a decade before the day Earthbound Beginnings graced your village. It’s nice that the 8-Bit Big Band also has a Mother hipster who knew the first game’s soundtrack that never saw the light of day outside of Japan featured English lyrics for all the songs, including “Pollyanna” (I also recommend “Wisdom of the World”).

But I don’t think the crying has anything to do with that connection or the power and beauty of this performance. It’s bringing to the surface the long-past feeling of the loss of innocence.

There are perhaps few things I would love more than to be called a Pollyanna (It would certainly be a nice change of pace from the role I play in my family, which is that of a Cassandra). But that’s something that most of us are too old to be without the world helping us along by actually embodying positive feelings. Because “Pollyanna” speaks of a world that doesn’t exist, perhaps never has existed, and cannot come into existence until the literal and metaphorical fevers that infest this pale blue dot and its inhabitants have burned out.

So really, there’s no question that a Pollyanna’s attitude is much more pleasant way to go through life.