It starts here
John Clark doing something he hasn’t done in several weeks….Write something. It’s one of those long, convoluted, disaster-filled, shaggy dog tales that necessitated my dark and cynical humor coming to the fore.
It’s no secret that I’m several parsecs beyond aghast at what has happened since the November election. I invested a lot of time and money into trying to keep democracy afloat, but the poor pontoons on my ship of state have been sharked, orca’d and narwhalled so viciously that it’s barely afloat.
Add in a mystery ailment that has now inflicted me since early February and remains diagnostically elusive, and you can understand why I hijacked the Grand Funk from the band formed back in 1969. In sum, I’m more husk than substantial, leaving that inner nuclear fusion which drove my writing more resembling a soon to be neutron star.
Flash back again to last October. I won $2000 in a sweepstakes which immediately widened my options for how much I could spend on a new gaming laptop. I used to be a very hard core computer gamer back in the 1990s and have continued off and on over the years. However, my laptop wasn’t powerful enough to handle more complex games like those released recently, hence the want (not need at that point anyhow) for a new monster.
With my affordability point higher, I purchased a new ASUS gamer model with 64 gigabytes of RAM and an eight terrabyte solid state drive. Compared to the HP laptop, it screams. However, I used it but twice before temporarily losing interest in gaming again.
Fate has an even blacker sense of humor than I do. With my hands slowly losing sensation (think taking several tries to turn pages, especially in a newspaper) and growing balance issues (yes I know many have thought me unbalanced for years, but that was in the mental realm), I was beginning to feel funkier than forgotten potatoes in a root cellar.
Then Dame Fortune descended with demented capriciousness while I was playing a new game on the monster after my gaming lust returned. I have an L-shaped computer desk with my work HP laptop above the pull-out keyboard and the ASUS on the other part. I’m a hardcore coffee drinker and despite having spilled coffee on the HP once with the result being only one stuck key, I continued to drink and compute.
This time, the HP got a full bath (it wasn’t on at the time) while I was gaming and that was its demise. I sat there looking at the disaster with detached bemusement before cleaning up the mess and trying to revive it. No luck. My years of computer nerdism have taught me to use external drives for storing files, so I didn’t lose any of my written work or extensive collection of music, but my just purchased albums by Medwyn Goodall and artists on his website were on the HP drive. All my bookmarks were toast as well.
Fortunately, the drive in the HP was a solid state one, so for around twenty bucks, I bought an external case that it fits into and am able to use it as an external drive on the ASUS. That saved the music, but not the bookmarks. In hindsight, it was a mitigated disaster, or as my AA friends would say, an interesting situation, not a problem.
However, that ‘interesting situation sent me full throttle into playing the game that drove my decision to buy a monster gaming machine in the first place. Elden Ring is not only the most addictive game I’ve ever played, it’s also the most challenging and has the biggest world. It’s no exaggeration to say that I die multiple times per gaming session. After getting my first character to level 61, I realized I needed to start over and be more focused on balancing the increases of each attribute. My new character is at level 59 and in replaying to this point, I’m discovering things I missed the first time around. Even at this point, I’ve barely scratched the surface of everything hidden in the unexplored regions.
Perhaps the most seductive aspect of this game is how quickly and easily I can get lost in it and (for several hours at a time) forget the grim reality of 2025.
And what constitutes YOUR guilty pleasure?
So true. Getting lost in Elden Ring is far too easy. Finishing the game, however, has still eluded me!
Last game I played was Lady Pacman, but I admire your abilities.
Deepest condolences on your HP. I had no idea that solid state drives could turn into external drives. As the proud possessor (and daily user) of a new in 2016 laptop, that could turn into a lifesaving bit of information. Thanks John, and I hope they get to the bottom of your symptoms soon.
Gaming can totally absorb time and space, that metaphorically, in ways nothing else does. Decades ago when quest games were new, I got consumed by the original Legend of Zelda. To save your place in the game when you finally had to stop required several steps completed in a specific order. Then you pulled the cartridge from the console. If one did not complete the necessary steps in their specific order and pulled the cartridge, all was lost. One began again at the beginning.
My husband drove over-the-road delivering freight all week, so after our son was in bed for the night, I would pop in Zelda. Most times I had to restart because the boys had not saved the game. But whether or not that was the case, once begun, the quest would consume me. Time stood still. I’d think a couple hours had pasted when in fact it was now 3 or 4 in the morning! Unlike John’s adventures, Zelda did have an end. Eventually, I vanquished the foes and rescued the princess. Except, a second level opened and another adventure could be undertaken if desired. I did not desire.
After being completely consumed by the game for weeks, it was as if a switched was flipped and I was done. Never played another game after. I understand how it can take you away from everything else. You get completely absorbed in another world.
John, if it helps you to forget for a time your current miseries, PLAY.