Dead Man's Notes

This Valentine's Day, I'm going to be at home, with my cat, baking a cheesecake. I guess my life is a Cathy strip now.

Recently, my capacity to play games increased dramatically. Before, I would rarely be able to keep up with the larger ongoing conversation about games. The gaming media predominantly focuses on the most recent thing, which is lost on the value-conscious/broke. Maybe I'd rent a new release the week it came out, but most games crossed my palm once they'd hit the twenty dollar sweet spot.

Now, I'm trampling my way through Mass Effect 2 along with the rest of the gaming biosphere. It's a curious feeling, to be on the cutting edge. Without financial limitations, I don't feel any desire to play games that don't land completely true on my mesolimbic pathway. If a game doesn't demand my attention, I let it slide. Assassin's Creed 2 is on the shelf right now, barely played - good, but not quite good enough. It's no tragic alteration to my pattern of play, but it's awfully strange to switch from quiet serial monogamist to globetrotting, lackadaisical Lothario.

I've been trying to work out a bit. There is an awesome, narcotic feeling that comes with the mastery of one's body, and I want that feeling back. From the cradle, I was a pudgy little fuck. Everyone looks at you differently for it, though I'd hesitate to say that fat's among life's greater burdens. When I was a senior in high school, I took a weightlifting class, catapulting me to the best shape I had and have ever been in my life. Before, I had been three hundred thirty pounds of bubbling disdain. After the class was over, I was a smug two hundred twenty pounds. Everyone outside of my inner circle seemed to treat me differently, and it made me happy, because now I had a chance to spurn them.

Valentine's makes me reflect on these things. I'm alone and still a bit afraid to admit that I'm lonely. Right now, I carry three hundred pounds of undead fury. But if I lost the weight, if I passed properly, if I got my stuff in order, would I like my choices any better? Would I just use it as an excuse to revel in the power of rejecting others? God, I really want to draw a parallel between this and my mostly-virgin copy of Assassin's Creed 2, but I'm drawing a blank. That really would finished this post off spectacularly. Well, at least I got something out of Valentine's Day.