I am a bit worried.

I can’t remember anything.

That’s not true. I can remember waking up this morning. Hearing the dog downstairs. Feeling immediately panicked, then breathing, making my bed, putting clothes on.

I can remember everything I did after that. And I can remember everything I did last night. And… Can I remember what I did yesterday?

I can remember flashes. Me at the dinner table, photo in one hand, a stick of glue in the other. Eating curry. Playing video games. I had dried mango at one point.

If you were to ask me what I did yesterday though…

I’d draw a blank.

This worries me.

I tried remembering things from my childhood this morning. Inner child work or something. „Picture the child. What is it wearing? What is its favourite toy?“, asked the calm lady from the meditation app. I panicked. What is the child wearing? I couldn’t even see its face, let alone what it was wearing. Its face was like some kind of nightmarish blank mask from a horror movie. Staring at me without eyes. No emotions, no accusations, nothing. What was my favourite toy, as a child? I am a bit worried that I can’t remember. „What does the child want?“, continued the woman with her singsong voice, not letting myself think about toys for a minute.

WHAT DO YOU WANT

I felt myself scream at the child.

WHAT DO YOU WANT

I don’t think you’re supposed to scream at your inner child.

Maybe it wants a favourite toy?

Surprise List of Links

It has been a long time, yadda yadda, here’s a list of links I enjoyed while being confined at home (which is my day to day anyway, not much change here as a freelance translator) :

• Scratches my Sleep No More itch to the point of reopening the wound: The virtual tour of Punchdrunk’s decors for the immersive show The Drowned Man http://tour.templestudioslondon.com/
• Zach Weinersmith (SMBC) has put his books as free PDFs online and we love him: https://www.smbc-comics.com/covid/
• Luchie did the same with her wonderful „Hot Milk Digital“:
  https://gumroad.com/luchie
• The amazing shortfilm (34 minutes) Pear Cider and Cigarettes by Robert Valley
• Not tested yet (and not sure if I will find the time to do so, staying (more) at home makes for a surprisingly busy time in my case, with work and moving) but if you fancy an escape room at home, this looks very cool: https://www.millersvilleescaperoom.com/loxstone-manor
• The National Theatre have put both their 2011 productions of Frankenstein with Jonny Lee Miller and with Beneduck Climberbetch as the creature. I have only watched to former as of now, a matinee in my living room, and it is a very, very impressive production. I had read and liked the book a few years ago, and it made me think back of all the wonderful questions it asks about life and morality. If watching a two hour long play on a screen is your thing, the National Theatre is putting Antony and Cleopatra online in a few days. Edit: They actually replace the upload by a new play every… two weeks or so. More plays!
• Incredible Longread about Marcus Hutchins, who put a stop to the Wannacry virus a few years back.

I’m going to keep updating the list with more links the next days. In the meantime: Drink tea and enjoy that pile of books waiting for you since forever.

Inktober: Roasted

They’re laughing so hard at you that you feel your face turn bright red and hot. That’s it. That’s all I can think of. Not much to start a story on. Led Zeppelin is blaring through my boombox and October is long gone. So much has happened since October, it seems to be a lifetime ago. Baby baby baby, chants Robert Plant. Was he ever roasted? I wonder how funny he is, if he would take it with humour, to be publicly roasted. I feel like I know nothing about that character, only that he had glorious hair. And a thing for Middle-earth.

You feel your face turn bright red and hot. I often feel that way, even if no one is laughing at me. People are rarely laughing at me though, fortunately. It’s not something they do, the people I know. They are nice, in general. I can’t think of anyone being innately not-nice, now that I think of it. Mostly, if someone is, it’s because their day was shit.

The bit of tea still in my mug is cold, and there are leaves floating around in it. I love how tea leaves unfold and grow when they’re plunged in boiling water. Not so much when I accidentally taste them in my mouth when I take a sip of cold tea. Baby baby baby. It feels gross, chewing on that leaf. I’m going to make more tea and I read the Wikipedia page on Robert Plant.

Games games games

Da fragt mich ein Freund, ob ich ihm ein paar hübsche und günstige Games empfehlen könnte, und down the rabbit hole I go. Wer sich das Ganze anschauen möchte und sich nicht vor ein wenig Französisch fürchtet, voilà:

https://jecraquemonslip.wordpress.com/

Eines Tages mache ich eine kleine itch.io Liste auf Deutsch. Und was zu meiner Steam-Wishlist, die auch nicht kleiner wird.

Jetzt aber habe ich eine kleine Liste gemacht mit allen Spielen, die mich an der E3 irgendwie angesprochen haben. Auf Englisch, weil es einfach so gekommen ist, und ohne zusammenhängende Kommentare, auch, weil es einfach zu gekommen ist.

Neo CabBeing a Uber driver in Blade Runner, count me in.

Night CallLooks like the same game, but grittier, losing the Blade Runner aspect and adding a darker look. Count me still in, I think.

Morning Star

I have NO CLUE what this game is about, but the trailer made me all excited for meta-gameplay and depressing reflexions about society.

Tunic

1. Cute graphics, 2. Fox!

Death Stranding
Someone on twitter mentioned how nobody has any idea what this game is about, but everyone is excited to play it. That’s fairly accurate, except I already know that I’ll be a huge scaredy-cat and just stream it.

Ooblets

I MEAN COME ON how cute can you make a game? Is too cute a thing?

SableIt’s beautiful and there’s a very obvious but very welcome inspiration from Moebius (pic) and it reminds me of Journey.

Beyond Good and Evil

I just want Ubisoft to make a movie right now.

Cyberpunk 2077A Witcher-like game in a Cyberpunk universe, I’m so so so happy. Let’s just try to get those hopes back down to earth before the game gets released, better to be overwhelmed with happiness than shattered by expectations.

Skull and Bones

Okay, the gameplay did look kind of boring, but the cinematic trailer was magnificent. Also CUSTOMIZING YOUR SHIP HOW RAD IS THAT

Sea of Solitude
I will never be able to play that, not even during broad daylight.

I’m not counting the Bethesda games nor The Last of Us because those games are too big, too spoilery, too far away and it’s too obvious that I will want to play them all. I haven’t even finished the first The Last of Us yet, nor Dishonored 2, now to think of it. But soon I’ll have a PS4 and will catch up on all of those big games.

SCIENCE!

Weiter mit den Linkhäppchen, dieses mal: Wo lerne ich was ohne mich zu langweilen? Schliesslich fängt das Unisemester erst wieder im Februar an. Ich lerne nun schon seit einer Weile Spanisch, zuerst mit Unikursen, dann im Tandem mit dem Nachbarn und nun mit Duolingo, einer Sprachlernwebsite. Ich zwinge mich nun seit einer Weile mindestens ein Modul pro Tag durchzugehen – keine Ahnung ob ich nun viel dazulerne, aber wenigstens verlerne ich mein Unispanisch nicht. Das Prinzip ist einfach: Es gibt eine gewisse Anzahl Levels, die muss man durchgehen indem man einfache Sätze übersetzt oder Artikel antickt.

Nach demselben Prinzip: Codeacademy. Hier ist das Logo zwar keine lustige Eule die zum blau-grün-gelben-Spaaaass-Design der Website passt, dafür sind die Kurse voller Humor gestaltet, nur sanft, aber genug, dass ich interessiert bleibe. Zu lernen gibt es allerlei Code, und ich lerne jetzt HTML, damit ich in die Vergangenheit reisen kann um mir selbst zu zeigen was ich damals schon wusste. Das macht keinen Sinn, deswegen weiter mit Links.

Seit Jahren folge ich nun schon den Vlogbrothers auf Facebook, und seit einiger Zeit machen Hank und John Green nun auch eine Reihe Geschichts-, Literatur-, Biologie- und Ökologievideos unter dem Namen Crash Course. Und die machen Spass. Ehrlich gesagt (und ohne allzu grosse Überraschung) sind mir Johns Videos immer etwas lieber, deswegen hier eins zur Landwirtschaftlichen Revolution:

Ganz toll ist auch AsapSCIENCE (Ich fühle mich immer 5 Jahre alt wenn SCIENCE in ALL CAPS geschrieben wird. Als würde ich es als kleines Kind aufspringend schreien: „SCIENCE!“) Hier werden allmögliche Fragen mit hübschen Skizzen beantwortet, zum Beispiel: Was bewirkt einen Kater, wieso ist mir im Auto immer schlecht  oder eben wieso Männer Nippel haben:

Aaaand finally C.G.P. Grey, der Videos zu allerlei komplizierten Themen macht, die immer unglaublich gut elaboriert und recherchiert sind (oder jedenfalls geben die Videos diesen Anschein). Hier eines zu den Begriffen Grossbritannien, England und mehr:

Und all diese Seiten sind auf Englisch. Surfe ich mehr auf englischsprachigen Websites, oder sind gute deutschsprachige (oder französischsprachige) Videos und Lernplattformen effektiv rar?