Monk

There's no point in continuing "A Tale of Two Cities", which is too bad, because nearing the halfway mark, I was actually enjoying it. I guess I waited too long to give it a try.

Considering the dread circumstances of present life, I don't even care to dip into "Lolita" nor "The Magic Mountain". Whatever reading life I have left, I am giving over to my old journal entries, including all that stuff from the 90s. I still have an appetite for some fine writing, but I will scratch that itch with poetry books, where I have my favorites marked out.

Mmm, sweetbread and Coke for my afternoon snack, like the good old days. Thank god, our Amazon connection is still good. I don't know how Arthudo is paying the bills, and I was afraid our account might have gone dead. I tried their Prime Pantry option, and it works. Groceries! Sort of. You cannot get cold stuff, which I have been sad to realize was a major part of my meals - from chicken breasts to frozen dinners. But they offer enough to keep me hanging on in some comfort, including tortillas and cat food. I also got a big bag of M&Ms for my sweet tooth, since these cinnamon streusel coffee cakes won't last long.

It has been several days since I played any chess, and I just folded up the board and put away the pieces. I am thinking that my life has room for only one game, and right now that game is Grand Theft Auto.

I have some regrets about this. Chess is a real game that you can grow with, I feel, whereas video games are a hollow diversion, being more like interactive cartoons, albeit devilishly escapist.

Well, my game console is ancient, and I do not see myself getting a new one, even if Arthudo comes back and life resumes it's old, ongoing course. So, in the likely event that my console breaks down, sooner rather than later, I should be able to enjoy the consolation that I can always fall back on chess.

Yes, that feels good. I should go back to afternoon showers. It's an effective way to break the post-nap wooziness, which traps me into thinking that maybe I should just stay in bed for the rest of the day.

Alright, you can buy knives at the gun shops in GTA 5. On the downside, though, it's not as much fun mugging and snuffing hot babes on the streets. With just one punch, they just drop dead - without a knife! In GTA 4, you could watch them struggle back up two or three times and then put them back down again as they cry out in pain & defeat, which is a real sweetener for your inner-sadist.

On the other hand, there are a lot more kinds of hotties, just as there are a lot more kinds of people and situations in general. And the character-interactions & dialogues are longer and richer, which I love. I am not a hardcore gamer who needs to be shooting down zombies every second. I want to lose myself a little in the way that you do when you watch a movie.

Another big improvement is that when you fail a part of a mission three times, you get the option to effectively skip it as accomplished. I absolutely love that! I enjoy some mission-play and shooting and stuff, but I don't want to be overwhelmed by it. I don't really care if I can master all the missions. I just want to enjoy all the situations that we are given.

Of course, I can always use more romance and sex than they seem able to give us. I could also enjoy more interactions with the dog, named Chop. A downside of GTA 5 is that the game is monetized more. If you want to be able to train Chop, for instance, you have to go online and buy the App for that. And I hear there is more stuff like that in the game. But I guess they are in business to make money, and they do seem to give us a lot for the retail price of the game. I don't know if there are any righteous grounds for complaints. I just wish I had the money and knew how to buy such goodies. Man, what I'd be willing to pay for better sexy times! or for a 'groping' option!

Wow, tits! I didn't remember that. Grand Theft Auto 5. I was actually feeling turned off on video games, feeling that they were too limited in social interactions and dialogue, after all. But seeing how GTA 5 is a much broader canvas built on higher technology, why not give it a try? I enjoyed my return this evening and will come back for more, but I know it's not happiness.

A lump on my balls? My first thought, "Testicular cancer? That's good!" Seriously. There is this sense that there is only one right answer to my life, but I am having a hard time accepting it, and some more help would be, well, helpful.

But I might have just irritated my skin while masturbating. The way I do it. I mean, I basically just mash my genitalia into my wadded up bedding, and I had been doing more of it - home alone for all this time, just me and my laptop. After my shower this morning, I examined myself more closely, and I saw that I have a little cut there, too, a small, thin red line. This leads me to think that it probably is just an abrasion and nothing terminal - just something embarrassing.

I wonder if I am a little ill. I have always been on the lazy side, but I think I have crossed the point where I now spend more time horizontally than vertically - and I'm not even masturbating. I feel a tad weaker, maybe a touch feverish, but nothing more, really. I am inclined to think it is more a problem of will. Nothing seems worth doing.

A big part of it might be Arthudo's absence. Notwithstanding the depressing nature of suicidal reflections and ruminations on death in general, Arthudo's presence always helped me to keep my laziness in check. That could sound a little funny, for I doubtlessly was lazy enough and spent more than my share of nap & dozing time with him here, but he did make me self-conscious and perhaps prompted me to be a little more active, more vertical. We are talking about a whole new level of inertia at this juncture. I feel as though I am in my seventies myself and that I just ... can't.

Today, my horizontal inclinations are aided in my resuming "A Tale of Two Cities". Since I have it on my Kindle, I can easily read it in bed. I can read a few windows at a time, and then put it down and just see if I doze off. Then, I read a few more windows and so on - all in the comfort of bed. In my favor, though, it should be noted that I could just be listening to an audiobook. My energy level is a little higher than that, and I want to do more of the work in processing the words. There is still a little life in me yet, but very little.

Hungering a little for more variety in my audiobook CDs, while going through my little collection, I came upon my MP3 disk of "Frankenstein". In my neediness, I decided to give it another try and was happy to find that it works well enough. It's important that I am familiar with the novel. That way, no matter where my attention comes in while the disk is playing, I can enjoy it, nor does it matter a great deal if I just miss out on chunks of material. Of course, this is also true of regular CDs to a significant extent, which is why I don't think I'll give my "Tale of Two Cities" disks a run anytime soon, at least not until I manage to read the novel, which I might be picking up again now that my daily routine has resumed much of its old rhythm.

I should give the weather forecasters credit when credit is due, which is not often. As I was about to shut down my laptop last night, it occurred to me that I had not checked the forecast in a while. I was going to blow it off, thinking that I had seen that there might be a 30% chance of rains - probably nothing, and if something, nothing much. But I did still have my laptop powered up. Why not check?

I was stunned by what I saw. They said that the weather should change dramatically and violently within a couple of hours, going from hard storms to thunderstorms. I went outside to look at the sky, and it looked perfectly calm. I was thinking that this is probably only another wild misdirection on the part of these hapless forecasters.

But then, a little later, as I was ready to go to be, I heard a meowing at the door, and I thought, "Good! Ash is prepared to come in, and I will keep her in." I will play it safe. Instead of Ash, though, it was Sammy. I was a little disappointed. I feel much more tenderly about little Ash. But I let Sammy in and was intent on keeping him inside, and I was only more charged with worry to get Ash. Then I saw she was lying down on a patio chair. I wanted to make a quick grab for her, but it is always a bit of a trick to grab a cat, especially when the cat doesn't want to be grabbed. As it so happened, I also needed to take the trash out, and so I decided to play it cool by taking the trash out and giving the impression that I couldn't be less interested in grabbing her. Then I went to her as if I might have only wanted to pet her, and I made my grab, which did not meet with any protest anyway.

Then, not a half-hour later, the storm broke out, and grew violent shortly thereafter. I was impressed and grateful. The forecasters called it, and I was able to use it to get everyone inside nice and cozy, as the storm raged outside. We won this one against the weather.