And that sums up my week. Started the new job officially on Monday, and didn't do a goddamn thing related to it all week. Got sick Sunday afternoon and spent the entire week being miserable. Found out Monday morning that I had to go to some training in Boston Wednesday and Friday. But not Thursday. Oh, no. They "understood" that I had to be back for a jury trial date. So, I had to drive to my folks' house, take the train in, take the train back, then drive back home, all in about 24 hours. Then I was super extra miserable the next day. So I called in sick Friday. The training was useless. Fuck'em all.

Thankfully, I'm finishing up a long weekend here at my folks' place. Drove back for the second time Friday afternoon after taking an extended sleepytime. Good food and comfort were on the menu all weekend. I helped make some homemade pizza today that was balls to the wall. It involved a roasted garlic/olive oil/parmesan/oregano spread on the dough followed by the pizza sauce, a mozzerella/sharp cheddar blend, then sliced tomato and crushed red pepper to top it off. It was awesome. There was also some chicken pot pie action, some chicken soup, and some apple crisp somewhere in there near the end.

One of my colleagues, one whom I never met, is a colleague no longer. Having received notice of her hiring rather late, she skipped get-to-know-Springfield week and went straight to the intensive training for new attorneys. Thus, we never met in person. We heard an interesting anecdote from our boss and got some personal/professional details, but that was it.

Now she is dead.

Suicide and I have had an interesting relationship. Like most of my relationships, there was always a dearth of primal connection. I confess to fascination, indignation, philosphication, dramatization, and even a bit of novelization. But I have never known anyone personally who has taken that road, at least, not all the way. I've known quite a few near-misses and a few more likely candidates. I do not wish to cast aspersions on either the living or the dead, but from the living I've received virtually no insight or useful information about the process or the state of mind surrounding the phenomenon. And so, my relationship with suicide is one of abstract thought.

It's been about a year since my totally awesome mom waited in line at 5:30 AM in front of a Toys'r'us to get me a Wii for a birthday present. Before that, I had been behind the video game curve. My "reviews," such as they were, were for games that had already been played and reviewed to death everywhere else.

But a new era has dawned, and although I cannot claim to have played the many new games for PS3 and Xbox360, I have decided that new Wii games are a luxury I can afford.

Enter Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

I just finished this game yesterday. I would have finished much, much sooner, if not for three problems. The first problem is work. The second problem is that FPS-ish games tend to give me vertigo unless/until I immerse myself in one thoroughly for several days. See the first problem for why I could not do this.

My third and final problem was, Metroid Prime 3 just did not "wow" me.

The game's got a lot going for it. It's visually superior to the first and second entries. The sound and music is, like before, fantastic - it matches the various stages very well, sets/reinforces the appropriate mood, and the various pieces stand by themselves as well-composed and arranged. The iconic space bounty hunter always gives an "intangible awesome" bump to any title in which she appears, and the voice acting (a first for the series) was done competently. Samus of course remains one of Nintendo's silent heroes.

According to the internet, and other, more reputable sources, the word "unique" is one of many modern litmus tests for the properly-educated and grammatically fastidious. If one lazily uses the term with a modifier, i.e. "quite unique," "rather unique," or the anathematized "very unique," one is out of the club - no secret handshake, no decoder ring, no access to the secret hideout.

My so-called peers and colleagues may look upon me with shame and disgust, but I must rise to the defense of the informal and colloquial use of this term. But defending the term is meaningless if I don't first tell you why I feel compelled to do so. So, part the first: me loves words. Part the second: the word "unique."

Part The First

Although I have no great aptitude for languages or linguistics, I've developed sort of a niche when it comes to the English language. I feel a deep affinity for my native tongue. I give credit to my love of music (yay awesome song lyrics) and my method of reading books for pleasure. I tend to sort of "hear' the words as I read over them. It's hard to describe, and I need to move on. Suffice to say whatever mastery I've acheived with English is due to an inexplicable compulsion to say exactly what I mean.

I will say this and this alone regarding my communications to you, my stranger friend: because I have visited your world, I will make the effort to meet you on your terms. I cannot tarry, however, to wrangle with the way that my world defies description by your words. I will simply do the best I can.

************

Our kind are never truly young, though we are, for a time, ill-formed.

As best I can remember, I spent my ill-formed days very close to that soupy swamp. This was not so uncommon. Many congregated there to slip amongst the fragmented pictures and sounds. Some preferred the tactile bits, while others searched for the rarest of morsels, a taste.

By and large we did not bother each other. There, we were protected. We had no particular benefactor. We benefitted from the unmalleability of the swamp, however, because even the most senseless and vicious among us could not swallow up and digest the swamp. Only to the rare few did the swamp become a hobgoblin or nemesis; most, upon discovering its dumb defiance, promptly ignored it forevermore.