Digging ourselves out
Things can only go up from here
This month has been a road to recovery from the bullshit that had been thrown at us so early in the year. As readers of the blog might already know, our basement flooded at the end of January when a pipe froze and burst. We’ve been dealing with the clean-out and tear-down of pretty much the entirety of our basement while juggling communications between home insurance, water damage remediation, and plumbers.
As of the end of February, we have had our flooring completely torn up, holes cut in our drywall around the perimeter of the main room, and most of our personal effects either tossed out or put into storage. We’re currently waiting on insurance to approve the rebuild, and then we’ll start on scheduling a full remodel of our basement.
And to add to the shit pie we’ve been served, just days after this tragedy unfolded someone hit our car, causing for the entire passenger door needing to be replaced. Luckily the damage was paid for in full by the guy who hit us, we still have to deal with the inconvenience of losing our car for more than a week. We just can’t catch a break.
Movies
Die My Love - Another movie about the stresses of motherhood and marriage, but this time Jennifer Lawrence goes completely off the deep end (again). It’s kind of mean spirited and at times very uncomfortable to watch, but it was a decent sit.
Return to Silent Hill - As someone who has always loved the Silent Hill games, particularly a fondness for Silent Hill 2 after Bloober Team’s excellent remake last year, this movie was a complete pile of steaming excrement. I won’t even elaborate any further because there was nothing of value here at all.
Marty Supreme - Probably going to end up being my personal pick for best picture for 2025, even though I don’t think it has a shot in hell to win. It has all of the best manic and anxious energy of Uncut Gems but while being a bit more “fun”. Josh Safdie is excellent at painting entertaining portraits of absolute scumbags.
Nirvanna the band the show the movie - Hands down the most fun I’ve had at the movie theater in a long time. Before seeing this I was only partially familiar with the Nirvanna the band web series and TV show, but now I feel like I have to go back and consume it all. There are things in this movie that had to be done by actual magic or an ungodly amount of foresight.
28 Weeks Later: The Bone Temple - I had a lot of hope for this one coming off of the solid, but not mind-blowing 28 Years Later seeing that the story was going to move forward with Dr. Kelson and the gang of Jimmys. I think I came away entertained but kind of expecting more. For sure there are some great set piece scenes here, but I feel like it leaves the next movie in a strange place that I’m not really looking forward to.
Books
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - A man trapped in an infinite labyrinth of halls ponders his existence after an unexpected visitor shows up. This started out as a buddy read with my wife, but the sheer obliqueness and weirdness put her off immediately. I was told it would be up my alley if I enjoyed The Library at Mount Char (which I do), and I totally see the comparison there, but this one didn’t hit as hard for me. I do like how the story starts out vague and deftly unravels and reveals itself as things move along, but ultimately it wasn’t a story I could really care about.
Root Rot by Saskia Nislow - A group of unnamed children come together for a family reunion at their grandfather’s house in the woods and weird things start to happen. I had no clue what was going on for the majority of this short novel and will probably have to reread it at some point. Narrative shifts between characters (or maybe it doesn’t?) and it’s really hard to keep track of the characters and what is going on. I got the impression that the ambiguity was a deliberate part of the story but it really hurt my brain.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - After the world is flattened by an alien corporation, the survivors are thrown into an underground role-playing-game-inspired intergalactic game show to fight for their lives. This was my mindless entertainment slop read for the month and while it started out a little bit insufferable, I ended up getting on its wavelength by the end and kind of actually enjoying it. It’s definitely an uphill struggle trying to not roll my eyeballs out of my head at all of the shoehorned references, but it’s handled leagues better than something like Ready Player One. There are like 8 books in this series and while I’m not going to rush out to complete them, I might dip back in whenever I need to unwind a bit.
The Wingspan of Severed Hands by Joanna Koch - The fates of a teenage girl and a weapons director spiral together in a world succumbing to a cosmic madness. I thought for maybe the first third of this book that I had a handle on what was going on, but that was swiftly dashed away as this novella goes completely bonkers and incomprehensible. The prose is really well written but sometimes got in the way of my basic understanding of events and characters. I think I spent too much time this month reading extremely dense and difficult stories and my brain is just shot.
Games
ARC Raiders - I’ve been dumping a ton of hours into this extraction shooter that I started playing last month. I’ve been mostly playing alone, honing my understanding of the map layouts and loot routes while steadily growing my arsenal of weapons. A big update went out at the end of the month and added a few enemy types as well as a new weather event. As I near the level cap, I see myself backing off quite a bit, but I can totally seeing this as a game I come back to now and again as the devs put in more content.
Diablo II: Resurrected - Briefly, I checked out the new update that Blizzard put out for this 26 year old game. They added a new class, the Warlock, who kind of plays like a mix between a sorceress and necromancer. I started up a new ladder character for the season but really haven’t seen any new content other than this character.
Resident Evil: Requiem - I was so excited for this game that I actually took a vacation day at work to play. I’m maybe a third or half-way into the game and I’m absolutely loving it. The game is divided up between two characters: Claire, who is recommended to play in first-person perspective and plays more like the slow-burn puzzle-filled horror experience that the early Resident Evil games cultivated; and Leon, who in third-person is in more of an action-oriented game, blowing off heads and axing zombies in the face. I can’t wait to see how this story unfolds because I’m extremely interested in this new villain character, Dr. Victor Gideon.
Marathon (Server Slam) - I checked out this free weekend for Bungie’s new extraction shooter and left with kind of mixed feelings. I think the shooting feels great (as you would expect from the creators of Halo and Destiny) and the augment/weapons system shows promise, but the game’s art style and UI design feels a bit off-putting to me. Playing on console with a controller does not feel intuitive and sometimes I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to be looking at on screen. I’ll probably hold off a bit on buying into the full game when it comes out in March. If they can deliver a PvE experience on-par to Destiny’s dungeons and raids, I will consider signing up.
Quite a busy, difficult month! I'm glad you got some movies and books to distract you from your disasters!