Very Shitness...

The notion of a forward moving career trajectory right now feels as pointless and non-existent as a vigorously sandpapered unicorn horn. I only bring this up again because of recent events relating to the actions of others in the world of Facebook and because working in retail over the Christmas period is enough to send even the most optimistic person on a ride in a one-horse open sleigh off a cliff made of discounted spirits, pigs in blankets and mass avarice.

Let's go back to Facebook for a moment and leave the clumsy, rambling, overly-elaborate similes to one side. My own personal ventures into 'the book' lately have resulted in shared YouTube videos and anecdotal asides that could only be collectively described as "shit my 4-year-old nephew says". Meanwhile, others have used the medium to point out good things that have occurred in their respective existences. Okay people post bad stuff too, but screw the bad stuff. It's not that time of year. It should more "Merry Christmas" and less Very Shitness.

People post the positive developments in love, career and wealth; that's the Tarot card holy trinity right there. Anyway, as is human nature, when I become aware of someone else's good news, I feel something akin to happiness for their cause. Unfortunately, such a feeling lasts for much less time than an ice cube does in an oven, before it's taken over by a mix of jealousy, selfishness and the need to continually come up with rubbish bits of rhetorical extravagance like a vomiting dictionary. I start to examine my own current state of being and compare my relatively crap lifestyle to that of those others who actually have exciting news to share.

As it stands, I live away from family, with a select few friends in a fairly dilapidated portion of the country. My current financial stature has me now in a position where I'm earning enough to live comfortably, but still dealing with the spectre of outstanding, backdated rent, thus forcing me to stay in a co-dependent situation without the freedom to go it alone. Regarding freedom, I lack mobility in terms of long distances. I'm unable to drive an actual vehicle and thus rely on others to move me across vast spaces, namely railway companies. The full-time retail work I'm currently associated with seems to hold a kind of monopoly on my life since it's my only source of steady income but restricts me to one particular place. The problem here is that any future career prospects are most likely going to require me to relocate, which is something I simply can't afford to do since without my current job and steady income, I'm kind of screwed.

Back in the virtual realm, my escapades in the written word - mostly coming from this perpetually stagnating blog - have attracted the attention of a former college tutor of mine from way back. When I say "way back" I really mean 2008, but a fair bit's happened to me over the last five years, meaning that a sudden inbox message from someone I knew for one term and have kept on the periphery of my digital contacts ever since actually took me by surprise.

"Hey," said he. Well probably not really, I'm just paraphrasing to give you the general impression of the message I received. "How's it going? I see you've graduated. I see you write a fair bit. What kind of forward moving career trajectory have you got going on now?" It was as if he knew misery and wanted to caption it for me. However, he works in the field of creative arts where work is never easy to get into and never stable enough to cling onto. I felt the warmth of his sympathetic sentiments as he offered a few words of encouragement in the form of handy job-recruitment websites. I told him I'd have a look at them and then went and did the exact opposite.

I suppose I have to cling onto the hope that time will solve everything and I'll get to a more comfortable career-wise position eventually. The only problem I'm facing right now is that time seems to be moving so slowly, yet it's constantly racing away; every day that I'm not thinking about where I'm going to end up or how I'm going to get there is just another day wasted in the grand scheme of things. Part of the problem is I don't even know exactly what kind of career I want to pursue and haven't quite taken the time, courage or initiative to consider it. That's why, after typing all of this, I'm going to dig out that list of handy websites, take comfort in the fact that figures from my past still have some shred of faith in me, and start exploring where and how that career trajectory can actually start hurtling forwards for once.

To put it in simpler, and more seasonally appropriate terms:

Dear Santa, I have been a good boy this year getting my degree and not murdering anyone, so pretty please can I have a new job for Christmas? Well, not a new job for Christmas, but can you at least give me the strength and encouragement and enlightenment as to what it is I want to do with the rest of my life, because I sometimes worry that if I stay working in retail over festive periods, I'll turn even more and more bitter towards life and all its human inhabitants and I'll end up on the naughty list. Oh, and a clockwork train too. Cheers mate.

P.S. Forget the train. Even though it's clockwork, it probably won't run according to schedule anyway.

Spent More Than Enough

Money-wise, I'm on my last ass right now. I would say I'm on my last legs but my bank balance is far too low now that not even metaphorical legs can save it. And as far as figures of speech go, the last ass seems more fitting. According to Andy Williams, it's the most wonderful time of the year, although sadly, I'm forced to disagree with the late crooner on that. Daylight hours are shorter, gas consumption is larger and retail establishments are crammed to the rafters with people throwing money about in exchange for pieces of tat they're not even buying for themselves, all because social and cultural protocol says so. Season's greetings.

Anyway I'm not being bitter about the festive period or retail, or indeed the festive period in retail. I've actually managed to reach a point where I'm fairly comfortable about the impending holiday, and to be even more accurate, I reached that point on Sunday night. All of my gift shopping for other people is done and all of those bits have been draped in colourful paper and shiny ribbons. I'm actually done with it early this year, or at least earlier than normal. Last year I did virtually all of my shopping on December 21st then spent a solid evening wrapping the heck out of it. The fact that this year I've managed to get everything finished whilst the month was still in single digits (i.e. the 8th). Go me!

In order to complete the task at hand, though, I've had to go a bit spend happy. In fact, over the last four days my debit card's seen more action than I have over the last twenty-four years. Slutty little bit of plastic; inserting itself into every slot it sees, ejaculating money like nobody's business. There's a mild chance I'm sexually frustrated right now, but then again that's nothing new. And as much as you probably don't want to be reading about such a topic... well... to be honest that's really what the internet's for now. Quite frankly, if you didn't want any of that, you shouldn't have come online in the first place. Weirdo.

Having such low funds right now means that I can't really splurge (which still hasn't stopped me from buying presents for myself alongside presents for others). Having to live on bread and water seems to be the order of business up until Christmas though now. Okay, it's not as drastic as that, but I think I'm allowed to exaggerate a fair bit if I want to continue utilising words in my life as some sort of career path. As it stands, though, my current working lifestyle is getting in the way. In fact, I'm probably supposed to be doing that right now. You know what, forget "probably". That is actually what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Besides, I've spent more than enough words today. Any more and I'll surely be facing some kind of word debt very soon. I should stop before I fall into any overdraft.

Bye.

Still Here

When Internet historians in the distant 45th century take off their headsets, disable their brain chips and discover our primitive mesh of information transfer, they'll probably wonder how we managed. They'll marvel at how people had to use their fingers to manually input individual characters to spread the word. They'll wonder how a static, two-dimensional 100x100 pixels thumbnail could possibly be used to represent a person's entire personality. And when they find millions upon zillions of homebrew blogs, they be astonished at how so many people seemingly dropped dead immediately after their first and, tragically, only entry.

Back in the now-most times, however, we understand that people create blogs and neglect them very quickly when they run out of either stuff to say, energy to say it, or memory to stop and go "shit, I've still got that blog somewhere in the technological ether". I have - at one point or another - done all three. Not all at the same time, that would be ludicrous, illogical, contradictory and possibly lead to the explosion of brain matter. But at various times, I've done each of the three. As it happens, I've not been here for a while, not written for a while and if I hadn't started typing this one, those 45th century historians might've looked back at this time when I roamed the planet and naturally assume I ceased to exist at some point in early November. I didn't though, I'm still here. These words prove it. Furthermore, my brain matter is still intact as far as I can tell.

I wish I could inform the great wide everywhere that the last few months have been filled with numerous wild adventures that have prohibited me from heading over this way and actually bothering to make words about it. I wish I could tell you that I've traversed dangerous mountainsides, swam long and winding rivers, and collected all kinds of exotic treasures along the way. To be honest, I kind of have been doing that whenever dipping in and out of brand new The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. The real world truth, however, is that my wild adventures have amounted to nothing more than working, sleeping, occasionally eating, farting, and trying to come up with another thing to make me sound moderately interesting, but failing. This, evidently, is a feeling that has plagued my entire existence over the last however long or so.

My enthusiasm for writing something, anything in this space has waned due to a lack of exciting things to mention in the here and now, alongside a strong sense of fatigue that comes from picking up extra hours in convenience retail. In future, I may well have to rely on my past. The problem with the past is that I can barely remember it well. Hell, I don't even remember what I wrote two sentences ago, but it probably had something to do with hypothetical historians of the future or the existence of a fickle attention span. It's apparent now, though, that I'm going to have to have a sit down and good long think about things that have unfolded before my eyes over the last 24 years and pick out the interesting ones. At the risk of turning this webspace into a bad sitcom-style clip-show episode of my life, I regret to inform you that the more exciting stories aren't really happening this season. Maybe a look back into the past will remind me of how the show used to be back in its heyday whilst also attempting to improve those sinking ratings and angering the critics at the same time.

Hey, at least I've written something here this time. Don't cry to me if you find it crap. I know it's crap. This is my personal crap space where I come to write crap. My theory is that I have a certain amount of crap within me, so if I write out all the crap first, that'll only leave good stuff left to write about later. Meanwhile, all this talk about getting the crap out has made me notice that shifting sensation in my bowels so away I go now. I hope that, as you're reading this, you're now imagining me sitting on the toilet doing some natural - if a little bit icky - business, because that's actually probably where I actually am right now.

Weird And Wonderful People

So yeah, October can bugger off. The whole month has skipped by without me getting much of a chance to input words into this 'ere white space via the data highway. Well, I say that. Actually, I don't say that; I'm not sitting here talking to a keyboard. What I mean is: Well, I type that, but the truth is I've had a couple of chances to update over the last four weeks but the working lifestyle thrust upon me lately makes me want to spend every free moment I have sleeping. The problem I face with this is that falling into such a work/sleep routine makes me loathe the other people who live in my house for the fact that they get to actually live in the house, whilst I treat the place like a very personalised hotel with albeit pretty shit cleaning staff. What follows here, therefore, is a brief list of things I've managed to get done over the last month that I can vaguely remember. My apologies in advance for the amount of shitness to come in this post.

The childish side of me has reared its ugly freckled face over the last few weeks following the release of Pokémon X and Y, rendering a lot of my designated sleeping time moot and causing me to fall victim to addiction like countless alcoholics and smokers before me. I blame Uni - more specifically the people at Uni - for making me this way. Up until about a year ago, the last time I'd so much as thought or even cared about the Japanese gaming franchise was, as far as I can remember, in the pre-Internet era for me. This is the best recollection I can make considering my memory in times without Internet is rather sketchy. I also feel I should point out that I first gained access to the online realm in 2002, so we're going back at least eleven years here. However, Uni does weird things to people, forcing you to mingle with a multitude of weird and wonderful people with one collective like-minded childhood.

Somewhere in the mire of young adults who seem to have shared cultural aspects of my youth, stories and jokes have been shared creating an air of nostalgia. This fond nostalgia has convinced me to revisit older aspects of my childhood in a move generally labelled in the geek community as "retro". However, when the good people of Japan announced they were continuing the seemingly never-ending franchise with yet another game with the same premise in which the same sequence of events occurs but now with updated graphics and shit, I just knew I'd have to honour this collision of a long forgotten childhood and updated technologies by spending 35 quid and countless hours of life on it. The inner child has now taken over and takes pride in the accomplishments achieved in the game despite the fact that the difficulty level of the whole thing is so considerably low, not even an ant could limbo under that stick.

I mentioned smokers earlier in this and that reminded me of something else that's occurred in my life-sphere lately, thus making a seamless transition from the last paragraph to this. No, I'm not suddenly smoking now: it still smells like the dust from behind a long-standing pile of bricks being burnt and I don't quite fancy the idea of standing outside for ten minutes at a time whilst winter approaches. My smoking story emanates from the fact that a large portion of my work time is spent behind a kiosk counter meaning that I can now identify most brands of cigarettes or loose rolling tobacco by the design of the packaging, despite never touching the contents myself. It also means I can hum the little jingle produced by the National Lottery machine whenever a winning ticket or scratchcard is rewarded at will.

In a twist of events, though, a considerable portion of the locals in my area come from one of three groups: Polish migrants, Spanish/Portuguese/possibly Latin-American migrants, and native English locals probably inwardly complaining about the number of foreigners 'round 'ere. In my embracing of all the peoples of this world, I don't differentiate between people who originate from elsewhere, just as long as nobody's rude to me I'm happy to serve the human race in all its forms. Unfortunately, however, there comes a point where a certain amount of basic English-language skills may be necessary to partake in a transaction involving what variety of tobacco-related product one would like to purchase. Usually the name of the brand is enough but one of my most recent customers was unable to produce such a name for me to look for, providing me with only the description "Smoking Kills" in spite of the fact that virtually every type of tobacco is brandished with "Smoking Kills" as a kind of standard issue governmental warning.

Never a dull moment there really. And before the whole Internet descends on me to jump down my throat becoz I is bein' a racist, I'd like to point out that as a worker in the retail sector, my only gripe with humanity is rude people. As a matter of pure fact, I've dealt with several native English people who gruffly grunt as a form of communication and several non-native English folks who are just peachy and pleasant regardless of their level of speaking the lingo. Now that I've dug myself out of that hole, you bunch of web-space dwelling, accusing bastards can jog on.

Brain's Not Working

The old work/sleep routine has well and truly been reinstated. The fact that I actually have time on a Wednesday afternoon to type words into this is nothing short of miraculous. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating there; miracles aren't that bland. Sorry, brain's not working and I have an awful lot of stuff from the last week or so piling up in the virtual depths of a Sky+ hard drive that I need to catch up on.

It'll probably take me the next two days to get through everything, which is just enough time to cover it all before I head back into a working environment once again.

Communications

It's a rare occurrence for me to check my emails; even more rare than me checking my older email address. I currently claim ownership of two separate accounts, completely going against everything nineteen-year-old me stands for. The way nineteen-year-old me sees it, you are one person, therefore you only need one account. One email address, one bank account, one phone contract, one place to live, one plot of earth to rest, one gravestone. Anything more is just wasted extravagance. Nowadays, 24-year-old me (a.k.a. me) is faced with a certain sense of uncertain future and feels like the only thing he can control in his life is the amount of online presence he has. Also he displays a tendency to switch perspective from first- to third-person mid-paragraph.

The latest addition to my vast roster of two electronic communication channels happens to be a Gmail account, courtesy of that powerhouse of search engines (and the only website your nan has ever heard of), Google. I'll be honest with you, having a Gmail account is great. Emails are easy to access. Whenever I stupidly sign up to websites that churn out newsletters and notifications every seven seconds they get automatically filed away as "Social" or "Promotional" or something I don't give a crap about, leaving only the actual ones in my actual inbox. Connectivity to many things is easier, including this blog right here. Yes, you there reading this. Hello. I'm able to communicate this to you a lot easier now thanks to Google. Hell, if anybody were even to actively search for this particular one there's a fairly decent chance Google might put it somewhere near the top ten of all found results. Furthermore, I don't get spam.

Previously, in my email account history, Hotmail (currently known as Outlook and formerly affiliated with the virtual equivalent of an early 2000s youth centre, MSN Messenger) was the only channel of communication I used on a regular basis. Since the end of my University adventures some three months ago, though, the place has been fairly abandoned, gathering virtual messages equivalent to a discarded yogurt pot gathering fluffy green bits. And that's just the inbox. The spam folder however... let's just say that if it was a person that needed taking to a virtual hospital, I'd probably have to check it in for cases of diphtheria, polio, meningitis, high cholesterol, liver failure, appendicitis, a broken leg, tennis elbow, a lodged Tic Tac in one nostril and (apparently) erectile dysfunction. The only reason I haven't pulled the plug on its life support yet is that, on occasion, it may still prove useful. And behold and lo...

A series of communications between a past uni tutor and myself have unfolded, skipping over the fact that it might actually be better to get in touch with me another, more Google-orientated way. Ultimately, we've briefly had the "what are you doing now that uni's finished?" discussion, with potential University-related opportunities being mused over by both him and me in a blind attempt at (a) remaining a part of the University family after my recent graduation, and (b) giving me something to do.

As it happens, we've now progressed to the stage where, semi-awkwardly, he's asked me if I want to go out for coffee. This could, of course, quite simply be an innocent offer of meeting up and having this discussion in person rather than in words. Cold, static, Times New Roman words. However, there's a little part of me that is aware of the underlying meaning of two people going out for coffee. Heck, I even wrote a shite story about it; one which this same tutor marked fairly poorly due to its obvious shitness. Anyway, there's a certain awkwardness about the idea of meeting up with my past tutor for coffee in this way. For starters, he's not really my type. For other starters, I don't actually like coffee.

Needless to say, I have tentatively accepted his invitation to meet up since it'd be nice to have a bit of a catch-up and hopefully get a chance to hang around the University campus for a little while longer. However, I must stress that I have only accepted purely on the pretence that there's no funny business.

Nothing

Contrary to how it sounds, violent mood swings are not (necessarily) the way one would describe the sensation of being hit repeatedly over the head with a golf club made of anguish. Instead, "violent mood swings" is how one might describe the sensation of being hit directly in the life with a something made out of something. Unfortunately, a bout of mild depression has hindered me from allowing that last image to make any sort of sense in any coherent sort of manner... sort of.

It seems that, whilst I may be working, the idea of being paid in monthly instalments is taking its toll on my attitude towards being comfortable in this life. Keeping track of the hours I'm working and the pennies I'm earning is most deflating when I realise that I don't get to touch any of that money for up to four weeks depending on what day I look at the numbers and think about it. Sure, with each night that passes, the amount of time I have to wait lessens by one day. But the days seem to be travelling by so slowly I feel that science needs to take a long hard look at itself and redefine the duration of a day. Although with that in mind, it's unsure how long that long hard look will take exactly. If I were to guess, I'd say six days (or seventeen "new days") would be appropriate.

Even though the time passes so slowly, however, I still can't help wondering about the future. Actually. Scratch that. Some subconscious part of my mindspace can't help lazily drifting off towards damning thoughts about the future. Where am I going to be one year from now? What am I going to be doing? Where will I live? Who will I live with? What about three years from now? Or seven? Or twenty-three (in "new years" [actually, that sounds dangerously close to "New Year's" and could cause an awful lot of confusion {should I just end that whole lengthening of time periods thread of thought? «so many brackets!»}]). Ultimately, the general feeling generated by whatever evil portion of my brain does that travels throughout the rest of my very being is one of monotonous pointlessness.

There came a moment yesterday during which I stopped everything I was doing. For the record, "everything I was doing" was watching potatoes boil. I stood, one hand over my head, little feeling in my legs and the uncontrollable urge to lie in a foetal position on the cold, tiled floor of the kitchen, suck my thumb and cry. Fortunately, the oven timer went off to signal that the sausages were done and snapped me out of my regressive trance before my body hit the deck. You may be pleased to know the potatoes were mashed successfully and the sausages coated with onion gravy. However, the whole thing was rather bland and tasteless, much like life at this time.

I later went on to watch whatever episodes of Friends Comedy Central had thrown on. It happened to be one of the first season ones where Ross' gay, pregnant ex-wife gives birth to his child. During the episode, he, Phoebe and the other lesbian (the not-pregnant one) get locked in a supply cupboard and nearly miss the birth. During this mediocre plot point, Phoebe (who, for some reason, brought her guitar into the supply cupboard with her) begins to sing a maudlin, sombre ditty about how trapped they are and how their corpses would be discovered a day later. During this brief musical interlude, a tear rolled down my cheek and I genuinely despaired at the hypothetical sudden deaths of these characters in what was essentially a throwaway comic situation in a work of fiction. There's no real point to this, other than the fact that depression does weird things to a person.

I'm not going to sit here and claim I've been clinically depressed, by the way. I know that clinical depression is a truly awful thing, as opposed to that pansy meaning that's been tagged onto the word "depression" lately. There's a mighty difference between "got sick and can't go on holiday" depression and "just curled up in a ball cried on the kitchen floor and have no idea why" depression. The overwhelming sense of pointlessness, worthlessness, lifelessness and "ehh" is a truly awful set of feelings to experience. There's no strong sense of happiness or sadness, but instead nothingness. If it feels as though I'm not describing it very well, sorry, but it's hard to describe nothing.

Close your eyes. Go on close them.

Now think of nothing.

What?

Shit, well open your eyes again.

Read this first: when you close your eyes, think of nothing.

Now close your eyes.

And open them again. Hi, welcome back. Did you think of nothing? What did it look like? Dark? Black? Empty? Blank? Good, but you're wrong. Those are all still things. Darkness exists. Black is the absence of light and therefore has a definition as "something". Even the word "nothing" is something. See, it's hard to truly imagine nothing, and it's just as difficult to experience it. I suppose, in that sense, that feeling of "nothing" is in fact, thousands of things (might I refer you back to the many future questions my subconscious threw at me) bombarding you all at once. The senses can't handle it. Information overload. And as a result, that little part of your life that tells you to "just keep on going" suddenly stops talking and stares blankly out the window at a puddle or something.

I've experienced this before, I'm experiencing it now and I'll probably come into contact with it again in my life. I know people who've been affected by it much worse than myself and subsequently feel as though I have no right to complain about feeling shit on occasion. When it comes for me, it comes in concentrated bouts after steady healthy doses of what I'd like to refer to as "feeling normal". Feeling normal is much better than anything else in the world; way better than "just happiness" and "just sadness", and miles better than "just nothingness". Feeling normal is when I know I'm coping in life just fine. I cook meals, I shower regularly, I watch TV, I'm slightly addicted to virtual games, I read, I work. These are the things that let me know I'm a capable and fully functioning adult. And I am an adult, and I have a Nectar card to prove it.

Most of the time, I'm able to cope in this world using only the tools provided. But occasionally, I crash and hit a wall made out of nothing (or the meaning of "nothing" since that's actually something) and I struggle to carry on without somehow dragging myself out of it. And you can rest assured that next time that happens, it'll probably end up being a case of me writing all about it.

15 Years Old

Dear The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,

Whoa, Jesus, man! Seriously?! I mean, forgive the lack of clarity to such outbursts and rest assured they shall be clarified soon enough, but seriously, are you for reallies?!

Anyway, it's nice that you've dominated a solid week and a half of my time and filled it with so much joy, wonder, frustration and surprise. I must say, however, that the truth is I really don't know how to feel about you. You see, I have this blog, right. I set it up with the intention of keeping me writing so that I wouldn't lose my mojo and that, which - as an aspiring writer - is an extremely important thing to have, dangerous thing to lose and horrifically difficult to get back. To put it in terms you might understand, imagine your first ever meeting with Volvagia except you've just had the big-ass hammer knocked into the lava and all you have to destroy the flamin' dragon is a Deku Stick.

It's now been almost a month since I last put something on that blog, which is monumentally awful considering my intention to keep at it on a weekly basis. Naturally, as with trying to sell banal masks to people with nothing better to do, more important aspects of life get in the way and subsequently take over all of your time, meaning the little things get put on hold. Since I last posted, I've been employed in a retail establishment, spent time away with family and played with you. Somewhere along the way, that whole notion of me wanting to write turned into me not wanting to write, which then turned into me not wanting to do anything at all. Even getting up before midday is a chore. I suppose I could blame my working shift pattern; I generally only work in the evenings meaning that by the time I get home and want to put my feet up and stare at the TV, the only thing that's on is a repeat of Family Guy or three, or twelve.

My time away on Britain's south coast produced a multitude of thoughts. Thoughts like: "Wouldn't it be nice to live in one of those apartment blocks overlooking the beach?", "Did we really just pay that entrance fee for a walk around an underground cave?", and the realisation that as much as I love my immediate family members and enjoy the rare amounts of time I now spend with them, it's uncanny how quickly everyone is able to fall into the old routine of "yelling at each other for no reason". Several factors managed to raise tensions between the family unit on holiday: the staying quarters (a crowded static caravan in amongst other crowded static caravans), disagreements over what attractions to see/places to eat, Monopoly. All in all though, a fun time was had by everyone, but I'd like to end this segment by informing you that if you think crossing from one side of Hyrule Field to the other takes a long time, clearly you've never attempted the M25 on a Bank Holiday weekend.

I had my first day working in Morri-Tesc-Asd-bury's (I'm not telling you where I am, just pick your favourite one) mere days before the family vacation and exactly a week after I last touch my blog. Going back into the workplace a week and a half later, therefore, proved fairly daunting. It was like waking up one morning and suddenly being thrust into the dank and dark, monster filled interior of a giant tree. I've started to ease myself into the place, but like most working humans, I look forward to returning home again. Which bring me to you, dear game.

The sheer fact that you actually exist is nothing short of marvellous. Your vastness and depth (which is really just another word for "vastness", but you know, struggling to get back into writing here) is grand, you've got mini-games coming out the wazoo, if I were to place your chronological origin in history, I wouldn't want to go any further back than 2005. Yet as I understand it, you've been around since 1998. You're 15 years old. Christ, I've met fully grown adults more dense and moronic than you. As a piece of technology from the '90s, you actually hold up well in today's world, and for that I am eternally surprised by you. I must say I had my doubts. After all, so many have hailed you as one of, if not, THE greatest video game of all time. Now that I've experienced you, I feel as though I can jump into that forum and throw my own opinion in there now too.

Labelling something as THE greatest of those somethings, to me, seems a bit obtuse. It's all relative really. You're an action/adventure/RPGish amalgamation, sort of like a child-friendly, cartoony version of Tomb Raider (the old ones, not that new one that's like an episode of Lost as written by a serial killer). There's not a lot else in the world like you to compare to. And if we're judging you on a technical aspect, there have been newer releases since 1998 that have accomplished more that your Deku Nut-sized brain probably ever could. But the way in which I shall judge you is that for the time you were created, you were unrivalled. I realise that for the many who played with you in your earliest days, that memory cannot be overwritten. However, I can only look at you with my own eyes and say you're probably not THE greatest game ever, but you are pretty damn good for an audience today. And if you're pretty damn good today, it's no wonder people worshipped you a decade and a half ago.

I must admit to you, though, I've only played through your recent 3D remake (only using the 3D function for cutscenes, mind), allowing me the use of a touchscreen to switch items at a moment's notice. I feel that in order to get the full authentic experience of you, I'd need to see you in your original, unaltered form and become aggravated whenever I need to switch boots inside the Water Temple without a simple touchscreen tap to do it in an instant.

So well done to you Ocarina of Time. You've managed to provoke a reaction from me, which I suppose is all that's needed to prove that you are worthy of discussion. You've managed to further distance me from the prospect of writing whilst distracting me from the more boring, workaday parts of my life. However, that strange combination of wonder and marvel at how something so complex could've come from a time that (now in relative terms) feels so primitive, has actually giving something to write about. Thanks Ocarina, and I vow to play with you again at some point. But not straight away. Jesus. Asking me if want to play the harder, mirror-world Master Quest version the moment I just finished, are you friggin' crazy? I wanted a brew straight afterwards, not to relive it all in backwards mode!

Yours tunefully,
Me.

P.S. I still find Fi more irritating that Navi, but I suppose that's an issue I'll take up with Skyward Sword next time we speak.