Holy fuckballs was that a shitstorm of a year!
I mean, there were good things and bad things that happened and then some really, really, REALLY bad things that happened.
First off, in our own microcosm, we lost our cat Joey Mjölnir Explosion, the First of His Name, Destroyer of Tribbles, Defender of Homesteads, King of Second Chances at the end of October. He had been declining for some time and we decided that it was the right time for him to move on after a number of increasing signs. We first picked him up from Cat Adoption Team around the beginning of December in 2011 and has been with us in three houses and was the best cat. He loved his carbs be it in the form of sandwiches, pizza, dinner rolls, crackers, or literally any other foodstuff you were holding. Being a usual resident of the Pacific Northwest, he also loved coffee, but only if it had been spilled on the ground or licked from a finger that had just been dipped in coffee. He was 14, almost 15 (we think since we did not know his birthday), and will always be missed.
On a macro scale, if I were to list every BIPOC who was shot and or murdered by police this would cease to be an article and just turn into a list of tragedies and I am not the right person to lead that discussion but there are plenty of resources to educate ourselves with. And then tack onto that list social injustices perpetrated against not just BIPOC but all people who do not fit the mold of what narrow-minded people consider "normal." Bloody help you if you're a BIPOC Trans Woman, then roughly 46.9% of the United States would have it out for you. Probably more, but that's a starting number. And please listen.
Just last Wednesday, December 30th, 2020 the United States saw the highest (to date and of 2020) recorded number of people dying in a single day from COVID-19 and COVID-19 related symptoms. According to the record-keeping at the New York Times, 3,808 people in the United States died on December 3oth. In a single day, and just over two weeks since the first vaccines were starting to be administered back on December 14th. To date, 347,245 have died in the United States from COVID-19 in 2020. I personally have known two people who have died from COVID-19 related symptoms and both of those have been since December 1st, and then a handful more who have tested positive since March.
I think Nicolas Cage summed it up best with his opening line from the upcoming Netflix series "History of Swear Words" trailer. That's pretty accurate.
Oh, yeah. And remember that Australia was on fire for the better part of a year? From June 2019 through May 2020 18.6 million hectares of land were burned (or 186,000 square kilometers being the entirety of Ireland and 77.9% of England not including Wales; or 71,815 square miles being the entirety of the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and 81% of Rhode Island) and "nearly three billion vertebrates" died (which is nine times the entire population of the United States) driving some species [citation needed] into extinction. That was massive. Remember?
There was so much stuff that happened this year that I had honestly forgotten about the port of Beirut exploding fewer than two months after it happened. And then just last week there was a suicide bomber on Christmas morning in Nashville, TN, and fuckall his name because he said he was going to be "so famous that Nashville will never forget me."
But you don't have to take my word for it. Canadian comedian Julie Nolke hit the proverbial nail on the head recapping events in 2020 to her past self throughout the year, which seems like a flash-in-the-pan schtick until you see that she's been doing similar sketches for the past three years (although I only found out about her from her second "Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self" video).
But let us work on ending on an up note. Or a few up notes.
Conklederp and I (meaning I was in the room while not physically pushing a baby out of my non-existent womb) had a healthy human baby halfway through the year who, until they tell me otherwise and/or come up with their own online alias, I will be referring to as Goblino. They are a bundle of hilarity who doesn't always sleep through the night, enjoys waking up at 4:30-5:30 AM, doesn't always acknowledge that they're in fact sleepy and whose fingernails grow faster than Ms. Frizzle (the cat). But they're always excited to see me when I come home from work, they like singing/talking to themselves in the morning before waking us up, they very well may start standing (not the standing up process, just the standing part) unassisted before they've fully mastered crawling, and I'll be snookered if they're not climbing V1s by the end of next year. All three of us are still healthy although I still go into the office five-days-a-week, and I am wearing a mask any time I leave the house and change clothes immediately upon arriving back home, I wash my hands frequently, only use hand sanitizer with no less than 75% alcohol, have not seen a movie in a theatre since watching Pretty Strong with Conklederp at the end of February, and I have not eaten in a restaurant since Sunday, March 15th (for Conklederp it was Saturday, March 7th); although we do get take out every so often.
Right, good news. Gaming related then.
I feel like I have been making a dent in my Switch Queue, although according to the Completionist Times over at HowLongToBeat, I still have 1,350 hours of games left; but if we are completely honest, nearly 500 of those hours are from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and associated expansions; and yes I have beaten Skyrim on PC (by beaten I obviously mean that I've completed the main quest, but still have the DLCs to tackle), but I also started it on the Switch, so it is on the list; yes, I used a third semi-colon in a single sentence, sue me. And to say nothing about the list I made for DS and 3DS games that I have started back in on since being gifted a new-to-me 3DS from Mjku at the end of November. In that list, there are fewer games and not as much time required (unless you believe that Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies really does take 752 hours for a completionist run). Now I think I might look thr0ugh my Game Boy Advance games and see if there are any that I still haven't finished; maybe I will use Conklederp's DS lite or my Game Boy Advance to play Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones that I picked up/borrowed from ReallyBigAl last Christmas? And I still need/want to play The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds because god knows why I never picked that game up in the last seven years!
I also found myself dabbling a bit back into PC gaming thanks to Wolfenstein: The New Order and the subsequent standalone expansion The Old Blood, all so that I can understand and play Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Youngblood on the Switch. And by giving Amazon's cloud-based game streaming service, I found myself interested in the Metro franchise although ended up not really enjoying Luna overall, but at least some good came out of it all; and GOG had Metro Last Light Redux for free (through New Year's Eve, I believe), which is great because after playing Metro Exodus on Luna, I hopped over to GOG and got Metro 2033 Redux at a super discounted price. And speaking of free games, if you don't have anything against Fortnite's developer Epic Games, I hope you were able to take advantage of their free game give away throughout the whole year (stretching as far back as December 2018) as well as the last 15 days where they offered up a free game every 24 hours. I already had a few of the games they offered, but titles like Alien: Isolation and The Long Dark have been a welcome addition; Either I missed seeing Metro 2033 Redux back in September 2019 or I paid for a game I already had in my library, which I am fine with.
Boardgames were a bit lackluster in 2020 for us what with the social distancing and all. We did play Mansions of Madness a couple of times (still need/want to pick up the newest expansion too) and there were a number of rounds of Quiplash with the in-laws. Our Dungeons & Dragons group still meets semi-regularly on a bi-weekly basis if everyone is able to make it. Our DM is doing a great job with keeping track of all our characters in Roll20 and learning the system there too kind of as we go along. He actually has a Patreon for some DM tools that he has been spending some time working on that I look forward to making use of once I start up a new D&D group once this is all blown over like a miracle and go away like things go away. I also got some new expansions for Elder Sign which reminds me that I still need to incorporate and play with the Unseen Forces expansion I picked up back in March and the great thing about Elder Sign is that it can be a single-player game too.
Lastly, Conklederp and I are nearly halfway through season four of The Clone Wars animated series, which I am pretty sure I have mentioned before, is her introduction to the series. And after a number of cameos in season two of The Mandalorian series, has been our go-to show to watch in the hour or two we have between getting Goblino down for the night and going to bed ourselves. I have also realized that I should really brush up (by reading a book or eight) on my chess skills, because it really is a game that I love, that I have known for a while that I am not very good at. Ah well, that's what new year's resolutions are for right?
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
My Armor is Iron ~ Instrumental
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