It's now five days since I last posted. My existential doubt has, to some extent, passed, and I'm back in the blogging mood.
Several things have been occupying my brain since my last visit to my own little corner of the interweb. These are they, in no particular order:
Poker - I have finally won a game of poker, beating three teachers, one a mathematician, and that insufferable dandy Lord Tankington-Smythe. I was, of course, gracious in victory, and certainly did not whoop or jump or pump my fist like a chromosome-deficient American fratboy.
Half Life 2 - I cannot tell a lie. I have been gaming a lot recently, but I have a good reason: it's Half Life Bloody 2. I bought The Orange Box from the excellent Steam online shop, and I've worked my way through Half Life 2 again. As an example of how highly I regard Half Life 2, it's the only commercial game I've completed more than once. It's just great.
Then I played Half Life 2: Episode One, which is the first expansion pack for Half Life 2 and is great, but not quite as great as Half Life 2 itself. Right now I'm half way through Half Life 2: Episode 2, which is abso-bloodly-lutely brilliant. It's all I can do to stop myself closing this webpage right now and start playing it again.
However, it's not my favourite game in the package. That honour goes to...
Portal - Portal is a first-person puzzle game that comes as part of The Orange Box and it is, in a word, amazing. You are a test subject in a series of lab experiments based around a portal gun which you can use to create interdimensional portals in solid concrete. Walk into one and you'll come out the other. It's such a simple idea but it creates a puzzle game or startling complexity; everytime you succesfully solve a puzzle you feel like the most intelligent person in the world, which is quite good for me since I don't normally believe myself to be the most intelligent person in the room, often even when I'm on my own. And once you're through the initial nineteen test levels the game takes a turn and goes off at a brilliant new tangent. Skillfully designed and packed full of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments from your A.I. companion GlaDOS, Portal is quite the best game I've played in a very long time.
The Paralympic Games - If I'm a fan of the Olympics, I'm an even bigger fan of the Paralympics. Partly that's out of respect for the athletes, but partly it's because it's so damned entertaining. I genuinely find wheelchair basketball to be a more enjoyable sport than able-bodied basketball. And I can't wait until the Murderball - sorry, we're calling it wheelchair rugby these days - gets going.
Fear - I don't know if it's because playing a lot of Half Life 2 recently has made me worried about the experiments of scientists whose aims are well-intentioned but who seem thoroughly unprepared for the possible consequences, but I'm getting concerned about those bods at Cern. I know Stephen Hawking says everything is going to be fine, but he's probably laying the foundations for our subjegation by interdimensional alien overlords as we speak.
What am I talking about? Well, think about it. A scientist. In a motorised wheelchair. With a robotic voice.
Stephen Hawking is Davros.
Anyway, I've been drawing up blueprints for some kind of bunker-like structure in my garden so that I can ride out the inevitable laser-powered holocaust at the hands of our future transreality masters. All I need to do now is kidnap Keely Hazell so that I can brick her in with me and, when we finally emerge from our wattle-and-daub safehaven, start repopulating humanity with beautiful, hairy babies.
You think I'm insane. But when the Zragians beam in from Dimension Twelve and proclaim me Overlord of Earth you won't be laughing.