Sunday night. The first of yet another morbid month.

This ridiculous amount of time by myself has inspired me to dust off some old hobbies – or rather, things that I’d deliberately put aside because they’re just so damn addictive. This time, it’s the marvelous video game “XCom 2: War of the Chosen.” The plot is simple: evil aliens have taken over the world, and you’re in charge of the resistance in your stolen UFO. The combination of graphics, catchy music, and step-by-step strategy as you move your soldiers around… Let’s just say I’ve been known to spend multiple hours restarting the same mission just to get it perfectly right.

In pre-covid days, this game would easily gobble up several weeks’ worth of evenings, and a fair chunk of my weekends as well. Nowadays, it’s a very welcome distraction from, you know, everything.

The last votes in the US election will be cast in less than 48 hours. I’m curious, but not passionate – just emotionally removed, the same way you’d be if some TV show you didn’t really like released a new season. Things are heating up over there… In Texas, a bunch of yahoos in pickup trucks tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road, while the police offered no assistance. (Biden and Harris were not on the bus.) As a result, several campaign events had to be scrapped, so the domestic terrorists won. They’re also organizing roadblocks in New York, which is frankly pathetic. If they lose (if the election doesn’t get stolen again, this time via courts), I can only hope they’ll stop these shenanigans. It’s not like the US doesn’t already have enough bad press to deal with.

In covid news, there were some giant Halloween parties in – you guessed it – the States. Two in New York totaled almost 1,000 people, while the big one in Utah had somewhere between 2,000-10,000 altogether. I can maybe possibly understand the Utah party, since the state didn’t have a giant first wave in the spring. But New York? The same city that had to use forklifts to stack corpses into refrigerated trucks just six months ago?.. I hope some anthropologists dive into this fascinating borderline-sociopathic behaviour. That’d make one helluva documentary. (“To party in the time of plague”?) The worst part, of course, is that while the event organizers might face some charges, all the partiers will just keep on going to underground raves and off-the-grid parties. That right there is why we can’t have nice things, eh?

Welcome to November, y’all.