Here we are, Sunday morning. The coffee is brewed. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. Work is awaiting. Fantastic. Really great. A Sunday however, is a Sunday, and on this seventh day I always take a look at all the new and old and new-old stuff that’s (mostly) been keeping me occupied through the week, and today is no exception.
Reading…
I’ve been making plenty of time to practice Italian and do yoga and take on plenty of hours at work, but my reading efforts in the last month or so have been pretty shoddy. The Shining is gripping from the off (big surprise, sure I’m the first one to ever note that), but I’ve not made a lot of forward progress.
Playing…
Prey is an intense game that I will be putting out a more detailed write up on, but when a game takes me to the edge of my seat like this one does I enjoy having something else to take the tension off when I’m done.
Darksiders has been that game this week.
I’m playing the remastered (“Warmastered”) edition on Game Pass, and it is an experience which was specific to the PS3/360-era. It’s a middle tier 3rd person action adventure with light RPG mechanics – a double AA game – sitting in the oft-ignored space between the indie’s and the triple AAA’s. It’s just not something that happens very much anymore, and that’s a shame.
I appreciate the immediacy of it. There’s no pretension or over-extension here. Here’s the story: Heaven and Hell are at war and humans are caught in the middle when the apocalypse is called too early. As one of the Horseman of the Apocalypse and the only one on the scene, War is blamed, and you take control of him to find out how and why this has happened. He does this with a big sword. It’s a good time, and that’s its only intention. It has the budget to pull in Mark Hamill as a voice actor but doesn’t have the excesses in production which lead to an over-abundance of systems or extraneous mechanics.
Like I said, it’s a good time, and there’s not a lot else that needs to be said.
Listening to…
There has been a bunch of exciting new music this week, so much so that I haven’t even been able to listen to all of it with as much intent as I would have liked just yet. Usually a new Alex Cameron single would be enough to dominate my attention…
…and in absence of that a new King Gizzard album can take up my time quite nicely. Well, I got both those things this week, and although on initial listen I can say with confidence that I like both of them a lot, one album has absolutely taken over my ear space.
A$AP Ferg’s Floor Seats is an album of weird, punchy bangers. Singles Floor Seats and Wam prepared us for what was to come but tracks like Jet Lag and the unbelievable Butt Naked (feat Rico Nasty), which sounds like Ferg and Nasty going hog-wild over the soundtrack to an unreleased Terminator movie from the mid 80’s, really take it to the next level.
And we also have a new single from Donny Benet! And Muna! A remix from IDLES! And wait what about this Young Thug album?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
Great music week.
Watching…
After enjoying Basketball or Nothing so much I thought I’d give another Netflix sports docu-series a chance. Last Chance U focuses on another sport I know little to nothing about, and yet again it manages to make me care. In the first season it focuses on the struggles of East Mississippi, a Junior College American Football team who take on the dropouts, academic strugglers, and sometimes straight up convicted felons who otherwise have the talent to make it big on the college football scene and maybe even the NFL. Players don’t stay long there, all they want is to re-establish their name and get scouted by a bigger college and move on. It is unsurprisingly not that simple, and the drama comes in heavy doses. Like Basketball or Nothing it creates investment in the players, which ensures that although I know nothing about the sport, when it comes to game time I am fully committed to the team’s victory.
Running…
Still not running a lot but things are feeling a lot better. I’ve got myself a new pair of runners, this time with some added support. I realised that there was a good chance that my injury was perhaps being influenced by my far-from-perfect running gait. I’ve never had any interest in completely changing this gait, it is what it is in my opinion and I’ve got to work with that, but the Adidas Ultra Boost ST’s offer up some light correction to my over-pronation, and a whole lot of cushioning for my flattened arches. Couple of runs in, I’ve got to say they’re feeling good.
Fingers crossed.
With that, I’ll close out this week’s Sunday Morning Stuff, as I’ve got a whole lot of music to catch up with, and a half-marathon training plan to get back up to speed with. Plus I’ve got to go work, which I’m absolutely not bitter about,
no sir,
no
way.
run into words 