For Women Who Can't Face Leaving

TikTok likes to latch onto things. It dumps me into little niches so quickly and transparently that I am always fascinated by its new assigned interest. Some of these end up being short lived—a particular song that keeps coming up for a while, or a particular creator who makes approx. five thousand of the same video of them doing a particular move—but others are cyclical topics that keep returning to me. Maybe there's some genuine allure to these, something about them that makes me linger. I don't know.

Lately, I've noticed one of those old topics rearing its head again—the miserable girlfriend type video. This has been a longstanding thing, and I'll explain it briefly so it's clear exactly what I'm talking about. These are videos in which a woman vents about how she'll never feel the same about her boyfriend after a betrayal, or weeps openly behind some devastating text about what a man did to her. Often, these are videos made by someone who is very much still in the relationship that is causing them so much pain, grasping for strangers to relate to. And the comments, often, deliver, filling up with other (usually young) women lamenting their loss of innocence, or the horrible nausea they expect to encounter when they inevitably find some nasty thing on their boyfriend's phone, or when he gruffly tells them, "fine, I'll just delete Instagram then" after being caught leaving lascivious loser comments on cascading bikini photos.

This specific sort of crushing pain, paired with an uncertainty or inability to commit to leaving their stinky partners, makes up a sizeable community in the dark shadows of these sad posts, and for some reason, every so often, TikTok funnels me back into the tunnel of sad women and their neglectful, cruel men.

I think I do hover on these, training the algorithm to feed me a few more, because I do want to know, on some level, what's going on with these women. I feel bad for them. I want to wrench them out of the miseries they're stuck in. Like some beautiful firefighter pulling skittish women out of the weird quicksand of duty that they've imprisoned themselves in.

I think maybe it's partly because it seems like a lot of people are pretty mean to women who make excuses for their malingering boyfriends and husbands. I see countless harsh comments on boyfriend complaint posts along the lines of "leave him or leave us out of it"—and this, for me, elicits a dark and dismal feeling. I completely sympathise with those who can't stand to hear another woman's lukewarm defense of an annoying loser, or who have had enough of friends who refuse to accept the most obvious advice in the world when it comes to their stinky man, but to see swathes upon swathes of cutting remarks directed at these women makes me sad.

It's not easy, after all, to accept that the person you love, that you feel a genuine, serious sense of duty towards, needs to be thrown mercilessly off a mental cliff.

And so I've been thinking about what I might tell them, if I could. So, to those stuck women who can't face leaving, here is my advice:

#1: Make Your Life About You

The Metamorphosis of Sleep, by J. J. Grandville (1844).

If you can't bear to leave your man, or you think your life will crumble without him, I think the single most important thing you can do as a first step is to cultivate your own world. Whether it's reading books and keeping a little diary of your thoughts on them, or getting a new, weird hobby entirely, you have got to make a life that is just yours. This is good advice for everyone on Earth. Do things that don't involve your partner. Cultivate singular interests just for yourself. Be selfish with these interests. Make space for your alone time. Learn something that no one else is privy to. Create a shadowy, indulgent version of yourself.

If you have ever wanted to learn more about something, but have never made the effort, do it now in the name of self-actualisation. Learn to drive, or read three Russian history books, or start getting into the Saw movies. Just do something, anything, that can be your thing.

This is the number one building block. You are a person, not one measly half of a couple. Build yourself.

#2: Fantasise, Deeply

Melancholia, by Hans Sebald Beham (1539).

When I was a kid, I would imagine vivid scenarios before bed. Adventures, hopping into a TV show, being the ruler of a medieval land, or just having a fun social time with friends. Sometimes they would be achievement-based, like finishing a novel and becoming a bestselling author. At some point, I mostly stopped doing this, but I suppose I have, to some extent, transferred it into more genuinely achievable goals that I don't have to incorporate into a dream world.

Nevertheless, I think it's good to fantasise. I think it's great to let yourself live in a world of pure desire. I mean, literally, you can imagine all the things you might enjoy from some better boyfriend, and this can fuel you and turn around your head until you feel ready to get the hell out of there. Or, you can imagine some fun things you might really enjoy alone, or in some distant alternate universe. Indulging in this sort of thing can go a long way in figuring out what you really yearn for in life, and it can also be a nice relaxation tool for getting to sleep. 

Occasionally, I still lock in to some lofty fantasy like this before going to sleep. Perhaps I am a baker and the whole town loves my bread. Something just feels nice about that. I could be a million different variations of myself. Anything could happen.

#3: Keep a Diary

Phillis Wheatley, by Scipio Moorhead (1773).

This is not a groundbreaking suggestion, but keeping a diary can be pretty great for just getting thoughts out of your head and into some concrete, organised space. You might not want to keep a diary of nasty, whinging complaints—especially if you're worried someone might read and discover all your horrible thoughts—but it really can't be overstated how much writing out your thoughts can help you think.

Sometimes I make a new document and just let every evil little thought out. I find that a digital diary can be more freeing than a physical one, and there can be something more satisfying about typing if you're angry, or irritated, or sad. And y'know, you can always delete it later if secrecy is of the utmost concern. Write about how much horrible suffering your boyfriend puts you through. Write out all of the justifications you make for his behaviour. Maybe you'll read it back a few days later and see it all with remarkable clarity.

With a diary, you can look upon the version of you that wrote a past entry as a separate person, and that way, you might find some compassion for, or understanding of, yourself that you couldn't quite access before.

***

I don't know if this post will find anyone it can be helpful to, but I think a good amount about the best ways to 'deal with life', and since everyone comes up against things that aren't easy in their own emotional world, maybe some of these ideas will click. Ultimately, it's also important to treat yourself with understanding. Our feelings and reactions themselves are often embarrassing, but that's just how it goes sometimes. You're not an idiot for wanting to stay with someone who hurts you. In fact, tap into that want. Your sense of desire is something to pay attention to, ideally without moralising, no matter how stupid or selfish it might feel in the moment.

The thing is, you don't need to swallow your pain. If it's there, it's real, and it means something is wrong. I wish all of these sad women could hear and know that they are not alone, and that they don't deserve to feel this way, and that one day, when they're ready, they can choose themselves. And it won't be too late. 

The Memory Dog

I would like to present you, today, with a dog character. This dog is perpetually angry, because she knows that she is better than you (she has good taste in obscure films, and her favourite fruit is the peach). She is very aware of her own good looks, and she likes to lie angrily on the floor, mostly.

Otherwise, she has brief periods of serenity when looking on the reminders of days gone by. This sort of thing doesn't bring her melancholy, or that uncomfortable sense of loss. No, instead she revels in it, visiting her past as if it was a garden perpetually flowering.

She has a short temper and a ceaseless hunger, like many dogs. But unlike most dogs, she is vividly aware of, and eternally grateful for, a life full of memories—good, bad, stinky, and sweet.

I Read 7 Books in 7 Days

Last week, in a great intellectual pursuit intended to thicken my already swollen mind (take a moment to picture the cycling circus animals doing laps within), I decided to straight up read seven books in seven days. 

Cover design from Leonard Smithers' Catalogue of Rare Books (1896), by Aubrey Beardsley.

Here are the books I read, and a brief note on each one:

The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman

A chirpy but haunting children’s novel about a medieval homeless girl who becomes an apprentice midwife and must grapple with the marvel and horror of birth. There’s some really lovely, straightforward writing in here and a frankness about the deep suffering of the poor and unfortunate, but the book is also really uplifting and loving. A complicated study of an old, tough world.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Incredible, moving, and sometimes devilishly sarcastic duo of essays about the Jim Crow era black experience. James Baldwin is a very special and eloquent writer, and I hope to read MANY more of his things.

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I found this a quite odd and at first impenetrable novel. It’s about a guy who just can’t stop being nasty. Dostoevsky’s miserable, hideous spirit is kind of astonishing in some moments, and the exploration of this rambling, crazed character is at points entertaining and iconic, but I have to admit I kind of hated it. It was both boring and annoying.

Regardless, I'm intrigued by Dostoevsky’s particularly cold world of mechanically psychotic losers and criminals.

The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin

It’s interesting to read my first non-verse prose by Pushkin in this ramshackle collection of short stories and poems alike. It really gave me a full, deranged experience, because I loved a few pieces and hated others. The titular story is nicely spooky, but it’s the verse that shines. I like that overall, Pushkin seems very interested in crafting unnerving narratives. Thank you Pushpush (this is my cute nickname for Pushkin - he would love it).

The Dead by James Joyce

This was a huge favourite - a very beautiful short story about the loneliness and loveliness of a life lived imperfectly and a long-lasting relationship, and where an individual fits, exactly, in both. Very rapid and touching and real. Celestial at its high points. Bittersweet in the best way possible.
 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

I was surprised by how empty this was, this famed spooky tale which is hardly really spooky, and which contains very little in the way of character. The setting is great, but it feels like the background of a story, rather then a complete work. Very intriguing. Ichabod Crane is kind of a thoughtless dunce, and that’s not quite as fun as it sounds.

Night by Elie Wiesel

I ended with a holocaust memoir, as one must, and I really liked the vivid picture Wiesel paints of all the victims he encounters throughout his time in concentration camps. There is an incredible and particular and meticulous attention given to the details of the shreds of these people’s lives, and it is, of course, deeply unpleasant to read, but very powerful.

***

I’m making a video for my Patreon going over the experience in a bit more detail, but reading these books felt so exhilarating and exciting. I felt so stunned and alternately amazed, intrigued, horrified, annoyed, and pleased by these books, and it makes me hungrier to read more - especially more culturally and historically significant books.

I think The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and The Dead by James Joyce were easily at the top of list. Two beautiful Jameses. They had such a profound impression on me and felt kind of magical and fiery. Right now I’m reading a longer book, L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, which has its own sense of wonder and gorgeous, misty sentences, but after that - Perhaps some more Baldwin.

Temperature Too High

I can't bear it. It is currently 37°C (feels like 43°, apparently) and I am melting into a pathetic little puddle. I have the use of one of those portable AC units with a tube that you can throw out of your window. I'm happy I have it, but it is, dear reader, not enough.

My brain feels like a sludge, and so I have given myself permission to spend a full four hours reading today (or, possibly, playing a video game - I'm working on Yokai Watch right now). This is the only way. I am allowed to slump, and I think I must. I just watched the scintillating 2014 movie Gone Girl, and I knew I had to finally read the book, too. That will be my beautiful pleasure in this repulsive hellflame.

What I like most about it, a few pages in, is the wonderful excuse to be grandiose and literary and gorgeously crazed right from the get go, in writing terms, through the simple but iconic narrative excuse afforded to the book: making its main characters writers. Perfect. They can be as writerly as Gillian Flynn dares to make them, because they are writers, which means their heads are filled with writer sensibilities. I love that. I'm always disappointed when writer characters in books don't utilise that built-in permission to be overly literary - like in the awful People we Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, which I recently read.

In that story, the protagonist is a travel writer, but we only get to see the tiniest glimpse of her writing, and it feels supremely false as a result. The book also commits the cardinal sin of telling us super pointedly that this character is a really talented and good writer, but we see no evidence of this, to the extent that she comes off as a total hack, completely unsuited to her cushy career. It amounts to a seven-year-old's fantasy about what being a travel writer is. The book is hollow in every possible way, but I won't get into the depths right now. I just hate when a writer character is a writer for no damn reason. You'd think the writer of a book, when writing about a writer, would actually like and care about the details of writing, and what that means for a person who does it. But no, not for Emily Henry. For her, it's just a flat, cute, cardboard cutout aesthetic of a life worth living. How tragic.

Angry.

Anyway, back to Gone Girl I go, with a tall glass of water filled with yummy ice cubes. I will survive this heat wave, and I will destroy the sun with my own hands. Or something. 

Proposed Alternatives to the Car Horn

If you have ever had the misfortune of staying or living on a main road, you might intimately know the interminable, horrible sound of car horn based noise pollution. It seems that quite a lot of drivers view their horns less as emergency startlers, and more as an opportunity to express any minor vexation. This might not be so bad if it wasn't for the vexation being, for some, constant.

Jack Johnson at the wheel of his 90 horsepower Thomas Flyer, 1910.

This morning I was out getting important breakfast ingredients (fresh baguette, large bottle of Coke Zero), and I saw a devastating scene on the road. A bus had gotten itself stuck behind an unfortunately parked car. The car had positioned itself so close to a small road construction space in a manner that had created a very tight space between the two, and the bus driver had, seemingly, driven in at a slightly disastrous angle that made it impossible for him to pass. He needed to go backwards a bit, but that was a challenge with a growing queue of cars behind him. A simple problem that was, after five minutes or so, solved with the assistance of some helpful passers by, but until the bus could happily drive away, a good amount of those stuck cars behhind the poor bus driver simply would not stop slamming on those horns.

A 1908 patent for a 'mechanically-actuated diaphragm horn or alarm'. 

Why this urge takes hold in traffic, of all places, I cannot possibly imagine. I know I wouldn't choose to slam down on my horn in a traffic jam scenario, because I am better than these people and see no value in mounting stress onto an already embarrassing and tense situation. I am more enlightened and kinder than most people on Earth. That bus driver should have been treated to a beautiful, soothing song instead of harsh and cruel horns of torment. We are just not there as a society, but one day yet we may perhaps live in a gorgeous, horn-light world.

Until then, here are my proposals for what drivers can do instead of using their horn for pure antagonism. 

1. Kill yourself

Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, 1897.

A horn, as we all know, is very dramatic. But what's even more dramatic? It's killing yourself. For the true dramatist drivers, they might utilise this method to cause much more heightened distress, with the added benefit that they no longer have to be stuck in traffic, because they're dead. Of course, there is a major downside to this (being dead), but it's a great option if you really want to impart some genuine trauma on those around you.

2. Check out "Baby Shark"

Look man, I understand the sheer pain of sudden frustration and rage. This is brought out through the particular challenge of driving, and no one is immune to incredible irritation when something weird happens on the road. I don't even have a licence, and yet I have driven behind insane swerving freaks on the dual carriageway. It's inevitable. But one powerful thing you can do to bring yourself out of such madness is to play some sort of inane or joyful song. This could be Party Rock Anthem, Ring Dong Dong, or Saturday Night, but for maximum silliness, I have chosen Baby Shark as the representative song here. Just play Baby Shark, and remember that you, dear driver, are just like a baby. Go with the rhythm. Stop honking.

3. Remember that people are dying

Death counts in the most deadly conflicts 2015-2020, from Wikipedia's list of ongoing armed conflicts.

Okay, you're on the road with other repulsive people, struggling through a fit of misanthropy. Other people shouldn't be driving, only you, the most beautiful and perfect driver in the world. But it might be worth reminding yourself that you're quite lucky, really, because while you're in your car having an inconvenience, other people in the world are dying in wars and stuff. That could be you, but it's not. Really, you're quite fortunate. And maybe we should give car horns to the civilians of war torn countries, instead of drivers. So that they can be as annoying as possible. This makes sense to me.

***

These are my top three ideas for honking drivers, but I have many more proposals. If any country leaders or governmental workers are reading this, please contact me for a more complete list. I believe I can help make the roads of the world more beautiful and serene via my incredible ideas. Thank you.

Gorgeous Yakub

I don't know if you know much about the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist religious organisation founded in 1930, but after reading James Baldwin's tale of meeting their leader and his criticism of the group in his fabulous short book The Fire Next Time, I wanted to know a bit more about them and primarily their mythology claiming that white people were created by a specific servant of the devil.

The whole thing is that, y'know, white people are unnatural creations brought about by the experiments of a naughty scientist working under the devil. White people are, according to this exciting doctrine, essentially a special new race of devils. That's all great, but what really tickles me is this scientist. You see, the scientist who created white people is called Yakub, and he must have a crazy thick brain, because he looks like this:

At least, according to noted crank and founder of a related organisation, the recognised hate group Nuwaubian Nation, Dwight York, whose 'Holy Tablets' this incredible image is taken from.

mObviously, Yakub is quite reminiscent of Megamind, and that's part of why he's so appealing. Perhaps you would have to have a huge, bulging brain to invent white people. I don't know. But I just look at Yakub here and can't help but adore him. Maybe this is just my natural affinity, as a white person, for my beloved creator, or maybe it's just the undeniable swag of Yakub.

Predictably, white supremacists quite like Yakub (and have historically gotten pretty down with the Nation of Islam, largely due to a shared goal of racial seperatism), and of course, his big funny head is perfect fodder for hyper-online right-wing meme-lovers. How could they resist?

Nevertheless, I enjoy him as a baffling creation and a beautifully weird image. There is something lovable about him, to me. Just a weird-looking, big-brained guy who looks a little bit sad. Maybe he regrets creating white people, in some small way, even though he did it on purpose for evil reasons.

I just wanted you to know about Yakub. So now you know. You're welcome.

A Violent Game

Bump 'n' Jump is a curious game. Released in arcades, and ported to the Atari 2600 (and other systems) in 1982, it's a racing game with a goofy gimmick: you have to bump into the other cars in the hopes that you can get them to crash against the edge of the track. It is, quite simply, beautifully violent.

In Japan, the game was called Burnin' Rubber, but I love the English title because, after all, the key mechanics of the game are indeed the bump, as well as the jump. While the major task ahead of you at all times is to cruelly bump any other cars off the road, the game will periodically alert you to an impending jump you'll need to make, usually over some lake that has formed on the track. The way this "jump" looks is very funny - your car's sprite expands into an enlarged version of itself that looks a lot like a child's scribble. At first, I didn't understand that this was a jump. I thought my car was just getting big. But it turns out that it wasn't big, it was just closer to me (break out that Father Ted sketch if you must). The childish nature of this design is pretty great, and once I'd realised that this was in fact the titular jump, landing those jumps become possible, and exhilarating.

Making it across the water feels incredible, and then, of course, you're back at it again - crushing your enemies through the simple, beautiful act of ramming. This is pure pleasure.

This is gaming. 

Thinking About Water

Keen, eagle-eyed, genius readers of this blog will notice the reduced level of posting around here lately. The thing is, while I do love queuing up a daily post, it is a pretty intense commitment. Sometimes it's so refreshing and nice to take a break, and then come back chilled out and limber and stretchy. It's like getting up from your desk and wandering through fields of daisies for a while. It just feels good and lets your mind soften and relax.

Artist's impression of what it might be like to frolic.

This is why my approach to tasks I try to do every day allows for some laxity, almost as a rule. I keep a diary, which I fill in every day, but sometimes I forget. So I just try to fill it in the next day and not worry about it. Often I'll write "I forgot to write here yesterday", and just use the space as a sort-of expanded entry for that next day, or indeed just tell the version of the previous day that's already slightly marked by that little passage of time. No problem. The flexibility is baked in.

And so it is here, where sometimes I open a blank page and find I have nothing to say, because I have a headache and feel irritated. Because all my thoughts are slimy.

It's just not that serious, and so I can close the tab and drink cold water from the fridge instead. Nothing was lost, but some pleasure was certainly gained.

Speaking of water, it's almost hard to imagine a greater, more immediate pleasure than a drink of chilled water directly from the fridge. I guess I'm typing this while thirsty, but I'm just imaging that incredible, delicious feeling and the anticipation alone is literally so good. When I was a kid I didn't really drink a lot of anything else. I thought water tasted so good. And I'm not talking about the kind of soft water that people in soft water areas love to brag about. I'm speaking of hard London tap water, that yummy taste of sediment that causes all kettles to develop a thick and repulsive scum that demands a vinegar soak to be freed from. To me, that stuff tastes so good. If I have a layer of barnacle on the inside of my body because of it (this is totally how hard water works), it's worth it. That dusty tap juice is delicious.

All this to say, I suppose - pleasure is the ultimate goal of life. Long-lasting, luxurious, indulgent, sweet pleasure. And sometimes, pleasure is in the lack of doing, just as much as in the doing. So I will be writing and smiling and guzzling my water as suits me, but I will also be, as is necessary, wandering away and closing my eyes in peace. 

If you are looking for me, I will be filling a bottle with water at the sink, most likely.

Bread & Skeletons

The summer is arriving and invading my body, at this point in the middle of June, like an alien. I have always been a hater of hot weather. The sun just doesn't need to be that bright, and the temperature doesn't need to be that high. Ideally, I should be wearing a jumper, and I know that if that is not the case, something is going wrong. It's not even summer yet, but it doesn't matter. It's more summer than ever.

I'm not a big fan of the cold either - ultimately I'd really prefer it if it stayed mild - but summer heat is my truest enemy. I don't want to heat up, or wear less clothes, or slather gloopy sunscreen all over myself. I just want to chill. And so, every year, that nugget of hatred returns to my heart. I am a hot summer hater, and I will never relent.

Nevertheless, I can't deny the appeal of blooming flowers and cool drinks on balconies, and other such restful, lazy delights. The bugs of the world are treated to a feast - sugar and filth cooking nicely on every surface, and a pollen count reaching the millions. Elon Musk became an official, capital T Trillionaire yesterday (I am including news items in my blog posts now), and the plants of the city have reached a similar staggering status as pollen emitters. Before a few months ago I had never experienced the hell of hayfever. I was one of the people who are, instead, allergic to the inside (dust allergy), but now I have finally entered the world of outside allergy. And I don't like it.

I am, at this point, eating the softest baguettes available in the world. Cultivating a taste for fresh and flour-coated bread with the perfect crust. It's sickening how easy it is to develop an exacting standard. France's legally controlled traditional baguette ("une tradi") is one of the greatest things ever made on this Earth, and now I've had enough of them I know I'm going to be stamping my feet in entitled rage when I don't have access to them. It's really sad to see yourself go down this hole into a hell of your own making. Because you dared to access real, true pleasure. You can track the price of this type of baguette with the important website Le Baguette Index - tradis currently cost between 0.80€ and 1.95€. And this, dear reader, is the pricey baguette. Mind-boggling.

Beautiful cow, btw.

In any case, I have seen something beautiful and really cute that I'd like to share with you. Put the June heat and the beautiful baguette out of your mind. Here comes the star:

This is a chimpanzee skeleton housed in the Musée de l'Homme, in Paris. I love all manner of human-adjacent skeletons, but in particular I love fetal skeletons (their huge heads and tiny bodies are adorable), and, similarly, this small, sweet ape. Aww. What a cutie.

The Atari 2600's Prettiest Game

Atlantis for the Atari 2600 is a beautifully simple game. Much like in Space Invaders and similar celestial warfare titles, your task is to destroy increasingly rapid sequences of spaceships that speed through the sky above you. It's not as satisfying as those better-known classics, partly because the pacing renders your city blasted far too quickly, but nevertheless it is a servicable high score builder.

When ships get low enough, they let out pretty stunning beam attacks that kill you. The visuals are pretty cool here, painting a mermaid-like teal and green landscape that quite effectively looks both magical and oceanic. There's a touch of Oz to this vision of Atlantis. The spaceships and killable buildings are also made of nice arrangements of colour that manage to look like glittering rainbows. For what it is, it's quite a pretty game.

Beautiful destruction.

There are even flashier moments, too. Sometimes when you destroy a ship, it explodes into firework scatter and the screen flashes white, making it a danger for epileptics and a delightful spectacle for others, and these commitments to detail are fairly satisfying.

It's tough to get into the right rhythm with the oncoming enemy, and the game doesn't allow for quite as much precision and satisfaction as some similar titles, but improving your timing is fun, and the magnitute of the visual results when you fail are pretty spectacular. This is, I think, a contender for the Atari 2600's prettiest game. It has a sparkle to it that elevates it above a lot of other games for the system. I like it.

Blade is Really Cool

I recently watched Blade (1998), and this post will mostly serve as an opportunity for me to show you some amazing, super cool stills taken from this stylish movie.

There's Blade.

It has such a perfect 1990s comic book gothic flashiness, this gorgeous movie. The whole thing is very blue, sort of computer-y, and filled with dismal, murky warehouse spaces. There is a great sense of the industrial running through it, extending to Blade's own chunky belts and equipment. His life as a weird inbetween creature, not quite human, not quite vampire, is reflected well in the movie's focus on flesh meshed with machinery. One must imagine listening to the Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft  album 1st Step to Heaven (1986) in its entirety while traversing these vampiric environments. After all, we do spend time in the club, naturally.

There is a point past which an action movie throwing itself hard into stark, intense models of masculine coolness crosses over into a certain camp madness, and while this may not have made sense or been as true when Blade was initially released, it now feels like such a thickly 1990s film that the distance in time lends a heavier quality of heightened performance to it. That long, sweeping trenchcoat was absolutely on trend and futuristic in 1998, but now it has a distinctly faraway, retro feel that arguably makes it even cooler. The artifice of coolness is somewhat exposed by the precision of Blade as a timepiece. But paradoxically, the exposure only adds, only makes Blade's tough demeanour and legendary look more elusive.

One thing I love about this movie is its normal human woman, Karen. She's a hard-as-nails hematologist, she also wears a leather jacket, and she maintains a gorgeous steely stillness throughout every insane event that reveals itself to her. She gets bitten up by a vampire and injected with the ouchie juice that will help her to not die, and she barely flinches. She's a sort of sidekick and everywoman, but she has every ounce of the tough exterior that Blade does, and possibly ten times the smarts and ingenuity. She's gonna do whatever she needs to do with blood experiments. She's like if Elizabeth Holmes was actually really cool and doing something.

Blade is satisfying on many levels, then, but perhaps most of all in its special effects. The fleshy, bloody masses, the peeling skeletons, the sheer inventive violence of it all - it's remarkable. I like to watch these dastardly Euro-vamps explode weirdly. That's really good to me.

Three bubbling, bursting vampires out of five. 

★★★☆☆

The Delicious Terror of Iron Lung

The other night I played Iron Lung, the short horror game about being in a spooky little submarine that Markiplier ended up making a movie adaptation of, and man, I did love it.

There is a clear inherent freakiness to the ocean. I haven't played other notable spooky ocean games, but I certainly see the appeal. You can't see what's going on, even if you can get a glimpse into your surroundings. Everything is so, so dark, and covered in disgusting barnacles and things. The fish down there look gloopy and strange (I really like the varieties of deep sea creature we know about, really, but they are often gloopy mode). There is a great, vast, impossible world down there.

This game takes that beautiful darkness and injects a wonderful sci-fi nastiness to it. Not only are you desperately surveying weird stuff in a creepy alien ocean in the far future, but you're doing it in a uniquely dismal political situation - you're a prisoner put to work recording the vestiges of cosmic life, a task that will surely kill you. In an ocean of blood, by the way.

The gameplay itself is a bit tedious, but once you get invested, this too adds to the experience. You are experiencing the perfect tedium and anxiety of a fraught, dangerous job that you're doing against your will. You photograph confusing, unclear biological structures scattered around like wreckages, and you hear apparent signs of life surrounding your horrible, rotten vehicle. I was sweating with nervous anticipation through it all.

The game is short and mechanically simple, but there is a lingering beauty to the tension, to the dark slivers of a cursed and ruined world it presents. Finishing it was bliss. I must now, of course, seek out Markiplier's vision.