Everything Was Better When I Was in Japan
Coming back from Japan does something to you that jet lag doesn’t explain. The jet lag passes. What lingers is the specific grief of re-entry—sitting in your apartment staring at the walls, ordering food delivery at 11pm, scrolling through photos you took two weeks ago in a city that no longer exists for you. I’ve been home for a week. I am not handling it particularly well.
So: Wednesdays are mine now. A new column, titled with profound originality "Dear Diary," in which I will document the entirely inconsequential details of my own life with the unearned confidence of someone who assumes you’re interested. I’ve started things like this before. They don’t always survive past episode two. This time I’m committed. Or at least I’m saying I am, which is functionally the same thing. The graveyard of past columns would like a word, but we’re ignoring that.
The immediate calendar looks like this: Munich tomorrow for a campaign kick-off, then a week with family in the Allgäu, then the Berlin Festival, then mid-September I’m taking a friend to Rotterdam—ostensibly for an arts festival, actually because neither of us has ever been to Rotterdam and someone credible told us the cake situation there is excellent. I’m going for the cake. The culture is an alibi.
I should also mention that in the past six months I’ve gained approximately the weight of a medium-sized dog. My corrective program consists of nothing but unsweetened green tea, fish, salad, and rice—a resolve that will hold firm until tomorrow around noon, at which point some unavoidable circumstance will arise that demands pasta. I’m logging it here for my own conscience. It serves no other function.
The weight situation has been faithfully supported by the fact that I’ve started playing Guild Wars 2 with a collection of blogger friends who should all know better. We founded a guild—the Gammelgilde, named with exactly the dignity that name implies—and set up camp on the Riverside server, where my character Yokomon wanders around being catastrophically under-leveled and begging strangers for rare equipment. If you’re on Riverside: you know what to do.
That’s the update. My favorite blogger is Karley Sciortino. My penis is a respectable length. Mew is the best Pokémon ever conceived and Pikachu is overrated corporate mascot bullshit. See you next Wednesday, assuming I stick to the format, which historically I won’t.