And by landing, I mean coming home and not going to Emergency.
Thank frigging god.
Made it to the walk-in clinic. The doctor checked me out in a refreshinlgy old-fashioned low tech way. Pulse, check the heart, blood pressure, etc.
I have nothing against high tech – in fct I adore it – but when I am nervous and “awaiting my fate” I find the old fashioned stuff reassuring.
I guess I really am getting old.
I mean, if the place had been super high tech, that would not have upset me, as long as the decor was not too harsh or dehumanizing.
I almost said “too clinical”, but seeing as we are talking about an actual clinic, that did not seem to be la mot juste.
But I definitely prefer my doctor’s offices to be friendly ,and humanistic in the decor/design sense. I am already nervous just from being in a doctor’s office and feeling all the layers of worry, pain, and stress lingering in the air.
Yes, rational materialist that I am, I believe in “vibes”. The evidence from my own life experiences is overwhelming. Some places have a lot of bad vibes.
But I don’t think it has anything to do with magical energy vibrations or ESP or whatever. In fact, I am pretty sure that it is mostly pheremones.
Like I have mentioned before,. pheremones are perceived by a very, very old part of the brain that bypasses our conscious mind entirely and plugs directly into our emotional control center, thus making us prey to powerful unconcious emotional influencers.
In fact, they might be the most unconscious thing ever because while there are a lot of things going on in our brain of which we are not conscious, only the pheremone center is unconscious on a hardware level.
I wonder if there are people born without the ability to react to pheremones, and what their lives are like.
Anyhow, my point is that I think “vibes’, at least the kind that can build up in a fixed area, are really just pheremones.
The kind we get from one another when we are close to one another must involve something else as well because, in my experience, there’s more information in them.
Then again, given what we now know about how people tend to be attracted to people whose antibody profile is the most different than theres (thus insuring that their offspring have the biggest antibody arsenal possible), anything is possible I suppose.
AIn’t science wonderful?
That was a long divergence even for me.
Back to our story. So I saw the doc and he cleared me to come home and not go to Emergency. There was one troubling thing though.
We did this test where I stood with my feet pressed closely together and then closed my eyes, and I immediately become dizzy and started wobbling about.
My theory is that I have somehow been using my eyes to compensate for a certain amount of dizziness.
I will bring that up with Doctor Chao next week.
The doctor at the clinc had a French accent, and I found that surprisingly soothing. I think on a deep level it even made me trust him more.
Probably because it reminded me of my home. Le sigh.
Speaking of French, I have been playing this game called Assassin’s Creed Unity, and it takes place in Paris during the French Revolution.
As in, you are literally in the Bastille when it is stormed.
Cue the Rush song!
But here is the thing. The game is, of course, in English.
And that, in turn, means that all the main characters speak in some variety of UK accent. Because apparently, the world thinks everyone in history was a blood British person, from the kings and queens down to the lowest beggar.
This is a personal peeve of mine, especially when it comes to the French. They are, after all, my ancestors, and it bugs me that they never get to be French any more.
I mean, why not do like they used to do in the movies and have people speak English with the accent of where they come from?
You know,. French people with French accents, etc.
There are plenty of varieties of French accent where are just as clear and understandable as any UK accent, and it would make a lot more sense.
It’s especially galling (or is that Gauling) because Ubisoft is a French company.
Further muddying the issue is the fact that all the background and incidental character in the game speak in French!
Prrfectly flawless French, too, presumably because when you are making games a la belle France, you have no shortage of native French speakers.
I wish there were subtitles for those French speakers, because then I could be improving my French just by walking around listening in.
I guess mere exposure will have to do.
The point is moot, anyway, as I am stuck in the game in a super frustrating way. I make it all the way out of the Bastille before being cornered by the guards on a rooftop, and I am supposed to make some incredible leap to freedom to progress.
But the on-screen instructions as to how to do that do not work. For one, they want me to press W, Up, and E at the same time, and W and Up are the same damn key.
And the Internet is of no help. There is one walkthrough that says I need to do something called an Eagle Dive at that point, but there is literally nowhere on the Internet that explains how to do that in this situation.
I have some more things I want to try in order to get it working. I am going to look into rebinding the keys to make W and Up different keys.
And I am going to look into cheats I can use to skip directly to the next scene.
As God as my witness, I will make the game work.
Or die tying.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.