Perspectives

France went to war in 1939 in the wake of a demographic annihilation that no American born since the Civil War can really imagine or understand. A crushing defeat in 1870 followed by the bloodletting of World War I had badly eroded the confidence of French soldiers and, perhaps more importantly, the leaders who bore the literal and figurative scars of those experiences.

“Oh, sorry, I got distracted by the Internet.”Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, Chapter 3 It’s been a while since I’ve had any interest in checking box office grosses. Rationally, I know that I gain nothing from looking at those little numbers, but it feels comforting to see a film I like earn a ton of cash. Unfortunately, watching Scott Pilgrim Vs.

I’m busy reading a milquetoast digital rendition of “Reactor Problems for Dummies,” thinking I really should be letting everyone know I’m out of it, when a sound makes me seize up. It’s faint, no more than an understated bloop, but the implications behind it are terrifying. The 30 seconds I’ve spent hovering over a lost PDA have left quite the gulf between myself and the rest of my team.

I don’t play video games like a reviewer. I just don’t operate that way. The thought of being handed a game and tasked with marching through it without fail, clinically analyzing details and dropping endless notes on relative subjective qualities sounds like a great way to kill a fun game in the best of circumstances, and a march through hell in the worst.