A typical summer here at the Platypus of Truth features literary reviews or live blogs of series such as Terry Brooks' Shannara or my projected plan to work through Garth Nix's Abhorsen series. This year, while some books are being read (Moby Dick and The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings) most of my time is being sucked away by a change of apartment complex and a slew of medical tests trouble shooting my perennial stomach problems. In the meantime, pencils and pastels have become a favorite distraction and hence their proliferation on this site. We'll see if enough reading gets done to still post the "Seven Heavens of Summer Reading" awards at the end of August, but that may not happen. In any case, literary criticism will resume as soon as possible and the trip through Nix has not been forgotten. Until then, whatever's going on with me, the Platypus speaks Truth.
I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old. That's a couple years after it first came out. The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer. I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit. It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows. With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play. What was that first game? It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past . Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge. It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing? There were stretches when I didn't. Many times, I've just been too busy. There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
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