Halloween: The Game

Guys. There's a Halloween game for the Atari 2600. And it is iconically silly.

You play as a blonde girl with blinding white tights, and your task is to walk leisurely away from Michael Myers, who spawns after a few seconds on each screen and follows you as a scintillating 8-bit version of the Halloween theme plays. It's sort of... cute.

The game, you will immediately discover, is broken beyond belief. You can walk to the next screen and then return to despawn the man, and so you're never in any real danger of getting gotten. Your task is to meander around the map until you find a weapon, with which you can hit your frightening villain one single time to kill his ass and gain a few hundred points. Then he returns, and you must do the same thing once again. This is more or less the extent of the gameplay, and it is delectably stupid.

It's pretty rapidly dull, given that there is nothing to do but run circles around your sad, useless enemy - aside from escorting some random children to safety, or alternatively watching them be brutally slain (you're not punishing for leaving them to die) - but there is an incredible delight to this empty interpretation of the movie. There are sections with flickering lights that are fairly effectively scary - if I can't see him for a second, he actually maybe could possibly get me! But nah... he's never gonna get me.

It's so good.

Memories, as if from a dream

Here are some old family photos I've scanned. Let me take you on a beautiful journey to explore them.

The first is this lovely picture of my grandma feeding a little bird perched atop my granddad's car door. This was probably somewhere we'd stopped the car so she could get out and have a cigarette break. And then along came the bird. I think I took this one, and I have a feeling it could have been the same trip where we spotted an eagle flying around. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Secondly, some beautiful clouds over the Wallace Monument. My family must collectively be responsible for an alarming number of landscape shots of the Wallace Monument on its mound. And who can blame them? It looks beautiful.

The third image I present you with is this cute photo of my aunt and uncle. I like the milk's presence in the scene. Very important.

Fourthly, my cousin's birthday. Please notice the immense amount of booze in the back of the shot.

Next, the dog. That's Poppy. She's resting.

I love this picture of my grandma. I don't know why she's holding some sort of Museum of Scotland booklet, but that's just classic Norma. She has a little bit of red eye going on, but I'll forgive her.

Finally, here's my cat. I always loved the little spot at the tip of her nose. Very chic.

Sleepy Zone (& some thoughts on reading)

I have hit the sleepy zone. There's nothing you can do. I'm literally sleepy right now.

See?

Yesterday I hit fifteen books read so far in 2026. I finished the tradwife tale (and I loved it). I assume I'm going to hit my twenty books goal in about two months, and after that the number will be a beautiful mystery, climbing steadily until the final reveal. Very exciting stuff.

My next book is actually one I started reading right before Yesteryear, and immediately found a bit boring: The People we Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. Emily Henry is a much hyped author in online reader spaces, so I wanted to try her out (and watch the movie adaptation afterwards), but I really don't gel with the characters at all. I hate their cheeky, flirty way of speaking. I can see the appeal, but to me it reads a bit like all of the interesting parts of YA trope world were taken out, leaving the dull personal relationships without the buffer of an ambitious, weird, or otherwise interesting premise.

Perhaps it will hook me somewhere further in, who knows, but I'm not feeling very confident. I will read the whole thing though, because it's reasonably short and I want to know what the masses are into. I want to have more of a broad understanding of what's going on in the end-of-year Goodreads awards, what people are talking about when they talk about popular trends in books.

I've been thinking about diving into the romantasy genre, because it fascinates me how popular, and also how hated, it is. It doesn't really appeal to me, especially because most of the covers are generic and hideous, but so many people talk about the genre and its supposed nastiness from a very obvious lack of familiarity with it, and that interests me. I would like to become a genius about this. Perhaps this could be on the cards for me.

Anyway, here I am, today - scanned. 

Let's Make Flights Good (Not Bad)

I am writing to you today about flights, because I feel we have let them be too uncomfortable for too long. There must be ways of improving the aeroplane situation, because folks, my knees start hurting within ten minutes of sitting down in a plane seat. I cannot handle it. And then there are the mysterious weird aches and things. Strange new itches in the body. I know the flight attendants can tell that I am squirming, and they are laughing cruelly behind their grey privacy curtain. I feel it.

Me if I was a beautiful CGI anime woman revolutionising the aviation industry.

Just kidding, this is 'Real Anime Girls Flight Pilot Airplane Flying Games: Open World Flight Simulator High School Yandere Life – Urban City Luxury Plane Sakura Girl 3d £3.99', from Amazon or whatever. Don't worry about it.

The worst thing is, obviously, the complete impossibility of sleep. I've taken a few overnight flights, usually a seven hour situation, which I now think of as an almost breezy flight after my experiences taking ten and fourteen hour flights (Japan, I will endure anything to visit you, but fourteen hours on a plane is categorically evil), and there's just no way to do it. The closest I've come is on the few blissful occasions that the seat next to me was unoccupied, and oh my God, what an incredible sense of relief and pleasure such a thing brings. If no-one sits next to me, I feel so normal. It's amazing.

But even then, I'm just lying down in a crunched up, curled and tragic foetal position, resting my eyes while the intense blare of the aircraft jostles my bones. It's an ordeal. And that's before the hell that is jet lag.

So my proposal is: some vertical stacking.

I shall only ride the Demon Slayer jet.

I've seen ragebait Instagram Reels with comment sections in which people throw opposing views on whether or not reclining your seat during a flight makes you a disgusting pig who should be shot, and so I know that the people yearn to lie down, and also that the people wish to do immeasurable violence to those who dare to recline, and I say: let's force the recline. Why am I so horribly upright? The reclining seat is not enough. I need to be completely horizontal. So stack me. Stack me on top of two strangers like we're siblings in a small house settling into our bunk beds.

Do this now and put bluetooth in the in-flight entertainment panel. That way I could potentially know peace. Thank you. 

Warped Me

There's something undeniably great about the cartoon warping of the body. I used to love using the many face-warping filters of photobooth all the time, and of course I love the potion seller. We all do.

The pull of this simple re-constituting of one's face is eternal, and it's for that reason that I have drawn my beautiful new form today. I found a TikTok filter that turns your face all eyes and lips, and the joy I find in this version of myself is immense. Who is she? I love her. She's me. 

I think, in a way, this is my true and ultimate form. The complete re-shuffling allows for an ideal self to storm through. There is a great authenticity in the falsifying of the body. I am my own gorgeous avatar, the closest thing to the recreation of a Bratz doll I can reach, through the rudimentary art of streeeeeeetching out my facial features. There is something expressive in this great configuration.

And it's just... cute.

I am the big head now. Behold my gaze. 

I'm reading the tradwife time travel book

Okay fine. I'm doing it.

After seeing maybe ten people talk about Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear online, usually holding the book in both hands like an eagle with a fresh kill and often saying something about how UNLIKEABLE and DISGUSTING they thought the protagonist was, I knew I no longer had a choice. I must read this book and judge or join these hateful reviewers.

The story is about a tradwife influencer with a huge subscriber count, an obsessive hatred of "angry women" (her enemies), and an interesting and pragmatically evil view of men, discovering one day that she has awoken in 1855. 

"We're only a few souls away from one million on YouTube, Lord." 

I'm close to halfway in, and immediately I kind of love Natalie, the insane protagonist. She's written in this wonderfully villianous way, sneering dial turned up to the max and some over-the-top passages about how she blurts out nasty swear words in her head when she talks to God because she seethes so uncontrollably about other women. In some moments, it feels cringy and obvious, but for the most part, I like her Jokerfied persona.

"There comes a point in every marriage when a woman realizes that the man she married is a freak. This is inevitable. It cannot be avoided."

I think the novel is at its best when it lingers in Natalie's mind as she stews in her disdain. In these moments, her chosen lifestyle becomes a means to an end - an exercise in extreme self-control based in an interesting sort of blackpill feminism. She can obtain the best life for herself possible, she thinks, by swallowing down all these things she resents about men, all the little injustices that pepper the lives of women. It's a fun choice to have our tradwife be calculating and sure of her own supremacy, expressing things that many feminists would agree with, but not seeing the connection, too mired in her own individualistic quest for a personal mythology to have any ability to connect with other women.

Natalie is such a fun character. Her bitterness drives her, and there is a wonderful, dark relatability to that - but she is alone, and cocooned in an inescapable misery. Trapped.

I'm excited to finish it soon. 

I Flopped

A tragic state of affairs has arisen. This week I posted a main channel video, a YouTube video deposited neatly onto my primary video-posting location. It's a twenty minute video about the first Bratz movie, from 2004, and it immediately sunk to the eighth or ninth place out of the previous ten videos I've posted. That, unfortunately, is a certified flop.

It has reached seven out of ten now. Bobbing atop the dregs.

This can and must happen - it's the nature of posting. Some flops must occur. And potentially, the flop can help me to understand different elements of flop potential. But this also happened at the same time as another shocking video incident.

I made a video for my second channel this week, too. Usually, I don't post anything to this one, but on a whim, I made and posted a video about French Pokémon names a few days ago. For some reason, this racked up a quick twenty thousand views. That's a normal amount for my main channel, but not for this secondary channel, which usually can expect to see a few hundred views, maybe a thousand.

But here I am, with sweetie-pie commenters piling up in the comment section of this video and a gently climbing view count, while my poor Bratz video languishes. A strange predicament. 

Perhaps I can yet slay...

Would the Teletubbies Accept Me?

Okay, so we all know that the Teletubbies are a tight knit foursome. They don't fight, they just chill on their mounds all day, except for when they want to watch thirty minutes of Antiques Roadshow on one of the group's tummy TVs. But the thing is, I don't think they'd all accept me into the group if I was to visit their beautiful green hills. This is how I think the dynamics would work out if I, a normal adult woman, became involved in the social landscape of the Teletubbies.

Dipsy

Dipsy is a wild card. A real crazy guy. I think he would test my limits with some playful ribbing, which could escalate into a situation approaching tense. But ultimately, we would certainly become firm friends. I know this because Dipsy's hat is so cool, and there's no way someone with a hat that cool would commit to cruelty against me, long-term.

Tinky Winky

I believe Tinky Winky would hit me with his handbag - big time. Not maliciously, really, but just out of a sense of excitement. He wouldn't know what to make of me, so like a dog reacting with unconrollable madness when an unknown person passes through the doorway, Tinky Winky would begin a campaign of gentle violence. But this, of course, would bond us instantly. Especially because he's my favourite one.

Laa-Laa

I think Laa-Laa would struggle with the addition of a gorgeous, carefree woman like myself to the group. In a sense, Laa-Laa is the most feminine and the most unassuming of the Teletubbies. Her thing is just being cute and giggling. But then I'd arrive, letting out all of my big womanly laughs at all the Teletubbian antics, and she'd feel perturbed. She'd try not to show it, but we'd all know.

Po

Po is a sweetie, and wouldn't do anything to me, but she would slightly resent that I would immediately rise above her in the Teletubby hierarchy even though I'm not a Teletubby and am in fact just a normal human woman. She'd just make a few grumpy noises now and then to get it out of her system, and then everything would basically be good. 

Spacechase (1982)

It's another blog post about an Atari 2600 game. I cannot be stopped. You can't catch me and force me not to post about the Atari 2600, so I shall continue. Today's game is Spacechase (1982).

It's a beautiful little alien shooter, where waves of alien ships swoop in and you must GET them. And it works well as a high score seeking arcade game. It has just the right feel to make you want to go another round - the kills feel satisfying, and you quickly feel like you've gotten a knack for the game's movements.

What really struck me, though, were the visuals. There are some pretty sophisticated visual tricks going on. The background is this wonderfully rendered, perpetually moving moon underneath you, and it just looks so good.

I also love the blinking stars in the background, and the graceful way enemies swoop in. These details make the environment feel so immersive, which is not something I'm used to saying about Atari 2600 games.

Spacechase feels quite beautiful, but more importantly, it feels good to chase that high score.

Beat mine if you dare. 

Alien (1982)

In 1982, Atari and 20th Century Fox blessed us with an exciting licensed Alien game. That's right, you can be Ripley. You can feel the terrifying approach of the alien. You can relive the atmosphere of your favourite dazzling and terrifying sci-fi movie. As a Pac-Man clone, of course!

In this game, launched confidently onto the Atari 2600, you are not Pac-Man, but a regular human-shaped person. Your task is to avoid the scary aliens wandering through the gorgeous onscreen maze, and to get these yummy circles. In this game, the circles are alien eggs, and you are mercilessly crushing them - yay!

The controls are perhaps slightly more finicky than in the original Pac-Man - I found myself failing to swerve into the direction I wanted to go a few times, things feel just a touch sticker - but for the most part, this is a servicable, standard Pac-Man situation. An interesting deviation, though, is in its interstitial bonus levels.

This is a sort of Frogger. I wasn't ready for it. Quite frankly it frightened me, the presence of all those aliens. But before I knew it, I was back in the regular level, safe and sound.

It's really the look of this game that I find compelling. I love the sprites, human and alien alike, and the use of a very blue-purple colour palette creates a nice, moody, celestial feel to the whole thing. There is a beauty here in this low-effort licencing. They've taken Pac-Man away, leaving his workplace behind for you to attend to, but they've put a special little atmosphere where he once was. And there's something beautiful about it. 

Don't let the aliens get you. 

Beautiful Aesthetic, Terrible Game

There is a game for the Atari 2600 called 'Bugs'. Released in 1982, it depicts gorgeous, gargantuan, blocky bugs, which crawl rapidly to the top of the screen and kill your ass. Your task is to shoot them before they can do this. But reader, it is hard. Those bugs reach the top of the screen at lightning speed, leaving you very little time to pick them off. 

There is just no balance or finesse to the one single gameplay mechanic: moving your cursor around to shoot those things. The cursor moves in this horrible cumbersome way, often snapping to positions just left or right of the bugs' hitboxes, leading to immediate, unstoppable death.

There is also, if this wasn't bad enough, an orb-shaped thing awaiting you just underneath the enemy bugs. This thing will kill you if you touch it, creating an impasse that stops you from aiming at whichever bug is out of reach when you are on one side of the orb. The result? Near-instant death. So far, so consistent.

While I do like the design of this game - those big, juicy bugs and the flashing screen of pink-green-orange-blue horizon - the game is more or less unplayable crap. 

This is probably just how Ender of Ender's Game felt. Also, one of the bugs is a lizard.

Who is the Sexiest Pokémon?

Many fools have pondered the question, but I am here to finally answer definitively: Who is the sexiest Pokémon?

Now, I know which one comes to mind first. Obviously, it's Rapidash. That's a lithe, strong horse who is literally on fire. And she feels nothing. Very cool. Very alluring to all the fire-lovers in the audience. But ultimately, she's just a wonderful woman who needs to be left alone in her field. She's a single mother and she's not afraid to burn down the whole barn if she doesn't get her salt lick. She's a mysterious figure, yes, but she's honestly too normal, and perhaps parodoxically, too elegant for this title.

A common pick that the clamouring crowd looks to is Electabuzz. While I do understand this - he's stern and a little bit volatile, but also scrappy and hardworking - the truth of the matter is that he is a bit ugly. Like, I'm sorry Electabuzz, but you are not a serious being when it comes down to it. Yes, this guy can kill a child instantly by looking at it, and that appeals to many, but he looks like he's standing in front of the beer fridge in Tesco, indecisive because he's already had a little bit of a friend's joint about fifteen minutes ago.

Some people with eclectic tastes cite Klefki, the haunted key Pokémon, and while sure, haunted keys jangling about do betray a certain unpredictable, spooky delight, quite frankly this Pokémon is far too employed to really climb up the ladder of sexiness. Like, some Pokémon are too unemployed (Electabuzz), but Klefki has the opposite problem. I can't relax around a Klefki, because I know that thing needs to run off and unlock the basement any moment now. It's on call to lock up. And that just makes it hard to relax.

Girafarig is close to the top. Long, elegant, gorgeous neck, and a beautiful dappled pattern adorning its graceful body give it an incredible serenity and unique appeal. And then, oh my God, a weird dark tail with TEETH that BITE. It's scary, and yet you know that Girafarig will treat you well, bring you an excellent wine to taste with its home-cooked, delicately seasoned dinner. Great. But there's one Pokémon that knocks this demonic giraffe off the podium.

Regirock. It's Regirock. The very picture of masculinity. Stoic and hard all over. No-one can reach him. No one dares. This is the sexiest Pokémon, as voted for by one thousand of Northumberland's top midwives (Gornguss et al, 2017).

*** 

Well folks, there you have it. And honestly, looking at this Regirock, I have to say - it's really cute.