QTX

Soooooo, as I’ve said before, many, many times; tomorrow, Tuesday 10th November 2015, is quite possibly going to be the best day in the history of the world, ever. I mean, some other stuff has happened on some other days – some guy cured Polio at one point, for example, and there was all the Moon-ey type shananigans and such, but crucially, crucially – on no other day in History did Fallout 4 come out, and in no other cycle of 24 hours did Fallout 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider come out at the same time. That’s a fact – and you can check it if you want.

To say I’ve been looking forward to this day would be a slight understatement, and to say I’m a bit excited about it would be akin to saying that, like, the Universe is a bit ‘roomy’. I mean, I’ve been waiting for Fallout 4 for three years. Three fucking years of checking google, decoding totally unrelated tweets from Bethesda, asking random people in the street if they could hook me up with some Fallout news – whatever, I’d tried it all. And back when the ‘no news whatsoever’ dam finally started to crack, and then subsequently broke in a rapidly cascading tidal wave of Fallout 4 news, I was about as happy as I’ve ever been – as I could ever imagine being. At some point in the future I hope to have a kid, and don’t get me wrong, I expect that’ll be a “special” day but, in all honesty, unless the thing arrives rocking some kind of superpowers or some shit, there’s a fairly big chance the whole occasion will struggle to compete with how I’ma feel when I’ve got two particular games in my stubby little hands tomorrow.

Anyways, that’s all to say that tomorrow was going to be, all things considered, a pretty good day.

Except that yesterday, I finally got around to going through the pile of mail that’s been building up over Silly Season. This being real-life, there’s a few bills in there obviously, and just as I’m opening (what I thought) was the last one – and resigning myself to handing over the usual wad of cash for the privilege of not living like a caveman, and having such fancy-schmancy luxuries as lights and whatnot – I’m thinking that real-life’s pretty grim. Except it wasn’t a bill – it was much, much worse than that, and real-life went from just being grim, to actively, maliciously punching me in the nads. Repeatedly. And with glee.

See, it was a little heads-up from my electricity provider, informing me I’d be without power for a bit whilst they performed ‘essential maintenance’ on their infrastructure. In amongst all the usual platitudes about ‘valued customers’ and ‘streamlined user experiences’ and such, was a sentence that chilled me to my bones. Beyond my bones, in fact. To whatever’s inside bones (marrow?). As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now Dear Reader (thanks to my overly wordy build-up), that little sentence had a date: Tuesday 10th November 2015! As in tomorrow. As in what was shaping up to be my best day yet on this little planet of ours. As in….well you get my point.

I mean, honestly, that’s just brutal, right!? The first time my bag-of-shite electricity provider has deigned to do pre-emptive maintenance in living memory is tomorrow, the day I’ve been looking forward to for three years. THREE FUCKING YEARS!! And just like that, tomorrow went from being potentially the highlight of my (admittedly uneventful) life, to quite possibly being the absolute nadir.

Because while the rest of the world dives into Fallout 4, or Rise of the Tomb Raider, or both – I’ll be staring at a blank TV screen. With nothing on it. BECAUSE I’LL HAVE NO POWER! Nothing. Nada. Sweet fuck-all. Instead of playing a game I’ve been waiting years to play, or another one I’ve been quite excited about for a while, I’ll be curled up in a ball, crying every last ounce of moisture from my broken, beaten form. Indeed, unless the International Red Cross get back to me about that generator I requested, tomorrow will be an actual, real-life post-apocalyptic wasteland, and not the virtual, pixel-ly one I was hoping it would be.

I’d like to finish this with some eloquent, deep insight to the state of my soul right now, but I can’t. It’s just black. Infinite, endless blackness. So, you know, this’ll have to do instead:

Fuck. My. Life!