Ok Fontaine, you're goin' down.

Tomorrow I will probably kill Frank Fontaine and thereby complete the PS3 game BioShock. Can you believe someone who is presumably a standard-issue half-centenarian would play BioShock? I mean, especially BioShock. Epic Mickey was one thing because there are plenty of people who have never outgrown a taste for Mickey Mouse, but BioShock is, frankly, kind of gross. It is (in the parlance) a first-person shooter in which you are constantly beset by murderous crazy people in an underwater Objectivist utopia gone to dystopian seed. It took me about half the game to adapt to that. The violent part, that is. So, based on a case study of one, I conclude that video games do not make humans more inclined toward actual violence, but rather they simply make humans less sensitive to video games. Don’t base a sociology paper on this study please.

It is a distraction, is the thing. These days I am spending about 2 hours each mid-day visiting with Jeff and overseeing his lunch at Bayview Medical Center where he is an inpatient in the geriatric psychiatry unit. Well, no...64 is not exactly geriatric, but his condition is, so that’s why it’s a fit. It may take up to 3 weeks for them to conclude that his medication regimen is sufficiently adjusted so that he can be a newly functioning assisted living resident who will pose no danger to himself, the residents, the staff or his wife. Or it may take 3 weeks for them to conclude that he is pharmaceutically intractable, and then I don’t know what. He says he wants a job. Where can one send a severely brain-damaged person and say...”Voila--there’s your job. Enjoy.”? A submarine? No, feeling trapped will make him throw people around. Seattle, his dream city? No, being impaired in visual processing, he will walk into traffic and cause accidents. I’m out of ideas.

So tomorrow I’ll be back on the second floor at Bayview helping Jeff not miss the ice cream when he goes for it with his spoon. Either before or after I kill Frank Fontaine.

I do some other things too. Such as walk the dog, do basic housekeeping, and walk in slightly hyperactive circles. This chapter of life has taken me from slightly out of focus to lost in inscrutable static. I think my head will clear up during some future year and I will do at least something. Although I think, for now, it will be best to accept lack of purpose. I hope purpose is highly overrated. Pulling one out of thin air has never been my strong suit.