Life on a barge is pretty wild
Three Recs: January 22, 2024
The other day, a friend mentioned something to me about the upcoming 2024 United States presidential election. I, mercifully, keep forgetting that we’re having an election this year. I am going to be doing my best to be as uninformed as practically possible. Such a posture used to be worthy of public reprimand, but now it seems to be more acceptable.
Anyway, here’s some recs.
1. Captain Mark McGuire’s TikTok
The best TikTok account I’ve started following in the last month is an Irish guy who captains one of those massive cargo barges that travels all around the world. He spends the downtime of his countless days at sea sharing about life on the ship.
Recently, he has had to go around the bottom of Africa instead of going through the Red Sea to get to Asia (due to conflict in the Middle East). The videos are endlessly fascinating to me.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
2. The Fisher Space Pen
I used a little bit of my Christmas money to buy a new pen, which I definitely didn’t need, but decided I’d like to try. I am generally a Pilot G2 5mm Extra Fine guy, and those pens remain my favorite pens most of the time. But I saw a really neat pen called the Fisher Space Pen. It’s literally the same kind of pen astronauts use when they go to space because it can write in any conditions. It’s not like that really matters to me given I don’t spend time writing in any extreme conditions.
It doesn’t write as smoothly as other pens I like, but it’s a cool-looking pen, and it goes nicely with my trusty pocket Moleskine notebooks I write in every day.
3. Super Mario Bros. Wonder
I finished Super Mario Bros. Wonder a couple weeks ago after a few months of playing it off-and-on. Completing video games, even short ones like Super Mario Wonder, is significantly harder than it used to be given all of the responsibilities that come with adulthood.
The game was super fun. It was colorful and really beautiful. I enjoyed most of it, even if it did seem to drag on a bit toward the end. A wonderful entry for the 2D Mario collection.
Looking at the meager lineup of big Switch titles this year, it is almost certain that Nintendo will announce and release the Switch’s successor this year—which many expect to simply be something like a “Super Switch,” rather than a brand new console entirely.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave your recs in the comments!
I played "Super Mario Bros U" last year and I still haven't completed it, though not for lack of trying. The last level is such a steep A-button up from the previous ones that I just ended up relegating myself to the ranks of the DNFers! It's the first time I've played a Super Mario game—having grown up on Sonic—and I thoroughly enjoyed it.