To doodle is – if anything – a doddle. Equally the domain of avant-garde artists and incarcerated monkeys, presidents and poets, toddlers and self-help gurus, doodling is a radically non-hierarchical and non-classical activity that relays modernism’s epochal desire to reinvent traditional systems of value and to encourage the acceptance of new modes of being.
The experts all agree: it’d be better if these Big Brand fast foods weren’t there. And, according to a recent survey, the majority of Americans do too, saying places like hospitals shouldn’t serve or profit from fast food. Yet somehow, we keep blaming people for being unhealthy while designing a world that makes the unhealthy choice the easiest, most visible — and often the only one.
It’s been a while since I visited the household that my Sim shares with Rian, the Sim I made for my partner, Ryan. In the game we live with our two youngest kids, two dogs, a cat, a cow, and a number of chickens. I’ve been nervous: even though she’s on the Long setting for lifespan, it seems like she’s heading toward death. To keep her alive, I’ve been playing with our older kids and grandkids. They moved out as Young Adults to live on separate lots nearby. Sometimes I get them to invite me over for dinner.
But everything at our house seems to be as I left it. I’m holding Fiona, the cat, and our son Fielding is holding Rye, the puppy. There’s a purple onion on the grass. Rian’s Chatting on the computer in our bedroom. I direct him to work on the garden, where some of the plants need to be Watered and Sprayed for Bugs. In this world he’s a stay-at-home dad. I work two days a week as a Creator of Worlds, the highest tier in the Author track of the Writer career. Would I have chosen a different career if my real job had been an option? Luckily it’s impossible to say.
Far from being one of those cozy British crime stories, this novel offers a lament for a Great Britain that's lost its bearings.