[Max Payne] They said there are only a few original metaphors. Dream to life, road to time, sleep to death. I had found one more, ocean to love. And I was drowning.
These quotes reminded me of how, long after the first two Max Payne games, there was a genre called "nordic noir" that was popular here, "The Killing", "The Bridge" etc., none of which hold a candle to the og. Morbid, absurdist, cold. Completely serious and deadpan
After Y2K the end of the world had become a cliché. But who was I to talk, a brooding underdog avenger alone against an empire of evil, out to right a grave injustice? Everything was subjective. There were only personal apocalypses. Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.
Trees probably have dopamine and OODA loops and other such things, just on a longer timescale, something we cannot quite perceive because of impedance mismatch between the respective timescales. Touch grass (dirt). Become like a tree.