out of brain error

[rushthatspeaks]

I have what the doctor said is either bronchitis or pneumonia or both, and since I've had bronchitis before and it didn't feel like this, well. Just finished a course of antibiotics which appear to have done precisely zip, so I get to go back to the doctor. And the whole thing evolved out of a cold I literally caught the last weekend of September; it has not been the best month.

I am so out of brain I don't even know how to describe how out of brain I am, and I have been completely unable to focus on new books, watch emotionally involving new television, etc. I've hit a point in Fez where I'm going to need to be able to do some platforming which I'm not great at in order to progress, and while I'm going to download the Sam and Max games, it's not like I haven't played them before. I am also vastly, immeasurably, incredibly bored and twitchy at how housebound I've been, but whenever I go out and do anything I get noticeably and immediately worse.

Also, being sick reminds me of how when we lived in Texas I was sick for months and months and months and it was terrible and did horrible things to my mood, so there's remembering that and worrying about how long this is going to last.

I could really use some recommendations for entertainment. To give you an idea of the sort of thing that works right now, I have Cookie Clicker open in a tab and it was perfect for a while but then it got to the point where most of what I have to do is wait around. I just finished watching season four of The Great British Bakeoff, and I've reread all the Moomin books and a large chunk of Georgette Heyer.

So I'm looking for: really, really, really fluffy books; television which is involving but not stressing (the problem with most reality shows is that the contestants are bitchy to each other-- I tried Masterchef Junior and it was too competitive); online stuff; games which do not involve explicit physical/emotional violence or excessive physical dexterity, either for a moderately old Mac or downloadable on the Xbox Live Arcade; movies in which nothing bad happens. I do not have an ebook reader. I am too tired to knit. I am willing to throw some cash at things if it will result in something which is really occupying for a fair length of time, but I'm hoping to be well or at least better before the amount of time passes which anything that is difficult to get hold of would need to turn up in the mail-- like, next-day shipping from Amazon, reasonable; something which would need to come from, say, Britain, not so much.

Thoughts?

Comments

[anne]

When I had swine flu, someone recommended the Sushi Cat game (http://armorgames.com/play/5379/sushi-cat). It was exactly what I needed. I didn't like the second one as much, but perhaps that's because I was well when it came out...

[fadeaccompli]

(Do forgive me if I recommend stuff you already know about; trying to find decent suggestions!)

Okay, if you are up for puzzle games:

- Triple Town is cute and fairly simple, and aside from bears going GRR and sort of hopping around, and then turning into cute tombstones if you trap them, there is no violence whatsoever. And it's turn-by-turn, so no dexterity involved. It's available on several platforms, and I know it runs on Macs at least through Steam.

- Most any PopCap hidden item game (Escape From Rosecliff Island); most of them are either untimed or you can turn the timer off, and require only enough dexterity to click on a specific object in the picture.

- Nightshift Code and Nightshift Legacy are more hidden item games, but with some sort of actual vague storyline attached, which I found rather pleasing as a change of pace. That said, those ones do have a vague off-screen sort of "Oh no! The people chasing us are responsible for a death we thought was an accident!" plot point on occasion, so they may not be entirely soothing in that area. (Better actual hidden item play than some, though, in my opinion.)

For TV stuff to watch:

- I spend a lot of time watching nature documentaries. Especially ones about fish. Fish are very soothing, and I admit, not cute enough to make me too sad when certain fish eat other fish. YMMV.

- Emma: A Victorian Romance is deeply engaging, but even the people who Stand In The Way Of True Love are clearly sympathetic people who are trying to do their best for others. So there is some conflict? (Otherwise the romance would wrap very quickly.) And some background trauma. But I think the most violent it ever gets is someone being slapped, and overall it's quiet and pleasing.

- Any of Michael Palin's travel documentaries are usually engaging, light-hearted, and pleasant. Travel being what it is, they occasionally will stop and discuss social problems or historic tragedies, but those tend to be brief, respectfully handled moments in the midst of pretty landscapes and cheerful narrative.

Reading:

- The Yotsuba&! series. It is made of adorable and fluffy. There is nothing more adorable and fluffy in the entire world than this manga series.

- The Dragonbreath series. Which...okay, yes, it's easier to recommend kid books for that kind of request, but they're really quite entertaining and adorable and happy! Maybe skip the Halloween one, that comes the closest to having an actual depressing point.

- Chi's Sweet Home. I believe the second season of the anime based on the manga is available for free on CrunchyRoll, too. As fluffy as anything ever comes, ever.

- Pretty much any book by Mary Roach. (...okay, maybe skip Stiff, which is all about dead bodies.) Packing For Mars in particular lends itself towards a high level of hilarity with a very low level of actual historical tragedy getting mixed in. Also, these books are very easy to pick up and put down again repeatedly when dealing with a lack of focus, without getting lost, which I find handy. (I also have a weakness for all those footnotes.)

- To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. It's pretty much Heyer plus time travel, so!

- Tentatively recommended as sufficiently fluffy: Anything from the Casson family series by Hilary McKay. There are sometimes serious issues (dealing with divorce and school bullies and unrequited love and learning your parents are not at all perfect), but the sheer sense of "these people really and truly love each other", plus the light touch and delightful shenanigans, make me categorize these in the fluffy category. But they may just be mostly fluffy, so. Tentative. (Very good, though.)

- The Silent Traveller books by Chiang Yee. Pleasant, gentle travel memoirs matched with his excellent watercolor art. If your library has some of the ones with the actual color plates for the big full-page pictures, all the better, but even in black-and-white it's great stuff.

- How Much For Just The Planet: classic Star Trek novel, and quite possibly the funniest book I have read in my life. Includes musical numbers.

- Azumanga Daioh: more manga, mostly strip-based entertaining slice-of-life about some high school girls and their teachers.

...anyway, with luck, there are a few things in there that you might enjoy that you are not already familiar with.

[redbird]

Mostly sympathy, and a note that I've been looking at a discussion of soothing YouTube videos, showing things like a fireplace or the ocean for long periods, or pasted-together images of trains. The context is more "soothing things to look at when my brain is too busy" but they might also be good for "when my brain isn't up for much." So I was given a pointer to two hours of a candle burning. The sidebar for that includes "three hours of California ocean waves" and three different fireplace videos. Indeed do many things come to pass.

[jinian]

Probably Scott Pilgrim is too much right now, but it's on XBLA and you should get it at some point.

Some Flash games that I think are likely to work for you right now:

Loops of Zen and Colourshift are my favorite link-up games, both very soothing and not too much brain applied in any one place. Flood Fill is less challenging; you're just coloring maps such that neighbors don't match.

10 ranges from very easy to somewhat challenging to plan out, but the concept is as simple as it gets. I played a lot of this while sick recently, because the sounds are so pleasing even when you're hitting undo repeatedly.

Utopian Mining is cute and fun! It's all fetch quests and a little resource management: easy, charming, and all too finishable.

William and Sly is platforming, but not very hard (says the platforming fan, though), and the world is soothing and beautiful in a way somewhat like Okami.

How do you feel about tower defense? Kingdom Rush can eat a lot of time.

Try Pixel Zen if the others are too brain-intensive: it is nothing but a sandbox you can make pretty things happen in (and a snarky tutorial).

Love you. And I still want a screenshot of the cookie apocalypse. :)

[lnhammer]

There is nothing more adorable and fluffy in the entire world than this manga series.

Not to mention side-splittingly hilarious. Every new chapter makes even my worst day ever so much better.

---L.

[jjhunter]

Re: being sick - if what you have is like an extended version of what my work colleagues, various housemates and I have been wrangling for the last few weeks (flu season is unusually *nasty* in the greater Boston area this year), my vehement sympathies.

Re: TV / movie entertainment stuff - have you found thevault yet? I'd start there. Also Studio Ghibli films, especially those involving Hayao Miyazaki, bear up well to rewatching, let alone the special treat of watching for the first time.

Re: reading - are you familiar with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga? Space opera shenanigans can be a lot of fun, and a deeper season is a fannish fork that manages to be extraordinarily well-written, lengthy and engaging *and* fluffy comfort reading of the most satisfying sort. (And if certain Baen-published books fall into the brain candy category for you in general, check out thefifthimperium.com for free + legal downloads of a number of Baen-published series.)

Other reading bits and pieces you may find diversion in sampling: the webcomic Nimona, which is playful and trope-savvy and blithely gleeful in its genre blending and evocative art; The Food Timeline: food history research service is endlessly fascinating to meander through; synecdochic's Writing Meta Table of Contents links to a number of fantastic essays about writing and writing process that can make time disappear at a suspiciously rapid rate without strain or sense of effort.

Hope at least some of those help ease your present state; my fervent wishes for your swift recovery asap.

[yasaman]

I don't know if you like animated stuff, but my go-to no-stress, delightful tv show is Adventure Time. It is for children, but I think it's genuinely funny and just plain fun to watch even for adults. The first season is available for streaming on Netflix.

[starlady]

I was going to suggest this. It is funny, wild, and smart. The later seasons are some of the most interesting cartoons I've seen.

you said yourself this is what fic is for

[jinian]

I think you have probably seen the Kate and Cecy Pacific Rim fic, but if not you should read it. Also Byerly Vorrutyer vs. aunts. And Troy, Abed, and Annie making a pie and having sex.

How do you feel about Kate DiCamillo? The Tale of Despereaux was too twee for me, but we have slightly offset twee-sensing and you might like her stuff. It is sure fluffy.

[zeborah]

For games, when I'm sick and bored I sometimes play with MustPopWords until RSI threatens.

[cyphomandra]

I am currently useless in the evenings, and have just started rereading the Swallows and Amazons series rather than just lie on the couch staring blankly at the Internet (although, as I ran out of bookcase space at M, I did have to open 14 in hindsight very poorly labelled book boxes to find anything other than Coot Club. And I still haven't found Winter Holiday.)

I would also suggest Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, and I agree with the suggestion of Eva Ibbotson, who writes very kind novels. And for games, Tiny Wings (touchscreen) is sweetly undemanding.

(I am not sure i would call any of these "fluffy", but if you find the latter Moomin books soothing despite their melancholy (I was way too young when I first read them and never quite got over my first impression) I presume there is some wriggle room!)

[hunningham]

The Asterix and Obelix comic books are my partner's go-to in times of sickness; you've already hit both of mine (Heyer and Moomintroll)

[oracne]

Urgh, yuck. I had a bad bronchitis last year, but luckily no pneumonia. I find David Attenborough documentaries very soothing in such circumstances.

[rinue]

If you haven't already tried Peggle (the early levels of which came as a free demo on a lot of XBoxes, and is definitely downloadable), it's one of my ultimate "I'm queasy/distractable/blah" games. Involving, cheerful, no time stress, infinite lives, huge numbers of levels/challenges you can jump around between if one gets annoying.

[kate_nepveu]

Very, very sorry.

You can reset Cookie Clicker and gain bonus points for restarting . . . ?

TV: is Anthony Bourdain too bitchy? I like his travel-and-eat-things shows. You've seen me mention the silly _Face Off_ SyFy makeup artist competition, which is very cooperative, and there are five episodes from the current season on SyFy's website.

Games: you've also seen me talk about Fallen London, a browser game that's kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure writ really large. The teaser text on player profiles says,

"Three decades ago, London was stolen by bats. Dragged deep into the earth by the Echo Bazaar. The sun is gone. All we have is the gas-light of Mr Fires. But Londoners can get used to anything. And it's quiet down here with the devils and the darkness and the mushroom wine. Peaceful.

But then YOU arrived."

And while it starts with a Victorian London, it has chosen to be non-historic with things like letting you decline to state a gender for your character and allowing your character to pursue romantic plots with male or female characters (or both at the same time), and it has a huge geography and mythology that is gradually revealed and goes way beyond London.

That said, it is a click-the-choice game and takes its time unfolding all the content, so I think it would not be very demanding. However, it is also not immersive because it does limit you to ten turns at a time max and regenerates one turn per ten minutes.

Movies in which nothing bad happens: _Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day_ (spoiler review by Genevieve Valentine.

Online things: the archives of Improv Anywhere, the folks who do things like recreate Indiana Jones running from a boulder in Central Park and run an annual Black Tie Beach Day?

Feel better soon.

[thegorgon]

Whenever I can't brain but have to do something I end up marathoning a lot of procedurals and rereading kids books. So I read a lot things like the Enchanted Forest chronicles by Patricia C Wrede, Ella Enchanted, maybe the entire Chronicles of Chrestomanci, and then watch six seasons of something that would probably make me want to cry if I actually thought about it, like NCIS or Person of Interest. So that's my suggestion. Sometimes if I can brain a little, I reread Red Thunder by John Varley, which is a book in which absolutely nothing happens but some people build a space ship out of a train car and ~science. Good luck, and feel better!

[kore]

I am so sorry you're so sick, I've had that kind of antibiotic-resistant WTF-is-it respiratory stuff before (not pneumonia tho) and it's so horrible.

Reliable for when I just can't brain: my RSI prevents me from doing a lot of clicky games. I listen to Pratchett audiobooks on an iPod lying down in bed, or watch old adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (I think I have all of them). If I'm really truly out of it, audiobooks of Jane Eyre or Little Women, because I know those nearly by heart and it's just soothing.

T and I just got through Warehouse 13 on Netflix, which was mostly silly zany fun, with a kickass heroine and a hacker chick who aren't cliches, and a square-jawed type who wasn't the focus and reminded me a bit of Crichton on Farscape.

[(Anonymous)]

Primary Education Among the Camiroi, a short story by R.A. Lafferty. (Probably too hard to track down... But Lafferty is worth tracking down in any case, and that story is a very nice on-ramp.)
And absolutely not Gormenghast! I tried reading that when I had the flu. It felt as though what I was reading was, itself, my illness, with all those dreary, oily, dusty descriptions...

[ckd]

I'm still a fan of Amazing Race, though some of the teams do get bitchy with other teams (or their own team-mates) it puts a much higher premium on working together and not screwing up.

(Also, going neat places!)

The LEGO video games might work; they are fairly forgiving in terms of dexterity/brain needed, and the only violence is that things (and minifigures) fall apart. All but the latest one are likely to be <$20 on Amazon, and there's Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. (They may also be available as downloads -- I know they are on PSN.) Maybe try a demo of one if XBLA has such.

[weirdquark]

Stupid flash games? I remember liking the one where you launch a hedgehog into orbit by upgrading its equipment and a similar themed game where a penguin wants to fly and so you give it a spiffy hang glider.

[selidor]

[first comment marked as spam? trying with link removed]

TV wise, I've been really enjoying First Crossings on TVNZ. Two Kiwis who are skilled in such areas (rowed the Atlantic together; skied Antarctica together) try recreating the major trekking accomplishments of pioneers with the original equipment. Spectacular landscape in large dollops, and they get on very well together. Also succeeds in lack of culturefail.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

The fluffiest book I read recently: Once on a Time by A. A. Milne. Worth a read possibly even if one is not sick.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

http://www.zoo.org/animalcam

It's sort of like the most boring non-interactive videogame possible, but it's BATS and sometimes they move around.

I like when they kind of unfurl and refurl, like they're adjusting their little wing outfit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My brainless game is naturalchemist dot com. It is silly. It has lots of sister games that are also silly, but for me that's the one that works to occupy my brain when I'm trying to think of something else or not able to think at all.

[larryhammer]

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee is a good but not terribly challenging omnibus. (I find geology almost as interesting as mathematics.)

---L.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Bujold's Spirit Ring is a lovely light fantasy. Some SF with a touch of Heyer: Pilot's Choice by Lee & Miller (actually two novels reprinted--Scout's Progress has a very Heyer feel to it). Quarter Share and its sequels are non-violent "day in the life" space opera.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Zuleika Dobson? Sheer meringue.

Nine

[landofnowhere]

Eva Ibbotson? She wrote both kids fantasy and adult romance (some now marketed as YA), and both are fluffy.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

OK, trying to think of things with the same specific gravity as Heyer. Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books, except for Drowned Hopes. Noel Streatfeild, everything, but maybe they have them in the library. Josephine Tey. Jennifer Crusie. Lani Diane Rich.

You know what this list is lacking? Genre. And you know why? Because genre requires plot that requires stuff. I was considering Elizabeth Moon's Serrano books, and also Walter Jon Williams Dread Empire's Fall, but... there's Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, and Wrede and Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia, and there's McKinley's Beauty.

Also, I have had pneumonia, and not at this tech level. Breathing steam is vile but genuinely helps -- towel over a bowl of recently boiled water, put your head in and breathe for as long as you can bear it. Adding menthol or something helps but I usually can't stand it then. Also, the ancient and vile remedy of rubbing Vicks on your chest helps. If you can't find Vicks, use tiger balm, it's essentially the same for this purpose. Also, if you can get it without getting to it half-killing you, sea air, right off the sea. Antibiotics are the cure, but they're slow and don't seem to do anything. This stuff I'm suggesting is palliatives that give your lungs help. (Also, if you have an asthma inhaler? Use it every 3 hours and 59 minutes or as directed, whether you feel like you need it or not. If you don't have one, suggest to the doctor that a turbohaler is often prescribed for cases like this.) Oh, and drink hot drinks all the time. Don't drink anything cold or carbonated, tea, tea, tea, tisanes, and hot juice. If you can get rosehip syrup or blackcurrant cordial (may be available as Ribena in UK import shops) drink that, with hot water. Drink the elderflower cordial I got Ruth, I'll get more.

Probably you're not going to be sick for months as in Texas, but I understand the fear. You sound convalescent to me. If I were your mother this is the day you'd get a Viking Transfer sticker book..And lots of hot drinks, and reading aloud, and the special treat of reading one of the Time Life Enchanted World books. (And no TV, ever in any circunstances, so there would be downsides!)

[kate_nepveu]

Oh, _Sorcery and Cecilia_! Perfect.

(I use the Dortmunder books in moods like these, but I recall that during the review-a-day project rushthatspeaks found Dortmunder the character incredibly depressing.)

Also, can I ask which Josephine Tey books? Because I did not find _Miss Pym Disposes_ anything like Heyer and would like to avoid things similar to it in tone.

[(Anonymous)]

Tey isn't like Heyer in tone, but in weight. But the more I think about this the harder it is to explain what I mean, and maybe it's just inside my head. And Miss Pym Disposes is a comfort read for me. But that is to say it's a comfort re-read. Reading it for the first time wouldn't be. But then nothing would. Nothing I read for the first time is a comfort read, because it's only comfort if I know what's going to happen, and even a retelling of a fairytale won't give me that the first tme..

[papersky.livejournal.com]

That was me, randomly logged out. Sorry.

[kate_nepveu]

Thank you!

[sovay]

I don't think I've read anything fluffy in weeks—I am presently enjoying the new anthology Once Upon a Time, but I think by definition fairy tales don't count. Filmwise, I'd probably stare at a lot of screwball comedies or Moonrise Kingdom if you haven't maxed out on it already. I've asked derspatchel for games recommendations.

Can you be visited, even if you can't go out?

Love you so.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

"Grand Designs", a UK TV series on people's astonishing, bizarre, frequently over-ambitious and occasionally magnificent self-build projects.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I tend to go to fluffy nonfiction, and have recently read Lucy Worsley's If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, which is a companion book to the BBC series If Walls Could Talk, which you can find on YouTube in this playlist. There's only one time I came across a fact that I was sure was wrong, but I treat pop-culture books and shows like this similarly to Wikipedia, in that they're a decent place to start research, but I wouldn't trust them for writing papers.

As far as TV goes (she says as she recommends the thing you said you didn't want), I have found that the Syfy reality makeup competition series Face Off is a breath of fresh air compared to other reality shows that focus on the contestant drama. The competitors appear to be genuinely fond of each other, for the most part, help each other out, and the few drama queens that show up tend to get thrown out of the competition early, instead of being guaranteed a few extra episodes for the ratings potential. Early seasons, contestants have a distressing tendency to pick the Black models and mention "tribal" as one of their inspirations for the makeups, but I haven't noticed that in recent seasons.

If you're willing to read ebooks on your computer, ursulav recently self-published a novella as "T. Kingfisher," and the Smashwords version comes in a number of formats including PDF, HTML, and plaintext. A wee bit dark near the end, but still her brand of humor.

While I was typing this, I got an email that the Shelley-Godwin Archive just launched a digital archive of the draft and fair copy notebooks of Frankenstein.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Also! If you need computerized game-like activity that actually does Science!, check out the projects at Zooniverse. I highly recommend Snapshot Serengeti there, where all you do is ID animals (and a minimum of 10 people see each photo, so you don't need to worry about getting it wrong), but if you read my LJ you already know that.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Books (some of them filmed):

Cold Comfort Farm.

The Brontes Went to Woolworths.

I Capture the Castle.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

Have you exhausted Elizabeth Enright yet?

Films:

Galaxy Quest

Clueless

This is Spinal Tap

Would The Critic make you cough too hard?

Love,

Nine

[shark-hat.livejournal.com]

My Neighbour Totoro. Singin' In The Rain. Black-and-white Fred Astaire.
For TV, what about an utterly deadpan fictional educational series? Look Around You is a parody of British "television for schools" and is wonderful. (Amazon has it, and I bet it's on youtube as well.)
For books, seconding Elizabeth Enright and Gerald Durrell. How are you on cozy mysteries? Charlotte Macleod's Peter Shandy series is very fluffy.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

For me, light comfort reading is inevitably something I've already read ten times, so I'm not sure my recommendations are much use as first reads. But they tend to include Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books, Novik's Temeraire series, any two mysteries by Donna Andrews, Scalzi's Agent to the Stars and The Android's Dream, and Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Anansi Boys. ("Any two mysteries" is because I can't read more than two of a cozy mystery series without suspecting the protagonist, YMMV.)

I also like rereading good fanfic when I'm fuzzy-headed: particular recommendations include the first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and any of Sam Storyteller's Avengers stories.

[encephalogistic.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the Myst games might fit the bill, if you haven't played them already.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

If you've never tried it, I suggest watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You probably already know that it's a kids show with lots of teen and adult fans. It is surprisingly clever and well-written. It's on Netflix streaming, if you have that.

[rustycoon.livejournal.com]

So, I am reminded of when I had 'walking pneumonia.' The 'walking' descriptor was flat-out bullshit, btw.

Anyway, you may want to check out 'Chime.' It's a pretty low-key puzzler, with good ambient music. It's sold in support of charity and last time I checked it was five whole dollars, to boot. It's available on Steam and the system requirements should be pretty low. At least a dozen hours of solid play time my first go-round, and I find myself coming back to it again and again.

In other news: Ugh. I am really sorry that you are having this experience - Pneumonia sucks rocks. :( :(