What I'm playing: Potato Route Zero Edition

I'm lost somewhere on the dark highways and byways of Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition. I've got my hound dog, Blue, with me. I always have the option of asking how she's doing, but I usually just talk about what I'm doing. She totters after me, always catching up eventually, so I figure that old dog is doing about as well as can be expected.

My guy in Kentucky Route Zero is a delivery driver. I am too, in real life. Wish I could have a dog with me, but it's a government vehicle and no one's allowed to ride with me except other government employees. I handle logistics with my city fire department, by the way, so don't picture me in some murdered-out CIA van when I say "government vehicle." It's a Freightliner Sprinter. One of those tall, skinny vans you see wobbling a little bit on a windy day or around a tight corner.

A low-grade sickness is settling in around my eyes and forehead as I head into my daughter's birthday weekend. She's turning 10. She's asked for a potato-themed party. There will be tater tots, french fries, potato chips, and baked potatoes to eat. Her train of thought can be difficult to follow at times. But, at first, she wanted a Lord of the Rings birthday party. Then she scaled that theme back to Generic Adventure. Then she thought of that line Sam Gamgee says to Gollum: "Po-tay-toes! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!" All of which brought her back to a Lord of the Rings theme—what she wanted in the first place—though most folks don't think of potatoes when they think of J.R.R. Tolkien's magnum opus. There will also be Nerf bows and arrows to shoot at a cartoon potato target at the party. It's a whole thing.

Which is to say, my low-grade fever, plus my kiddo's potato party, plus the surreal nature of Kentucky Route Zero, is quietly making me question my sanity. Did I just see the silhouette of a unicorn in the blinking light of that mine shaft? Did I just agree to find an open-air venue for a man with antlers slung over his shoulder by me saying, "Yep. Pseudoscience"? And I watched two people, who were completely barefoot and emotionally ruined, push a Cessna up a stretch of the road? 

I don't know what to say. Except I'm reminded of this one time I went golfing, drunk, with a couple coworkers of mine. We were on the second hole. After my coworkers stopped wrestling over a cigarette butt they found in the trash, I pushed the hair out of my face and said, "I don't know where the wind is coming from, but it's going that way." I feel similarly about Kentucky Route Zero. I don't know where this story is coming from, but [I point off in a leeward direction] it's definitely going that way.