Strange times

SOME MIGHT say we live in strange times. Technology is constantly changing things. Some of it is actually pretty neat.

Televisions continue to get bigger and thinner, phones continue to get smarter (though their users don’t), and video games sure as heck don’t look like they did when Donkey Kong was in arcades. Some of us are old enough to remember blowing the dust out of a blocky cartridge the size of a slice of bread and sliding it into the Nintendo set.

Mario Bros. was simple enough. Tetris was even simpler.

Some games today are a bit more complicated. Have you been lucky enough to see commercials for these things? Just the advertisements look like movie previews. Kiddos have quite a few options today that their parents surely didn’t.

But the latest offering that has us scratching our heads is called Untitled Goose Game. It’s gone viral, taking the Internet by storm. The concept is simple, even for semi-Luddites: You play a really mean goose (like, the bird) living in a rural English town.

You run around stirring up trouble and causing mischief, dragging people’s garden tools into the lake, destroying flower beds, locking unsuspecting ladies in their garages. Why? Well, why not? There’s no real rhyme or reason for this game. You’re just a cranky goose out to cause mischief.

It’s startling just how good some people are at being a cranky goose, stealing keys, honking at unsuspecting pedestrians, and generally making a mess of the town.

While some people are working on beefing up virtual reality for the eventual day when we plug our brains into computers, others are making games in which you play a mean goose. It’s a bizarre world. But at least you aren’t stealing cars and shooting people in this one.

The game looks like fun, and it’s doubtful any violence will ever be blamed on this one. Except, just maybe, there might be more hunting stamps issued this winter.