The Queue: Twelfth Night

Since today is the twelfth day of Christmas, tonight is the twelfth night. I plan to celebrate by watching the new Great Performances version of the play, featuring Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong’o, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Peter Dinklage as Malvolio.

We’ve had PBS Passport since 2022, and it’s well worth the price, even though our local has increased from $5 per month to $7 per month this year. And come on, Lupita and her actual brother as Viola and Sebastian? Amazing.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll answer but only if we can wear our yellow stockings and go cross-gartered while we do. And a paaartri-idge in a pear treeeee.

The WoW team tends to be a little fast and loose with the yearly roadmaps. The first one they really released was in 2022, and they put it out in March. It does kind of make sense, since sometimes they’ll include things that are semi-surprises, like if Plunderstorm doesn’t return again sometime this year I’d be shocked.

The Hearthstone yearly roadmap is usually defined by their 3 times yearly expansion releases, the rollover for which is currently late February. I wouldn’t expect their roadmap to be out until after January, but I would expect it to be out right around then.

Mind Controlling Rogues to their doom. Obviously.

Apologies, but Stardew Valley. I don’t think I have ADHD, but when I play that game I feel like I have ADHD. Just simple little things like remembering to feed the chickens every day, and then shut them in the coop at night is just a whole lot, let alone the whole calendar and birthday rotations and stuff like Mushroom Day in the mine. A lot of other games with a similar loop will let you squeak by, by letting you chart things, but with Stardew the days tend to go so quick that alt+tabbing to consult a chart or calendar is kind of futile.

This also goes for many (but not all) Stardew-alikes, like Graveyard Keeper. That one can be worse, because each NPC will have a timetable where you have to interact with them at a certain time — as I recall the Bishop leads church services Sunday morning, and if you miss it, you’re just screwed for the next seven days, for instance. But that’s a vague recollection of my just being generally annoyed with the gameplay.

I have 2 cars. One is a bright red Nissan Leaf, the other is a mid-2010s silver Honda Odyssey.

Every time I go somewhere like the grocery store in my minivan, when I go back to the parking lot, I always mistake at least one other silver van as mine, because there are always at least a half dozen nearly identical minivans in the lot. I swear to god I can feel that minute of my life being siphoned away every time — and it is every. time. I will almost always drive my Leaf if I can help it (in part because it’s more fun and easy to drive, but that’s a different thing).

I refuse to buy another silver, white, or black car. All else fails, I’ll get a silver car and pay to have a colorful wrap put on it. It enrages me.

But you know what is a delight? Peter Dinklage as Malvolio.

See you next week!