Despite the title this has nothing to do with any real life problems, which I will not acknowledge whether or not I have. No, it has everything to do with video games and my desire to pointlessly rant.

The last couple of days I have been playing a completion run in Donkey Kong Country 2 with a friend from my dorm. We finally beat the final boss and the secret world, and thusly gained the mathematically suspect 102% completion. As we sat basking in our extreme Donkey Kong awesomeness a chilling thought occured to us. "Oh sh*t. Now what do we do?" I should mention that the week before we had beaten every level in Super Mario World including the secret world with the funny level names ("Far Out", "Tubular").

Its the same with books and movies. I'm enjoying a nice book, enthusiastically reading to see how everything will resolve, when I realize that the book is going to end and there will be no more reading left to do. What makes it worse is that I'm a literary predator, overhunting my prey. I can finish a book in one day if it catches my attention.

I guess my point is this: you know the end is coming, but you can't stop yourself from hurtling full speed at it. You want to know the ending, the thrill of completion; but are afraid of what comes after. Kind of like a metaphor for life, except with animated monkeys. And that makes it all the more a better metaphor.