The only video game I was ever any good at was Snake on my first-generation Nokia mobile phone. The premise was that there was a line that grew as it moved, and you had to use the arrow buttons on the phone to keep turning it so that it didn’t cross paths with itself; when it crossed paths with itself, you lost. I was in a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Los Angeles with a woman who could not possibly afford one of the cars but wanted to ask about prices anyway when I beat Snake, discovering in the process that to beat Snake was also to lose at Snake. What I mean is that I kept the line turning for so long that it filled the entire screen at which point there was no longer anywhere it could turn without crossing paths with itself, which it did, at which point I lost, at least according to the phone. In this way, it was like life, inasmuch as if you succeed in living your entire life without dying, you die. As for the woman, I couldn’t tell you what became of her, but I hope she got her Mercedes-Benz, even though it has been proven that wealth and the luxuries with which it is associated do not lead to personal happiness. Before I forget, I should mention that I was also, many years earlier, very good at Tetris, a game arguably similar in spirit if not actual form to snake that I played on the Nintendo system we kept in the basement when I was a child. Once, I even achieved such a high score during a game of Tetris that I was rewarded with an image of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow blasting off into outer space!