Sometimes, your workday just needs the kind of pastoral background music that makes you feel like you live in a village full of animals, right? Nintendo's popular Animal Crossing lets you make your living through labor no more complex than collecting shells, fishing, and shaking trees for surprises, which fills one with simple longing.
Thanks to a forum user called Andrex, you can now add the Animal Crossing Music extension to your Chrome browser, letting you play the "soothing and upbeat" tunes in your browser — apparently they update in realtime, so you can hear the gently-paced day and night cycles of the series' songs.
Two summers ago I wrote a personal essay about Animal Crossing, and the poignant simplicity of a world where if you work the land from day til night and are kind to your neighbors, prosperity arrives with the surety and sweetness of a sunset. Maybe spin the tunes, give it a read, and go back to your weird, tangled modern life?
(Thanks to Ian Dransfield of Kotaku UK for discovering the extension!)
