Castle of Not

Cursed castle. Everything within it can only be defined by what it is not.

[Players meet the beautiful princess.]

“A hideous prince does not stand before you.”

[Players find a chest of gold.]

“You have not found a rotten sack full of live crabs.”

Sounds like something that would need to be secured by the Antimemetics Division.

I loved swordfish steak the one time I had it, so I’d bet that Scylla, Charybdis, or the Kraken would be quite good.

Oh, also The Kraken is quite tasty.

One time in high school, I heard somebody yell “Steve, you [bundle of sticks], stop talking to your girlfriend and let’s go!” and Steve was in fact at the time talking to his girlfriend.

The sheer concentration of cognitive dissonance has stuck with me to this day.

This is the whole “if humans were going to have wings we’d have to redesign the whole organism from the ground up” fiasco all over again.

Blacula is legitimately fantastic. It’s full-on a story about the lingering violence springing from European colonialism and the slave trade.

Just one example: The main character is an African prince, and his name is Mamuwalde, but when Dracula turns him, he says “I curse you with my name! You shall be called BLACULA!” For the rest of the film, no one calls him Blacula, because his name is Mamuwalde! Except there was one subtitle that slipped and read something like “BLACULA: I lost her because of you!”, and I immediately thought, “Hey you subtitling asshole, his goddamn name is Mamuwalde!”

By the end of the movie I was rooting for him in the fight with the LAPD.

John Stark, one of the rescuers of the Donner Party.

In Summit Valley the remaining rescuers discussed what to do and took a vote to save only two of the children in Starved Camp. That might have been all they could manage. The others would have to stay behind.

John Stark, above, could not abide that. That meant that nine people, mostly children, would die on the mountain, exposed to the elements down in a very deep hole in the snow. John Stark decided he would save all nine, “Already shouldering a backpack with provisions, blankets, and an axe, he picked up one or two of the smaller children, carried them a little ways, then went back for the others. Then he repeated the whole process again and again and again. To galvanize morale, he laughed and told the youngsters they were so light from months of mouse-sized rations that he could carry them all simultaneously, if only his back were broad enough.” Once they were out of the snow he would eat and rest he said, but not before. He saved all nine. That is extraordinary and that is heroism. It was also heroism he never got contemporary credit for.

Kamala is the best version of a normal politician fighting against Trump. It remains to be seen if that’s enough, because he’s just so goddamn weird that it’s difficult to even compare Tool A to Problem B.

I think she’s incorporated virtually all of the strengths of any of her comparable peers, and almost none of their weaknesses. I think that, given the nature of the opponent and his total lack of seriousness, she said everything I would reasonably hope she would have said during this debate.

I also think that I don’t properly understand the collective psyche of the American electorate. I don’t understand how the election could be this close, when it is a choice between a serious, competent, passionate, talented professional, and a man who is literally a collection of all of the worst possible traits a person could have. That it could come down to such a narrow choice is a mystery for the ages.

Picsart. I’d like something that can do a bit of photo editing, adjust brightness/contrast/curves, work with layers, and conveniently slap together collages, but that doesn’t interrupt me in between every other operation with an ad or a request to sign up for a subscription to the app.

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Harmonica holder

If you pick up a cursed armor or weapon and aren’t sure if it’s worth cleansing, throw it at an explosive trap, or throw a bomb at it. An un-upgraded item will be destroyed, while an upgraded one will not, and therefore may be worth using a cleansing scroll on.

Collapsible metal travel chopsticks. Always have a useful set of utensils on me. Cost me less than $10.

This is the way.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

1 moa (minute of audio in 128000 bps mp3)

Give me 320000 bps or give me death!

I’ve been playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon virtually every day for years, through I don’t know how many updates. I’m far from convinced that every run is winnable, but there are some patterns that I’ve observed.

Mage and Huntress seem to be my best classes. The Mage’s staff means that you are guaranteed to have something that’s worth upgrading. The Huntress’ bow and her special abilities like growing grass by walking can make for some truly interesting gameplay changes, whereas I feel like most of the other classes’ abilities are more about moderate improvements to quality of life.

A Ring of Haste is probably my favorite ring to find, since being able to kite monsters is a great path to victory. Tenacity, Elements, and Strength are boring. Wealth can be good if it comes upgraded, but I wouldn’t put scrolls into it. Evasion always seems to turn on me sooner or later. Energy and Arcana can improve quality of life but are otherwise pretty mid.

A Wand of Regrowth is almost always a path to victory, especially if it comes upgraded, doubly so if you become a Warden, and triply so if you can combine it with the Sandals of Regrowth.

A Wand of Blast Wave is incredibly useful when used to knock enemies off ledges or into traps, saving yourself the trouble of killing them.

Other wands are a super mixed bag, depending on what you can manage to do with them, but I’ll say that some of my most fun and successful runs are putting a Wand of Corruption into my Mage’s Staff and becoming a Corruption Battlemage. You whack an enemy, Amok him on his friends, then corrupt them, then rinse and repeat until you win.

I’ve already mentioned the Sandals, which I’d say are incredibly useful if you’ve got a Wand of Regrowth or a Blooming enchanted weapon, but are otherwise hard to keep getting enough fresh grass to make worthwhile. I think the Ethereal Chains and Hourglass are my favorite and most useful artifacts. Horn of Plenty is okay but not great, unless you can combine it with being filled by the Battlemage’s energy generating ability. Other artifacts are mid, but I’ll make a special mention of the Unstable Spellbook which seems to screw me as often as it helps and yet I can’t deny that I have a great time with the mayhem it adds to my run. The Alchemist’s Toolkit is terrible; I hope a future patch significantly alters or replaces it, because honestly why bother using it at all?

I think my favorite runs are Corruption Battlemage or a Sniper with a nicely upgraded Boomerang; I always get a lot of fun out of using the boomerangs.

There’s no end to the conversation but that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s far and away the most played game on my phone… possibly my most played game ever, measured by eternal hours. The publisher is an absolute treasure and he deserves all the praise and success in the world.

Not sure if I merit being called an audiophile, but…

Huge collection of mp3s ripped from CDs. Stored locally, currently using a Unihertz Jelly Star as a glorified digital audio player, running BlackPlayer EX, which I like for it being a good mix of minimalist and giving me freedom to customize as much as I feel I need. When I’m using headphones, I want my ears uncovered so I use Shokz bone conduction headphones.

Nice

Once I assumed that my kid could and would destroy everything that she touched, my outlook on life got a lot better. She’s actually not all that destructive at all, so most of the time I’m pleased with how well she’s doing, and when she does destroy something, I simply acknowledge that the truth I had previously assumed is being confirmed.