I have a horrible confession to make: I just misspelled “whose.” It wasn’t a typo. I had to go back and change it from “who’s.” And a couple weeks ago, I used “their” instead of “there” in a note to Mackenzie. She and Alex still haven’t stopped making fun of me for it.
Given that both kerfuffles happened around 7:30 AM, I think we can conclude that my grammar circuits don’t warm up until about 9:00.
Hanging his head in shame,
Seth
Cookies count as breakfast if they have oatmeal in them, right?
Left-justified,
Seth
Prepare to witness the majesty of the animal kingdom.
Note the tail, which flutters like a flag caught in a hurricane. Note the UFOs that resemble a shotgun blast. Note the dainty “fweeeep!” that punctuates the proclamation. And note the bewildered screams of the children. Their voices pulse with raw, Old Testament fear. They will preach this mighty work on the playground, that the heathens may realize the feebleness of their fluffs and square themselves with a higher power.
Doffing his hat respectfully,
Seth
I’ve returned to one of my favorite indie games ever: Space Pirates and Zombies!
This is a galaxy-hopping top-down space shoot-em-up where you play space pirates moving from system to system, doing odd jobs or just causing mayhem because you’re a SPACE PIRATE. TECHNO-YARRR!!!
You design your own ships, attaching parts of your choice to hard points on the hulls of ships. The game has a robust tech tree, so there are lots of ways to build ships and play the game. You can build lightning-fast attack ships or long-range artillery ships or hulking mega-freighters to haul all your booty. Arrrrrr.
If each star system is a sea, then there are a helluva lot more than seven seas.
This game is big. You don’t need to visit every star system, but your travels will necessarily take you to a good chunk of them.
Another thing I appreciate about the game is its difficulty. Normal difficulty gave me a decent challenge my first time through, but by the end I was finding things a bit too easy. So now that I’ve picked the game up again, I started over on Expert difficulty and I’m pleased to say it is punishing. Enemies are bigger and meaner, and suddenly I find myself carefully hoarding those resources I took for granted on Normal.
Anyway, I can’t recommend the game enough, and it’s basically everything I’ve wanted in a game since I was ten.
Happily plundering the styars,
Seth
On a friend’s recommendation, I looked up Alton Brown and his cooking show, Good Eats. He is the Bill Nye of food and his cooking show is aimed at people who can’t heat things in a skillet without thinking about molecules and thermodynamics. In other words, it is the perfect show for me!
I started with his show on how to make a French omelette. The show was brimming with tips, tricks, and sciency information (to coin a word)! It was great, because I don’t just want to know how to cook, I want to know why cooking techniques work.
Anyway, my attempt at the omelette went well! It was a touch overcooked, so when I folded it onto the plate it was no longer runny, but it was still fluffy and moist. I would call it a success with room for improvement. I overcooked the omelette because I feared it couldn’t possibly cook so quickly, but apparently it is only supposed to spend like ten seconds in the pan.
I’ll definitely give it another attempt tomorrow, because I like my eggs like I like my women—runny! Errr… that can’t be right. Am I saying women should be fluid, or that I prefer it when they run away from me? Awkwardness aside, I’ll see how the next one goes!
A bit of a yolkster,
Seth
When people put fruity scented soaps in their bathrooms, IT’S A TRAP! If your host hears you flush but when you come out your hands don’t smell like Pomegranate Fantasia, you are to be shunned! Because obviously you are, like your hands, unwashed and covered in poop.
No pressure,
Seth
There are few things more frustrating than piling a burrito high with delicious things, and then realizing the tortilla is too puny to wreath the mountain of goodness. Trying to enjoy a burrito while beef, cheese, and beans are spilling out of it like sailors from a sinking ship is just the worst.
To that end, I went on an epic journey to find the largest, toughest, meanest tortillas. I searched high and low, yea, even unto the ends of the street! As it turns out, the corner market near our apartment carries gigantic tortillas. Quest complete!
These tortillas are beastly. They are the size of a steering wheel, and that is no exaggeration. They claim to be “Chef Quality,” and while it would be hard to prove that empirically, the chefs I have known can certainly hold their beef and cheese, so I take that as a good sign. Who knows how many good chefs have been harvested to make these bean-holders? Their sacrifice was not in vain, in any case—to date the tortillas have been leak-proof and resilient.
Saluting the brave chefs who give all for their art,
Seth
By and large, I enjoy 40k fluff. The writing can be stodgy at times, but the content is interesting and there is usually a good story in there somewhere. It’s not something to be taken super-seriously, but it spices up the game a bit.
I’ve been reading through the Imperial Guard codex, and the fluff has been okay. Standard “They’re a big army” military stuff. The battles have been interesting to read about, certainly.
Anyway, reading through the pages about IG characters has left me shaking my head in bemusement. Really, GW? Must there be a Hun-themed commander from a world called Attila, where they all ride warhorses and belong to warring tribes? Must there be a charming and coldly brilliant Arabic-themed commander from a desert world who leads the Desert Tigers on hit-and-run missions? Must there be a Russian-themed commander named Chenkov from the snowy world of Valhalla, where everyone is swarthy, dour, and obstinate?
I get that they’re trying to incorporate military traditions from other nations. I just wish they would do it in a less juvenile and cliched way!
If they were trying to be tongue-in-cheek, they failed. There is nothing subtle or satirical about a commander named Chenkov from the ice planet Valhalla whose signature tactics are sending huge waves of conscripts to their deaths and turning his guns on cowards. That is not a sly allusion to World War Two Soviet Union, that is World War Two Soviet Union. He isn’t a Soviet-inspired commander, he is a Soviet commander.
…and there he is. >_< The tongue is so far out-of-cheek it is flopping about on the floor.
Justin and I discussed this issue via text. Quoth he:
Listen, Seth… Not everyone takes 40k lore seriously… And some of those people apparently work for Games Workshop.
I guess he’s right!
Still shaking his head ruefully,
Seth
Apparently there is a frozen seed bank in Norway! Its purpose is to hold genetic samples of plants in storage, so in case of a global plant crisis we’ll have copies. The seed bank is backing up our vegetative hard drive. Our chard drive, if you will.
This is the most famous of many “gene banks” around the world. Gene banks were first founded in the 1970s, and today they have proliferated to a staggering 1300 facilities with millions of preserved samples.
It’s crappy that it took this long for us to start preserving plant seeds. Who knows how many species have been lost? Global extinction of plant species sounds crazy, but it has happened before. Take, for example, the Bananapocalypse.
Back in the early 20th century, Panama Disease started ravaging banana plantations. The popular Gros Michel banana (also called the “Big Mike,” for no discernible reason) was all but extinct by the 60s. By that point it was too late to save the strain, so the short-sighted banana moguls had to sell the Cavendish banana instead, which by all accounts is a yuckier fruit.
Saluting defenders of vegetation,
Seth
It’s a fact that between Termagants and Hormagaunts, I just never know which is which. But there is something far more sinister than ignorance at work here. If I were merely guessing, I would be right half the time. However, as Max and Andy can attest based on yesterday’s Presidential games, I always say the wrong name one hundred percent of the time. It got to the point where they stopped correcting me and just interpreted my statements assuming I meant the opposite Gaunt.
If I keep this up, everyone in Brooklyn might call Termagants Hormagaunts and vice versa.
Transmuting wrong to right through boneheaded perseverance, aka “Common Usage,”
Seth
Born pink, bearded, and bespectacled, Seth writes about gaming, silliness, and capital "s" Stuff.
