Messages

Have a tenacious birthday, Stu!

Good job, Ponch! Keep rollin' Kweepa.

Thanks! 

Happy etc, Captain Mostly and Dark Dan (62! Wow!  :o)

Cool!  How much is this going to cost?  It will be worth it.  December's almost here.  YES!!!!

The bundle goes on sale Jan 15th. And it costs as much as you'd like to pay. But since it will contain many great games, and we're raising money for the charity Child's Play, I hope you'll dig deep. 

Armour of God?

And just as I was about to turn the computer off and leave. 

Your turn, sir! (And happy Thanksgiving!)

As soon as I get official confirmation from ddq, I'll throw you two a softball.  

EDIT: I'm off to eat turkey and nap. I'm assuming ddq has done the same. So, unless it turns out that it wasn't Hard Boiled, here's my clue:



I'll check back tonight, once the turkey and beer have worn off. 

Hard.

Boiled.

8)

> Resist urge to pee myself (just a little, out of fear). Go back to the hallway and try to contact the guy in the other room.

Also, there should be bathrooms.

... with a 10% change that you drop the soap...

Ponch, what are you doing in the bathroom with the soap?? Erm... don't tell me, forget it

Do you NOT wash your hands before you leave the bathroom? Is that how things are in the Snake household? As a cow, I was raised in a barn. But what's your excuse? 

If we're going to have a lobby, then I demand an arcade attached to it. With Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Street Fighter II. Plus, every attendee gets 10 free tokens. Also, I want to have a "pick pocket" button on my GUI to steal other people's tokens.

Also, there should be bathrooms. And a stack of back issues of AGS Today to read while I'm doing my business in the stall. And all the issues should have a random crossword puzzle for me to work on while I'm in there.

Lastly, at the end of the show, Larry Vales puts on a funktastic AGS blue jumpsuit and jumps ten school buses on a motorcycle. 

I looked through the post-mortem and it all seemed very generated. Like a 'which tree are you' quiz.

I'm a Douglas-fir. The interwebs said so. 

This should be fairly impossible.

See? This is why we encourage others to steal your turns!  What's next? Screengrabs from your family home movies? 

it's hard to keep track, especially since I want to know where Ponch is at all times.

Ponch was over in the corner, suffering defeat in stoic silence.

Blade Runner?

What the hell? Dualnames got a turn? Man, the forums go down for days, and when the finally come back up, THIS happens!

What is this world coming to? 

It's not my story! My story will have the whole nine yards! It'll be like a well oiled machine of cliches! This was just me letting you know where we stand, FYI. It was nothing. Just something I wrote in the heat of the moment. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta bite the bullet and get cracking! I got a long way to go and just a short time to get there, so I need to put my nose to the grindstone!

EDIT : Behold! My entry! There's a creaky old catchphrase hidden in every dialog exchange.

"Let's Be Careful Out There"

- by Ponch

It was the usual sort of day. My mother had dropped by the office to help herself to my liquor cabinet and tell the same old stories she always told.

"And this one time at band camp," she began, as she struggled with a new bottle of Wild Turkey.

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," I sighed. I had heard this story more times than I cared to count and it never ended well. "Just make me a drink, okay? A martini. Shaken, not stirred."

"It works for me," said my mom, already losing interest in me now that she had managed to open the bottle. She didn't even notice when I left to the room to answer the phone.

"Johnny Mark, notary public and freelance bomb disarm-er. Good evening and what can I tell ya?" My usual line. Nothing fancy.

"Oh hi, Mark. How's your sex life?"

I knew that voice. It was Elizabeth Yang. Once an old flame of mine back when times were leaner. She was now the city coroner. She made the big time.

"Nothin' to write home about. What's up, doc?"

"I need your help, Mr. Mark. We're in a tight spot."

In the other room there was a heavy thump as mom fell to the floor. Wild Turkey is a young person's drink.

"Why so serious, Beth?"

"This isn't a good time to joke around, Johnny. You wanna know what I'm seeing here? I see dead people." Her voice had a serious edge to it. "I have a job for you, over at the Glorious Sands hotel. Grab your stuff and come on down!"

"Not so fast, Doc. Two hundred dollars a day. Plus expenses. Deal or no deal?"

On the other end of the phone, across the city, she sighed deeply. "Okay. Fine. Come on down. Room 214."

"Cool. Here I come to save the day."

I grabbed the kit from my desk drawer and stepped over mom, sprawled out on the floor by the liquor cabinet.

"I've fallen... and I can't get up!" she muttered, too drunk to focus her eyes properly. She had mistaken the lamp for me.

"I'll be back."

"Be seeing you," she said to an empty room. I was already in the elevator.

Fifteen minutes later, I stopped the car in front of the Glorious Sands Hotel. The doorman did his best not to notice the dent I'd put in the coroner's station wagon while doing my best to parallel park. Never been any good at that.

"Did I do that?" I chuckled as I passed him.

"I see nothing! Nothing!" he said as I walked into the lobby.

Upstairs, as I stepped out of the elevator, I could hear voices coming from down the hall.

"How the hell should I know when he's going to get here? Damn it, Jim. I'm a doctor. Not a psychic!" Beth's voice.

"Don't you have a woman's intuition? Ancient Chinese secret? Hell, can't you look out the window and see if he's pulled up yet?" That was Jim Willis. My former partner, back before we left the bomb disposal union, local 184 under suspicious circumstances. Jim was a cop now, or so I had heard.

I rounded the corner and Beth's eyes lit up at the sight of me. I smiled my best crooked smile and announced my presence with my best "Here's Johnny!"

"Johnny! Are you a sight for sore eyes!"

"Hey, doc. Who loves ya, baby?"

We hugged like it was old times again.

"Show me the money!" I whispered into her ear.

"See? This is why we broke up. You love money more than you love people," she sighed, pressing the wad of bills into my hand. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Jim Willis appeared in the open doorway of the apartment. He looked older than I expected him to. He smiled warmly, but his eyes were tired.

"Well, isn't that special? You two need to get a room?"

"Whatchu talkin' about, Willis?" A voice from inside the apartment. One I didn't recognize.

"That's Tim, my new partner. Come on, let's go inside. Let me show you something."

Beth pointedly remained out in the hallway. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not going in there. I already know what you're going to find. And knowing is half the battle, Johnny."

Tim was waiting for us in the kitchen. He was a young kid, enthusiastic, glad to have a badge. He stood over a dead body. Some poor sucker that had collapsed in front of his sink.

"He's dead, Jim."

"Allll righty then, Tim. Thanks for that." Willis turned to me. "Third time today he's said that. It's like he has no short term memory."

"I meant to do that," said Tim. "Besides, it's funny."

"I don't think so, Tim." I said, surveying the room. "This looks like a standard 'natural causes' scene. Why'd you call me here, Jim? Not much work for a guy like me here."

"It's a trap!" said Jim.

"Somebody set us up the bomb!" said Tim, indicating the cabinet under the sink. He eased the doors open, revealing a bomb.

"Holy macanoli!" It slipped out before I could stop myself. The guy who lived here must have found the bomb when he was washing dishes and died of a heart attack on the spot.

"It's dy-no-mite!" said Tim. And it was. At least a dozen sticks, wired to a fail-safe detonator. A real professional job.

"Elizabeth!" I shouted to the woman waiting out in the hall. "I'm coming to join you, baby!"

"But what about the bomb? The detonator? Come on, man! Cut! It! Out!" Jim wasn't expecting my reaction.

"Look, Jim. I may be crazy, but I ain't dumb. I don't have what I need to defuse a bomb!" It was the truth.

Jim was deadly serious. "Is that your final answer? Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

"Jim, I'm sorry. But I didn't bring my bomb tools. You didn't tell me I needed 'em, you big dummy! All I brought was my notary public stamp."

"Aw hell no," said Tim softly, to no one at all.

Jim sighed deeply.

"I'm gettin' too old for this shit," he said.

I guess all you productive supergeniuses never need to look up a coding issue on the forums? I usually can't go more than an hour of programming without a "now how am I supposed to...?"

Tell me about it. I actually had to sit down and figure out how to do something myself over the weekend instead of just looking it up in the technical forums. I had to write actual code... from scratch! It was awful!  :o

I don't ever want to have to do that again!

Better off Dead?

Bingo! Now gimme my two dollars and post your screenshot.  8)

Looks fine to me. And is that Heretic / Hexen?

I had forgotten all about the movie until I saw the horde of bats shot. Then all those repressed memories came rushing back!  :o

Anyhoo, allow me to present the best little brother in the history of movies:



Best. Ever.