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And here I always thought that they just went around building things and not charging for their services.

I know, totally late post, right?

I think it's worth it.

In honor of the recently opened Lord of the Rings Musical we should look back at the musical roots of the time-honored trilogy:

Spock sings the Bilbo Baggins song!

Well, it did help my snoring problem, but I really had it removed because my uvula was abnormally large (like some other appendages of mine...) (god that was bad...) (apologies) and if I would sleep on my back, I would sometimes repeatedly swallow the thing, which would make it swell up to the size of my thumb and then I would wake up in the middle of the night unable to breath because a thumb sized ball of flesh was blocking my esophagus.  I would have to lean forward just to breath all the way to the emergency room where they would drain it of fluid and give me a shot so that I could breath again.  This happened three times before a doctor finally told me, "Y'know... you don't need that thing.  You can cut it off."  To which I replied, "Where do I sign up for that shit?!"

Now it entertains my students when I teach them the word "uvula" and then promptly bet them that I don't have one.

What's an uvula?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvula

So this one time, I had my uvula cut off.  But on purpose.  Like by a surgeon with a laser.  I was awake, sitting up, and breating in and out the smoke from my own burning flesh.  I nearly wretched.  But that's not the bad part.

The charred wound hurt like crazy everytime I swallowed.  It was agony.  So I was tossing back the pain meds like crazy.  It turned out that these pain meds were seriously thinning my blood.  About a week after the operation, my blood was thinned to the point that it wouldn't clot and started seeping through the wound.  I was representing my college at the time running a technology building at the state fair about an hour away from the city where I lived.  I started tasting blood.  I went to the bathroom and started spitting it out.  This had happenned the day after the operation and I assumed that, like then, it would stop soon.  It didn't.

I called the guy who was organizing the tech building and told him that I needed to go see my doctor and I took off.  I thought it was just a small trickle of blood, I'd be fine to drive an hour to see the doctor that performed the surgery.

So I drove for an hour swallowing the increasingly hastening flow of blood.  The blood started clotting now, but not at the source... it started forming clots in my throat.  It became more and more difficult to swallow and eventually to breath.  But I stuck with the driving because I'm mildly retarded.

Finally, I arrived at my parents house (closer than the hospital) and gurgled to them that I needed to go to the doctor who had performed the operation... they decided that the emergency room would be a better idea.  Before we left, I went to the bathroom and, by viciously clearing my throat, dislodged a huge bloody mass which again, nearly made me vomit as I spit it out.

We grabbed a large plastic cup of water on the way out the door to help rinse my throat, but I found that it was more useful as a spitoon and poured the water out the window.  By the time we reached the emergency room, the cup was pretty much full of blood.

I was rushed into a curtained off "room" and waited an hour for a doctor to see me while spitting out more blood and answering the useless questions of the nurses.  "Do you have a history of this kind of bleeding?" "How much blood would you estimate you've swallowed?"  Like I've been measuring.  They hook me up to an IV to replace the lost blood, which technically isn't lost.  It's still inside me.

Finally a doctor comes in and says, "My, my.  We're going to have to cauterize that thing!"  Thanks, pal.  Before he goes at it, I hawk up another blood-loogie.  The doctor uses long q-tips which he's dipped in silver-nitrate, a nasty substance that'll burn your skin on contact.  He gets some on my lip on the way in, it hurts like hell and leaves a black spot for a few weeks until the skin fell off.  Then he starts rubbing the silver-nitrate on the back of my throat which is like a carnival of painful.  After five or six q-tips, the doctor says, "Hmmm...  It doesn't seem to be working..."  He then decides that they're going to have to laser it closed. 

But he's not certified to use the laser death ray.  They call in the doctor who originally removed my uvula (which, if you'll remember, I had suggested to my parents hours ago).  At this time it's well past midnight, and she's certainly not happy to be awoken.  An hour and a few bloody wretches later, she shows up.  She takes a look at it and scolds the doctor for trying to use silver-nitrate on such a wide wound.  They bring in the laser and it's flesh smoking time again.

I should point out that during this whole thing, I'm in an extrordinary amount of pain and I'm constantly holding back vomiting up blood all over the lady who's weilding a laser pointed directly at my brain.  When she's finished, the blood has finally stopped flowing.

By this time I've had so much pain, I just want it all to end.  The doctor brings in some morphine.  I want to say 'Thank god.  Where the hell have you been?' but I can only get up the power to say "MMmmmgh..."  He says that this is going to relieve the pain and I can choose to take it in the IV, which will take a while to kick in, or I can take it in the ass.  It's a pretty big needle, and like I've said, I've had a lot of pain.  I couldn't stand the thought of anything else.  I was saying, "IV.  IV.  IV."  I just didn't want to be stuck with anything else.  It sounds like a dumb choice now, but at the time, I simply couldn't take it.  Luckily the doctor had sense, and forced me to roll over.  He jabbed the needle into my buttocks and I can't remember the rest of the night.

I woke up the next day in my bed, with a prescription for some really awesome drugs.

Kinoko's not the only Japanite here, y'know...  Jean Reno is pretty popular here and "Wasabi" is a pretty well known movie among Japanese people, and not because they think it misrepresents the culture.  I haven't seen it myself, but from what you describe, it's fairly typical of big cities in Japan.  "Cool" guys here often try to style their hair like anime characters.  Arcades are also really popular, and not just with nerdy people.  High school girls go in there too (mostly to take these little "print club" picture stickers that are really popular).  There are lots of seizure-inducing lights and loud noises all over the place.  So, yeah, at least that part is fairly accurate.  I'd wager that they shot the film in Japan, yeah?  That would mean that at least the settings, if not the characters, are realistic.

Avast, ye.  My generalizations about others' generalizations are not to be taken seriously.

thanx All hail the great Spagetti monster! bow down or we shoot you, we are a religion of tolerance!

You clearly don't understand our teachings.  Thus, we are forcing you to convert out of our religion.  I expect your hook and pegleg on my desk by eleven.  Due to your ignorance, generalizations, and sense of superiority, we'd suggest trying "Christianity."

My wife, being Japanese, is an expert on what Japanese people think, and can therefore accurately and authoritatively speak for every single person of that nationality.

Me: Hey, Kumi.  Do you hate yourself?

Kumi: What?  No.

Me: 'Kay.

So I think that the self-loathing argument is right out.

About a year ago, I saw this and thought I should take a screenshot.  Then I forgot about it until I saw this thread.

10100011 00110011 00110011 00110111 00100000 00100100 01110000 00110011 00110100 01111100 01111011 00100000 00110001 01101110 00100000 01100010 00110001 01101110 00110100 01110010 10100101 00100000 00110001 00100100 00100000 00110011 01110110 00110011 01101110 00100000 00101000 00110000 00110000 10100011 00110011 01110010 00100001

[Rob Blanc or Larry Vales]

This may not be significant enough to mention, but I was reading the IGN review of Scratches when I saw this:


"Closing Comments

Mediocrity is hard to choke down, especially in the gaming industry. All told, Scratches is a good game for what it is, but let?s not kid ourselves here: it still suffers from the limitations of the strict point and click adventure genre. At best, it?s an above-average interactive book though in the grand scheme of gaming, it is fairly average next to games such as Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life 2, God of War, et al.

This is not an easy game. Even with hints enabled, first-time adventure gamers won?t know what they?re doing and will quickly become frustrated. If you?ve never looked at adventure games before and can stomach 1987-caliber graphics, head to Google and find the Rob Blanc or Larry Vales series. They?re free, and a heck of a lot easier to deal with than this one. If you don?t like adventure games at all, don?t even bother.

However, if you?re an adventure gaming veteran, especially if you like the horror / creepy / gothic-type atmosphere, then Scratches is for you. It's a solid game although a bit on the short side as you may be able to get through it in less than a day. At the end, there are certainly a lot worse ways to spend the standard bargain price of $20. This is a pretty decent-good entry in the adventure genre thanks to some good presentation and interesting puzzles."


I don't know why either of those two would be a decent substitute for the first-person gothic horror of Scratches, but I guess to most people, an adventure is an adventure.

Jozef, you can count me among those five people who were eagerly awaiting your return!  When DIY came back from its... break... I checked back everyday hoping to see a new installment.  Right up until recently when the editor went MIA again.

Hooray!  Thanks for all the hard work.

And since everyone is doing it:

Seriously, try META (Awesmoe Quest) again!

Fifa Football 2004 was released in 2003!    You probably thought it was new because someone bumped a three year old thread with a question about how Duzz did something in the game.

Yay for name dropping!

No way!

Rui... dude...  I'm sure your reasons are good, but... dude...

Sorry to see you go.  It's a big loss for the community.

I liked the story wrap up.  The third chapter was of the same high quality of the others.  My biggest gripe about the whole series was the (lack of an) ending to episode two.  The hit detection was a bit funky on the bosses, but you could learn to avoid it.  I enjoyed the whole thing.

But I would have loved it more if the alternative ending had been the real one.

No more tears!  Here's a .zip version:

http://games.thexiis.com/files/spooks.zip

Ivy, you might as well update the AGS games page to include this file as one of the "mirrors."

I'll update the site when I get a chance.

Wait, that's not how the joke goes.  I thought it was "Yar, it's driving me nuts."

No, that's not how I heard it.

Don't make me break out my pirate joke.

This one?

Spoiler

listen to his little bit about his myopia being miraculously mended again...  he's lying.  You haven't helped him.  Did you perhaps leave something of his lying about somewhere in the carnageval?

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