Finding peace with text

You are standing on the North side of a house. There is a mailbox in front of you.

Open Mailbox.

There is a leaflet inside of the mailbox.

Read.

ZORK is a game of adventure, danger, and low cunning. In it you will explore some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No computer should be without one!



That's right. I've been playing Zork. And by playing, I mean reading. For those of you unfamiliar with the rich tapestries of Infocom games, Zork is the seminal text-adventure that one might have played for hours on the household's Commodore 128. I'm not sure why I went looking for it yesterday but lo and behold, you can go here and get not just Zork 1 but Zorks 2 and 3 for free. FREE.

Worth doing just for the haw haw of downloading the teeny tiny 137K games that used to DOMINATE one's desktop computer. On top of that, you can be eaten by a Grue when you go into dark places - in text. You can very easily drown at an abandoned Dam - in text. And you can marvel at the nerdliness of slamming your fist down on your cubicle desk when the thief steals your sword and mocks you openly in the Mirror Room - in text!

My Dream

Last night I had a dream that I was part of a large group flying to some mythical city in Europe. We stopped over in Russia, and while on the runway, a strange man walked on to the plane and laughed. The pilots chased him off, but I got nervous and went outside to inspect the plane's exterior. Fuel lines had been severed in two places, and fuel was pouring everywhere. I ran back inside and told everyone to evacuate. After they did, I went back in and got my Gameboy (I don't have a Gameboy). The Russian government put us up in a subway station that had been converted into a nursery for dark skinned Chechnyan children and upscale housing for homosexual, left-leaning Russians. We then made the rest of our journey on an old style Viking ship, and soon arrived at this magnificent metropolis that was either built on water or simply surrounded by it. The water level seemed to have risen over the years, so we would pass by submerged buildings from the 1800's, their roofs just above the surface. We arrived at a museum, where several musical groups imported from America would be nestled away in low-traffic hallways, performing for passers-by. John Conway, my old bandmate who's now in the Bravery, was with us. He said accomodations were much better when he toured Europe with The Bravery.

And that is my post for today.