It behooves us, from time to time, to consider how we have gotten where we are, in addition to where we are.

At the one hundredth Entry of this Journal, I wrote the then-current answers to the Six Questions, which felt was a suitable manner in which to celebrate a milestone. Besides being a chance to answer those questions fully and to the best of my ability, it was a chance to show that I do practice what I preach, and that i don't merely use the questions as tools to torture others. The questions had the added bonus of letting me write in that overly-melodramatic voice which I so love using. I did get a lot of interesting feedback after it, and I was somewhat tempted to do the same routine now, 100 Entries later. I've decided not too, though, because it's been less than a year since I last subjected you all to my Answers and they haven't changed much. Despite what it no doubt looks like to readers of this Journal, I really do try not to be too repetitive here. Furthermore, when I hit the 100 Entry mark, that was a milestone and a significant moment because I would never have expected to have been able to do it. Now, though, it's not such an accomplishment... writing this Journal has practically become part of my daily routine and the novelty, so to speak, has worn off. I imagine I'll still get a little excited each time it hits another year old, and maybe at the five hundredth Entry, but 200 just doesn't capture the imagination like 100 did and there's no need for quite such an ostentatious Entry to mark it.

Instead, to celebrate 300 more days of people knowingly taking time out of their lives to slog through my nonsense, it seems appropriate to look back upon the humble beginnings of this project. This is convenient because I've been proofreading and correcting and correcting errors in the early Entries and so they're relatively fresh in my mind. When we look at Entry 1, there are a few salient points leap out at me.

First, as has been repeated ad nauseum, the Journal was conceived as a method for me to do penance for perceived sins. This is a purpose it still serves well, since I'm still sinning mostly the same sins as I was back then. The second thing which catches my eye is that I had originally expected that the Journal project would run from mid June 2004 to mid August 2004, the duration of the courses I was taking prepatory to writing the MCATs. At the time, I'd planned out about 20 Entries worth of Stuff I thought I could write about, and the possibility that the project might last longer hadn't even occured to me. Sure, I loved to write, but how on Earth could I possibly come up with enough ideas for a longer project? More importantly, who among those I knew would be big enough suckers to read my ranting day in and day out? When I was writing for Bandersnatch, at least, I was published only once every two weeks, in small enough doses that people could handle it, and two weeks was often just barely enough time for me to get a suitable idea for a column and write it up well enough for mass consumption.

Now, looking back, I'm amused. Writing this Journal has actually proven downright hard some days, and many are the hours I spend sitting at my computer and trying to think of something to write about.It turns out, though, that it was never the long time in which I had to write while at bandersnatch which gave me ideas, but rather the whoosing of approaching deadlines... I could write about as well every three days as I previously had once every two weeks because, when you get right down to it, it's still just a blue-shifting deadline and the number of days prior to it weren't that important. The muses have always been kind to me (kinder than I am to them, at least -- obviously my readers aren't the only suckers for punishment) and I've generally had decent, if not good, ideas for Entries here. Yay.

How has the project diverged from its stated purposes at Entry 1? I've had a lot of fun writing it, I've had a lot of great ideas I wouldn't have otherwise had reason to conceive of, and I've laughed at a lot of jokes I might never have otherwise made up. The world would be a better place if the Catholics had as much fun with their self-flaggelation as I do with mine.

Spontaneous Diggression of the Day: Orcish arcoflaggelants. They tolerate extreme cybergrafting better than humans do and You wouldn't even need the rage-stimulant drugs!

So anyway...

One other thing that hasn't changed is my semi-pathetic need for readers... I've never met an artist who didn't obssess over the idea of who was observing their art. If this was Livejournal I'd get half a dozen reponse pieces of feedback after each Entry, but go to a website format with no convenient feedback form and you get mostly silence. I haven't harassed any of you with a readership check since Entry 49, so today I charge everybody out there who hasn't sent me feedback within the last month to take a moment and either write or tell me in person that you read this. You don't have to tell me if it's any good, just that you come by to read it. Your shameless feeding of my ego keeps me trying to make you laugh.

And that's it. Happy six hundred days to Etic's Journal! Tune in again on January 31st when we begin another extra-special month-long Entry series, tentatively entitled "A Certain Point of View."

Lactose intolerance is more interesting than one might think. I'm one of the 1 in 5 people who doesn't tolerate the sugar lactose, because I lack the enzyme necessary to break lactose down to smaller sugars. I used to have it, but it deactivated very early in my childhood. In my case, the enzyme stopped working because the portions of me which me which are meant to synthesize it within the gut aren't inside me. In general, though, lactose intolerance is caused because, in late childhood or early adulthood, the normal functioning enzyme in a person's body just sops working. Very few people are born entirely without the lactase enzyme, which is why generally speaking children who grow up unable to drink milk from a carton were able to drink it out of a human without trouble. I probably would have ended up being lactose intolerant in the normal sense as well, given that it's a genetic trait and my mother *and* her mother btoh proved unable to handle lactose, although they only began having sever problems around middle age.

Some quick biochemistry for the non-science people out there: If you have the gene to produce lactase, then your body takes lactose, a sugar found in only a tiny number of foods, and breaks it into smaller, more easily digested sugars. If you lack lactase, then the body's digestive system can't do that job, and the sugar passes undigested through your digestive system where it's eaten instead by the bacteria which live inside you. This is good for them and, in the long run, good for you, because these bacteria are symbiotic with you and help you not die. In the short term, however, they eat the lactose and produce metabolic wastes, in this case hydrogen. This gas builds up and causes the same effects as the other, more comedic gases which tend to build up in the body.

None of that, mind you, is what makes lactase and lactose intolerance interesting. I'm just getting to the good bit.

It's generally assumed by most people in Western society that lactose intolerance is a mutation, an unfortunate bad gene which causes all sorts of problems, and gosh aren't you lucky if you're born with the normal, healthy gene and able to drink all the milk you want. Recent evolutionary theory has some thoughts on that. Way back in human history, the only age at which humans drank milk was while they were weaning, and so there was no use for the gene which produced lactase after a certain age. It was geneticaly advantageous not stop producing lactase after a certain age because synthesis of any enzyme or protein takes up precious energy which can be put to better use fleeing a tiger. As humans evolved, therefore, those who kept lactase active for only a short period were more fit to survive, and so the gene developed as we'd imagine. Fast forward a few millenia, though, and you come to the development of domestication. Suddenly, humans have all these animals penned up outside, and somebody, for whatever reason, asks why they don't just drink milk from that goat rather than walk two miles to the nearest well. They find that milk is incredibly nutritious and contains all kinds of vitamins and minerals which they were probably deficient in, and suddenly the farmers who drink milk are more evolutionarily viable than their neighbours. The environment has changed and the most evolutionarily fit individuals are now those who can tolerate lactose up until the age of seven rather than the age of six. Then, the fittest are those who can tolerate it until ten. Then until twenty. By this time, Chucky Darwin is cackling madly and Quebec is making laws to change the colours of margarine.

To sum up: In all probability, lactose intolerance isn't a new gene. It is, in fact, the people who are able to tolerate lactose efficiently for their whole lives who are the mutants. The only reason why people think of intolerance as being the mutation/disease is because we're a very Western-centric society and, because the evolutionary benefit to drinking milk for longer really is quite powerful, eighty percent of people produce lactase for their whole lives. On the other hand, if you go to the developing world, or most of Asia for that matter, where milk drinking never became quite as vital to survival, and the vast majority of people are lactose intolerant.

For those who are keeping score at home, there's one major factor which makes milk drinking evolutionarily favourable: calcium. More specifically, the vital part is vitamin D interacting with milk. You see, vitamin D is essential for the body's absorption of calcium... if you get a lot of vitamin D, you can survive effectively on a relatively small amount of calcium. As those wacky Europeans moved North and West, however, they got less and less sunlight, and that means that they used calcium more and more poorly. The result: weaker muscles, smaller kids, and brittler bones. The kids who grew up drinking more milk were the ones who could lift an extra twenty pounds before their spines gave out and throw one extra punch before getting a boxer's fracture. Then, when you factor in things like phosphorus and, of course, glucose, they outcompeted everybody else pretty easily, and that was that for the lactose intolerant subspecies of humanity. On a related note, if you are lactose intolerant, your risk of osteoporosis as you age is probably significantly higher than someone else... I'd get onto dealing with that right away if I were you.

The *really* interesting bit, in my mind, is how the whole lactose issue has been rendered more or less meaningless by our science. Humans are actively thwarting their own evolution at every turn nowadays... Lactaid milk and other nutritional solutions erase any majpr advantage which the lactase-producers might have, simultaneously keeping inferior genes in our population while also giving Nature a good solid smack on the head. This doesn't bother me in the least, of course, since by all rights I'd be an evolutionary dead-end myself if not for relatively advanced surgical techniques. I just feel that it's important for us to be honest with ourselves, first of all that what we think of as disease might actually be our "natural" way of living and that the phrase "natural way of living" probably doesn't have that much meaning anymore.

That's it. I'm off for a cup of hot chocolate.

I was asked by a couple of people last Entry if, given the theoretical possibility that i might someday drink alcohol again,I might conceivably try harder drugs. It's a fair question, arguably. As one person put it to me, if I was willing to try alcohol to see how it affects my self-understanding, I should be even more motivated to try reality-altering substances, which might *really* change how I see things. As another person put it to me, given my vocal distaste for reality, I ought to be interested, even eager, to use substances which would distance me from the Universe with which I'm at war. These are, by and large, fair arguments, and the truth is that I've always wanted to try hallucinogens. I don't have any interest in drugs like marijuana, since I never really need help relaxing and becoming dispassionate, nor do I have any interest in drugs such as ecstacy or speed which, while I'm sure they have very interesting and enjoyable effects, don't really provide anything I need.

I would very much like to try hallucinogens. This is part of why I have never tried them. I have always been quite fascinated with the idea of seeing what kinds of things my imagination conjures up given chemical stimulation. I have something of a tendency to hallucinate while totally sober, and as anyone who reads this will understand, I already hold numerous unrealistic ("magical", in psychology parlance) beliefs which, in theory, only one somewhat dissociated from reality (as in schizophrenia or similar disorders) should be able to form and maintain. My imagination contantly gets the better of me in daily life, and while I don't actually hear voices or see things (except when I'm meditating... or sleepy... or in class... actually, this line of thought's getting kind of worrying), my sense of reality has always been a little weak to begin with. Given all this, it's quite understandable why I'd want to try a hallucinogen -- I'm desperately curious what my perceptions would be like if I actively removed the few barriers that I have to total dissociation. All this is exacerbated, of course, by the many spiritual and philosophical influences I could point to as having benefited from drug use... The whole Principia Discordia, for example, is heavily influenced by Timothy Leary and his LSD experiments from the '70s, and great thinkers and religious leaders throughout history have used -- often actually relied upon -- hallucinogens to see their gods or to obtain musal inspiration. I see my gods everywhere daily, of course, and my muses don't so much visit me as drop heavy objects on me from a great height. I'm curious to know what I would perceive on a hallucinogen because it's my variant perceptions while sober that give meaning to my life.

Despite all this, though, I've never tried anything reality-altering, or even been tempted when it was avaiable to me. I've studied the physiological effects of things like LSD and some of the more avaiable mushroom species, and I'm well aware of how dangerous they can be. Consider: there is a small subset of the population, a fraction of a fraction of the population, who will react incredibly badly to simple marijuana, to the extent that they'll experience permanent brain damage after a single use and continue to experience high-like symptoms for the rest of their lives. This is a potential side effect of marijuana, a drug generally considered safe. With the hallucinogens, stories like this are much worse... someone who reacts particularly poorly to LSD may never entirely recover. Granted, the odds that I'm someone who will react this badly in infintesimal, and I know many people who have used various substances without any permanent damage, but I've been at the fourth standard deviation of too many normal curves be rely solely on the odds to protect me. When I underwent psychological testing, they told me that i have a personality unusually prone to psychosis and that I should avoid situations which might damage my grasp on reality, and given the stuff I go through weekly, I sometimes think I'm already pushing my luck without adding a chorus of purple wombats singing show tunes in the bathtub. Finally, I avoid these chemicals because there's too big a chance that I'll like them. Prolonged use always have negative consequences, and I prefer to avoid developing bad habits which i might develop. I watch my diet and restrict my fat intake carefully because it's easier to simply never get into the habit of eating poorly. Similarly, I put off trying alcohol for a long time because if I was going to end up enjoying it and wanting to do it again, I'd prefer not to know that and not be tempted to drink regularly. Even if I did try a hallucinogen safely one time, in some ways I'm more concerned I'll enjoy the experience than that I won't. The biggest reasons I went years without ever trying Warhammer was that I was afraid I'd enjoy the game too much -- an addiction I've known to quite literally devour every cent friends of mine have earned. In defense of my self control, I tried alcohol once and haven't since, and I barely play Warhammer now, although primarily only because I didn't end up enjoying it that much after all.

As an aside, I'd be lying if I left off one of the main reasons for my fear of hallucinogens... I'm quite justified in fearing some of the things I have inside me, things I sometimes have difficulty controlling under the best of circumstances. I'm genuinely fearful of what might happen if, under the influence of something dissociative, they get out. I've seen what Ragon is capable of when he's let loose under meditation where I can control him, and he's not even my biggest worry when we start getting into hallucinations.

Finally, to those who wonder why I might not be tempted to try harder drugs as a waepon in my war against the Universe, the reason is simple. I don't think that drugs are a weapon... I think they're a distraction at best and a retreat at worst. If I'm going to defeat the Universe, I'll do it by attacking and not by running away, and it seems to me without question that drugs would be escaping reality rather than taking the war to it.

Yes, I have been tempted to try harder drugs from time to time, but unlike most males my age, I'm capable of telling the difference between temptation and real desire. I have a great deal fo scientific curiosity but almost no sense of adventure, and trying something new for the sake of trying something new holds no appeal to me. I'm fascinated by the thought of finding out what I'd see and feel under the influence, but no sufficiently tempting experiment has ever occured to me and the proper experimental conditions haven't come up. I'm a big believer in waiting for the right time for something... the right time presented itself to try alcohol, and if the gods want me to try other drugs, the right time will present itself. In the meantime, while I don't rule out the possibility of someday sparking the ol' neural pathways, it's not a high priority.

As I've always said, when all else is accounted for, drugs are just a crutch for those who can't hallucinate on their own.

Being a scientist, I'm naturally drawn to form and test hypotheses whenever I'm faced with a question about the world. I have a lot of curiosity about the natural Universe around me, and while this most commonly manifests in my life as philosophizing, I do enjoy doing a little experimentation from time to time. It's important to keep in practice at forming and testing theories, because one doesn't want to take the chance that one might start to forget how, and begin taking things at face value. Many of my hypotheses are very difficult to test, of course, but that's half the fun, and the important thing is to be always striving for nkowledge, enlightenment, and grant money.

It was the scientist in me which drove me to attempt alcohol once. No, this wasn't recent, so don't start to think that you may have missed a party that I didn't tell you about. This was actually way back in late March of 2003. I'd been making studied observations of drunks for years already by this time and had studied the effects of alcohol in terms of psychology and biology, and felt I had a pretty good grasp of its functions. I had also, by this time, been faced with ample evidence of my non-human physiology. I was therefore curious 1) what it feels like to actually be inebriated and 2) whether alcohol would have a different effect on me than it would on a human. Choosing to look at this as a scientist, I arranged for proper experimental conditions (a comfortable place to conduct the experiment, several responsible non-drinkers to keep an eye on me, and about half a dozen of my close and trusted friends to make everything fun and social (which is, after all, the environmental condition in which I've most commonly observed drunkeness). The result of the experiment was dispointing. On a full stomach and over the ourse of about two hours, I ingested approximately one cup (the unit of measurement, not a glass or something) of vodka mixed with various sodas. As near as I can tell, I bypassed all "fun" stages of inebriation and passed right to being extremely ill, in the process missing out on two entire geek movies, one of which featured Dean Cain killing dragons, which you can all imagine I'd never have skipped on purpose.

In the time since, i've had ample time to reflect upon this experiment. The foremost conclusion I got from it was that alcohol really did affect me differently from humans. My theory had been as follows:

• Alcohol is absorbed exclusively in the small intestine, and a little bit in the somach
• In a normalhuman, the large intestine is used to store material prior to voiding
• I have no large intestine, and therefore my small intestine is used for storage as well as digestion and absorption
• Therefore (I concluded), if alcohol is stored in my small intestine instead of my large intesting, I might absorb more alcohol per drink, based solely on it sitting in the right placxe for longer.

I don't drink. It's fair to say that I have drunken, once, but except for that, I have not once in my life (by which I this time mean any of my incarnations, not just since 1999) had more than one sip of alcohol in any given month, and even that sampling happens only a few times a year and usually only at Passover when it's specifically a mitzvah. This, too, would have influenced my very low tolerance, since the more you drink the more you become able to drink. I have no desire to drink, because I somehow always imagined that when I tried I wouldn't get any of the positive effects I observed in others, and sure enough, that's what happened. I am glad that I tested once, though, because I'm dedicated to self-understanding (sometimes with more success than others) and this did teach me something about how I work.

Now that I know more in terms of medicine and health science, I've actually been increasingly tempted to try the experiment again, albeit under more controlled conditions. The first time around, I made several mistakes in my scientific method, because I wasn't taking it that seriously. Last time, I used an unecessarily strong alcohol, I failed to properly measure the exact amount I was having, and I didn't keep track of time effectively. Were I to attempt this experiment again one day, I would want to correct these errors. First off, before the evening in question, I would take what I know about my body mass and work out, ahead of time, approximately how much alcohol it would take to bring me to what stage of inebriation. Next, I would select a form of alcohol which I know I could bring myself to drink... vodka, quite frankly, tastes like poison, which is really a very impressive evolutionary adaptation if you stop to think about it. Finally, I would try to work out a schedule of how much to drink, when, and get the help of a sober laboratory assistant to follow the schedule, maximizing the odds that I can experience the "fun" results of alcohol while minimizing the risk of another undesirable outcome. I'm reluctant to conduct such an experiment because, as my current theory stands, I'm going to prove more or less incapable of the good effects of alcohol and all too sceptible to the bad ones. On the other hand, the theory, as it stands, is based on incomplete data, a flawed experiment, and a lot of supposition, all of which is the basis for good science as a starting point but shouldn't be cited as a strong basis for a course of action. If I had a second me to use as a test subject, this would be an easier situation to deal with, but as it stands, and given the research I've read which demonstrates the permanent and measurable damage done to the human brain by even a single drink of alcohol, I'm in no hurry to test this one.

Most of the fun of science, after all, is forming theories. Testing them only leads to work, and the whole point of science is to have less work to do in the future.

Because I had a screw loose, one good blow to my reality caused me to lose all perspective; my two eyes could not see the same world. This led to a frantic search for that which could never be seen, for even as the goal of the search was to warp my perception, it was, itself, invisible to the eye. When at last the goal was acheived, the solution was so small that my pitiful mortal abilities would never have been able to repair to damage had I not had the proper tools. Fortunately, I had a tiny screwdriver in my backpack and my glasses were easily repaired once I got the lens and screw back in place.

So anyway... (1)

Like many people, I used to have a recurring problem with my glasses where the screws which hold the lenses in place keep coming loose, and even falling out. I lost screws like that several times over the years, and variously found myself temporarily fixing my glasses with toothpicks, copper wire, silly putty and plasti-tac, and a variety of other things I would scavenge from my environment. This is a problem that plagues neraly all glasses-wearers but is particularly problematic for people like me who frequently take their glasses on and off, folding and unfolding, and is particularly a problem for people like me who have gotten into the habit of opening their glasses one handed with a flick of the wrist. As with many of the problems in my life, I ended up solving this problem with super-glue... it's astounding how many of life's problems can be solved by the judicious application of a little cyanoacrilate. Between my glasses, my shoelaces, and any other little spot repairs I may have recently (and my fingers, if I've recently been building miniatures), there may actually be times when I'll be out of the house wearing more glue than any other single type of material.

So anyway... (2)

According to my optometrist, a man I'd probably trust with my life, about one in every ten people who wear glasses never get used to them over the course of their lives. When they wear their glasses for an extended period, their vision gets blurry, they develop headaches, they begin to have difficulty focusing on objects both near and far. This leads to vision impairment, discomfort, bitterness, and hate for any and all tools which they use to improve their vision. Generally speaking, though, these are people who have no choice but to wear glasses, so, like the small metal bits which hold my lenses in place, they're screwed. Unsurprisingly, I'm one of these people, and this is why people see me constantly taking my glasses on and off. It's also why I almost never leave the house unless I'm wearing a shirt with a breastpocket into which I can put my glasses when I'm not tolerating them. I'm actually fortunate in that my uncorrected vision is pretty good -- I can legally drive without my glasses if I ever have to, although I'd better not be driving anywhere where I need to read unfamiliar road signs. Similarly, I can usually function in class without my glasses as long as I sit in the front row, but even the twelve-foot-tall powerpoint slides used by most of my professors gets a bit hard to read if they use a smallish font. I've developed a lot of hand-eye coordination with my glasses-unfolding hand, although for some inconvenient reason it doesn't seem to carry over into any other sort of visuospatial task.

So anyway... (3)

A poetic individual might be tempted to suggest that this glasses problem is a metaphor. We have our natural way of seeing the world, which is more acute for some than others. Some of us have the resources to obtain the tools to "correct" our vision, and that works fine for most people, but a lot of people get embarassed if they're observed to be changing their sight according to what society calls normal. And, of course, some people adopt normal vision for a time but can only handle it for short periods before they need to tear the correction from their eyes and see things through their own eyes, even if that vision is a bit blurry and shows things different from other people. This is what a poetic individual might say. As you all know, I'm not a poet and, in point of fact, I hate almost all poetry. Sometimes, a pair of glasses are just corrective lenses.

For the record, since a few people have asked in the past: Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It's pretty much the only poem I've ever liked. There are lots of other poems I've apprciated for their artistic merit, mostly ones written by people close to me such that I put real effort into liking their work, but I don't like poetry as a general rule. As this Journal proves, this doesn't mean I can't be poetic... just that I try not to.

So anyway... (4)

At this point, you may be asking why there preceeding paragraphs didn't have the "So anyway... (4)" in between them. That's because the two paragraphs were closely related, one being a digression based on the other. There's no need to draw onesefl back to a given topic at the beginning of a digression... if you're going to do that, you may as well not digrees in the first place, and then where would the fun be?

So anyway... (5)

What I will suggest that my glasses might be metaphorical for is the Universal Balance, because I may not like poetry but I'm more than a little obsessed with this whole balance thing. My glasses represent a tool which is basically essential to my proper functionning but which i can only tolerate in moderation. Like vitamins, or sunlight, or humanity, my glasses improve my life as long as I don't overuse them. It's hardly even worth mentioning such a comparisson, since I tend to be able to point it out in... well, basically anything. Now that i think of it, if it's hardly worth pointing out, i won't bother to.

So anyway... (6)

And now I've run out of things to say on the whole topic, so I'm going to go read comic books. It'd be a shame if Neil Gaiman went to all the trouble of sticking Spider-Man into the seventeenth century and I never read why.

You'll all be pleased to know I've been hard at work proof-reading old Entries. Look at me, I'm keeping my New Year's resolution! Whee!

In other news, after years of hard work and dedication, I am now current with the most recent issue of The Fantastic Four. To acheive this goal meant reading over 535 comic books, and that's not counting crossovers, one-shots, and limited series. To most people, this may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but I earned this through hard work.

So anyway...

Since time immemorial, for longer than humans, dwarves, and even elves have called the surface world home, the rulership of the Netherhells has been decided by an ancient, mysterious, mystical and meaningful ritual. Acutely aware of the nature of the demons who reside there, the demons who rule the Netherhells spent centuries working out how to allow shifts of government without civil wars that would wipe out entire constituencies. Most demons are effectively ageless, and so one cannot simply wait for a leader to leave office over time. Similarly, most demons think with their bellies, or worse, their claws and fangs, and so rational discourse among those who would try to rule typically failed. Finally, left to their own devices, those demons capable of amassing armies would, doubtless, do so, and then, at best, the Netherhells would be divided up among countless warring factions, weakened and ripe for the picking by the merciless and terrible denizes of the surface. The ancient demons considered all of these factors and finally devised what they felt would be the simplest, most just, and most reliable system whereby the most deserving demons would come to power and rule effectively, and be safe from the threat of lesser, scheming demons. They named this process "Got Yer Spleen."

It is a most apt name.

The logic, the ancient demons believed, was simple. The Netherhells does not need intelligent rulership. The demonic population of the subsurface was such that intelligent government wouldn't accomplish much... bad laws would be broken and good laws would be ignored. Intelligence is important in a leader, but in a land such as the Netherhells, it was of tertiary or quaternary importance. No, what would be needed by a ruler of the Netherhells would be a modicum of intelligence, a respectable amount of cunning, a surprisingly high minimum level of education, and, most importantly, the sheer brute power to hold onto rulership. Got Yer Spleen met all of these requirements.

The rules of Got Yer Spleen are simple, because, after all, politicians have to be able to follow them. Two demons must face each other in single combat. They fight in an arena several hundred yards across, all spectators a safe distance away in case of magic being used. They may use any natural weapons they have (teeth, claws, tail, tentacles...) or, if lacking a natural weapon, they may bring a single standard weapon (a list of legal weapons exists, allowing most forms of swords and other martial weapons but disallowing arrows, guns, rods and wands and so forth). Wizards and clerics may use whatever magic they wish but extra concessions are given to the opponent if they are themselves unmagically trained, and spells which destroy and enemy's entire body are legal but, due to victory conditions, would result in an automatic loss for the caster. The demons have twenty four hours in which to battle, using carefully chosen terrain features strategically and avoiding traps and hazards. Within this 24 hour period, the demons may: reach special magic transmitters which allow them to broadcast their political platforms to the spectators; showboat for the crowd in avoiding traps or taunting their foe; and track, defeat, and splenectomize their enemy. The winner is, quite simply, the last demon in the arena to have a spleen. Demons who did not have spleens when they entered the contest are assigned an alternate organ to defend, and shapeshifters are required to retain this organ at all times over the course of battle.

The reason for the choice of the spleen as the goal of the contest has been hotly debated by generations of demons. According to notes left by the ancient demons, they designed the contest as Got Yer Spleen, rather than, for example, the more classical Heart, for several reasons. First and foremost, any demon can rip out an opponent's heart, but the spleen is a much less famous organ. Fewer demons know where a spleen is in the body, and therefore competing in the contest requires some education and enough intelligence to have a basic grasp of anatomy. To claim victory, the demon must remove its enemy's spleen and identify the removed organ as the spleen; no other demon is allowed to help the candidate find it or tell the demon when it has removed it, and presentation of the wrong organ three times in a row is grounds for being removed from the contest. Second, while very useful to most species of demon, the spleen is generally not an organ essential for life. While the events leading up to spleen removal and/or the removal itself are fatal for the vast majority of contenders, a truly brilliant and powerful demon can remove an opponent's spleen without killing the demon in question, and several Grand Hoohas have held power in the Netherhells for decades because they were more feared for *not* killing their vivisected enemies. Thirdly, whatever else may be said about them, the ancient demons had a flair for the poetic, and "Got Yer Heart" or "Got Yer Liver" just have less of a ring to them than "Got Yer Spleen."

On the topic of the poetry of Got Yer Spleen, Netherhells Demonthropologists have suggested that it was the first champions of Got Yer Spleen, (most of whom probably did not know what a spleen actually was beyond being told "it's the squishy thing near the intestines that bleeds more than you'd expect,") who inadvertently inspired such ancient demon folksongs as I Left My Heart, Lungs, and Liver in Satanas Francino.

To this day, rulership of the Netherhells continues to be decided as it has been since before the humans of the surface learned that shiny, magnetic rocks could cut the dull, flaky ones. The system works far better than one might expect, and the Netherhells has had competent, intelligent, thoughtful, and pointy rulers for centuries. Elaborate systems remain in place to ensure that demons who might win based solely on deadlyness do not win -- generally, they are assassinated by demons at various levels of government before the contest begins -- and the winner of Got Yer Spleen, more often than not, proves to be a very effective and very deadly leader. Humans familiar with the process look down at the Netherhells and curse its barbarity and brutality. The demons, however, gaze up at the surface world above them and, seeing, the leaders that the humans end up with, laugh so hard that they occasionally require healers.

Eric's note: What can I say? The bad guys always just have more to say than the good guys.

From: (scramblesend)
to: (scramblesend)
Subject: Requested Files

Heya Doc,
I got a hold of the files you wanted. They were a real pain to get to... I know he's supposed to be paranoid, but I've never seen so many layers of ICE on a computer system, civilian or otherwise. I burned out three linkups trying to break through, and one of my monitors exploded for no apparent reason. No worries, though -- all that was factored into the initial price we worked out, and like I always tell you, you get what you pay for. I hope you get a good chuckle out of this. Good flow to your electrons.
-CathodeGhost

Attachments:
drmalev~.doc

Nightwatch File #2731
Doctor Malevolent
Real name: Morton E. Daniels (exactly what E stands for is unknown... possibly Eugene)
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Species: Human (possibly metahuman)
Other known aliases: Dr. malevolent has operated under at least twelve separate false identities in the last decade; rarely is any of them used for more than a month at a time.
Known relatives: None.
Group affiliations: None. Malevolent has previously worked with The Society of Supercriminals, but this has never been what might be termed an affiliation (or, for that matter, a willing partnership).

Dr. Malevolent is the criminal alias of Dr. Morton Daniels (MD, PhDs in biochemistry, physics, criminology and, of all things, economics). Certainly one of the foremost criminals in The City and probably one of the foremost threats to world security, Dr. malevolent is a powerbroker and a schemer whose most typical activity is to organize and coordinate crimes and then hire metahuman agents to conduct them for him. Such is Malevolent's talent that he has been operating in the same city as the Justice Force for over ten years and we have yet to aquire enough evidence to bring him to trial on any charge, let alone convict him. Such is Malevolent's reputation that he is actually better known among the civilian population by his criminal alias than he is by his given name.

Although he most likely cheated to attain them out of general principle, Malevolent's academic degrees are all quite well deserved. His publications in the field of biology (and, disturbingly, metahuman physiology) are at the forefront of the field. Similarly, his work on sattelite based laser technology is among the most advanced published, and though he claims that all of his research is purely theoretical more than one world government is nervous about sattelites which his various companies have tried to put into orbit. Malevolent has never pursued scientific research in his other two fields of expertise... I can only assume that he uses that sort of knowledge only for his own amusement.

Of Malevolent's early life, even I have been able to uncover little. All traces of his existence begin only in the last twenty years due to a series of filing errors, fires, and other accidents which have resulted in such documents being "lost." His original birth certificate no longer exists, nor does the hospital in which he claims he was born (it was collateral damage in a battle between The Bulldozer and the Exploding Thing nearly forty years ago). No trace exists of Malevolent's various PhD theses and his supervisors have all long-since passed away, two of them in "accidents," although numerous papers reference his theses on general points (not direct quotations). Malevolent has no family and has never discussed his private life or background in the media. It cannot possibly be coicidence when so many records and recorders simply stop existing, but if anyone remains who know some of the information Malevolent has buried, they obviously know better than to talk.

Malevolent is an older man, in his late fifties. To all appearances, he is a human male, caucasian, with black (graying) hair receeding from his forehead and worn in a short ponytail in back. Malevolent is of average height and has the build of a normal man his age who engages in light regular exercise. His eyes are dark brown and often reported as black. Malevolent wears custom tailored suits; I have been unable to determine who his tailor is, and given his resources, I do not rule out the possibility that even his normal, everyday clothes might be armoured or armed. Malevolent additionally is reported to wear two pieces of jewlery at all times: an amethyst ring, reported by several heroes as being a significant power source and able to discharge various blasts, and a gold necklace with a stylized M which may power a personal forcefield or may simply be an affectation.

Malevolent is, to the best of my knowledge, human. Certainly, his general appearance and physical capacities seem to be human, and laboratory tests "borrowed" from his personal physician tell me that he is physiologically human (as opposed to alien, pan-dimensional, etc...). If Malevolent is metahuman, it is his intellect which is paranormal -- few enough humans have the mental ability to obtain even one of Malevolent's degrees, and I would be surprised if more than half a dozen people on Earth are smart enough to have weaved the legal web around himself that Malevolent has.

What Malevolent lacks in parnormal ability, however, is made up for in financial and technological power. Malevolent is, to put it mildly, wealthy. Legally, he is merely rich, but factoring in the resources, funds, and business ties which I know he is linked to (although, of course, can't prove), his personal finances put him on par with the richest people in the world. His extensive contacts in the military, the underworld, industries such as medical and robotics research, and, I believe, even several alien governments make it possible for him to put his hands on very nearly any piece of technology or information available to any creature living on this planet or several others. Previously, Malevolent has demonstrated access to orbital weapons, exo-battlesuits, plasma weapons, and the fissionable elements necessary to build atomic devices, if not the devices themselves. His personal battlesuit, which has been caught on film battling several heroes (but which has never been captured with him inside it), is a ten foot tall exoskeleton loaded with jump jets, missile racks, laser cannons, a highly advanced scanner package, and some sort of cold fusion power source. This suit has previously demonstrated at least enough physical power to fight the Silver Sentinel to a standstill and enough speed (or cloaking gear) to get away afterwards.

There is no doubt in my mind that, while Malevolent lacks the obvious world-shattering power of other villains, he is one of, if not the single greatest threat to world security. Finding a hole in his legal armour should be one of the Justice Force's primary objectives, and failing that, his powerbase must be destroyed, even at the risk of the Force being seen as the illegal agressor. I will no doubt have difficulty persuading some of the Justice Force members to take such extreme measures, but if I have to, I can go outside of the Force to find metahumans with fewer scruples and more understanding of what has to be done.

Loathe as I am to admit it, recent events have forced me to confront an uncomfortable fact: I was actually a human for the first two years of my existence as Eric 4.0. Obviously, I was physiologically and anatomically just as inhuman as I remain today, and I did hate the human species and try to distance myself from it, but as of around May of 2001, I was apparently still using phrases such as "we're only human" (as opposed to, for example, "they're").

It is accurate, baiscally, to say that I stopped considering myself human in my current incarnation, and it's fair to say that September 10th was the date of my rebirth. Anything as complex as a personality change, however, is naturally a lengthy process due to many factors, and we pick a single date just for convenience. We never stop evolving... if we did, we forfeit the right to consider ourselves superior. It's often hard to look back and deduce what the moments were when our universes shifted, the moments when we grokked something we didn't before, the moments when, dare I say it, we manage to actually learn something, against all odds. Most people lack my obessions and don't have the need to go over their lives looking for these moments, and the people who do tend to lack the fairly meticulous records of my life that I've kept since 1998. I haven't kept records on purpose, but I've kept websites and the archives of the mailing list of my empire, and looking back, you'd be amazed at some of the stuff that, as a result, I still have, in hard copy, with dates attached, and word-searchable. Forsteri has always provided for my needs, and this is no exception. So, when I'd recently been thinking about a single line of dialogue that someone said to me once, which by happy coincidence just happened to have taken place over that mailing list, even though I didn't remember the name of the guy who'd said it or even the year in which it had been said, I was able to look it up in only a few short minutes. It turns out to have been Monday, May 20th, 2001. Around 1:41 AM, in fact, though I'm unsure of the time-zone and I probably didn't read the letter for at least a few hours.

Reprinted here is the letter which I wrote to the mailing list, unedited. It's something of a view into Who I Was some four and a half years ago. To put it in context, the list had been placed under modship shortly before because a religious debate (triggered by Christian proseletyzers) turned into a flame war and genuinely upset some people. This was back in 2001, remember; the Empire's population in those days was over 500 people, though it was dropped down to only 100 or so about a month later when we kicked out everybody whose e-mails had become bouncing in the year previous.

Side note: from a purely literary point of view, it's somewhat interesting to compare and contrast my current writing style with how I wrote back then. If anything, back then I put more emotion into my work and was a better typist.

> When I applied for Aerican citizenship I thought everyone would
>really make this seem like a whole different world, as much so as it
>is possible through e-mail, a place to get away completely, well, at
>least mentally, from real life.

That's not what I see the Empire as at all. Sure, we make up the occasional planet and most of you have ridiculous pseudonyms, but this isn't a game. This is a real group, and like it or not, we're all stuck on Earth. The Empire is my own little attempt at fixing some of the things I think are screwed up in the world. I have established this place to be, not exact, but closer to what I think an ideal state might be like. We're far from ideal, and here's the reason:

"We're all human."

No matter the colony and no matter the name, we're all humans. We have human psyches, and some people are easily upset by certain discussions. More often than not, people have no idea if they're upsetting someone until it's too late, and by then, the disagreement has bloomed into a war. Just because we fill in a form and get on a mailing list, we don't rewrite our own cerebral programming, and I wouldn't even if I could.

The Empire isn't my way to escape the world: it's my shot at making an impact on it. I know most of the citizens see things differently from me, but the Empire *is* my world, not my escape from it. My dream is to show other people how to make it their world, as well.

>So, as I said, if we still find them even here, why not try to
>do something about them, as far as we can here at first and then...

I agree completly. However, in my nineteen years on this world, I have not yet figured out how to solve these problems. I'm closer than I was three years ago, to be sure, but not there. If anyone can escape these problems, they're a better man than I, and likely someone who would make a better world leader than I would. When I try and change a subject during an argument, it's not my way of ignoring it and hoping the problem will go away. I was simply taught that the best way to end an argument that's going around in circles is to kill the topic and let people cool down before they write their next replies. Usually this works. Sometimes it doesn't.

We're only human.

I won't post the name of the person I was speaking to at the time, because I doubt he'd want his name to be searchable by Google as being on a page like mine, but he was, at the time, a citizen of the Empire and a loyal and enthusiastic one at that. His reply to my letter was a lengthy letter (or a brief essay) which can be summed up in its last line: '"We're only human", let's try to be more...' He actually made that into his tagline, and I saw it again every time he posted to the mailing list thereafter, until he left the Empire a couple of years back. I got back in touch with him recently to tell him what kind of conclusion I'd come to years later, and he's still using it as his signature. Looking back now, he actually made a lot of profound comments which I simply wasn't at a cognitive level to appreciate at the time, though I came close even back then. I was no fool even at age ninteen, but I wasn't the entity I am at 23. And I'm extremely concious every day that I have no idea what I'll be thinking when I reread today's convversations when I'm 30, and rest assured, a lot of my conversations and, thanks to this Journal, my philosophical writings *will* still be around in a few years time.

For what it's worth, I still stand by the things I wrote back then. I acknowledge that blocking conversation until people have a chance to cool down isn't always the right solution, but usually it is, in my experience. And I also still believe in everything I wrote back then about the Empire, more so today than ever before -- it's one of the few things in life about which I'm capable of genuine passion. More importantly, though, I can look back at this conversation and say that it was the defining moment when I realised that humanity isn't something to aspire to... it's something that, sometimes, and perhaps only for some of us, it's something to rise above. When we use the phrase "only human" as an excuse, that's what it is: an excuse. It's our way of saying "this isn't our fault and it's not our responsibility -- we're human and that means we have to live with it and can't change it." But may the gods shred my soul if I'll accept that kind of splatterthought. In some ways I'm far less than human, but I'll never stop trying to be more.

And to think, I'd meant to spend time tonight writing an Entry about hot chocolate. Just goes to show.

I flatter myself to imagine that I'm the only person in my circle of friends who, in writing a one-shot game, will spend more time reading scientific journals and the Encyclopedia Britannica than rulebooks.

Where Walks the Shadowripper was a superhero game I first tried to run circa Entry 91 which was cancelled when the gaming convention it was part of fell through. Not one to give up impossible goals easily, I seized this year's Game Day as a chance to try to run the game again, and suceeded. Today, I'm posting some of the notes that went into writing the game, along with some expanded character background and information about The City.

The City:
The City is one of the largest cities in the world, with a population in excess of five million. The City also has one of the highest concentrations of metahumans in the world -- about one in every 10,000 individuals has some measurable non-human ability or trait. Most of these individuals can pass perfectly normally and want only normal lives, while some few cultivate their talents and become capes, either heroes, villains, or even just supercivilians. The mayor of the city is the honourable Stanley King, a responsible but harried individual who has been encouraging the influx and acceptance of metahumans in the belief, true or false, that more civilians with powers will alleviate many of the city's problems, everything from trash disposal to traffic jams, to say nothing of its effect on law enforcement. This policy has proven to be the bane of the existence of Chief of Police and Administrator of the Department of Vigilante Affairs, Byron John, who works twelve hour days (at best) keepin tabs of the seemingly endless metahuman conflicts seen from day to day.

As with any metropolis, the City has a variety of places of interest. The City boasts world-renowned museums, hospitals, universities, and, of course, super-heroes. The City is home to the Roger Stevens Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Meta-Humans. The Museum of Meta-Humans, the only respectable one of its kind in the world, is home to some truly remarkable artifacts unique in the world, if not the galaxy, and also traces the meta-human phenomenon to the first verifiable recorded sightings of superhumans in the 1930's. The museum is also home to one of the highest security areas of any museum in the world; the Louvre is home to expensive works of art but the Museum of Meta-Humans is home to artifacts which could level cities *and* are worth several million dollars apiece. Not far from these museum is the Weishaupt-Newton Library, home to millions of books, journals, and electronic texts. The library is frequented by average people looking for cookbooks and novels and also contains, in private collections which only select individuals have access to, a storehouse of magical and questionable tomes not meant for public consumption. Attached directly to the library's science wing is the Moshe Dayan Jewish General Hospital, a hospital of such repute and care that even the city's superhero population secretly uses its services for their own health care. A block south of the hospital is the Justice Force Tower, home to the world's foremost team of superheroes, staunch defenders of the City and recognized the world over as saviours of all life on the planet time and time again. At the opposite end of downtown an facing the Justice Force Tower, almost as though a challenge, is Reichenbach Tower, home to Dr. Morton Daniels, known among the great unwashed as Doctor Malevolent, master of most of the criminal and metacriminal activity of the city. And, finally, The City is the headquarters of The Osiris Corporation, the biggest branch of which is Osiris Construction.

Important "people":
Cyrus MacTalamh (AKA Osiris, god of civilization, cities, and rebirth): A tall, thin human whose clothes give the illusion of being, not pulled on, but wrapped around him. Osiris wears a tall, peaked hat, has a long, almost cylindrical goatee, and has a faint greenish tinge to his skin. He has a limp and walks with the aid of a crutch. Cyrus, actually the Egyptian god Osiris, came to the city thirty years ago posing as a rich Scottish man and set up Osiris Construction, a division of the Osiris Corporation. As the god of cities, Osiris came to live in the world's greatest city and turn his resourcxes towards its growth and maintainance. His power has waned over the millenia and he is now little more than a human, albeit a very wise and experienced one, and he wants to live in peace and help the city grow. Osiris retains some of his godly power, however, most notably the ability to transform into his avataric alternate form: a centipede of enormous size, stretching just over one hundred feet long.

Isschussus the Shadowripper (AKA Babi, God of Violent Death, Son of Osiris): Eighty feet tall and black as night, The Shadowripper appears to be an immense monkey of some sort (a baboon, specifically, of the hamadryas species common to Egypt). The Shadowripper devours the shadows (and often entrails) of enemies and gains power and knowledge from each. In the waning days of Egyptian power, as most of the gods were losing their power and forsaking their followers, Babi's cult all but collapsed. Concluding that the gods of the underworld would be the last to be forgotten, Babi, already a figure of evil and death, set out to consume the other underworld gods and become the pre-eminent death god, starting with his own father. Babi hunted his father across all the nations of the earth for fifteen hundred years before, when attacking a village on the Eastern coast of what would one day be North America, Babi was imprissoned by Native shamans deep beneath the soil. Babi slept for some thousand years before being foolishly woken by Schustus Magus. Detecting his father a mere two hundred miles away, Babi, dubbed the Shadowripper by the newsmakers, began to march towards the City and renewed godhood. Although the Shadowripper easily defeated the city's primary defenders, it was in turn destroyed by the inexperienced heroes who banded together with Cyrus and the villains who had summoned it.

Dr. Malevolent (AKA Dr. Morton E. Daniels, MD., multiple PhD's): The foremost Criminal Mastermind of the City, Dr. Malevolent is a medical doctor and holds additional doctorates in economics, physics, biochemistry, and forensic criminology. Daniels has hidden himself behind an impenetrable legal wall and has operated in the city for ten years without being touched by law enforcement. Though known to the general public and the heroes as Malevolent, no crimes have ever been proven to have been at his instigation. Most recently, Dr. Malevolent linked together two other criminals, a science-villain and a mage, in a scheme to unleash the Shadowripper and either gain the ultimate power it promised to those who freed it or, at least, profit from the estruction it wreaked. Even Malevolent himself was unprepared for the horror that was unleashed, however, and in the end took the battlefield himself in a battle suit exo-skeleton to aid in destroying the Shadowripper. Despite taking damage to his suit which nearly revealed his face to the world, Malevolent escaped in the confusion after the Shadowripper's defeat and no evidence of his involvement in the matter remained.

Batty the Cyborg King (AKA Roy Bartholomew): A lower-rung Science Villain known to police and heroes, Roy Bartholomew was a lab technician experimented upon by his evil employers. Turned into a cybernetic organism with powerful technopathic talents, he became Batty the Cyborg King and, with the aid of a robot army he built up, began a crime wave before defeat at the hands of the Justice Force. Since then, Batty has escaped from prison several times and each time resorted to tech-theft to fund his operations and built his nefarious weapons. Batty was recently recruited by Dr. Malevolent, whose commands Batty dared not refuse, to build deivces which would amplify magic spells and free the imprisoned Shadowripper. In the wake of the whole affair, Batty was once more defeated by a group of heroes and taken, despite resisting arrest, into police custody.

Schustus Magus (AKA Simon Quitely): An evil wizard, Schustus Magus spent his life seeking knowledge unfettered by such constraints as morality or decency. A thron in the side of many a hero, Magus came upon an ancient animal-hide scroll written by the shamans who imprisoned the Shadowripper a thousand years before and arranged to free the sleeping death god in exchange for power and knowledge. When it became apparent to Magus that even his considerable power was not enough, he contacted Dr. Malevolent, who funded Magus' experiments and who put Magus in touch with Batty. Horrified by the power he'd unleashed (and which had reneged on its promise of knowledge and power), Magus helped to fight off the Shadowripper and voluntarily surrendered to police afterwards.

The Justice Force
The city’s pre-eminent superhero team, the Justice Force is composed of seven of the most powerful heroes active in the world today. Together, the Justice Force have saved the world from destruction at least eight times, and this includes only the publically known events. The Justice Force consisted of the Silver Sentinel (strange visitor from another world with strength and power far in excess of mortal men and who could fly faster than any human-built vehicle), the NightHaunter (a dark vigilante all the more incredible for his being an ordinary and powerless human), the Blur (whose spedd was faster than human thought, let alone eye or hand), Miss Miracle (one of the world's foremost sorcerers and charged with guarding the planet from threats from within and without), Alien Hunter (a shape-shifting cyborg dedicated to finding and eliminating those who would assume human form and attack society from within), Battle Machine (a paraplegic encased within armour of his own design who carried on his back more weapons than a marine platoon), and Elemental Lad (a youth whose commands of earth, air, fire and water gave him the potential to be the most powerful hero ever to walk the world). The heroes found themselves outmatched by the Shadowripper's strength and ferocity, however; the Blur, Alien Hunter, Battle Machine, and Elemental Lad were all killed, their shadows and powers added to the Shadowripper's, the NightHaunter and Miss Miracle were severly wounded and hospitalized, and the Silver Sentinel was swallowed up by the Shadowripper, who used his strength and invulnerability to become ever more unstoppable.

Bob the Janitor and The Justice People
As the Justice Force were the City's finest heroes, the Justice People were its least respected. Each member of the Justice People was powerful in his own right but for whatever reason, individually or as a team, none of them ever did a deed worthy of respect and consequently never earned any. Bob the Janitor, wielder of the Enchanted Mop of the gods which could crush steel and clean any spill, led the team, which was composed of The Soldier (an ex-military man mistakenly given an experimental super-soldier serum despite a dangerous psych profile), Architect Man (who could design incredibly complex devices and buildings in his head in instants but had no talent for building), Wheels (who could instantly comprehend any vehicle he touched), Ordinary Guy (an utterly indestructible but otherwise ordinary person, who dressed like an Indian because he was Native American), Gunslinger (who could shoot pretty well), and The Law (able to make people feel really really guilty about breaking laws). The Justice People joined in the battle to stop the Shadowripper and aquitted themselves well, though several of them died in combat. In the aftermath, the Justice People swore to try to fill the void left by the depleted Justice Force, news met with cheer and celebration in the criminal community.

The Cult of Babi: Though Babi was imprisonned for a thousand years, his cult persisted, and was ready when he awoke. The Cult of Babi attaempted to poison the surviving members of the Justice Force in hospital but were thwarted by other heroes. The Cult did suceed in destroying important texts regarding their master's imprisonment which were kept in the city Library but this ended up being only a minor inconvenience to the enemies of the Shadowripper. Although the leaders of the Cult remained at large after the Shadowripper affair, with their god destroyed, the cult had little purpose left and slowly fell apart.

And now, with that all said and done, let me just say that I'm very glad that i ran this game without anybody who knew a lot about Egyptology playing, because there might have been some awkward questions about Babi's holy symbol and masts of ships which I really prefer not to have to have gone into. That's it... You can all expect me to try to run another game next December 29th, so be prepared and start working on your characters now.

It is my hope that, by sheer volume, this page someday becomes the number 1 match on Google for the word "fnord."

So anyway...

In the new year, I traditionally find myself reflecting upon one fact: Time passes and life moves on, but we still don't have flying cards or computers that break the natural language problem.In fact, this whole 21st century, from a purely technical perspective, has been a pretty big disapointment so far, although I am pleased by the evolution we've seen in the field of MP3 players that don't involve the letter i or the word "pod." Given this tragic lack of development, I will today do my part to rectify the sorry state of human knowledge. As most of you know, of course, I'm no engineer -- I don't know what kind of graphics card my computer uses, so I'm certainly not the person who's going to build Hal. I do have my own unique talents, though, and particularly in one field which almost no-one ever suspects: cooking!

I am, in fact, a proficient cook, and can work my way around a kitchen with nearly as much grace and cunning as I can a keyboard. This consistently surprises people for some reason, who really should know better than to underestimate me after all these years. I learned cooking in two ways: first, by watching adults around me, and second, by working in chemistry labs. If you want to learn how to cook, study chemistry, especially organic chemistry, and pretty soon you'll be able to follow complex and convoluted recipes easily. I don't enjoy cooking and so I don't do it often, but it's a valuable skill and, for that reason alone, one I made sure that I have. My recipes, though, like my writing and every other artistic field I practice, has a tendency to suffer due to my own creativity (and lack of sense), and dishes I create often make up in creativity what they lack in edibility. In any case, here are the recipes for two of the more edible of my own personal recipes, made up by me, which have actually been sampled by other people who survived. May this knowledge bring humanity to a higher level of advancement and understanding.

Emptea:
My own personal tea recipe perfected through years of patient testing. I originally called it Emperor's Tea but it was subsequently renamed by some of my citizens (note: if you ever find yourself ruling a nation of people with weird senses of humour, don't ever tell them anything). Boil water. Fill largest mug available about 1/4 full. Add teabag (orange pekoe, Tetley) and make tea as dark as possible. Add 1/8 orange juice (Tropicana or other pure brand, generic is fine) and two heaping teaspoons of sugar. Top off with cold water (I like my tea only luke warm and not actually hot). Mix until homogeneous and drink while reading comic books.

Chaotic Pie:
I was asked for this recipe after bringing this pie to a holiday party this past December 26th. I spent many hours working out what the best things to add would bem and in the end placed every single chocolate pastille and marshmallow one by one to ensure everything was in the right spot. You'll need:

A bag of pretzels, preferably big ones Put a layer of marshmallows at the bottom of the pie crust; make sure you cover the whole bottom, because this will be the pie's foundation. Add a thin layer of chocolate, again, covering the whole layer if possible. Next, add a thin layer of pretzels; in addition to adding a nice salty tang to the pie to give it a unique taste, it will freak the heck out of people when they try to cut what appears to be a giant marshmallw and suddenly hit something solid that makes disturbing snap sounds as they cut. Cover this carefully in more marshmallows, takig car to put marshmallow in all pretzel holes and covering the pretzels completly, and ass another layer of chocolate. THis last layer of chocolate should only cover about half the pie, giving it a polka dot look. Ideally, you now have what appears to be a marshmallow pie with chocolate pastilles on top, and the pretzels should be totally hidden. The pie is obviously not really edible yet -- preheat an oven to 350 degrees and bake the pie for about 7 minutes, or until the marshmallows are all melty and gooey and starting to brown nicely on top. At this stage, the chocolate pastilles should have just started melting and loisgntheir shape, and they'll be putty-like and malleable. Let the pie stand and cool for about 5 minutes and then eat. Be warned that letting the pie cool for too long will rsult in the marshmallows fusing into a single mass, and in addition to becoming very hard to cut or show, the pie loses its wonderful squishyness. The end result can be likened to a giant, inside out s'more with some unexpected crunchy bits hidden inside.

Various variations on this pie exist. To give it a more festive and disturbing look, put a single candy cane on top before baking, so that it melts and fuses to the top of the pie. To add a bit more flavour to the pretzels, consider coating them in dark chocolate and letting them harden like that before addting them to the pie. Add a thin layer of rice crispies between each layer to turn it from an imploded s'more into a giant, imploded rice crispy square. And finally, to kill any diabetics you know, drizzle some syrup on top, either after baking (to add a cthonic liquidy and squamous texture to the pie) or before baking (which will result in a caramelized frost on top of the pie).

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