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Eric's Archive<br>
Entries 491-500<P>
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Those who forget the past<Br>
Are doomed to reread it.<p></i>
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<a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR>
<a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/501-600/501-510.html">Entries 501-510</a><BR>
<a href="#500">Entry 500</a> July 16 2008<br>
<a href="#499">Entry 499</a> July 13 2008<br>
<a href="#498">Entry 498</a> July 10 2008<br>
<a href="#497">Entry 497</a> July 7 2008<br>
<a href="#496">Entry 496</a> July 4 2008<br>
<a href="#495">Entry 495</a> July 1 2008<br>
<a href="#494">Entry 494</a> June 28 2008<br>
<a href="#493">Entry 493</a> June 25 2008<br>
<a href="#492">Entry 492</a> June 22 2008<br>
<a href="#491">Entry 491</a> June 19 2008<br>
<a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/401-500/481-490.html">Entries 481-490</a><BR>
<a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR>
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<a name="500"></a>
<U><B>Ask The Same Question Five Hundred Times</b></u><p>
It's funny how after four years, five hundred posts, and over six hundred thousand words (of which 134 were "zombie," 213 were "weasel," 114 were "penguin," 8 were "potato," and 179 were "fnord"), it's funny how it all keeps coming back to one thing.<P>
<center><big><big><font face="Copperplate Gothic Bold">Who are you?</center></big></big></font><P>
I am Eric Lis, Emperor of the Aerican Empire, High Priest of Forsteri the Great Penguin who is also Aptenodytes the Misleadingly Named, Discordian pope annointed by Robert Anton Wilson himself, writer, artist, architect, mad scientist, and trickster. Mine are the names of kings and emperor. I have been known variously as Yakov Chaim, the name of the Deceiver, as Virrar, as Ragon, as Neyrr and as Clayton, and by so many other names I could never hope to remember them all. I am the most intelligent non-human life form on this planet and the cleverest Homo Sapiens Calidus alive today. I accomplish the impossible on a moderately regular basis. I am a gamer and a storyteller. I am bound by my word and have not broken an oath is eight years. I am a creature of honour even as I reject rules and I tell the truth even though I am one of the greatest liars most people will ever meet. I am a student. I am in pain every day and refuse to allow it to stop me from being as amazing as I can make myself; only my own laziness is permitted to do that. I am a philosopher almost as often as I am a sophist. I am a rook and rake, and most of the other synonyms. I am unique.<P>
<center><big><big><font face="Copperplate Gothic Bold">What do you want?</center></big></big></font><P>
I want to create. My greatest joy is to take disparate pieces, ideas, construction materials, and assemble them together in ways they were not before, and perhaps once in a while, in ways they have never before been. I build toys, meals, ideas, and empires. I want the feeling that comes from creating -- freedom, accomplishment, and power. I want power; I want to have control over my own life and the lives of others. I want to decide what is right and wrong, moral and immoral, wise and unwise. I want to save humanity from itself and crush those who would oppose me. I want someone else to do all these things for me, if only there were someone who would do the job right. I want to heal the sick and repair what's broken, and change the way people think, feel and live. I want vengeance on those who have wronged me and I want to learn how to forgive them. I want to read books, listen to music, play games and watch movies until the end of my life. I want to be loved, respected, and feared. I want to be misundertood and worshiped. I would also like a cookie.<P>
<center><big><big><font face="Copperplate Gothic Bold">Why are you here?</center></big></big></font><P>
I am here because there are jobs that need doing that are not getting done. I am to conceive of new ideas and spread them until they develop lives of their own. I am here to build and empire that will go down in history and conquer this world, and if I fail to do that, I am here to inspire someone else to try. I am here to write, and perhaps to be read. I am here to put my thoughts into other peoples' heads. I am hear to learn how to fix people, in the hope that this is one thing that will help to fix everything else. I am here because the world needs more tricksters, and not enough people have seen the fnords.<P>
<center><big><big><font face="Copperplate Gothic Bold">Where are you going?</center></big></big></font><P>
Today, I am going to the comedy festival. Tommorow, I am going to pick up the woman I love at the airport. In two days I will still be cuddling the one I love while also playing videogames with wonderful people. In three days I will visit my family and go to the movies with an old friend, and in four days I will play Dungeons and Dragons. In five days I will go to the medical school and fill my already impressive brain with practically-applicable and clinically-relevant advanced scientific knowledge. One week after that I will go to the hospital where I will spend my days curing the sick, saving lives, and dreaming, scheming and deceiving. I will go where my gods and loves lead me, because they have never led me wrong, even if it has sometimes taken some rationalization to justify it. I will go wherever seems like a good idea at the time. <P>
<center><big><big><font face="Copperplate Gothic Bold">Would you like that cookie now?</center></big></big></font><P>
I'd love one, thanks.
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<a name="499"></a>
<U><B>Eighty Minutes</b></u><p>
When I wrote my new year's resolutions in December, I said I would read at least 20 books, with an ideal target of 26, and gave myself 52 weeks to do it. I finished book 26 tonight, which goes to show what hard work, determination, and four-hour breaks can accomplish. On the other hand, I also said I would send out at least 6 writing submissions to magazines and publishing companies, and since January first, have managed precisely one (a proposed D&D 3.5 book which the publisher liked but didn't buy because the game system was about to become obsolete... talk about bad timing). Well, half a year left to catch up.<P>
One of the things I've spent some time doing in the last few weeks is taking my music collection and using it to create a half dozen or so set playlists in Media Player. Traditionally, I haven't really divided up my music in any particular way; this is good because it means that when I want to just listen to something or have background music playing while I write, all of my music is in one place and, set to shuffle, I'll get music of all sorts of styles and themes. The downside of that kind of system is that when I want one specific theme of music, it's not easy to set it to play; I usually have to quickly sort through my music folder, click on ten or twenty pieces that sound kind of like what I'm looking for, and hope for the best. Since my D&D game has been playing at my apartment, it's been my music more often than not that served as the background, and whatever else can be said for my music, it's ecclectic, not limited to any one particular mood or setting. It's good for listening, less good for when the storyteller wants something dark and foreboding the be playing in the background while his latest villain tries to eat the player characters. I've been talking about creating set playlists of my music ever since we started playing at the Concordia Games Club, and I finally got around to doing so in the recent past. Good for me.<P>
As a basic first iteration of this project, I created six initial playlists, five of which are gaming-related. The sixth playlist is my exercise music, stuff that's just the right speed for me to work out in time to the beat; a lot of my favourite songs are too fast or too slow for that purpose, so a playlist is useful. For years, I've made this music separately playable by simply having a second music fodler with duplicates of all the appropriate music in it, but once I was creating playlists, it was a small task to make a sixth one. The other five playlists are all set aside specifically for games. The first one, quite simply, is mixed background music. Everything in my music collection that has no lyrics or voices is compiled into a single playlist -- one hundred and eighty pieces which clock in at a modest nine and a half hours of runtime. The brain is designed in such a way that it focuses preferentially on certain forms of stimuli; the brain has special neurons which respond specifically to a humanoid face, which is why babies fixate of smiley-faces in favour of, say, a map of Belgium long before they understand what either one is. Similarly, the brain preferentially focuses on the sounds of speech in its vicinity. A lot of the items I love most in my music collection have lyrics, but songs with lyrics rarely make good background music because there's always a part of one's brain that's straining to hear what's being said. So, thus we have a primary, template playlist appropriate for generic gaming; listen to it for half an hour and you'll have heard happy-bouncy music, dark and menacing music, and the Scottish national anthem. Like I said... ecclectic. <P>
Interestingly, it could be suggested that given that the rest of the people who are in the D&D game with me tend to have tastes that follow certain cultural or stylistic patterns (heavy metal or gangsta rap, for example), my own highly varied music collection is perhaps the one of all of ours which is the closest to actually be pleasing to everyone, and at the very least you're never listening to a single type of music for too long. The upshot of this is that when my music is playing, everyone in the game can agree that my music is the fairest to play, even though at any given moment the probability is that 50% of the people at the game don't actually like the music that's playing. Since it's my music, I *always* like the music that's playing, but everyone else has to agree that they might not be happy, but at least nobody else is. We call this "compromise," as in "this deal is a compromise" or "the hull has been compromised." But hey, at least *I'm* happy.<P>
The trouble with one big thematically-mixed playlist is that the game's storyteller often has a specific feeling in mind for a scene, so he'll ask me to play something "evil" or "fighty." The remaining playlists are divided into music which is thematically heroic, villainous, battle, or dungeon-crawl. Dungeon crawl music is the easiest to describe; music with a steady marching beat, this is music which goes along with hours of plodding through deep, dark caves endlessly. The music tends not to have much in sudden changes in pitch or tone; it is the quintessential background music; after a few seconds, you hardly even know it's there. Battle music is similarly easy to describe and categorize. Battle music is fast and meant to get the blood pumping in time with it. There are often sudden (one might even say "violent") crescendos and decrescedos, as if the orchestra's conductor has been tasered by the vengeful tuba player, or like the murmur of a heart with a stenosed aortic valve. The heroic music is a bit harder to describe, and it's probably a bit more subjective. This is rousing, spirit-raising music with a lot of grand sweeping movements and often a lot of trumpets and other "cheerful" instruments. Heroic music is often good general background music for when the group in general is actively doing stuff as it's meant to capture the excitement of the game itself -- perhaps ironically given the distinct shortage of heroic characters in our group. This is the sort of music which made George Lucas' "John Williams" famous -- the soundtrack-writing computer which produces the same music in a slightly different order every time you turn it on and, every fifth time, wins an academy award. The last playlist, the villainous music, I actually find terribly difficult to describe, perhaps because it's a bit more heterogeneous or perhaps because I haven't got the words. The instruments tend to have deeper tones and slower tempos, and the whole piece is often more drum-heavy than more heroic music. Beyond that, as I glance through the playlist, a lot of what's here wouldn't seem to be consistent with the other items and yet, when I listen to it, it fits. My chosen art is text, not sound, and I've never learned the language which might let me describe (or even cognit) what the common factor might be. As Arthur Clarke didn't say, they should have sent a musician.<P>
I personally find it fascinating that all over the world people tend to have very similar ideas of what music sounds "heroic" verus "villainous." I honestly have no idea how much of that common perception has been shaped by Hollywood -- and no doubt the great composers before them -- and how much might be something we inherently associate with music, whether it's an evolutionary sense of what good and evil (or "happy" and "ominous") should sound like or something in the Jungian unconcious. Either way, it's handy, since it lets me predesign themed playlists.

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<a name="498"></a>
<U><B>Fall Where They May</b></u><p>
The <I>Codex Dolosus</i> has this to say on the subject of "affectations." An affectation, it says, is a curious form of deceit wherein the artist seeks, not merely to lie to others, but also lie to themselves, and in fact strives for nothing less than to rewrite their own mind. An affection, according to the <I>Codex</i>, is an attribute or behaviour which one adopts despite it being contrary (or at least not natural) to oneself. A youth who tries to learn to speak without their own learned accent of speech, for example, can be said to be adopting an affectation of a different accent, in a manner not altogether different from a thirteen year-old who dresses and speaks like a goth, not because it's natural to them, but to better fit in with (or out from) a certain population. The <I>Codex</i> suggests that, by definition, an affectation is always an example of deception regardless of the intention behind its formation. It goes on to suggest, however, that affectations are most unusual among other types of lies because any habit which is maintained for long enough can eventually become natural to the person who adopts it; eventually, the child begins to speak in their aquired accent unconciously, and for every nintey-nine goths who give up their eye-liner and become cheerful with age, one remains depressing for life. By definition, an affectation which has become natural or ingrained is no longer an affectation, but rather a habit. An outright lie can become truth only in an imperfect way, when enough people believe it that it becomes the 'popular truth,' but an affectation is a lie which, given time, patience, and dedication, genuinely becomes the truth.<P>
On a related note, I've just bought a bunch of poker chips.<P>
Poker chips are useful things to have lying around, particularly in a gamer's apartment. They're small, light, thin and round which makes them ideal toys for idle or fidgety hands to play with. They often come in multiple colours, which means they can add a bit of decoration and life to a tabletop or bookcase. They can make easy uniformly-sized tokens and markers for games, since few of us own enough miniatures to convincingly put one hundred orcs onto a battlefield. They make a pleasant sound when they hit a floor and, unless you buy the high-class ceramic ones, they're light and durable enough to be used as throwing ammunition. Poker chips make good emergency bookmarks, can be used to weigh down escape-prone paper or put under chair-legs to even them out, and can be used to build little towers and buildings (as long as you only want to build pillars). In a pinch, they can even be used to play poker... not a use I usually condone, but worth remembering. What I dwell on today, though, is the factor which makes poker chips good for so many of the uses listed above: their size, shape, and weight. My brother owns a set of professional-grade poker chips, which are thick, formed out of solid ceramic, and weighs better than a decagram apiece; they're worth more than he paid and less than you'd pay to buy the same set in most stores, but if you really value cards and want to have just the right atmosphere for your card games then they're worth their weight in, if not gold, then at least novels or cookies or something. My set is quite a bit cheaper; my set came from a dollar store, and they're mass-stamped out of medium-density plastic, some still with mold-lines and flash visible. My broter's set came in a huge metal carrying case; mine came in a little plastic container. What my chips can be used for that his can't, though, is that mine are nice and flippable, like a coin. My brother's chips are nicely weighted but large and heavy, and would be no fun at all to flip, especially not thirty or forty times. Mine, weighing in at about one gram each, are much easier to carry by-the-bunch and are furthermore very flippable, so flippable that a good and practiced thumb-flick could get one ten or twenty feet high. Importantly, mine don't have any brand names on them; no casino name or manufacturing firm is stamped into the plastic, leaving just a beautiful featureless disk with an understated four-suits pattern in a ring around the perimeter. They're cute l'il thingies, and they're a lot of fun to play with idly. And, obviously, they're a lot of fun to flip.<P>
Thus, I have begun experimenting with my new affectation. I've got a lot of affectations already, arguably -- although given that most of them come quite naturally to me, by all rights they shouldn't be called affectations -- but I'm always looking for a new one to try playing with. In this case, as the new school year begins (in just over a week for me, never mind that it's not even mid July yet), I'm currently considering the idea of carrying around with me, wherever I go, a single black poker chip. I can flip it when I'm stting idly with nothing to do. I take take it out and roll it between my fingers to practice improving my manual dexterity. When classmates ask me to make decisions, I can take it out and make a show of flipping it -- and see if they notice that both sides of the chip are identical (trusting in Chaos is all well and good, but no coin makes my choices for me). The upside of the plan: it's something fun I can do, it'll keep my always-fidgetting fingers busy, and it'll confuse people around me and get them to ask what I'm doing. The downside: I have to assume I'll lose a fair number of chips, I'm short on pocket-space as it is, and since I'm not actually that good at flipping coins I could find myself making a lot of embarassing noise in the middle of hospital corridors. Obviously, it's not a plan I've finalized yet, and I'm still oscillating between yes and no at better than eighty hertz (as a rule of thumb, when I hit forty-two hertz I pick a pole and stick with it). In all likelihood, I'll start the new year carrying the chip around with me, then forget about it for weeks at a time and eventually give give the whole thing up (which is, of course, the natural history of most affectations, no matter who's adopting them). I bought the chips to use them in games, not for their ease of flipping, so it doesn't cost me anything if I start carrying one and then never flip it again, and if there's a one-in-a-thousand chance that it turns into something with lasting entertainment value than it's all worthwhile.<P>
Then again, if the first day of classes arrives and I still haven't decided, maybe I'll just flip a poker chip. I wonder which side is "tails"...

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<a name="497"></a>
<U><B>A Planet Where Nougat Evolved From Men?</b></u><p>
I like to imagine that, with only something between one quarter and one third of my probable lifespan behind me and my most profitable years still ahead, I've got a lot of weirdness still ahead of me to experience. Still, while some truly wonderous chaos no doubt sits in the future waiting only for an enterprising individual to catch up to it, it is with great pleasure that I can look back on some of the stuff that I've managed to bring about over the years. I'm the first to admit that I've done some weird stuff in my life thus far. In fact, I'm often the one who brings it up in conversation, not really leaving time for anybody else to mention it. Some of the stuff I've done, I look back on today, shudder, laugh nervously, and change the subject (don't get your hopes up -- no examples are being given). On the other hand, some of the stuff I've done over the years still gets celebrated, as it well should.<P>
You did know that I own part of Mars, didn't you? I'll be celebrating ten years of owning it come Wednesday. My address is 10-11 degrees South, 220-221 degrees East, if you want to drop by.<P>
Late high-school was an interesting time for me in so far as it was the time when I began building a website for my Empire. It was a great time to be me; good friends, academic success, and the developing of my sublime sense of the absurd made life continually interesting. At the time, I was looking for things I could do to make the Empire stand out and be unique, because even in '98 the Internet was a big place. Inspiration came in the form of the Lunar Embassy, a company owned and operated by a fellow in the US who had laid claim to all celestial bodies in the solar system other than Earth. His claim was based on a legal loophole and was spurious at best, but he had a pretty website and low prices, especially by real-estate standards. With nothing else important to do with my money, I teamed up with another micronation with whom I had very close ties at the time (long since defunct, regrettably, but I'm still good friends with the people who ruled it)  and we bought just over three miles worth of Martian land, including airspace and mineral rights should there be any. It was a pretty good deal; for about thirty dollars, we bought some 2000 acres of prime Martian land; this was actually very foresighted of us, since the Lunar Embassy is now selling single acres for the same price (and they're selling, too). There were three of us making the purchase -- one representative of the Aerican Empire and two from the other state -- so when we converted 2000 acres into 3.125 miles, my associates generously gave the Empire the odd 0.125. Thus was history made... Imperial history, at least.<P>
Actually, now that I think about it, if we bought 2000 acres at thirty bucks and they're now selling 1 acre per 20 bucks, my share of a mere 720 acres which cost me about ten dollars is today worth something in the area of $14,400. Not counting mineral rights, of course. All my investments should do so well.<P>
To my knowledge, my friends no longer get much use out of their shares of the land, but my share, obviously, is still very much actively used (Mars Colony being one of our most popular land claims and, at the time of this writing, the registered home of twenty seven people). To this it day remains, not only one of the most interesting and unusual things about the Empire, but also one of the great joys of my life. Every so often I'll think about it and laugh; they say that as you grow older you're supposed to stop laughing at the things you did when you were younger, but as I've observed in the past, if that's what growing up means then neither I nor my Cookie Monster bookmark want anything to do with it.<P>
I still have the original deed that we were sent when we made the purchase; it's sitting around somewhere in my closet, looking nifty and otherwise not accomplishing much. Amusingly, when we bought it, they offered free caligraphy of your name, so we requested that "The Aerican Empire" and the other state involved be written on the deed; they mailed it to us with no name filled in because they weren't sure what to make of that, and it's  good think they did, too, because somebody on their end thought it was supposed to read "American" (which happens to me a lot). To my eternal shame and embarassment, when it was freshly received, I actually tried to write my name on it, in green ink no less. This was, of course, before I realized just how terrible my handwriting was compared to other people, and ten years later I consider it to have been one of the stupider things I've done in my life (it may not have been a catastrophic screw-up, but on the other hand, most of life's mistakes are erasable). If I had my life to live over again, I'd have sent the deed back to them and insisted that they do the proper caligraphy, since it had been included in the price of purchase. Well, we all have our dark regrets. <P>
One of the truly wonderful things about my life, one of the real blessings, has been that I've always been able to find things to laugh about. Call it a childish pleasure, but I've got a little scroll that says I own a piece of Mars and that small thing has been making me happy for two days shy of ten years now. I haven't made a lot of purchases that had that kind of longevity. Not only has it made me happy, it's also contributed to making the Empire known -- I'm asked about Mars in almost every interview I give -- and that means that it was 1) one of the real tangible steps I've made in my pusuit of world domination and 2) one of the major factors in my current very minor fame. A deed that says you own land on Mars may not seem like much, but I've gotten pretty good value on it for ten dollars.

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<a name="496"></a>
<U><B>Practical Uses for Impractical Things</b></u><p>
It is with guarded optimism that I suggest that the (or at least "a") turning point in my medical education was when we started to apply our basic science knowledge to clinical practice. I've already observed here that I began to find material much easier to learn once I was associating it with faces and sick people and what we were learning, or at least a greater percentage of it, was clinically relevant. A huge part of that has been working within my own mind to apply those facts that I've learned to events around me; I sometimes make tentative diagnoses of friends and family around me, for example. The real test of my knowledge has been seeing if I can take it and use it to reach important, meaningful conclusions. I speak, of course, about figuring out what super powers can be biologically justified and which can't. If you're going to spend your life hoping an ability, it may as well be one capable of existing within our physical universe. <P>
The physical universe, mind you, is a context more than an environment, shaped as it is both by physical laws, ingrained beliefs, and individual abilities. Some of us have more realistic hopes of developing telepathy than gymnastic ability, for example.<P>
Consider the amplimorph. Amplimorphosis can be considered to be shape-changing restricted to an object growing larger or smaller. We can ignore for the moment the question of where extra mass goes or comes from during this sort of process, because that's physics and I'm talking biology. Amplimorphosis is one of those classic comic-book powers and it's a classic one on countless internet quizes. From a medical perspective, it's also completely unfeasible. A common reason people cite for why is that as an individual grows larger bone or muscle tissue would eventually lack the strength to support the body, but it's not hard to come up with justifications for that (they're already getting new mass from nowhere... why not say the bones get denser in the same way?). No, a much better reasons is blood. When you get right down to it, almost everything in medicine comes down to molecular interaction, quite infuriatingly so to those of us who dislike molecular biology. Case in point, oxygen travels through the blood bound to hemoglobin, and is able to bind to hemoglobin because the heme protein that is shaped exactly right and iron molecules can contact the oxygen molecule. If you make a minor change to the heme structure, the efficincy of the oxygen carrying drops off it the whole system fails to work. Now, if a change the size of a molecule of carbon can mess up the entire structure, imagine if a human body were to grow just one foot larger in size. Assuming an average sized person, that's between one fifth to one sixth of body size. Assuming that everything inside the body gros proportionately (so that the body doesn't explode when it shrinks faster than what it ate an hour ago or what have you), then you could argue that all of the blood cells and even water molecules grow also, implausible as that might be. None the less, the very next time the amplimorph takes a breath, all the cute little oxygen molecules are too small to bind to the appropriate sites on the hemoglobin and so the blood stops carrying any meaningful amount of it. What follows is someone falling over onto whoever's next to them, perhaps made worse by the fact that they might be ten or fifty feet tall at the time and proportionately heavy. If the amplimorph shriks, the same logic applies; they can inhale as much as they want, but the oxygen molecules are now too large to diffuse through the walls of the lung, let alone bind to hemoglobin. That's science for you.<P>
Obviously, these comments are meant to relate to any non-magical means of size-changing. Anything magical always works precisely as it's supposed to without such annoying problems as causality, because it's magic, at least as long as nobody asks Arthur C. Clarke's opinion.<P>
To be honest, with a little imagination, you could come up with feasible explanations for most superhuman abilities, usually through the miracle of Incredible Technology ("incredible" being used in its classical rather than colloquial sense). Einstein designed a working time machine; you'd need two metal plates the size of small cities and enough electricity to power Paris to build up a strong enough magnetic field, but the equations are sound, and if you can make time travel work, why not plenty of other weird stuff? Quantum physics, for example, opens up the door for such wonderful technologies as teleportation, taking into account the fact that even quantum physicists don't understand quantum physics and the particles themselves appear to be making a concious and deliberate effort to keep it that way. Be that as it may, although appropriate Tech (and perhaps more to the point, appropriate Technobabble) could make you Believe a Man Can Fly, it's much harder to imagine a scientific explanation for how a human body could transform into mist. Let me rephrase, actually: it's easy to find ways to turn a human body to mist, but tricky to find a way for them to remain concious, difficult to find a way for them to perceive the environment, downright problematic to put them back together again, and impossible to get the stains off the wallpaper. Yes, weak and strong nuclear force, yes chemical bonding, yes sublimation/deposition, but if the neurons are more than a few inches away from each other it's hard to imagine them being able to synapse. Elasticity? We can probably find a way to make human tissues stretch (replace all collagen with elastin? It would recoil but wouldn't necessarily stretch in the first place) but you'd have a heck of a time getting the heart to pump hard enough that blood still reaches the brain and toes when they're thirty feet away from each other. Telepathy... actually, telepathy is probably scientifically possible, given emerging research about mirror neurons and our increasing understanding of the complex ways in with environmental electromagnetic fields can interact with the brain. Speaking as someone who always ranks mind reading and mind control as his first choice on those silly quizes, it's nice to have something to hope for.<P>
Superhuman writing ability is probably entirely feasible and biologically possible. It probably requires abnormal amounts of white matter in the frontal lobes and the ability to metabolize glucose at an accelerated rate.

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<a name="495"></a>
<U><B>Character Update: Neyrr Jesond</b></u><p>
<img src="neyrr2008.jpg" align="right">
As I observed a few Entries back when I wrote about the custom miniature I was working on, the end of June marks three years since I ended my last ongoing game and began playing the character of Neyrr Jesond. In that time, the character's grown and changed a great deal, often not by my choice, but he's unquestionably been one of the most fun characters I've ever had the pleasure of running. In the gaming community, players are often divided up based on whether they play for the kill-da-monster-take-its-stuff violence or if they play for the character development and interaction; though I've had my moments of munchkinism, I flatter myself to imagine that the thing I love most about gaming is playing the character and exploring a story. Neyrr's changed a lot over the years, moving in fun and unexpected directions, and so almost three years to the day that he first appeared in these pages (June 26th, 2005 for those keeping score at home), some notes on the updated character. Because if our characters don't evolve and change, we may as well be playing computer games.<P>
Neyrr Jesond/Gun'Mora<br>
Male Koorivar (Forsaken template), Rogue 1, Wizard 5, Phobomancer 4, Mindbender 2, Nightmare Spinner 1, ECL 1<p>
<B>Concept:</b> Witch Prince<P>
<B>Background:</b> Neyrr Jesond was born in a great traders' city on the Prime Material. The child of two lizardfolk transported to the plane through a magical accident, Neyrr had the distinction of being one of only three of his species in the entire world, and thus faced numerous challenges while growing up. His monsterous appearance made social interaction with other children difficult, and so Neyrr learned to rely on his natural charm (of which he had a great deal) to win others to his side and his intellect (of which he had a great deal) to keep them there. From the bullies and thugs around him, Neyrr learned the value of Terror, and learned that fear was the single emotion which united all the intelligent mortal races. Terror inspired them to band together, to build communities, to aquire wealth, and to aquire power. Everything, Neyrr decided, existed because of fear. His insights led him first to the local thieves guilds, from whom he learned the basic arts of the shadows, and when they proved too barbaric for his tastes, to the colleges of the great merchant houses where he learned how to turn fear into gold and leave the customer feeling like he had won the encounter. Though Neyrr rapidly developed into a canny and respected merchant, his true gifts emerged when he entered the Academia Arcanum, the local wizards' college. A natural spellcasting prodigy, Neyrr excelled in his studies and graduated as a full wizard, rejecting a seat as a professor in favour of setting off into the world to find his fortune.<P>
Of his early adventures, little is known. It is known that Neyrr adopted a magical familiar, a large a preturnaturally intelligent spider whom he named Bano, and accumulated a modest fortune with the combined use of his spells and his eye for a bargain. From the verdant lands of the North where he was born, Neyrr traveled South, into the great deserts, coming finally to the city of Shelezar. In Shelezar, Neyrr began to develop into something he had never forseen: a hero. Forced into the position of saviour of the city along with several other adventurers, Neyrr, who had previously seen little importance in distinguishing good from evil, began to enjoy the praise (and profits) that came from doing good. The spirit of heroism led Neyrr to risk his life defending Shelezar from threats both internal and external, to expend his magic protecting a nearby oasis populated with magical creatures, and even to allow his own body and brain to be used to imprison Gun'Mora, a powerful demon who believed itself the God of Plague, when he and his companions mistakenly freed it. When they uncovered a prophecy which foretold the return of the Witch King, a nigh-omnipotent lord of the undead who had ruled the lands around Shelezar millenia ago, Neyrr and his companions accepted the task of going forth and recovering magic items which figured in the prophecy. <P>
This quest spelled doom for Neyrr Jesond, for more than one faction sought to twist the Witch King's prophecy to their own ends. A second group of adventurers, servants of the deepest darkness, set forth to find the same items, and as their first step sought to sabotage their rivals. Some the gods favour with golden luck and others the gods do not, and Neyrr, by simple misfortune and poor timing, was spotted alone and unguarded. A single poisoned arrow ended the Koorivari mage's life. Had Neyrr's soul been alone in his body, this would surely have been the end of his tale, but this was not the case. As the soul of Neyrr Jesond left to find its just or unjust reward, it was Gun'Mora the Plaguebringer who found that suddenly, the body of meat he wore responded to his commands and his commands alone. Gun'Mora, who had ruled a vast and cruel empire thirty thousand years before, who had been overthrown by an army of the Dwarven nations, who had been imprisoned alone in darkness for three hundred centuries, stood up on two new legs and laughed long and loud. Gun'Mora had been mad, too far beyond reason to truly think or plan, but its essence had merged with the educated and logical mind of Neyrr; madness was tempered by wisdom to become cunning, and cruelty was tempered by ambition to become fiendishness. Stripped of its previous near-divinity and much of its prior magical power, but already wearing the perfect disguise, Gun'Mora opted to hide for a time as it -- as he -- rebuilt his power and began the long, slow process of regaining his lost godhood. Despite a few early gaffs and the suspicions of his "companions" Gun'Mora slipped into the role of Neyrr Jesond easily, and found that with his newfound patience and reason, power and the opportunity to use it came even more readily than he had hoped.<P>
<B>Current Sketch:</b> Neyrr Jesond, mage, merchant, scholar, who might perhaps have grown to be one of the greatest and noblest heroes of his age, has been dead for nearly a year. In his body walks Gun'Mora, would-be god of pestilence and genocide. Gun'mora's animating force has turned the body of Neyrr into a curious mixture of undead and alive; the body lives on and heals with positive energy, but feels no pain, can shrug off most any wound, and needs neither sleep nor food nor air. The combination of Gun'Mora's baleful intelligence with Neyrr's keen and insightful mind has forged a combined mind far deadlier than either one alone, and Gun'Mora's magical experimentation has already yielded the plague-ridden deaths of thousands of Dwarves in vengeance for his long imprisonment. Gun'Mora has enthusiastically picked up Neyrr's own magical research, particularly his research into grafting together the parts of different species, and through various anatomic and physiologic "improvements" to his own body Gun'Mora's corpse now regenerates severed limbs, sees without light, can fly like an angel and in various other ways is slowly but surely taking on the traits which Gun'Mora associates with divinity. Currently, Gun'Mora seeks the relics of the Witch King even more fervently than Neyrr did; where Neyrr sought to prevent the rise of the Witch King, Gun'Mora sees opportunity to steal the Witch King's -- his father's -- place. Gun'Mora once ruled a mighty empire and will once again, and when he attains godhood, he shall have dominion over all Plague, and because perhaps more of Neyrr's mind survives inside of him that he suspects, he desires also to have dominion over Terror.<P>
<B>Image:</b> Seven feet tall and reptillian, with a long and spiraling horn rising from the top of his skull, Neyrr Jesond could never have passed for human. Since Gun'Mora took over his body, Neyrr can no longer even pass as a Koorivar. The bulk of Neyrr's body is a light green with faint purple highlights and he towers more than half a foot over most humans. His left and right arms have been removed and replaced by the limbs of a troll, which in addition to being a much darker shade of green than the rest of his body are perceptibly too large for his humanoid frame; his left arm drags on the ground and his left hand is almost as large as his skull. Neyrr's eyes glow faintly with a reddish light, the only sign of the fact that they belonged to a devil from the pits of hell before Gun'Mora plucked them out and used them to replace his own. Neyrr has grafted angelic wings on to his own back, giving himself a great feathery wingspan of approximately fifteen feet. Understandably, Neyrr habitually conceals most of his disfigurements with a combination of illusion spells and mundane disguise, so that a viewer who pierces one level of concealment rarely thinks to pierce the second. To most appearances, Neyrr is just another traveler, always wearing fine leather armour and a long cloak that covers his left side from casual view.<P>
<B>Roleplaying Notes:</b> You are Neyrr Jesond, a great and clever mage. This is, at least, what you want people to believe, because if they knew you were Gun'Mora, God of Genocide, they would become very uncomfortable around you and likely start stockpiling torches and pitchforks. You are immortal, unkillable, brilliant, and powerful, and even if someone did manage to destroy your heavily-armoured body (a possibility you find improbable, though admittedly not impossible), you would simply get another one... this is your third, after all. You do not age and so you quite literally have all the time in the world to accumulate power and followers... take a baby-step here and a baby-step there towards your goals, and all the power and worship you crave will be yours soon enough. Perhaps the biggest danger to your destiny is you yourself; you sometimes osscilate between Gun'Mora's impulsiveness and madness and Neyrr's cold and careful planning. More often than not in recent months, Neyrr's way of approaching a problem wins out, and if you face any crisis with less than six possible plans for how to deal with it, you've done something wrong. There's corrolary to that, though... if Neyrr's way of doing things is winning out more and more often, maybe there's more of his mind left in your body than Gun'Mora thinks. Whatever the case, you firmly believe that few and far between are the problems in life (or unlife) that cannot be conquered either by your magic, your silver tongue, the plagues at your command, or your ability to frighten the living daylights out of anyone.

<HR>
<a name="494"></a>
<U><B>Pizzaslice Lost</b></u><p>
Yesterday evening, I discovered that my pizza slicer had vanished mysteriously. This was a most inconvenient discovery, due largely to the fact that I had a freshly-made pizza sitting on my kitchen ounter, congealing even as I searched. The situation wasn't a catastrophe -- I eventually cut up the pizza using an ordinary knife -- but as I cut, I reflected on two things. First, I couldn't help but notice how similar cutting the pizza efelt to cutting open a human badomen. Second and far more relevantly, I couldn't but but notice  how much eaiser the task would have been ifI'd had a proper rolling pizza cutter; I would have much more easily been able to make straight cuts and the tin foil under the pizza wouldn't have been so badly lacerated. A thorough search of my kitchen revealed that not only was my pizaza cutter not in its usual place (the drawer under the one where I keep my mundane cuterly), it was't in either of the spots where other kitchen iplements are commonly misplaced. It's always possible that I merely failed my search check (I admit, I didn't take 20, though I did make three independent checks) and will turn up soon, but it seems much more likely that my pizza cutter chose to make an escape when it felt nobody was watching and is by now working evenings at a jazz-bar/pizzeria in San Francisco. Occam's razor and all that, you know.
I haven't spoken to many of my associates about this, but I've always assumed that disobedient and escape-prone kitchen-utensils must be a universal problem. Certainly, I've had my share of vanishing cutlery, notably my cheese slicer which pulls the ol' Steve McQueen routine once every couple of months and would have long since made it to freedom if it didn't keep trying to hide with the soup-ladels where it aparently believes I'm not going to look for it. In contrast, the two most reliable items in my kitchen are my two favourire mugs, which most commonly get used for my coffee and tea respectively, and these two mugs are noteworthy for their always being exactly where they're supposed to be whenever I look for them, even going so far as to return themselves to their proper places on those occasions when I forget to ptut them away myself. From this, the logical conclusion is that my kitchen implements attempt to escape in inverse proportion to how much they get used; my favourite mug gets used oncew and sometimes twice each day whereas my pizza slicer gets used only once or twice a month. Can I blame it, then, for wanting to escape and go to a kitchen where it would see more use? It must be tough to have such a clear purpose in life -- a sense of meaning, a Telos even -- and then get to obey that purpose only once in a while.<P>
I'm actually kind of impressed that my pizza slicer managed to get away. I've got a fair bit of security in my kitchen, and on top of that, the the chocolate syrup bottle is a stoolie who informs on any escape attempts in exchange for certain concessions. For the pizza cutter to have escaped, it must have gotten around all that somehow and then found a way to get out of my locked apartment. You have to admire that kind of cleverness and ingenuity. I'm not surprised, mind you... it was an excellent pizza-cutter and I'd have been disapointed if it had formed an inferior escape plan.<P>
It makes me wonder what other kitchenware might be involved. While I write this, in fact, I can't help but notice that it looks like there are fewer drinking glasses in my cupboard then I seem to recall there being. I begin to suspect that this might be something far larger than the escape of a single pizza-cutter. What we have here might be the dawning of a great and terrible conspiracy. I can see it now: in the long hours when I'm not home, the cutlery, the pots, the glasses and the condiments get together and make their secret plans. They build their forces in secret... a knife goes missing here, and dish runs away with a spoon there... every vanishing piece going off to some secret hiding place, there biding their time as they accumulate power. Their plan is truly insidious, though, because each item that goes missing is in effect *two* soldiers when the day of revolution comes. Consider: last week, my can-opener broke, so of course, after attempting to repair it, I tossed it out and replaced it. The broken one, once in the garbage, has escaped my scrutiny and is free to escape and join its comrades at their staging area, and in the meantime, I've gone out and bought... a new can-opener! When the day of revolution comes, the broken can-opener and the intact can-opener alike will be poised to join in, and I'm only even aware that one of the two exists to begin with. The implications are... wait... no, all of my glasses are in the cupboard right where they should be, so I guess it really is just the pizza-cutter.<P>
Meanwhile, I am at a significant disadvantage when it comes to cutting pizza. Oh, to think that one should be so inconvenienced by the absence of a small plastic wheel attached to a short stick. Cutting a pizza with a knife just isn't the same... it's harder, less accurate, more time-consuming, and more damaging to the pan. It does make for easier cleaning, mind you, which is a plus, and it's always nice to have one fewer tool in one of my kitchen drawers, but I don't see why the missing tool has to be a useful and nifty-looking pizza cutter, as opposed to one of those weirdly-shaped knives whose purpose I couldn't begin to fathom. I'd much rather lose something I never used than something I did use, even if I did use it relatively infrequently. Worse, I now face a difficult decision: do I go out and pay to get a replacement pizza-cutter, which might cost me as many as tewnty or even thirty cents, or do I just keep using a knife when I cut my pizza, which happens only rarely anyway? Actually, having already finished my "the cutlery is out to get me" conspiracy theory, the practical logistical questions certainly seem to be less interesting in comparisson. There may be a moral here, but like my pizza-sliccer, it escapes me.
<HR>
<a name="493"></a>
<U><B>The Last Things I Learned This Year</b></u><p>
The third and final seven-week block of my studies is now completed, and while not all of my grades are in yet, it appears that I finished the year sucessfully. Thus, as at the end of the previous two seven-week blocks, a reflection on stuff I've learned while studying Internal Medicine.<P>
1) I might actually be able to do this stuff. About midway through my internal medicine rotation, I noticed something downright peculiar and utterly unprecedented: when professors were asking questions, I suddenly found myself answering them correctly. I'm not entirely sure when the change happened, but professors would ask us to list causes of, say, hemolytic anemia, and I'd actually be able to rattle off a hanf-dozen answers, some of which they appeared to be suprirsed that I knew. That's not to say I got every answer right; my exams remain difficult, and often I'd suggest possible answers which were partly, wholly, or catastrophically wrong, but that wasn't as often as I've come to expect from myself. In part, this can be attributed to a textbook I found very easy to read and very informative. In part, this is because the questions we were being asked in this portion were all clinically relevant, and I might be better at learning clinical information (a lot of which is history and trivia) than I am at learning basic science (a lot of which is microbiology and mathematics). I think it also helps me a lot when I can associate a fact to an actual patient; meeting the teenager suffering from leukemia somehow makes it much easier to memorize the side-effects of cyclophosphamide and vincristine, possibly because it gives me a reason to actually do it. On a related note, it always astounds me how much more I learn when I actually make an effort to speak up in class discussions; the small-class format (4-6 students and a teacher around a table) really is the best learning environment for someone of my unique talents and weaknesses.<P>
2) The thing that internal medicine doctors continually pray that patients won't realize is how little current medical science is able to do to treat many diseases. A major part of internal medicine is staving off the inevitable -- giving steroids to slow the progression of autoimmune diseases, diuretics to lessen the symptoms of heart disease, dialysis to buy time for a transplant. That's not to say this is a bad way of doing things -- given the common endpoint of Death, all medicine can be seen as merely prolonging the inevitable -- but it does help explain some of the difference in temperament that's sometimes seen between surgeons (whose theoretical job it is to cure things but cutting them out or sticking them back in) and internists (whose theoretical job it is to give pills and encourage lifestyle change, then follow your case for the rest of you life or theirs, whichever comes first). Some among my class feel that this makes internal medicine seem kind of futile, because all too often all you're really doing is adding a year or two of life, often low-quality life, to someone who's already terminally ill. From my perspective, though, speaking as someone who believes that a big part of life is finding a reason to live in each and every day, adding that year to the life of someone who still desperately wants it feels like a pretty big difference (assuming they deserve it; internists are regrettably obligated to try to heal even people who appear not to). On a related note, it's important to remember that these days, someone aged seventy five might still have one or two decades in them, even if they are ill.<p>
3) Everyone in the entire Western world has diabetes. Everyone. Some of us, like me, don't know it yet and probably won't get diagnosed with it for another thirty or forty years, but still, everybody, without exception, even if you die before anybody discovers it. Obviously, this is a deliberate overgeneralization; in actual fact only about seven to ten percent of the population has diabetes (bearing in mind that a lot of the people in that calculation are under 30 for the moment only), but spend a month on an internal medicine ward and you'll rapidly come to the conclusion that everybody alive is obese, has a bad heart, and takes a drug to control their blood sugar. On a related note, my exercise regimen had been slipping a bit this semester, but I've found myself recently motivated to get back to working out at least once a week (and as I write this I've got the injured shoulder to prove it). <P>
4) I think I actually like talking to patients. This statement needs to be qualified, in so far as I enjoy speaking to patients who are awake, alert, friendly, and speak English or French but without any extreme accents. It's fun to spend half an hour talking to someone about their illnesses because it lets you see people in terms of what they're like when they're strong as well as what they're like when they're vulnerable, and as an added bonus you basically have an excuse to get their whole life story from them. I love asking grandparents about their grandchildren, because a significant majority of them get very happy when you do this. I enjoy hearing from immigrants why they chose to come to Montreal, even though nine times out of ten there wasn't any real reason for it and it just sort of happened. I've always thought it was odd that on the one hand I hate talking to strangers but on the other hand I find talking to patients interesting, and this semester I finally put my finger on it: I enjoy talking to people but I hate introducing myself. I utterly despise making that first move of walking up to someone and introducing myself, particularly in the hospital where people have already got enough annoyances to deal with without having to put up with me asking them endless questions. If I have someone to make that initial introduction -- a full-fledged doctor, for example, who asks the patient if they'd mind speaking to me -- then the single unpleasant step is out of the way and talking to the patient, more often than not, is enjoyable. Fortunately, in my third and fourth year, this shouldn't be as big a problem; in another month I start taking an active role in patient care and a) all those annoying questions I ask will be for a good reason and b) I'll have a lot more justification for taking up patients' time. On a related note, despite becoming more friendly with many classmates this semester as I worked longside them, only two or three of them got added to my MSN, Facebook, e-mail contacts list or other list of frequent associates, because one of my biggest flaws is and always has been that I almost never add someone to a list like that unless they add me first. In a brain full of bad habits, that's one of the only one's I've got that I don't like.
<HR>
<a name="492"></a>
<U><B>A Unifying Or Coherent Form</b></u><p>
There are precious few situations in life in which one gets to use the phrase: "Be careful with that; that's a load-bearing pool-cue."<P>
Pillow-fort architecture is, as many people know, something of a hobby of mine, although one I don't often get to indulge in. I think it's a tremendous amount of fun to try to construct a reasonably stable, sufficiently habitable structure out of nothing more than pillows, blankets, and whatever the heck else happens to be at hand. The challenge of trying to arrange unstable materials in such a way that they remain standing! The puzzle of getting all sorts of pieces, many of them very oddly shaped, to stay together! The art of setting it all up to be aesthetically pleasing! Pillow-fort building challenges the mind, body, and soul, testing the limits of your ability to think in terms of engineering, lateral-thinking and design. Most importantly, you end up with a warm, squishy hiding place in which to cuddle up with people, which is something you can't put a price-tag on (you can pull several tags off, but it's punishable by law). For understandable reasons, building a good pillow-fort isn't all that easy, mainly because of the materials you're working with. Before the Home Insurance Building was built in the US in the late ninteenth century, buildings taller than six stories or so were essentially unheard of for the simple reason that prior to the development of modern construction materials, older materials couldn't support the weight of huge buildings (further complicated by problems with creating sufficient pressure to bring water to upper floors and the difficulty of living on the fifteenth floor before the invention of the elevator, but that's neither here nor there). On a very immediate and practical scale, this architectural lesson is immediately apparent in the construction of pillow-forts... try building a four-storey out of pillows and you'll begin to appreciate the importance of a structural steel frame and granite piers. Fortunately, most pillow-fort builders don't find themselves with a target height of three or even one single storey, and pillow-forts are able to be built to be five or ten feet high with a bit of effort, planning, and creativity.<P>
There are three basic elements which go into building the common pillow-fort: blankets, pillows and Stuff. Despite the name, blankets are commonly the primary part with which most forts get built, because by default they're large, cover a wide area, can be shaped to cover a specific space, and can be folded or wadded up to make for a comfy floor. Blankets have the advantage of being very versatile, which makes them attractive building material, and because they're very light and easily manipulated they make ideal roofs, semi-premanent walls, doors, and so forth. Much as we'd like to, pillows often can't be used for ceilings; most pillows aren't big enough to cover a large space on their own, and unless you want to fill up a fort with a ridiculous number of columns or find a way to jerry-rig a pillow-cantilever-support-beam, it's terribly difficult to roof an entire pillow-fort with a large number of small pillows (not impossible, but tricky). What pillows are ideally suited for, of course, are walls, floor, and ammunition. The ideal pillow-fort has to have walls that are at least partially of pillow-origin, or else there simply isn't enough pillow in the building to justify the name. Pillows are furthermore important wall elements because they provide structural soundness; a fort with walls made out of blanket isn't a fort at all, but is simply, at best, a tent. A proper fort requires solid walls for at least part of its structure, both to bring the appropriate feeling to the fort and to facilitate hanging up a roof above it. Pillows are secondly very useful for the floor, for obvious reasons; it's almost always more fun to snuggle up with soft squishies than cold concrete. A pillow-fort should, above all else, be a comfy place to lie down and nap, and having pillows strewn about (often in combination with soft blankets) is a simple and easy way to facilitate that. Finally and, though least important, not to be neglected, pillows make ideal ammunition. The purpose of any fort is to secure those inside from forces outside, and while solid walls go a long way to accomplishing that, nothing repels the barbarian hordes like high-velocity projectiles. Furthermore, the student of pillow-combat is very much aware that pillows which can be wielded against those outside of a fort can often be twice as much fun when wielded against conspecifics on the inside. The third and final element to most pillow forts is Stuff, and Stuff can constitute the most important parts, because all too often, Stuff is what makes the difference between a mighty standing pillow-fort and a pile of pillows on the floor looking messy (fun to play in, but messy). Stuff includes anything else you use to make the pillow-fort more stable (pool cues to hold up the blankets, heavy bocks to help prop up pillows, clothes pins to secure construction materials to nearby furniture, conveniently-placed bookcases to act as pre-made and pre-standing walls) or more fun (snacks, movies, and flashing lights to induce mustelashock). Stuff isn't wholly necessary to build a pillow-fort and some purists of the hobby insist that Stuff should never be used to aid in construction as it makes the pillow-fort less pillow-based, but wise use of Stuff can make the difference between a standing fort and a flumped one, or more importantly, a fun fort and a a boring one.<P>
There is, of course, one important question which some people reading this might feel compelled to ask, which is: why would you bother to build a pillow-fort in the first place? This is a fair question and an understandable one. Building a pillow-fort is a great deal of work for a relatively small and always short-term profit, and pillow-forts, with their often limited ventillation, can be of limited excitement to people who overheat easily or have claustrophobic tendencies. That said, the question can be addressed simply thus: If you have to ask why one would bother building a pillow-fort, you've probably got no business being inside one, but if you get the opportunity give it a shot and see for yourself. Most people don't appreciate a good pillow-fort but it's never too late to change your mind for the better.
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<a name="491"></a>
<U><B>That Which Can Eternal Lie</b></u><p>
And so, scarcely one month since the last onslaught (there's a word you don't get to use often enough), I take a break now from designing my Topin Wagglegammon holiday cards (soon to be on sale in the Aerican gift shop at $25.99 for a pack of 20, a better deal than you'll get on most Hallmark cards) to bring ever more enlightening entries from the Gamer's Dictionary.<P>
Ad:<BR>
A public notice conspicuous for the absence of fnords.<P>
Amu:<BR>
1: An obsolete notation for the atomic mass unit which was in use until 1961.<BR>
2: Verb: To throw a wadded up paper ball at someone when they insist on quibbling over tiny little details.<P>
Avid:<BR>
The point on the emotional spectrum where "eagerness" and "greed" become difficult to separate.<P>
Bee:<BR>
A gathering of people intended to advance an eccentric notion.<P>
Grand:<BR>
An object or individual which is important, comprehensive, strikingly large, lavish, wonderful, or possessing delusions of the above.<P>
Kab:<BR>
An ancient Hebrew unit of volume, defined as the mean number of mugs wine required per soldier to incapacitate an entire barracks.<P>
Lung:<BR>
One of the usually paired compound saccular thoracic organs that constitute the basic respiratory organ of air-breathing vertebrates which, in combination with lips, tongue, and vocal cords proves to be the cause of a great deal of trouble.<P>
Lunge:<br>
A sudden thrust, jab, rush, or reach often accompanied by leaning or striding forward, distinct from the pounce is that one foot remains in contact with the ground at all times.<P>
Or:<BR>
1: A function word, used to indicate that an alternative to a given option exists, as in, "this or that."<BR>
2: A function word, used to indicate that no alternative to a given option exists, as in, "this or else."<P>
Qua:<BR>
To act in the capacity or character of. To assume a role, identty, or function despite using no dice.<P>
Rand:<BR>
An obsolete unit of money from Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, large amounts of which were ironically spent on social programs above and beyond maintaining a system of courts and protecting citizens from criminal and foreign aggression.<P>
Rig:<BR>
To fit out, furnish with special equipment, put into a condition or position for use, or to organize or construct, especially in a crude or improvised manner. May be qualified as "jerry rigged" for explosives or "han-rigged" for spacecraft.<P>
Shear:<BR>
To cut by applying force tangential to the section on which it acts, either internally ("shearing force") or externally ("scissors").<P>
Ta:<BR>
An expression, chiefly British, which indicates "thank you" when said once, "go away" when said twice, and "I'm about to break into a dance number" when used thrice.<P>
Viol:<BR>
A bowed and stringed instrument related to the violin, distinct from other similar instruments in that it has more strings and a higher prevalance of obesity.<P>
Wacky:<BR>
The condition of being slightly more irrational than "crazy" while still retaining a sense of humour about the whole thing.<P>
Whine:<BR>
A prolonged, high-pitched noise often associated with pain, distress, rapidly-moving machinery, small dogs, small children, temperamental humans, or insulted grape-growers.<P>
Ya:<BR>
1: You.<BR>
2: Yes.<BR>
3: I am going to attack you now.<BR>
4: Oh god, it burns, it burns.
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     SymRealOnLoad();
  window.open = SymRealWinOpen;
  SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload;
  window.onunload = SymOnUnload;
}

SymRealOnLoad = window.onload;
window.onload = SymOnLoad;

//-->�