The Number of the Day

Don't ever let it be said that Congress doesn't do anything.



I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

Everybody wants to be a cat

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I prefer to keep it simple:

Hey, hey!

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Say, haven't you noticed?





Oh, I ate the lotus...

The Sophisticated Barbarian

Good question!



Truth is when we say "Barbarians," we are talking about so much more than can be fit in a single stereotype...



Take the fine tradition of tea, for instance:



Do Barbarians drink tea in Conan Exiles? Why, of course, we do! We are Barbarians, not savages...



All in moderation, of course! You know what they say...

"Tea is a gateway drug to biscuits."

I am not all that interested in your cosmology

It's not me, Obsidian, it's you:



It does go on.

And on.

And on.



I know, right? 😴

It's too bad, though. To Obsidian Entertainment's credit, the dialogues in that second installment in the Pillars of Eternity series are fully voice-acted, and the actors did a stellar job! (Giving credit where credit is due.)

To be fair, the Pillars or Eternity series has its fan base and its cringe-worthy cosmology has its well-meaning commenders.

Point in case:





I rest my case.

CRPG games are half about mechanics and rules, for one part, and half about story-telling and world-building—i.e. the power of words—for the other part. While many contemporary games, like Pillars of Eternity do well with the former, they seem to have lost their touch with the latter, which was the hallmark of the golden age of adventure games, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, with titles like, say, Ultima VII (The Black Gate), or even point-and-click games like Quest for Glory (Shadows of Darkness), which did so well creating immersive worlds and engaging engrossing stories (including some simple, yet memorable, mood setting MIDI compositions), with so little, technologically , compared to today's era.

Lestrade may never glimpse the transcendental potential of words—though he well understands their everyday mundane uses.

I, on the other hand, feel that words, and the worlds they conjure, are mostly successful if they open for me a glimpse of attractive and undiscovered places.

The Nail of Fortitude

There is no knowing, these days, what will land inside my in-box at the Lodge...



Take this note from fellow member Matthew Hayden Atkinson, for instance:





I know, right?





The Quest del Saint Nail transformed the quest for the Holy Nail into a search for mystical union with God and made the pure knight Matthew Hayden Atkinson the Nail's ideal hero. Only Matthew was able to look directly into it and behold the divine mysteries that cannot be described by human tongue.





🙃 I kid my fellow club member. 🙂

Aww...

You remembered!



It's all true, you know...



Dōmo arigatō gozaimasu, Mister shiro usagi.

ハッピーバースデー !

I detect it's your birthday...







You know who you are!



And all that sort of thing.

Is it just me, or . . . ?

Does it look like my dentist and her father are coming straight out of a J. K. Rowling novel?

Leave room in your garden for the fairies to dance

The hap- happest season of all

Yes, it's that time of the year again!

And you know what that means...

If you've guessed that it's but just a few weeks till my birthday, you are on the right track.



Thank you for your consideration.

Man with a harmonica

Tempus fugit. Carpe diem. And all that.



I found him at my local curiosity shop.

Every town ought to have one.

What is he playing? I wonder.



The shop owner caught me snapping those shots and she invited me in... to hear him play—yes, it's an automaton!

The music the automaton plays, it turned out, is "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain." The song is derived from the Christian spiritual known as "When the Chariot Comes."

I don't know. I am a little disapointed. "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is an enthralling and fun song and all, I am sure, but I just thought "Man with a Harmonica" suited him better.

Sometimes certain things are best left to the imagination.