Twitterpated

• 06:14 @huggythuggy Are you sure you're not thinking of tiramisu? #
• 06:17 @hodgman Flansy was in a soda can, I'm assuming. #
• 06:20 @eehouls 13-year-old girls who CALL themselves women, perhaps? #
• 06:21 @eehouls I thought of that recently, too. They must have been named by the owner of a roadside stand. "Apple's! Pear's! Go-Go's!" #
• 07:02 They're bringing back indulgences. tinyurl.com/d74k7y #
• 07:03 Odd that I'd find that out the day after I made a post about the Seven Deadly Sins. #
• 17:57 That Dunkin' Donuts waffle sandwich is pretty good, although I'm sure it's about as nutritious as gorging at a bag of sugar. #
• 18:00 I think I might need to check out more music by Robyn Hitchcock/the Soft Boys. #
• 18:02 @eehouls I remember watching people play Oregon Trail, but I'm not sure I ever did myself. #
• 18:02 I do recall making bad puns about the wagon needing a new tongue, though. #
• 18:04 Fuck this shit! cursebird.com/ #
• 18:06 There was a sign on the Expressway that said the police were using lasers. Wow, futuristic! #
• 19:32 @TheRealTavie Yeah, that's pretty much what I said. vovat.livejournal.com/469247.html #
• 21:50 I sometimes think it would be nice to have a vacation home, but I doubt I ever will. #
• 22:17 @NowIsStrange thinks FreeCell is easier than Spider Solitaire, but I'm not so sure. #
• 22:17 Okay, it's easier than Spider Solitaire on its hardest difficulty level. #

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Work Under Pressure

That was the working title for XTC's fourth album, but I think the manager figured it would send a bad impression, so it was changed. The cover art for that title was retained, though, and the name changed to Black Sea.



I'm not entirely sure how the "black" part of the title fits, although I guess there IS a song that mentions Russia, and that's a country that borders on the Black Sea. Besides, it makes a good counterpart to White Music. I have to say that this is the band's most straight-up rock album.

( All part of decency's jigsaw, I suppose. )

Okay, that's that. Next week (or whenever I get around to it), English Settlement will be the name of the game.

The Meteor is in control, and he says, "Read this post."

I think it's now time for a look back at another old favorite among video games, Maniac Mansion.



The plot of the game involved a group of teenagers trying to rescue their friend from a mad scientist's mansion. It turns out that the scientist, Dr. Fred by name, is experimenting on teenage girls at the behest of a sentient slimy purple meteor that had landed in his backyard twenty years earlier. It's a point-and-click adventure that gives you a choice of several options with which to interact with characters and items around the house. And since this house has in-home nuclear power, a live Green Tentacle who wants to be a rock star, a mutant plant (plus another totally useless plant named Chuck), a mummified cousin in the bathtub, a rocket-powered Edsel in the garage, and postal delivery and pick-up in the middle of the night, there are a lot of different things to try. There are also a few different ways to win the game, depending on which party members you choose. Two of my favorites are having the Meteor arrested by alien cops, and helping the Meteor become a best-selling author. (Actually, if you play with both Bernard and Wendy, you can see an ending that incorporates both of these.)

I found this game a bit scary at first, due to the family members who will show up periodically to throw your playable characters into the dungeon, but it doesn't take too long to recognize their patterns. In addition, I remember having trouble with a security door, which turned out to be unlocked, and just had to be opened. Oh, Occam, where was your razor when I needed it?

Although I only ever played the Nintendo version of the game, it was originally released for PC, and had to be bowdlerized a bit to meet Nintendo of America's standards at the time ("We want these games to be family-friendly, so no cursing, nudity, or blood! Shooting or stabbing the crap out of every living thing you see is fine, though."). Here's a good article about how crazy this editing was, and what ended up being changed.

I've heard that there was a sequel, Day of the Tentacle, for the PC, and that it involved time travel to stop the Purple Tentacle from conquering the world. I've never played it, though, and I don't think it ever came out on a Nintendo system. I also never saw the Maniac Mansion TV show, a Canadian production featuring a lot of former SCTV stars. From what I've heard, though, it really only conformed to the game in very basic ways.

Incidentally, the title of the post is a reference to an error message that would show up occasionally, stopping you from saving the game or restoring a saved file. It normally appeared near the end of the game, but there were occasionally bugs that made this message appear when it probably shouldn't have. And it often made the game freeze up, so it was really annoying.