1131: Lavatorial Subconscious

It is, as I have noted a number of times previously on these very pages, during the hours of the morning between waking up for the first time and actually waking up enough to be able to get out of bed that your subconscious works the hardest to show you the most fucked-up shit possible to get you wondering what the hell someone was injecting into you while you slept. These “morning dreams” are also the ones that tend to stick in your memory a lot more than the things your brain dreams up in the main part of your sleep cycle, too.

As you will recall if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I have recounted these peculiar and surreal experiences in the past. And I thought I’d do that today, largely to resist the temptation to write about Ar Tonelico yet again.

This morning’s weird dream was once again somewhat lavatorial in nature, at least in part, so for that I apologise.

I forget the specific circumstances which brought me to the situation, but something had caused me to arrive at a building which looked somewhat like Kazuma’s orphanage from the video game Yakuza 3. There were a few differences, though. For some reason, inside the wooden building there was a large room with windows all around its walls, except for one completely wooden wall, which had a toilet on it.

I had arrived at the building to see someone I knew — I think they were a teacher, but I don’t recall seeing their face clearly. Their class were with them, but ignored me until I stepped into the bizarre “toilet room” and started having a piss, at which point some kid pointed out the fact that I was clearly having a piss, and that everyone should watch closely. Naturally, once I had started, I couldn’t stop — you know how it is when you really need a piss and you release that valve — but I was also very conscious of everyone standing around outside this room, with me on display.

Somehow, I managed to find a way of standing where I knew that no-one would be able to see my knob or the seemingly never-ending stream of piss erupting from me, but the crowd began to become more rowdy. At first it was shouting and laughing, but then it changed to singing — a few scattered voices at first, which eventually became as one, singing a driving, dramatic song that inexplicably developed an orchestral backing after a while despite the fact there was clearly not an orchestra present — at least not one which I could see. As the music built in intensity, volume and tempo, I became aware that I was losing control of my, uh, “flow” and it was going everywhere, and that everyone could see this.

Suddenly the music stopped, and I was done. I flushed, and went to wash my hands at the sink that I’m sure wasn’t there beforehand. The sink was full of paint and the draining board next to it looked rusty and dirty, but clean water came out of the taps, at least. I washed up and left the room, trying to get far away from my “audience”, who thankfully didn’t follow me. I’m not sure how long I ran or to where, but eventually I found myself in a room with Emma Watson, who grabbed me and kissed me rather forcefully.

And then I woke up, disappointingly. Well thank you, subconscious, for keeping me asleep during the bizarre, slightly traumatic part and waking me up just as things were getting interesting.

1121: Dreamscape

I had a “game dream” last night. As any longtime gamer will tell you, these happen with increasing frequency the more you like or have spent time playing a particular game, are often extremely vivid and are usually quite memorable, too.

In my case — and disappointingly for this blog post, which is about to get a whole lot of padding — I can’t remember the specific details about said dream. What I can remember, however, is the peculiar combination of games that formed the basis of said dream. First up were Ar Tonelico, which is my new RPG jam having finished Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2; and Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 itself — hey, I really, really liked it, okay? These two aren’t especially weird to put together, since Ar Tonelico’s developer Gust also contributed to Hyperdimension Neptunia and was even personified in the game as the character called, err, Gust.

Combining with Ar Tonelico and Hyperdimension Neptunia was the visual novel Kira Kira, which I was reading shortly before I went to sleep last night, so it’s perhaps unsurprising it put in an appearance. Kira Kira doesn’t really fit with the other two, though — it may also be Japanese, but it’s 1) not an RPG 2) not in a fantasy setting and 3) not quite as “crazy” as the other two.

This isn’t as bizarre an inclusion as the presence of CD Projekt Red’s dark fantasy opus The Witcher, however, which also put in an appearance courtesy of its white-haired protagonist Geralt, who looked very much out of place alongside the colourful characters from the other games.

As I say, I can’t remember what actually happened in the dream, so this story is mostly a waste of time, but I thought it was an interesting combination of things that my subconscious chose to put together — particularly since I haven’t played The Witcher for quite some time.

Game dreams don’t always blend together experiences like this. Sometimes they’re a focused experience based on a single game. Puzzle games used to be particularly bad for this — I remember shortly after getting my very own Lynx (Atari’s ill-fated 16-bit handheld which was absolutely enormous) and playing a whole bunch of Klax that I had a number of Klax-related dreams, which mostly centred their attention on my mental image of the female voice that whispered such sweet nothings as “Klax Wave!” and “Yeah!” and “Oooh!” while you were playing. (I think it was the latter that made me go weak at the knees. It was quite a sexy “Oooh!”. I have tried to find it on YouTube but instead found nothing but Flight Simulator videos. Apparently “KLAX” is the abbreviation for Los Angeles International Airport. What was I talking about again?)

Um, anyway… Yeah.

Dreams are a strange thing. I am fairly convinced that you can influence your own dreams strongly by what you’re doing immediately before you go to sleep (wash your mind out, pervert) but it seems that the most vivid dreams tend to show themselves when you’re not specifically trying to think really hard about something, and instead have a mind full of things that have stimulated it. In my case last night, the rather wordy prose of Kira Kira obviously kept my mind active as I drifted off to sleep, and then other influences that I felt strongly about drifted in there, too.

That still doesn’t really explain the presence of The Witcher, but eh, I’m tired, so I’m off to read a bit of Kira Kira and then go to sleep for hopefully some more subconscious happy fun times. See you on the other side.

1056: More Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t

[I have written twelve articles of between 500 and 1,000 words each today so I am too tired to do a comic strip. They’ll be back tomorrow.]

A long while back, while I was in my faintly delirious “holy shit my life has just fallen apart, I need to distract myself in any way possible” phase, I composed a series of fever-dream blog posts that I have a feeling might have actually been relatively amusing. (Or at least I found them amusing. Your mileage may, as always, vary.) One of these posts was Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t, in which I explored a selection of things that I had ingrained into my brain for various reasons — either I’d overheard my family or friends say them and gullibly believed them, or I’d simply never seen anything to prove my opinion wrong.

So, in the spirit of that original post from way back when, here are some more Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t.

1. Taking a drink into the bathroom is forbidden.

You just can’t do it. You shouldn’t do it. I never questioned why this was — I believe the somewhat vague explanation of it being “unhygienic” may have been bandied around at some point — but over time I just sort of gradually grew to make up reasons why people didn’t take drinks into the bathroom, unless they were attending a house party, in which case everyone must take their drinks into the bathroom.

My favourite explanation of why you shouldn’t take drinks into the bathroom is because of all the “poo particles” floating around in the air as a result of whoever last had a dump or did a really big fart. If you take a drink — particularly a hot one — into the bathroom, then all the poo particles are naturally attracted to the drink and infect it with poo. So when you start drinking your drink that you took into the bathroom, you’ll then be drinking poo. And no-one wants to drink poo. So don’t do it.

2. You can make yourself dream about a thing by thinking about it really hard before you go to sleep.

I’m actually in two minds as to whether or not this one is actually true. Because certainly when you do something intense (get those thoughts out of your mind, hentai) before going to sleep, you’ll often dream about it. See: playing too much Tetris/Klax/Dr. Mario before bed and consequent surreal dreams. (My favourite was the one where I met the lady who said “Klax Wave!” before every level and “Ooh!” every time you got a 4-tile Klax in Klax on the Atari Lynx, and she was like totally fit and into me and we… wait, what was I talking about again?)

For a long time, though, I was utterly convinced that lying there with your eyes shut trying to picture something really vividly would influence your dreams. Of course, it doesn’t; your brain occupies itself too much with trying to picture something really vividly rather than actually attempting to shut off and get to sleep, making the whole exercise a fruitless endeavour. I’ve also found that as I’ve got older, my concentration span for lying awake trying to think of things has lessened considerably than it was when I was a teenager. This is perhaps a side-effect of the build-up of depression and anxiety over the years.

3. The first time you see something is the first time it ever happened/existed.

I genuinely believed this as a kid. The first time I got a copy of Fast Forward magazine, I thought it was the first issue. The first time I saw things on television, I thought it was the first time they’d been broadcast. Kind of silly, now that I think back on it.

This attitude did sort of perpetuate itself even after I left home, though. When a friend referred to baseball cap and tracksuit-wearing white trash as “chavs”, it was the first time I’d heard that word and I thus assumed that it had originated in our social group. Of course, it transpires that the word “chav” is very much in common usage to mean exactly what we thought it meant. It must have spread around the country somehow. I wonder where it originated? I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate from my friend Cat on the No. 11 bus heading to Safeway in Portswood, Southampton.

4. If you fart when you’re not ready, you’ll shit yourself.

I have no doubt that in certain circumstances, this may be true, but for the most part, the act of farting and the act of shitting are two distinct motions — unless, of course, you’re attempting to force out the fart, which carries a significant risk of following through. Let it come naturally and you’ll be safe. Probably. Right? OH GOD NOW I NEVER WANT TO FART AGAIN.

5. If you sleep on your back, you’ll…

To date, I’m not entirely sure if this actually happened or if I dreamed it at some point, but I am absolutely convinced that for a sex education class at secondary school, all the boys were taken to the library while all the girls went off to talk about periods, and we watched a video of a 1950s-style very British man explaining how if you slept on your back, you’d probably spunk your pants in your sleep. He obviously didn’t use that exact terminology — I forget the exact words he used, probably “nocturnal emissions” or something — but I vividly remember it. At the same time, though, I also have the strongest feeling that I might have made it up. Because it just doesn’t seem very likely.

That said, I used to have a recurring dream where I was going to have sex with someone on the London Underground, but couldn’t go through with it because I didn’t have the sheet music for it, so… wait a minute, that doesn’t really help at all.

I’m off to bed now. To sleep on my side. I have a hellish week coming up. See you on the other side, and apologies in advance for any day’s entries that are just “AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH”.

1008: Three Wishes

My mind regularly wanders, particularly when I’m trying to get to sleep, and often delves into the territory of rather predictable fantasies. No, not that kind of fantasy — well, not all the time, anyway — but rather the sort of fantasies that tend to provoke conversations in the pub or at the end of a house party. Things like “what superpowers would you like to have?” or “what would you do if you had three wishes?”

I’ve always found the idea of three wishes a fascinating one, ever since I first heard various genie-toting tales from the Arabian Nights and the subsequent primary school “I wish I had three more wishes” jokes. I’ve never quite managed to come up with a definitive answer as to what my three would be. The closest I’ve come is determining that I’d probably have two “practical” ones, one of which is usually ensuring that my body is in perfect physical condition — because, well, if you have the opportunity, you might as well ensure you’re in full working order, right? (And also I’m fed up with having an itchy scalp. TMI? Fuck off.) The second practical one is often ensuring I’m in a situation where I don’t have to worry about money. (This fantasy came up considerably more frequently while I was out of work, as you might expect.)

It’s the third wish I often spend a long time pondering, though. I figure once I’ve done the vaguely responsible thing and wished for things that ensure my affairs are in order, I can cut loose with the third one. (Of course, I could also set the genie free with my third wish, but where’s the fun in that?)

Several recurring possibilities usually enter my mind for this third wish. They probably say something about me. Please do not read too much into them. (Or do. I don’t care. You can do what you want.)

My first possible third wish (you’re following, right?) is the ability to “do magic”. Perhaps as a side-effect of my love of role-playing games, every time I imagine requesting this wish I picture the genie bringing up what essentially amounts to a character creation interface and inviting me to pick my spells. The magic I end up choosing usually ends up being of the elemental variety. Thinking about it, I’m not entirely sure why I pick this, because if there’s one thing that probably isn’t that useful in everyday modern society, it’s elemental magic. Whatever role-playing games might tell us, there are not monsters wandering around outside every town, problems cannot always be solved by setting fire to people who disagree with you and broken machinery cannot be repaired simply by calling down a thunderbolt on it. (In fact, some might say that usually has the opposite effect to repairing it.)

My second possible third wish is that my car would become a VTOL flying vehicle powered by anti-gravity technology which is physically impossible — so far as we know, anyway. Or it might be magic, given that said car doesn’t usually require any fuel. This is a fairly self-explanatory wish usually provoked by the fact I’ve been stuck in a traffic jam at some point during the day and inevitably found myself picturing what it might be like if my car could just rise up off the ground and fly over all the frustrated motorists beneath me. It would be awesome. Don’t say it wouldn’t be, because you would be wrong.

My third possible third wish is the ability to switch bodies with someone — usually a person of the opposite sex who has absolutely nothing to do with my normal life and who possibly exists outside of normal space and time. This is pure curiosity, and come on, who hasn’t wondered about how “the other side” lives? Different times I’ve had this particular fantasy have varied slightly — sometimes the other person simply ceases to exist when my consciousness isn’t present in her; other times she goes about her normal life and simply switches places with me willingly; sometimes she’s an empty vessel (like a robot body) built to hold my consciousness; other times, she is me in a parallel dimension and I am actually both people, I’m simply only aware of one at a time; other times still, the change comes without warning at unexpected moments. (The latter situation, I’ve recently discovered, is the plot hook of the anime Kokoro Connect, so naturally I’ve immediately started watching it.) My motivation for this wish is simply to see what it would be like living another life that is completely different to my own — opposite in almost every respect.

A variation on that third possible wish is to gain the ability to shapeshift. When I picture this wish, my imagination usually puts some surprisingly conservative limitations on my power. I can usually only shapeshift for a limited amount of time, meaning that I can’t just stick in another form — I’ll just change back to my real self after a set period of time has elapsed. I’m usually only limited to changing into other human forms, as well — no turning into, say, a xylophone or a fridge for me. It’s enough to have a similar experience to the “body-swapping” wish, though — I get to try out what it’s like to be someone completely different for a little while.

Obviously, I know all of these will never come true so it’s a completely moot point. But I wonder, if the opportunity did arise, which one I’d actually choose when the time came?

#oneaday Day 976: An Open Letter to the Robot Lady Who Lives in the Sainsbury’s Self-Checkout Machines

Dear Robot Lady who lives in the Sainsbury’s self-checkout machines,

I’m sorry to write to you out of the blue — and so publicly, too — but no longer can I go on with my life and our relationship without saying something.

It’s not you, it’s me. No, wait, it is you.

I know you’re just doing your job. I know you’re just reading the things that the nice people who pay your wages — do robots get wages? — tell you to read, but seriously. I know how to use you by now. I know that I jiggle the things I want to buy over your scanny bit until you go “bip!” and then I put them in a bag, and then I repeat the process until I want to pay. Then I put my card in and type in my number and we’re all done. Then I go home and cook and/or eat the things I’ve paid you for.

This is all fine. You should know by now that I’m fine with this, as indeed are most of the people who avail themselves of your services.

So why are you so needy?

“Unexpected item in bagging area,” you say as I put the item I’ve just told you to expect in said bagging area. “Checking item weight,” you’ll retort as I put an item that isn’t sold by weight into the bagging area. “Approval needed,” you’ll helpfully inform me as I put an age-restricted product into the bagging area.

Why must you do this to me? I came to you because of your promises of efficiency; of not having to wait behind the old grandma who has bought fifteen thousand tins of dog food and a microwaveable corned beef hash; of not having to make small talk with a cashier who has to have a piece of paper taped to their console saying “SAY HELLO, THANK FOR WAITING, ASK HOW THEY ARE” in order to remember how to have a genuine interaction with another human being. I came to you because I thought you could help me and that you could ensure the whole miserable process of shopping in a supermarket is dealt with as quickly as possible. But you taunt me, you wound me by forcing me to stand around waiting for someone in a Sainsbury’s fleece to notice the big flashing red light above my head — that light that seems to imply ha! this person fucked something up! HELP!

Your lack of faith in me is disturbing. Why can’t you trust me? What have I ever done to you? I push all your buttons with loving care and attention and still you can’t trust me. I’ve bought everything from a big slab of meat to a basket full of blind-bag My Little Pony figures from you, so you know I trust you. At least I did. Now I’m not so sure. Now all I want to do as soon as I see you is press your volume button until your voice goes quiet. Still you mock me from your screen, but at least I don’t have to hear your voice any more. At least I don’t have to deal with you talking at me just slightly too slowly and calmly to be comfortable. At least I don’t have to put up with you telling me to do things I’m already doing. Your friends over at Tesco and Asda don’t patronise me anywhere near as much. So why must you mock me, you damnable machine? Why?

We could have had something. Something special. But no. I’m sorry. This is it. No more.

Oh, what am I saying? I know I’ll be back. I always am. I need you. I don’t want to admit it, but I do. Together forever, enraptured in a relationship of mutual disdain, our lives pressing ever onward until our inevitable demise. I might buy some sushi from you tomorrow, or possibly a muffin. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters. Nothing except your cold, heartless slavery to the capitalist machine, and my ever-present need to buy food from you and then eat it.

Regards,

Pete

#oneaday Day 788: From the Depths of the Subconscious

Analysing your dreams can probably tell you a lot about yourself. If that’s the case, though, I’m not sure I want to know what my most recent vivid imaginings say.

I dream best in the morning after I’ve woken up once. At least, those are the dreams I remember. If I wake up when Andie leaves for work and promptly fall back asleep again (which, to be perfectly honest, I usually do) then I’ll often have incredibly vivid dreams which, more to the point, I tend to remember pretty clearly. They’re certainly not conscious imaginings, because there’s no way I’d choose to think of a lot of the things that flit through my mind. Rather, it appears to be a completely automatic process, presumably based on anxieties or thoughts already stuck in my head.

This morning, these bizarre “snooze dreams” were — and I apologise for what I’m about to recount — rather lavatorial in nature. To begin with, I found myself sitting on a toilet in an upstairs hallway of a house. It wasn’t my real-life house, though I think it might have been my own house in the dream. Quite why there was a toilet in the upstairs hallway was anyone’s guess. And quite why I was sitting on it when the house was clearly playing host to a large party is an even bigger mystery.

Despite the fact I had clearly just had a dump in front of all the passing partygoers — most of whom seemed oblivious to my presence and activities — for some reason (and again, I apologise) I found myself unable to… uhh… “clean up”, as it were. I found myself panicking and wishing all these people weren’t in my house, screaming at them to get out of the way, but still no-one paid me any heed.

I ran downstairs and found myself in the house I lived in for my fourth year of university. I knew there was a nice, quiet toilet in the back where I could complete my business, so I opened the door. I found a toilet all right, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting. Rather, it was in a large, L-shaped room whose walls and floor were all made of ceramic tiles. There was no ceiling to the room, and outside I could see that we appeared to be floating in space. Worse, there was no bog roll here, either, only three circular red buttons next to the toilet.

I left, and the subsequent journey was a blur, but I ended up in what appeared to be an aeroplane bathroom, albeit one with a sloping roof that met the wall behind the toilet, and a large skylight in it. When standing in front of the toilet, I could look out through the skylight, and I saw that we were in some sort of rural area. Outside the skylight, men in peculiar costumes were being shepherded away by strange figures I can’t remember any details about. For some reason, I thought nothing of this strange and slightly sinister behaviour, because I had more pressing matters on my mind.

There was a toilet paper dispenser on the wall, so I pulled the handle to dispense some, but the string of sheets went down a small hole underneath the dispenser. When I retrieved the paper from the hole, it was completely covered in a weird black sludge which was then all over my hand. After going “urgh” for a little while, I simply washed it off, finally wiped my arse (noting with some surprise that my underpants had not been soiled despite all the running around) and then woke up slightly worried that I might have shat myself in my sleep. (I hadn’t.)

This particular incident follows a long stream of other bizarre “snooze dreams” I’ve had which include being unable to go through with a sexual encounter because I didn’t have the sheet music for it; starting to read the TV Tropes page for my own life and being literally unable to look away from it; and a particularly unpleasant one where I lived in a big house with all my friends and we all suddenly started hating each other for no apparent reason.

My subconscious is fucked, basically. Oh well, at least it keeps things interesting. And the fact I can remember all this nonsense gives me good fodder for when I actually do want to do something creative and imaginative… though I can’t see a novel about someone who might have shat himself catching on, really.

#oneaday Day 763: A Question That No-One Seems To Have Asked Regarding RPGs

Here’s a stumper for all you RPG fans: exactly how much does taking one hit point of damage hurt?

It’s not a particularly straightforward thing to work out, given that hit points are a representative abstraction of physical condition rather than a measurable, uh, measurement. But let’s assume for a moment that it is indeed possible to measure one’s own hit points. How much, then, would taking one hit point of damage hurt?

The answer to that question would largely depend on what model of hit points you are using. If you’re talking Dungeons and Dragons hit points, taking one damage would fucking hurt if you’re not in tip-top physical condition. The average “man in the street” sort of person (i.e. not a warrior, rogue, wizard, cleric or what have you) is regarded as a “level 0 human” and generally has something in the region of 2 or 3 hit points, if that. Level 1 wizards often only have in the region of 4 or so. As such, taking one hit point of damage as an average person following the Dungeons and Dragons model would hurt a great deal, putting you potentially up to halfway towards death (or rather, being knocked out, since people don’t officially die until bleeding out to -10 hit points in D&D).

Compare and contrast with the JRPG approach to hit points, however, where totals frequently extend into the thousands and, in some cases, the tens of thousands. As a beginning character in a JRPG, you’ll often have a low three-figure hit point total to start with, which will progress towards that elusive 9999 (or 99999) as you level up. Assuming that your average person hasn’t really levelled up a great deal thanks to a notable lack of monsters (big spiders battled with Hoovers notwithstanding) we can work on the assumption that a single hit point’s worth of damage doesn’t really hurt a great deal. ‘Tis but a scratch and all that.

So, since it’s late and my brain is starting to shut down a little bit, let’s take this to the next logical extension and consider a variety of horrific injuries to determine exactly how many HP damage they’d do following the two approaches outlined above. We’re assuming that the person being injured here is not a Destiny-chosen hero who has been infused by the power of the Goddess/branded by the fal’Cie/chosen by Fate/revealed to be the wielder of the legendary blade Monado but rather, say, that man who works behind the fish counter in Sainsbury’s. As such, we’ll say he has 4HP in D&D and 150HP in a JRPG.

Getting an electric shock off an escalator handrail — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action in surprise; JRPG: 1HP electric damage.
Falling out of bed while asleep — D&D: 0HP, lose “Sleep” condition; JRPG: 1HP physical damage, lose “Sleep” condition, afflict with “Embarrassment” (special moves charge slower)
Walking into a coffee table — D&D: 0 HP, maybe stun for a turn, staggering randomly around the room going “OUCH”; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Paper cut — D&D: 0 HP, afflict with “very mild bleeding” status, lose 1HP every 500 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 3 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 2HP physical damage.
Accidentally grating your fingers while attempting to grate cheese — D&D: 0HP, afflict with “very mild bleeding status” as with “paper cut” above; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Stubbing your toe — D&D: 0HP, incapacitate for a turn, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling “FAAAAAAAHHHHK!”; JRPG: 3HP physical damage.
Having a cat that is standing on you decide that it needs to hold on tightly with its claws — D&D: 0HP, 50% possibility of affliction with “very mild bleeding” status as with “paper cut” above, movement forbidden (you’ve got a cat on you); JRPG: 3HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted (you’ve got a cat on you).
Inadvertently ripping off a toenail by catching it on something — D&D: 0HP, afflict with “bleeding” status, lose 1HP every 50 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 8 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 10HP physical damage, afflict with Slow.
Burning your hand on the handle of a poorly-insulated saucepan — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action, forced shouting of obscenity breaks any Stealth-related effects; JRPG: 10HP Fire damage.
Standing on an upturned three-prong plug — D&D: 0HP, movement forbidden for 5 turns, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling “FUCK. Cunt! ARSE! SHIT that fucking hurts. AAAAARGH.”; JRPG: 15HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted.
Banging your head on a low ceiling even after seeing a “mind your head” sign — D&D: 0HP, dazed for one turn. temporary reduction to Wisdom and Intelligence; JRPG:10HP physical damage, 10MP magic damage for a blow to the head.
Getting punched in the face by some drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus but in fact you were trying to read the scrawled sign on the front of that fridge that said that the cheap drinks might actually be a bit out of date — D&D: 1HP; JRPG: 25HP physical damage.
Suffering any sort of trauma to the testicular area — D&D: 2HP (probably won’t kill you unless you’ve just been punched twice by a drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus, but it bloody hurts), stunned for 5 turns, temporary reduction to Constitution; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with “Stop” status as you wheeze and cough in an attempt to recover your dignity.
Getting stabbed in the leg, whether accidentally or deliberately — D&D: 2HP, movement rate halved; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with “Slow”.
Failing to escape the unwanted affections of an amorous gorilla — D&D: Your adventure is over. You have been adopted by an amorous gorilla as its mate. Any attempt to escape will result in death. JRPG: Perform a badly-executed stealth/platforming sequence to escape.
Getting stabbed in the face — D&D: 5HP (you will likely bleed to an unhappy -10HP death), permanent reduction to Charisma; JRPG: 100-150HP physical damage.
Suffering an apparently successful attempt to behead you — D&D: 14HP; JRPG: 150HP
Getting the smackdown from an angry God/being hit with a planet by the final boss — D&D: 50HP; JRPG: 5000HP
Standing quite close to the epicentre of a nuclear explosion, you know, enough to get a good view and think “ooh, that’s a bit hot, I wish I’d stood back a bit more” — D&D: 998HP; JRPG: 9998HP.
Standing in the epicentre of a nuclear explosion — D&D: 999HP; JRPG: 9999HP.

Should you find yourself suffering any of these injuries, though, fear not; for a good night’s sleep cures all ills, as everyone knows. Unless you’re already dead, in which case you’d better get on good terms with your local Cleric or purchase some Phoenix Down.

#oneaday Day 600: Childish Fancies and The Faces Traffic Lights Pull

When you’re a kid — or, more specifically, if you’re me as a kid, your imagination sometimes likes to play tricks on you. Or perhaps it’s not “tricks” as such, but more a sense of artistic verisimilitude, or other such pretentious-sounding words. In simple terms, my mind liked to imagine that mundane things looked like other things.

Electricity pylons, for example, looked like an angry moustachio’d man. They stood there in the fields and meadows of the English countryside, glowering down at me as I sat in the back seat of my parents’ car on the way somewhere. I was always most keenly aware of them on long journeys, particularly the ride from Cambridgeshire to my grandparents’ home in the West Midlands. This was a journey of about two hours or so which was largely motorway based, and so there was relatively little to look at save electricity pylons for the majority of the route. (There was also the mass of TV and radio aerials near the town of Daventry, which our whole family knew was where King Graham was from, even though said farm of masts didn’t appeal in the King’s Quest series even once, disappointingly.)

I don’t feel such a strong sense of “alternate identity” with electricity pylons any more. That side of my childish imagination has gone the way of my childhood. But certain things have stuck with me — chief among which is the fact that I genuinely believe that traffic lights look like faces.

No, wait, stay with me. Let me describe it first and if you’re still not convinced I’ll draw you a picture.

Red lights are looking somewhat surprised, wide-eyed and open mouthed. Red and amber together are still eyebrows raised, but pleasantly surprised — a smile is creeping onto their lips. A green light is grinning with eyes closed — the facial expression most commonly associated with the obnoxiously overused emoticon “XD” nowadays — and an amber light, preparing to return to red, is eyes closed, looking worried — the kind of expression you might pull before driving your pedal car into an expensive plant pot, or something like that.

No? I can see I’m going to have to demonstrate this in a visual manner.

[Pause, while Pete fumbles with Paint.net]

All right. You want proof? Here it is. Traffic lights pull faces. And if I don’t convince you after this, then your sense of childish imagination is disappointingly withered, possibly dead. So there.

All right. That may not be the most compelling evidence ever put down on paper (real or virtual) but it’s what I saw as a kid and it’s what I still see now. I bet there’s something weird you look at in the same way. It may not be traffic lights, but I bet there’s something.

#oneaday Day 153: Things That Make No Logical Sense But Are Clearly True: Food Edition

Life brings with it a number of learning experiences, and you store these pieces of information away in your dome-like for future reference, ready for subconscious recall at any available opportunity. Some of these pieces of information are, of course, complete nonsense and have absolutely no basis in scientific fact, but you become convinced of them anyway.

And so it is that you, like me, may have come to believe such rubbish as the following facts, which are clearly true. And all food-related, oddly.

Coke tastes better in a can.

It just does. Cans get colder than bottles and stay colder longer than bottles. Plus something about the metal particles makes the Coke taste better than the plastic particles of a bottle. There are people who will say that a glass bottle is the best way to enjoy a Coke, but they are wrong.

Sandwiches taste better when cut into triangles, unless they are bacon sandwiches.

This is also true. Eat a sandwich that has not been cut in any way and it tastes clearly inferior to triangular sandwiches. And don’t even get me started on people who cut rectangular sandwiches. There’s nothing even a little bit right about that.

Bacon sandwiches taste better when cut into small squares.

The exception to the sandwich rule is the bacon sandwich rule. Try it. Next time you have a bacon butty, cut it into quarters and you’ll see that it’s clearly better.

McDonalds chips taste better when consumed by the handful.

Milk tastes better swigged from the bottle.

As everyone (who enjoys milk) well knows, having an illicit glug from the bottle is far nicer than pouring out a glass. I fear that some of the Coke Science may be coming into play here.

It’s impossible to make a good cup of coffee for yourself.

Make yourself a coffee. Taste it. Put up with it because it’s “all right”. Now get someone else to make you a coffee. Taste it. Enjoy it. Accept their making you a coffee that one time as acceptance of a non-verbal contract to make you a coffee whenever you want.

Tea only tastes of something if you believe in it.

I don’t believe in tea, therefore it tastes like hot water — particularly the herbal teas. They smell great, but I never believe that they’re going to taste of anything, so they don’t.

Ketchup and HP sauce are opposites, and if they touch each other they will spontaneously combust.

What other reason could people possibly have for putting dollops of each respective sauce on opposite sides of the plate?

You are not allowed to have soup on a hot day.

It’s not that you don’t want soup on a hot day, your brain tells you that you must not have soup on a hot day.

If a piece of food you don’t like touches a piece of food you do like, the food you do like is forever tainted.

This one is actually true. I hate onion — particularly raw onion. Even the slightest hint of a taste of it makes me retch. This includes if a salad once had raw onion on it and said raw onion has since been removed. It leaves a flavour residue that makes anything the onion once touched completely unpalatable.

Cheese sauce can be used as the strongest adhesive known to man.

If you’ve ever burnt cheese sauce onto a saucepan, you’ll know that this is also true.

The most exotic-sounding sandwich on the menu is always the best.

This one is, unfortunately, not always true. Many’s the time I’ve had a chicken tikka sandwich hoping for a gorgeous curried revelation and walked away disappointed, wishing I’d gone for the tuna and sweetcorn.

The dessert that mentions chocolate the most times is the best.

Also not always true, since too much chocolate can lead to becoming completely gummed up with sticky, gooey goodness. And while that can be fun, it can also lead to feeling a bit sick. And no-one likes feeling a bit sick.

If you don’t have some sort of sauce on a kebab, you are Doing it Wrong.

Because why on Earth would you eat that shit if it wasn’t covered in chilli sauce that can strip paint, or garlic sauce so strong it can be used as insect repellent?

#oneaday Day 132: Sleep Tight

(Aside: “Sleep tight”? What the hell does that mean? For one, it implies you can somehow “sleep loose”, which sounds suspiciously like bollocks to me. But I digress.)

Sleeping’s a strange thing, really, isn’t it? It’s something natural and instinctive — so much so that it’s pretty much impossible to explain to someone how to do it. I know I can’t. I know that I can’t even explain it to myself, and the more you think about trying to get to sleep, the less able you are to actually do it. “Trying to sleep” becomes “lying in a dark room with your eyes shut trying not to think about anything and failing”.

Because that’s impossible. You can’t think about nothing. It’s actually impossible. There is no way you can completely clear your mind of absolutely everything, because even if you’re picturing darkness or a black wall or something, you’re still picturing something, not nothing. And your consciousness of the fact that you’re not clearing your mind, the fact that you’re thinking of something, not nothing, that makes things worse.

It gets even worse when it’s late and you know that you actually need to get to sleep otherwise the following day is going to be hellish, especially if you have to get up early. Not only do you have the pressure of trying to clear your mind and get to sleep (and inevitably failing) but you also end up opening your eyes every so often just to check how much time you’re wasting when you could spend it sleeping.

Then you realise your phone’s by your bed, so you figure a quick round of Bejeweled Blitz/couple of levels of Angry Birds/few weeks on Game Dev Story/couple of attempts at Tiny Wings/an episode of Cause of Death is just what you need to make you drop off. And so you play for a bit, and your eyes get heavy, but then you figure “what if someone’s said something interesting or exciting on Twitter?” so you check that, then look at your emails, then possibly send an email or two to people you’ve been meaning to email for ages but never remember to in the daytime. By now, your brain is full of words and jumping birds and Special Agent Natara Williams and so there’s no hope of you getting to sleep any time soon, so you go and get yourself a drink and/or a sandwich and/or a jammy dodger and then repeat the whole process over and over again.

I envy those people who can just keel over in pretty much any context and start happily snoring away. Clearly I need to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber approximately three miles away from my phone and any other electronic equipment.