One of my more recent blog finds has been Melmoth’s Inferno. I can’t resist it, thanks to such engrossing posts as An undead berry is a Lichee? (which suddenly reminds me that I have a delectable can of lichee nuts in my kitchen, hmm… You know, they actually do kind of look like undead berries):
Considering the sheer variety and culinary diversity that exists in MMOs these days and seeing as adventuring folk spend so much of their time masticating, why not making eating into a mini-game? Yeah, you could make it such that combining foods into ‘courses’ will enable bigger and better buffs as well as healing and replenishing mana. If you have a small soup starter and manage to follow it up with the lamb shanks and roasted vegetables, you’re allowed to try for the power combo finishing desert item! But only if you ate all of your brussels sprouts and you used the correct spoon for the soup. Otherwise the buff fails, and you go straight to bed without getting to fight Bregnip the Merciless.
Does it make me a bad person that I think this actually sounds hysterically fun? But then I’m one of those loons who totally enjoys the farming and cooking crafts in LotRO.
Anyhow, eating a pork pie and suddenly being able to bench press an elephant, or eating cheese and suddenly being more intelligent but only for thirty minutes! is totally bizarre. And what if you melt cheese on a pork pie and eat that, does that count? What happens then? Are you suddenly able to bench press an elephant with your brain? Can your pectoral muscles calculate pi to four hundred places? Food would become dangerous, you wouldn’t know whether to put mustard on your pie in case it combined in some weird way that gave your nipples the power to whistle dixie every time you’re struck in combat. For thirty minutes only.
Go on, read the whole post. I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. Make sure to always read the comments on his posts as well, because they’re frequently just as hilarious. Next in my list of new favorite reads is his entry, You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, which brings us the adventures (such as they are) of Timothy and Trevor, two troll guards sent to find out What’s Going On around the troll encampment:
Timothy: “You’re a peon at work. Good. Good. And you’re another peon, well done. Ok”
Trevor: “You’re a guard, that’s fine. And here’s a priest, lovely. Lovely.”
Timothy: “And here we have the corpse of Tony, who appears to have been smashed to a pulp with a large blunt instrument of war. Ok, good, good.”
Trevor: “Well I think that’s everything, shall we head back to base, Tim?”
Mark my words, someday this blogger will be getting his books published, if he isn’t already. If the rest of us are lucky, that is.
The human mind is not developed to deal with people being nice to it over the Internet, it’s fully evolved to deal with trolls and flamers and other general nastiness. But pleasantness and compliments? It has no comprehension, just no idea what to do…
So far it’s got me to put all my house plants in the freezer, get all the food tins out of the larder and stick them to the car, and fill the bath tub with odd socks. Now it’s got me mowing the carpets.
Thanks for the kind words.
Hmm. What other odd things could I get you doing? This could turn into a lovely social experiment! One with plenty of odd socks and mowers! *rubs hands together with glee*
You’re quite welcome. I have tons of fun reading your posts. 🙂