Category Archives: What I Did Today

Oregon Trail Live

Posted on by

Long work day made me not want to draw so in retaliation I’m going to try something that subverts the blogging form, to prove that work cannot prevent me from fulfilling my potential. To do this I am going to play the original apple version of oregon trail using an emulator at the same time as writing a blog about the adventure.

To set the tone here is a picture of the start up screen:

Now that we’re fully immersed in whatever century it’s supposed to be we can begin to prepare for our pioneering journey into the unknown!

04/04/2013 20:04

First I have to decide whether to be a banker from Boston, a carpenter from Ohio or a farmer from Illinois. Apparently this is a difficulty setting so I will be a carpenter because I don’t want to fail but also I don’t want to feel like I didn’t deserve to win. I don’t think a carpenter would make it to Oregon though so I’ll probably die of cholera but definitely not before my wagonmates do. I don’t know why I want to go to Oregon, it’s not even going to be warm.

Naming yourself is easy.

Ahah. I thought we were in the 1800s, there were no Superguys or Poopants before then of course. Missouri is miles away from Oregon. These people are stupid, just stay at home, it’s probably not that bad. Also Florida is closer and there are no mountains in the way, go there if you have to go somewhere. We’re leaving in April cos it’s miles and the grass should be growing in April.

Matt is a rediculous name.

Matt, I presume you’re the only retailer around here seeing as you’re selling both oxen and clothes. Don’t be ripping me off like you’re obviously going to. I should really set up a rival shop seeing as you need some competition and I really need not to be going hundreds of miles in a cart. Matt you have a smug face and you’re going to get me killed and take all of my money. (Matt also sells food, ammunition and wagon parts)

The music is yankee doodle dandy in midi and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. I may have to listen to yankee doodle dandy for over 1000 miles.

It’s okay it’s stopped. So I bought a bunch of stuff but Matt wouldn’t let me buy the 5 wagon wheels that I wanted so I was pretty bummed out about that.

I’ve begun the trail and I thought a good thing to do first would be to stop and have a chat. Some trader told me to swap my food for indian clothes and also pay indians to guide me. People just want me to give give give all the time, what sort of trader tells you to trade with someone else. I hate these people.

More yankee doodle dandy. Horrible.

That was quick. This trailing is easy. I’m going to do this in no time, I just need to make sure I don’t talk to anyone. Music is different in Kansas. Life is great.

Wat? Whatever Rebecca, get out of my way.

The river is only 4 feet deep. That’s pretty much nothing.

going for it.

Kansas music is doing my head in.

Music has changed. It’s a lot worse now. There is a wagon crossing this river already, pretty sure I can ford this one.

Okay Marnie, why don’t we just stay here and concrete over the prarie together. You’re a real downer Marnie.

This river is 2.9 feet deep. That’s like half as deep as the other one.

going for it.

That was the sensible option! Why am I being penalised for this?

I’m suddenly in trouble. Food goes down really quickly. My crew is deeply selfish and I’m

getting suspicious. I’m looking at Tomcruise.

Quite jolly music at Fort Kearney. Feels like it’s mocking my food situation. I have changed the portions to “meagre”. Probably a bit late for that seeing as I have no food.

I have gotten nowhere. Need to up the pace. Have changed the pace to “strenuous”. Should probably get some food.

I bought some food at Fort Kearney but it hasn’t lasted long. I think I need to slaughter a crew member. Probably Tomcruise.

Oh god I’m going to die. The music is auld lang syne. In midi.

Alonzo you need to quicken up dogg, I suggest “strenuous”. Do you have any food?

Socks! Why did you have to ingest people’s toilet doings?. I knew we should’ve eaten Socks while we had the chance. Now she’s all gross. I can’t figure out how to hunt. I have so many bullets.

A bad thing just happened and I had to restart. I am attempting to get back to where I was how I did it before. Sadly the first time I tried to recross the Kansas river Poopants, Nice Hat and Socks drowned. That would’ve left me alone with Tomcruise, so I’ve restarted again.

(Broken wagon tongue. Socks has a snake bite)

I lost Poopants and most of my stuff trying to float across the Kanses river. Started again.

(Nice Hat broke her leg. Whilst sitting down in the wagon presumably)

Kansas River

(Socks has a broken arm)

Big Blue River

(Tomcruise has Typhoid)

Fort Kearney

(Poopants has Typhoid)

Chimney Rock

HAHAHAHA YES!

I’m going to begin again proper from here with my beautiful wild fruit. Now life is good again (despite the broken limbs and diseases that the others have) I think I will try hunting because I found out how.

YES!

I love this country. I love my country. What a beautiful country.

Heh yeah. Greenhorns are idiots. You’re alright, mountain man.

Broken axle. Good job I bought 3! Totally predicted broken axle, if not the need for food.

Nice Hat has a broken arm and a broken leg. I think we should eat her but Tomcruise fancies her even though he has typhoid and she can’t stand to be near him.

“De Smet”? Is that a name in America? Music at independence rock is midi version of Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

CUP OF TEA BREAK

This trailing is thirsty work. I suggest you have a rest now too and listen to that Gary Puckett.

MATT!

Snow on the mountains in June. I am surely dead.

I have been given an option to head for Green River crossing or Fort Bridger. I guess this is where I decide whether I am lazy and suicidal or reasonable and boring.

I checked the map and Fort Bridger is miles out of the way. I’m going for the river. 57 miles to the river. This was definitely the right choice.

One of my shoddy oxen is injured. Haven’t heard anything more about Tomcruise’s typhoid. Or Poopants’ typhoid. I wonder if they’re dead.

Easypeasy.

Boohoo, well maybe you should’ve bought more food ya idiot. Everybody knows people eat food. I should probably leave Tomcruise with these guys. They could eat him when he gets better. If he’s still alive.

Right, Green River is over 20 feet deep. Even I’m not that stupid, I’m taking the ferry.

Made it. Had to wait 4 days.

Saucy. Music: When Santa got Stuck up the Chimney. In Midi.

Lovely. Music: Midi version of that song about skipping to the toilet.

Doing good. This is a piece of cake.

Poopants has a broken arm. And typhoid still? Dunno.

Native American. I’m bored of wagoneering, no one told me it would go on so long. To be honest I thought I’d be dead by now. I’m going to ford this next river whatever. I think it’d be good experience for the crew. I’m really tired.

6 feet deep. I’m sure they can manage that by now.

I’m counting that as a win. Pioneering is so easy. I’m straight up running for it from now on. The wuss bags in the wagon can just shut up.

I’ve spent my last money on not very much food. There is no water around here despite what that larking family would have you believe. I think they must eat pioneers, I should be careful.

So selfish. Selfish bragger. What about me? Give me some food!

Big news! Socks has died. This means we’ll have a lot more food to go around. It’s sad I guess but I’m sure it was quick and painless, you know those snake bites.

An ox has died. It’s about time to be honest.

Poopants has another broken arm.

Oooooh wowee. Music: Ob La Di Ob La Da. Midi.

Jeez. People are well moany around here. I can’t even bring myself to take a screenshot of what they’re saying. You’d think they weren’t even surrounded by lovely mountains and the beatles.

A thief stole 60 pounds of raw meat from my typhoid ridden wagon. Look at him, it’s the last you’ll ever see of him. What an idiot.

Poor Connie. I bet she was whining right up until the moment she died of broken arms and typhoid.

Nice Hat has a snake bite. That’s good because we are short of food again. Hunting is easy but it takes time. It’s better for people to just die. Although the thought of being left with Typhoid Tomcruise and Paralysed Poopants is not a happy one.

Poopants has measles. Hahaha, what a dork.

Nice. Music: Midi Love Is All Around

Poopants is dead. Good. Oh, when will all the suffering end? What a mad world.

I fear this may be my ultimate choice. I’m going to float. Rivers have been good to me.

Ah dang. I didn’t expect any skill from this game. Right I’m going to have to focus here, I don’t think I can bring you any images of my river journey.

Well I made it. To summarise, I crashed three times and lost hundreds of bullets and some clothes and some stinking meat, none of which I need.

Oooh Aaaah. Music: Horny by Mousse T. Midi version.

Oh. That’s it. It’s over. I’ve made it! Time to start my new life with Tomcruise and Nice Hat. I expect we shall fight over her and one of us will shoot the other. Or she will shoot both of us and eat us when farming proves to be just as hard as it was before. Lets see how many points I have received!

yay.

yay.

That was actually horrible. I don’t think I subverted the form so much as give myself a headache. Anyway, maybe that wasn’t totally boring? I’m going to bed.

04/04/2013 23:37

Orange Bam

Posted on by

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To celebrate our hall being orange now me and cecy have invented a cocktail. The cocktail is called Orange Bam. It is definitely something that could be called a cocktail.

To make O-Bam you will need:

Firstly grab that orange and take a knife to it and skin it.

Skin it whole, you want the pelt to be in good condition but make sure you get as little of the disgusting white fat as possible. If there is too much fat you need to pin it down on a surface and scrape it off like I had too. Cecy got much less fat but failed to remove all of the skin. Once you’ve skinned the orange put a measure of gin in a glass and push the peel right down in there.

Leave it to steep until the gin looks like weewee when you haven’t drunk enough water:

At this stage it is delicious but it is not Orange Bam so you cannot drink it. I would have recommended not making O-Bam and just drinking this but you failed to remind me before we began.

Next juice the orange but save a slice and halve it first. Then arrange the peel back into roughly the shape of an orange inside the glass.

Pour the gin, a measure of cointreau and the orange juice and a couple of ice cubes (these should really be made from orange juice but we forgot) into the glass.

Then place the half an orange slice in the glass like half a manhole cover…

top up with blood orange sanpellegrino…

and enjoy!

Either enjoy alone wearing orange clothes in an orange room…

(I don’t have an orange t-shirt anymore. I had to wear one that matches the door frames)

or with friends!

Bam.

You’ll notice that the far too sweet and mediocre squash-like initial taste gives way to the cloying stingy sensation that you get when you’ve eaten too much skittles. It’s your own fault for making Orange Bam in the first place. You knew it was going to be rubbish.

Goodbye Mister Bendy Man

Posted on by

I have written in the past about how useless mister bendy man is. And he is.

Finally I became tired of him getting away with doing whatever he wants all the time in a drawer and not working because he’s useless at his job and he doesn’t even care. I decided the only way to deal with people like that is to burn them in a fire.

I did bring this up with him a minute or so before I was going to burn him in a fire and he didn’t seem too surprised, I guess it happens to them all eventually, and so without any further ado, I burnt him in a fire. I only regret not doing it sooner.

I documented it because he deserved it:

Here he is saying “thank you for doing this, I appreciate it really. It’s just nice to be out of the drawer where I could do what I wanted. And it’s nice to see you, of course.”

 

 

 

Here he says “so goodbye then I guess. um…oh it’s quite warm isn’t it, this fire? you know I never thought it would be quite this warm but now that I’m so close to this fire here I can feel how warm it is and I can appreciate how much warmer it’s likely to get when I’m inside. That’s funny isn’t it? ha ha.”

“hmm?” I say.

 

 

 

Here he says “lordy, I am extremely flammable. That’s good though I suppose, to get all this over quickly. I’m sure that’s why you…um, ugh, it’s really very hot.”

I say “ooh”

 

Here he says “uck…ak, gah. oh. blimey. You know, you don’t realise how much you like your hands and feet until they’ve been melted by a fire. hey, ha, I’m like that man from that film Volcano aren’t I? Ha ha. He melts too doesn’t he, and he has a family and stuff. Doesn’t he? And he was saving those people too. Wasn’t he. Hey?”

“okay”

 

 

“You know, this is real…ugh..pfff…uh,nice isn’t it. Just two guys hanging out together, having a…real good time beside or inside an incredibly hot fire. Gosh, oh gosh, it’s a shame we won’t be able to do this much longer. I suppose great times can only last…uh, so… do you think you could jus…hu? no? okay that’s fine I’m sure.

“no”

 

“i love you…(?)”

 

 

 

What I Did Today (three days ago)

Posted on by

Today (three days ago) I went to Cornwall. Cornwall is a place that is so far away that the people there think that it is foreign.


It took me over twenty five years to get to Cornwall and when I got there I spent four and a half hours faffing about in this field.

After over twenty five years and four and a half hours it was getting pretty late and so I rushed down to Lands End before it got dark. On the radio it was the inquest into Nigel’s death, David Archer sounded well guilty about encouraging Nigel to go onto the roof. Nigel couldn’t undo double-knots and so now he’s dead.

It was a very good thing that the clocks went forward last weekend, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see Lands End.

Lands End is like a theme park where the theme is about how there isn’t any ground anymore. The same theme can be found at any other part of the seaside, as well as beside a lake or at the swimming pool. However, when you got past the amusements the view was an okay thing.

In the long queue out of the car park there were signs advertising other bits of Cornwall. One of the signs said Why Not Visit the First and Last Inn in England?. I had been disappointed that there had been no pub at the theme park and so I said Why Not Indeed!

Inside it was a bit crummy and sounded like jack johnson and so I took my local booze outside, which was nice.

Driving after that I saw this sign:

And I thought I Have No Idea What That Is, but as we were in the spirit of Why Not Indeed! we (me) went there anyway. It was down one of those wiggly roads that you’re not sure if you’re supposed to be on and the car park was basically someone’s back garden. This is where I was:

I had to film myself walking through the fogou (tunnel) because I was scared and the extra degree of separation provided by the screen made it less scary:

It was a very wonderful place and as I was leaning on the gate imagining campfires in the village my phone rang and I pondered on the contrast between the intimacy of the huddled stone ruins and the void between me and whoever was on the other end of the phone. It was my dad talking about european breakdown insurance cover.

As I drove away the radio was all talk about how our brains can trick us and our memory is radomly selective and unreliable:

See. (probably don’t want to watch that^)

Then I got lost trying to find the premier inn.

This is a photo of Price-Drop Tv:

It is the only channel available in premier inns. The broken human goon presenter is a new one and he wasn’t very good at describing tat. My favourite one came along later on and shouted an impressive medley of adjectives towards the bedding he was lolling about on. And, as the numbers on the product total counter rapidly approached zero, I slipped into an apoplectic stupor. I had a long dream about a sociable but drug addled village. It got nasty after closing time.

Treasures of the A1

Posted on by

It’s my intention to draw some of the monolithic cruddy fabrications along the side of the A1. I think they would make a nice series of collectable cards. Probably best make those from photographs though. The illustrations can go inside the presentation book. I managed to stop and grab photos of a couple, so if I never get round to it at least here is documented that I tried a little bit.

1: Ancient Little Chef

This is quite prominent and you will have definitely clocked it if you’ve passed it. Someone else was also taking photos of it when I was. I think it was someone from the estate agents because that makes me feel like my thoughts are original, instead of lazy.

 

 

2: Waywest Cafe

The A1 goes north/south so I expect the inaccurate name is why this place has no customers. Also it exists in a place that is psychologically disagreeable. No one stops at the petrol station because there’s a better one a minute down the road and there is a land of static caravans next door. The guy in the white van thinks i’m a mental. Columns are pretty sweet though, it’s what the acropolis would look like if there was a massive poo on it.

What I Did Today

Posted on by

Today I was in a dark and humid land of towering crates and I trod on a dead mouse. It was like treading on a snail only more substantial. This extra substance, however, was balanced by less of a contrast between soft parts and crunchy parts. In all I would rate it just as disturbing as stepping on a snail.

 

 

 

 

 

A live mouse before it died and I stepped on it.

(also, it’s weird that I equate stepping on a snail that would be alive to stepping on a mouse that was dead. I don’t know why this is.)