Sep/091
Peace and Hominy
Greetings from Charleston, SC! I’m down here for work, spending the entire week at a pimp Residence Inn. I’ve tried to make it feel residential: the first night I was here, I hit up a supermarket and picked up some Edy’s Lime Bars and Snapple. If I have those and my laptop, I can reside just about anywhere.
This room definitely feels like home. It’s covered in half-empty bottles and Edy’s Lime Bar popsicle sticks. Cozy.
Shrimp and Cheese Grits? Emphatic YES.
I have a little kitchen, too, this being a Residence Inn and all, but the one advantage of business travel is that it’s the perfect excuse to eat out. There are many tasty restaurants in Charleston. I’ve hit up two of them: Hank’s and Hominy Grill.
They’re expensive – I spent $50 at each – but very yummy, and I was in need of some serious food-therapy this week. Hank’s was good for seafood – I had a great Alaskan salmon – but Hominy Grill is what I really needed. I don’t know if you travel for business, but it is a freaking lonely endeavor. Couple that with the disturbing subject-matter I’m working with, and you have the makings of a serious caloric emergency.
After spending three days thinking about the end of the world, I needed to do something human, something life-affirming, something primal, and extravagant. It also had to include cornbread.
Sep/091
Type “Y” for Yes
So I’ve discovered an awesome website at virtualapple.org. Using a handy Java applet, you can load up any number of old games from the Apple II and have yourself a nostalgia party. We never owned an Apple II, but my school did, and the other night I loaded up “The Oregon Trail,” which was a game I remember distinctly despite the haze of 22 years years since playing it.
If you recognize this screen, you are freaking old.
First, I’d like to point out that I was a gifted child. I must have been, because to navigate the menus in these old games takes a freaking computer science degree.
There is no “yes” button to click, no animated, glowing, shiny thing with arrows pointing at it.
No. We had to type the letter “y” for yes and “n” for no.
This may be one of the first and most shocking pieces of evidence that I am, in fact, older than dirt because what sounds older than “Back in my day, we had to type our commands! None of this mouse-click whizbangery!”
I was shocked also, upon playing Oregon Trail, at how horrific the sound is. At every fort you hear some different American patriotic theme, warbled out in a single line of beeps and boops… literal beeping and booping… rendered with about as much emotion as a napkin. Compared to “Mass Effect,” which is currently eating my life on my XBOX 360, Oregon Trail grinds like a wheel from the stone age.
And yet, there I was the other night, playing it again after two decades, and having fun.
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