It will be in my best interest to never ever count up how much money I send to Amazon every year.
I gave in and pre-ordered Fallout 3 and Rock Band 2, after ordering some random kitchen equipment.
I already had five different book and video game pre-orders outstanding.
It’s entirely possible that I have a problem.
A trusted secret agent may or may not have been dispatched to a less-restrictive state to replenish my stocks of Crème de Violette and investigate the possibilities of the intriguing-sounding Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot and Orchard Pear liqueurs. It’s hard to say; I would never subvert the kind guidance of the PLCB like that, so it may all be a cursed hallucination. Surely I just went through the long and painful Special Liquor Order process, ordered the legal minimum twelve bottles of each variety, and waited a month or so for the PLCB to protect me from the dangers of unlicensed liquor. That has to be what happened.
Picked up Braid yesterday.
I’m pretty sure it’s the best game I’ve bought on Xbox Live Arcade so far (and I’m counting the time I re-bought Puzzle Quest even though I’d already beaten the DS version so I could play the Xbox-only expansion), and it’s in the running for best $15 I’ve spent all year.
The time mechanics are beautiful, and the way the game builds on them with each additional world is very smooth. World 2 seemed simple but pretty; then world 3 took that, twisted it around, and gave me my first “whoa, didn’t see that coming” moment. Then I hit world 4 and had to flail around for a while to un-stick my brain. Now I’ve solved that one, and world 5 is currently making me gibber a bit.
If you have an Xbox 360 and haven’t picked up this game, please do so immediately.
It’s damn hot tonight, so after taking the dog for a walk, I decided it was time for a nice tiki blender drink. It’s hard to find good recipes for these things; mostly you end up with sickly-sweet messes of fruit juice, pineapple chunks, and rum.
Fortunately, I’ve found a couple of tiki sites that have much better recipes — ones with actual complex flavors and interesting combinations. Tonight’s drink was from a recipe round-up on one of them, Kaiser Penguin:
Scorpion from Steve Crane’s Luau, 1958
Add it all into a blender, and mix until it’s more or less smooth. The original recipe claimed “for 3 seconds”, but that didn’t really seem like enough in my sad little blender.
It’s delicious.
I need to try some of the other recipes on that page soon.