Varia varietatis, or your All-About-The-Mollusc guide.
Here it ize :
Did the Eulorian miners find Elusive Purple Snails (only the specimens which can't elude for shit) ? They did. Did Daniel pray for dungbeetles and in so doing managed to get some ? He did! Did Foxy promise to make a craft bot, and in delivering it supplied us with Slithy Tove to last for perhaps even a while longer ? She did!
Meanwhile on the other front, did everyone make piles upon piles of Indistinct Bark Shavings, and were thousands of Spicy Moss found and dug upi, and are we set to make hundreds of Indistinct Oil which will allow for maybe a dozen or two Multifunctional Samovars ? Yes, yes, a resounding yes!
Does this put together mean we can now make Mollusc Cheese ? Obviously! And add the Mollusc Cheese to some Tuber Milkii and Dulce De Lecheiii can we thus make Suspect Ointment ? Sure we can! And is that the main ingredient in Unsteady Scaffoldingiv (alongside some Grubsilk Thread which only really needs Alchemist Gin as the Swarming Grubs are found, and so we only need Daniel to make more Two Leaf Clovers and we're set) which is in turn the main ingredient in the Worn Old Screens, which is the absolutely requisite tool of the trade of Booquinism ? Why yes!
And do I have the one, single, unique recipe for that tool, which, once this whole shebang is ready, can be given to a noob to craft and perhaps loot more, so once reproduced we have now actually unlocked the Booquinism line in the proper sense ? Surely! Or else, of course, fail to make it and be utterly fucked, because there's no Sacrifice without Booquinism, not really.
Adventure! Excitement! Risk and Intrigue!
Coming soon to an Emacs near you.
That's it. Automatic update is now off.
Except... it isn't. Ahh, that exquisite flavour on the roof of your mouth, when "Automatic Updates" pops up a textbox to "inform" you that your OS is "no longer supported"v which can not be closed because the process that spawned it died in a "futex wait me" state as if this is actually a fucking thing, and then it can't be turned off, because if one goes to follow the process that supposedly turns it off that one discovers the respective variables were zeroed out already.
That exquisite flavour, just like the sweet sweet taste of mollusc cheese in a light smegma sauce.
So a friend of a friend of mine which might even be me goes to check out the supposedly fabulous Tigre casino, greatest achievement of an Argentina that may be anything you wish but certainly no es un pais pobre. Because it's too busy being "rico en recursos umanos". That's right, it's not a beautiful landscape befouled by a stupid people, what is this! Un minimo respeto por el befouleador!
Here it is :
Leaving aside the cheapest-of-the-cheap "here's an industrial wall we covered in some metal profiles as the absolute lowest cost approach to facading in history - we'll call it artistic! Futuristic! Bauhausistic! Beeheheheheeee!" and the asphyxiating odour of disinfectant recirculated through poorly filtered AC a trillion times that'd go with it... there isn't much left of this Trilenium "here's our casino by the railway tracks" thing.
Specifically : the first floor is a random collection of one arm bandits scattered around the floor, with nary a consideration to anything. It looks exactly like the LAS waiting area for the non-first class travellers, whatever they call them these days. Then an escalator takes you to the 2nd floor.
The second floor is a random collection of one arm bandits scattered around the floor, with nary a consideration to anything. It looks exactly like the LAS waiting area for the non-first class travellers, whatever they call them these days. Then an escalator takes you to a wall. I am not making this up, you literally arrive to face a wall. A woman in uniform that was apparently taking a stroll through there stops to let you pass through an eight inch crevice to the left, between the wall and the rotating handrail of the escalator. It takes you a while to realise this is actually a PATH, intended for access. It should be funny to see what happens on that third floor if there's a fire. Or if there's a fat person. Or a horde of fat people on fire. But anyway.
This is where a collection of bovine middle aged men, dressed exactly like you'd expect retired train conductors and ex car mechanics to dress, all turn around to face you, because the girl's in proper stockings and you're actually wearing a suit - neither of which they've ever seen in the flesh before. So you start laughing and turn away, because no, I'm not about to sit down and play poker with the blue collar crowd.
So you go to try and have a meal instead, and discover that nope. All Tigre's got is icecream, specifically, one icecream parlour, with pretty decent icecream (this is very common in Argentina, blessfully). Other than that, the closest approximation to a restaurant is a nice enough looking place manned by an inept middle aged schmuck that approached me as "Chicos", and visibly shook when I told him to "Cartas, chico." in a moderately derisive tone. Apparently he understands deeply, with every fiber of his being, why it's a little off for a young man to address his imperial oldass majesty as "boy", but he somehow is still working on deciphering the mystery of the ages as to why it's improper for servants to address their masters thus.
And then the menus had beer and sandwiches on it. Because totally, the Spaniards of 1600 made a beautiful Moorish fortress right in the asshole of nowhere so that a bunch of Argentines can then sell barrio parichada fare in it, four centuries later. The flow of history all makes sense to me now. And remember! Con balotaje, ganamos todos!
Given the day today by yours truly, an everbrave Mollusc dissector and for his sins undesirious Mollusc coneisseur.
———- Four ordinaries! Which did hit my dwindling supply of non renewables to some degree, but hey. [↩]
- Just needs Nondescript Tubers, which I have, and Indistinct Oil, which we can make and have been making and will be making omfg already. [↩]
- Mostly, Tuber Milk. [↩]
- Not to be confused with Escherian Trestlework, har har. [↩]
- You know the joke about the inept builders who built some walls but the only way they stood up was if they were left behind there to actually HOLD THEM UP, and so they wanted to add food and drink on the construction bill, forever ?
Yea, exactly, just like the DoD works. [↩]
