So, I feel weird about this, but.

I have been learning about ebooks.  If, while I was doing that, you were busily harboring a secret desire to give me money for my bullshit, your chance has come.  (It’s pay-what-you-want, because probably your secret desire is to give me and my bullshit the smallest amount of money possible, and I fully support you in that.)

My practice ebook took six hours to write.  It’s quite short, and wildly uneven in quality.  Mostly about poop, and Peach & Mario’s sex life.  There are nonsensical instructions on how to make a dragon out of fish, and really skinny eyebrows for the moon.  There’s a guy called Harpsichordus Repairmagnet and the almost-adventures of Waffles the gentleman thief for whom I was too tired to actually write any adventures.  It might be worth a dollar, if you are the kind of person who runs around the zoo throwing dollars at ostriches.  It is probably definitely worth at least less than that.

Anyway, it’s a thing.

We shall never speak of it again.

(Update:  Well, damn, someone bought the thing at the ostrich price.  I’m up 56 cents!)

Spring Thing ’13 – Andrew Schultz’s A Roiling Original!

Tonight’s RSS buffer brought to you by Mouth Audio Interests, a division of Ryan Veeder.

me:  Mouth Audio Interests has got to be a front for something
Ryan:  that Pauly “Big” Mouth has his fingers in a lot of pies
me:  and a lot of pies in his mouth
Ryan:  one of his many piefingers is his literal pie business
he needs literal pie money to feed a figurative monkey
me:  ahahahaha
Piefingers is also the name of his literal pie business
Ryan:  it’s a front for literal monkey trafficking
me:  most of the overhead involves keeping the literal monkeys from eating the literal pies
Ryan:  figurative overhead
the literal monkeys are kept in the basement
me:  right, where it’s cooler
Ryan:  the pies are in a cooler!!!
me:  IT ALL MAKES SENSE
Ryan:  Pauly Mouth is a guy for whom
things just kinda
mesh

[spoilers begin here]

Monaco and Feminism, or, Give Me A Female Cleaner and A Smashburger and You Can Have All the Redheads You Want

Okay, I’m'a get real feminist for a minute, because God knows I don’t get enough death threats and people telling me I’m ugly.

[more words if you click a thing]

Spring Thing ’13 – Adam Holbrook’s Encyclopedia of Elementals!

Shameful things in my search history:

ikea horse puppet
i don’t know, son, we’re lions
rollerskating waitress jobs phoenix
ridiculous lion noise
echidna penis
ersatz homosexual relationship
larp not about vampires
a picture of a vagina
novels printed on toilet paper
don’t shoot the puppy
david bowie’s area
daisy dukes with the pockets left in

(If anyone you know needs a rollerskating waitress, hit me up!  I would be a great rollerskating waitress, or any other job I can do on roller skates!)

[spoilers begin here]

this is just to say

I have eaten the plums that — wait, fuck, no

This is just to say that the name of this blog is one of those phrases you can sing to the tune of Camptown Ladies, and it took me over four years to notice that.

Carry on with your bad selves.  I am going to sleep now.

doo-dah, doo-dah

Spring Thing ’13 — Mostly Useless’s Witch’s Girl!

Okay, Polodna.  I don’t think you managed to play half of last year’s IF Comp games.  You still haven’t played Hoosegow.  You think you can put on your big boy pants and play three whole Spring Thing games, or do you need Mommy and Daddy to take care of the monsters driving motorcycles in your closet?

…I’m a big boy.

[spoilers begin here]

AAAAAH THERE IS A GIANT COCKROACH IN MY APARTMENT AND ALSO IF COMP IS HAPPENING

Ryan Veeder’s Google+ informs me that it is that time of year again, the time when it becomes remotely feasible to shut off the air conditioning and open the windows in this godforsaken desert paradise, and I become disproportionately excited to play games AAAAAH FUCK GIANT COCKROACH

…I was just about to say that I get disproportionately excited to play games about people’s dirty apartments, and to wonder aloud what would happen if people spent as much time cleaning their dirty apartments as they did writing games about them, and then I looked to my left and saw a huge fucking cockroach, which I know from the Sims means my apartment is really filthy.  So this is what I get for feeling superior to people.  I will show you how big this cockroach is.

I tried to knock him into a bucket but he wasn’t having any of my bullshit, and now he is hiding somewhere in my kitchen.  I don’t know where.  All I know is that once I’m asleep, he is going to crawl into my nose and lay his eggs in my brain, and if I am very lucky this will kill me.

Lesson learned, I guess!  (Although I really do look forward to playing people’s dirty apartment games.)

Spring Thing has games in it this year!

Go check it out!  I’m going to, as soon as I’ve located and eradicated the rank odor emanating from this sink full of dishes I should have washed but didn’t.  (You guys read this blog because you enjoy up-to-the-minute reporting on the tiniest details of my domestic situation, right?  Because I can totally set up a webcam.  Giant pandas nothin’, it is my unwashed rice cooker that will move you to tears as it forces you to contemplate the beauty and fragility of human existence.  Also, if I leave it in there long enough, it will probably grow some sort of tree, which will be interesting scientifically.  And violate the terms of my lease.)

Oh, and if you haven’t played any of the Apollo 18 tribute games yet, you should go do that!  I wrote one of them, so everyone who’s been up my ass to write a game gets to be briefly excited before the disappointment sets back in.  What more could a person ask for from life?

Oh, I should mention

My new blog is off the ground, mostly thanks to Riff writing a whole bunch of stuff like a real Koopa Troopa. Also, if you’ve ever wanted to help Taco Fiction’s Ryan Veeder pick out Etsy neckties, this Google document is the place to go.

IF Comp ’11 – Lynnea Dally’s The Tenth Plague!

Why is Lynnea Dally’s name familiar… oh, she did last year’s cheerful zombie hospital game where many of the male players were surprised to suddenly discover they liked boys.  I enjoyed that one well enough.  Hopefully the tenth plague, the plague of cat videos, is equally peppy.

Let’s find out!

[spoilers thrust into earthly existence below this line]