49. A Very Wet Hell
September 28th, 2020
1 hr 8 mins
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Lords:
- April is @aprilsaur on Twitter.
- John remains a mystery.
Topics:
- Climate-aware architecture
- On Dungeons & Dragons: focusing on the characters vs focusing on the story
- Why do people say "ahh" after taking a drink
- Miko asks: "Perpetual Stew, a food that instead of being cooked once and then eaten, continues to be cooked for up to five hundred years (while occasionally also being eaten, but not in its entirety)"
- That strange feeling when you move to a new state and the laws around plastic bags are different, and other weird differences between places
- The Afghan-Mexican fusion burrito shop in Albany that we didn't name on the podcast: https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-hot-shop/Location?oid=1113434
- You want the "tropical" or the "cajun," depending on how spicy you like it.
Microtopics:
- Seasons that aren't summer and states that aren't California.
- John of the Commonwealth of Virginia Johns.
- Calling yourself a Commonwealther but not knowing all the deep Commonwealth cuts.
- Not having a city name because you're between cities and so calling yourself a "census designated place."
- An experience that you had that is in the past.
- Plugging a suspiciously expensive hat that players love.
- Not being able to have hobbies because you just bought a house.
- California, where it's sunny for hundreds of years and then suddenly a thunderstorm covers the entire state in tens of thousands of lightning strikes.
- Not having to get your home repairs done before people visit because nobody can ever visit.
- The good news is: podcasting.
- Not having had a basement in decades.
- Discovering that Virgina is a tiny piece of a giant land mass called North America.
- Buying the Frog Fractions hat DLC for all your friends.
- An extremely Californian form of hell.
- Architects forgetting that climate exists after air conditioning is invented.
- Fantasizing about winning the lottery when you never play the lottery.
- The downside of climate control via architecture.
- The feeling of tatami mats under your feet.
- Realizing that having bugs in your floor sometimes is just the price you pay for having floor mats that bugs like to live in.
- The tortilla mouse story.
- Discovering that a mouse is living in your bag of tortillas and signing a contract with the mouse that it will just eat the tortillas and not destroy the rest of your house or breed.
- Cats discovering extremely stale candy in the cabinet under the sink.
- A squirrel spinning a corn tortilla like a steering wheel and eating it from the outside in.
- A squirrel spinning a tortilla like a sign spinner.
- Joining a D&D campaign late.
- Knowing what your characters are about and creating situations where the characters have something to play against.
- Making sure your players have stakes in the story being told.
- A dope encounter on a luxury liner where you have to follow a bard with an anti-magic field.
- A D&D campaign where all the players just hang out and eat Doritos.
- Crafting a narrative by building outwards from a single dramatic moment.
- Not knowing anything about the company you own half of.
- The mystery of the Ultraviolet City.
- Collaboratively inventing a story with your friends.
- Having a beverage with you and being able to test a beverage hypothesis.
- The sensation of a little bit of cool air passing over the various nerve endings in the inner mouth area.
- Whether pooping is a social construct.
- A two year old fixating on the color of Pepsi.
- Tripping out on your own sensory experience.
- Some real good honest mischief.
- Taking a deeper breath so you can drink more.
- Getting out the whiteboard to teach your infant son how to drink and belch.
- A gentle sweet boy forcibly closing your laptop so you'll pay attention to him.
- Perpetual stool, which also hangs around for 500 years.
- Living for as long as you can keep the stew going.
- Being caretaker for a stew that is 300 years older than you.
- Making sure you eat all the meat out of your stew before it goes bad and spoils the rest of the stew.
- Filling your house with the smell of fresh baked bread.
- A bread recipe where you just put all the ingredients in a pan and then bake it.
- A gradient of cheese.
- Broccoli with horrible stinky cheese melted on top.
- Jumping on any excuse to make an elaborate ridiculous meal.
- Visiting your friends in Virginia but never talking to them because of COVID.
- Going ballistic whenever you see a deer.
- Making everyone sign an NDA before they can listen to this episode of your podcast.
- Some sort of palace of food.
- Two grocery bags being filled before you even realize what's happening.
- Stipulating that the burrito rant has occurred.
- Differing vehicle registration laws in Virginia and California.
- Running a bunch of stop signs because they don't write the word "stop" on the ground in Portland, they only have the red sign.
- How to proceed with the ARG when you believe you've solved the mystery of John's identity.