December 30, 2019

10. The Entire Weirdness Of Plants

1 hour 2 minutes

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Lords:

Erica talks about birds and plants on Twitter at @YerrikTRB and wants you to listen to the Frog Fractions 2 soundtrack. https://ryanike.bandcamp.com/album/frog-fractions-2-original-soundtrack

Justin talks about puzzles on Twitter at @firetrucknpl

Topics:

2:34 Children are terrifying.

8:41 The Frog Fractions ARG, culminating in its Christmas release

The FF2 ARG on the Game Detectives wiki. https://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Frog_Fractions_2

Befunge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge

22:02 Bringing interesting puzzles to people with boring jobs.

Reading with Rover. https://www.readingwithrover.org/

28:00 Paraphrased asks: "What were you doing before you're doing what you are now?"

41:38 Weird Christmas / holiday foods.

Traditional Lithualian Christmas Eve dinner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%AB%C4%8Dios

Lithuanian Christmas Eve recipes. http://www.maskoliunasfamilyproject.com/christmas-eve-recipes-and-others/

Vinegretas. https://www.receptai.lt/receptas/burokeliu-salotos-su-pupelemis-1455

Yule Sandwich Log. http://www.midcenturymenu.com/2011/01/the-mid-century-menuyule-sandwich-log/

52:37 Weird Christmas / holiday birds.

Passenger Pigeon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

54:12 Incorrect plant genera in video games.

Plants of Star Trek. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23plantsofstartrek

Birds of Google Maps. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23birdsofgooglemaps

Columnar cacti. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23columnarcacti&src=typd

Flora of the Colorado Plateau. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_of_the_Colorado_Plateau_and_Canyonlands_region

Hecho cactus. https://imgur.com/gallery/kVXqnhR

Organ pipe cactus. https://www.nps.gov/articles/organ-pipe-cactus.htm

Cardon, the world's largest cactus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnWeiSi9s2w

The black bars on the left of the screen in Atari 2600 games ("hmove lines") are caused by repositioning sprites in the middle of drawing the frame. http://www.ataricompendium.com/faq/faq.html#general18

Extrasolar. https://extrasolar.com/

Microtopics:

People who celebrate Christmas on January 6th.

Addressing the least-served Christmas demographic.

Muting your mutuals because it turns out you have no common interests.

Not being sure if the Frog Fractions 2 Soundtrack liner notes exist any more.

Your three year old opening all the Advent Calendar doors and hiding the chocolates in his Halloween bag.

Your three year old pushing chairs from the kitchen to climb on top of the refrigerator because that's where you keep the cookies.

Developing problem-solving skills long before you develop a sense of ethics or self-preservation.

Your two year old deciding it's time to be a cool pirate and picking the biggest sword possible out of the kitchen knives.

Taking comfort in only half of prehistoric children dying before the age of five, so with modern medicine and safety advances your child has a pretty decent shot.

Half of all children dying before the age of five so they never amass the numbers needed to overthrow the adults.

Your one year old overcoming the child safety lock by ripping the entire door off.

Half your age plus seven being your personal cutoff for when someone stops being a child.

18 year olds being allowed to vote and drive and get married.

Teenagers having infinite energy to learn and get things done, but no judgement for what are good things to learn or do.

Describing your relationship with your high school student as a jockey/horse scenario but not being sure if he's the horse and you're the jockey, or vice-versa.

Placing bets on the three-legged toddler races.

Taking bets on high school track events being illegal, so that's why a Silicon Valley startup has to do it.

Cleverly tying your collective bragging to the holiday season.

Writing a book about the Frog Fractions 2 ARG and hiding it inside of another book.

Making a GameFAQs-style guide to document how the game works while it's still in your head.

Your Skype work partner probably not looking at the screen, but maybe they are, maybe they know you're not working.

Teaching people to read by having them read to dogs because dogs are uncritical and just love the attention.

Skyping with a dog all day to motivate you to write your book.

Having a friend come onto the show and do a dog voice because real dogs pick terrible topics.

GameFAQs turning out to actually have standards.

GameFAQs rejecting your submission with the rejection note just saying "Boxing."

GameFAQs rejecting your submission with a subtle joke about the previous game in the series.

Actual FAQs being pretty rare on GameFAQs.

Writing an angry letter to the New York Times about your walkthrough being rejected from GameFAQs.

Programming languages that are deliberately constructed to be difficult to think about and work in.

The Museum of Artifacts From Collapsed Timelines.

Leaving your release date in the hands of the players and players deciding you should release on Christmas.

Letting ARG audience members take over your ARG design because you're busy making an executable.

Wanting something to be a commercial success and so hiding it as well as possible.

Reneging on your vow of obscurity at the last second and raking in the dough.

Not being able to put your game on sale because it would violate truth in advertising laws around the world.

Pricing your game high because games should cost money -- but that also meaning people have to pay that money.

Trying to convince the IRS that they've already deposited the check for the amount they're sending you a due notice for.

Enabling your bank teller to feel like a private investigator.

Adding quest flavor text when you ask things of retail workers so they feel like they'll get XP by helping you.

Asking the restaurant pianist to play Happy Birthday in a minor key and the pianist just being grateful that you didn't ask him to play Billy Joel's "Piano Man" for the fortieth time today.

Hearing somebody playing Gershwin in the next practice room over and playing Gershwin with them and them fleeing because the conservatory is haunted.

Asking the librarian to research paranormal activity on your property.

Tracking down the records of everyone who died in a house but entirely ignoring the fractals that may have died in the house.

Not accepting that although some things are known, you'll never know how they're known.

Realizing that economics and economists are dreadful.

Luminary physicists all having killed themselves because nobody took their theories seriously in their lifetimes.

Hiding behind freelance work because you're terrified try to to follow up your accidental success.

Not knowing what you're going to make, but definitely knowing how to sell it.

Bacteria just hanging out and waiting for you to succumb.

The bacteria in your jaw being the true legacy of your life's work.

Taking until your mid-30s to figure out how to work on purpose and not just when you're excited about something.

Sleeping when you want to sleep and getting up after you're not tired anymore.

Meeting a wife and coming to a sleep schedule compromise.

Having more dictionaries than you've ever had in your life.

Thinking your traditional holiday foods are weird until you hear about the other guy's holiday foods.

Pagan traditions intersecting with Christmas in ways that lead to incredibly weird food.

Thinking of whales as fish because you're allowed to eat them on Christmas Eve.

The food you like being impossible to find in a store or restaurant because it's horrifying.

A beet salad made with sour cream and beans and vinegar and peas and carrots and onions and a huge amount of pickles and nobody wanting to try it because it's the color of Pepto Bismol.

Eating poppy seed soup and failing every drug test for the rest of your life.

A puce soy milk served cold.

Skimming off the thick layer of poppy seed fat so your soup won't poison people.

Tiny dumplings representing food for the dead, because the dead don't need to eat a lot.

Pirate Santa, Santa's evil brother who likes puzzles and hiding presents.

Pirate Santa running the Christmas Puzzle Hunt to find all the ingredients for the Christmas appetizer log sandwich.

A Yule Sandwich Log, made from hard-boiled eggs, crumbled bacon, bread, avocado, pineapple, pimento cheese, shrimp, chili sauce, cranberry sauce, deviled ham, peanut butter and a dill pickle, all dipped in cream cheese and decorated with canned pears and maraschino cherries.

A combination of savory, sweet and salty that is pleasing even if you've read the recipe.

A garden gnome except it's a duck.

Decorating a duck for holidays rather than a tree.

Two ninja turtle doves.

Being disappointed with depictions of columnar cacti in popular media.

Being disappointed with depictions of Atari 2600 games in popular media.

Being subpoenaed to the Supreme Court to testify about whether an Atari 2600 video capture is a forgery.

Star Trek either being filmed in California, or every planet in the universe having a mediterranean-style biome.

Plants on Earth being way weirder than alien plants depicted in sci-fi.

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