Topic Lords

By Jim StormdancerComedy Education Arts

Topic Lords episodes

February 10, 202016. I Don't Want To Be Skin Dad
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Lords this week:
Tim made Jamestown and just shipped Jamestown+ on PC and Switch. http://jamestownplus.com/
Kole makes podcasts at Duckfeed. http://duckfeed.tv/
Topics:
2:42 Cat trees for humans.
Ninja Warrior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJPP7M1hQZE
"Find an American Ninja Warrior Gym." http://www.ninjawarriorgyms.com/
7:37 Non-analytical storytelling/writing (flash writing, story time, songwriting)
Alice's Restaurant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
15:08 The ephemerality of AI Dungeon.
AI Dungeon: https://www.aidungeon.io/
AI Dungeon patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AIDungeon
Art breeder: https://artbreeder.com/
25:13 Brett asks: "The assertion that programming and in particular programmers are getting worse."
36:20 Sonder
"This Is Water." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
"Laziness Does Not Exist" https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01
47:48 What determines if an inanimate object (car, home, golf club) gets a proper name.
56:09 Fruity Cheezma
"Cheese Tea: It’s Real and It’s Spectacular" https://www.dinnerpartydownload.org/cheese-tea/
Orbitz (drink). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitz_(drink)
Jim's Fruity Cheezma outcome: https://twitter.com/mogwai_poet/status/1210328506359414785?s=20
Microtopics:
Releasing the same game over and over again because it keeps being your best move.
Suffering through and finding the magic but still believing you shouldn't have had to suffer.
Asking yourself what the problem is and breaking it down.
Being here for topics.
Understanding that the question you're asking is ridiculous but asking it anyway.
What you want only existing for children because their needs are greater.
Using adult-sized playgrounds for physical therapy.
Using adult-sized playgrounds for physical therapy keeping those blades sharp.
The through line from bouldering to Ninja Warrior to Super Mario Bros.
Watching the first half of Full Metal Jacket and thinking the obstacle course looks really fun.
Putting game show contestants in a video game for the viewers at home but the contestants themselves are just looking at a big green wall.
Professional skaters having skate parks in their back yard.
Doing American Ninja Warrior every day and getting a lot more miles on the tires.
Tony Hawk getting away with skateboarding in a 50-year-old body because he's good enough to not faceplant all the time.
Giving a skateboard to an average 50-year-old and saying "go for it buddy."
Restarting civilization around your business plan.
Making up stories for your children in real-time.
Being a DM except nobody else gets a turn, you just keep going.
Five years of daily practice to wake up your storytelling brain.
Going to an Arlo Guthrie concert because you're old and go to Arlo Guthrie concerts.
All of Arlo Guthrie's songs being twenty minute stories like Alice's Restaurant.
Thinking that advice sounds wise for somebody else.
David Lynch's book on storytelling turning out to actually be about Transcendental Meditation.
Actually possibly having deep insights about the universe while being high on drugs.
Writing a book by just writing down something you already said and it feeling like someone else wrote the book.
Letting the story write itself and then taking credit for it.
Having children because you want to become a great writer.
Incurring $10,000 of hosting costs because you misconfigured your CDN.
A text adventure telling you what you did but not telling you what happened as a result.
Markov chain text generation.
AI replacing musicians and ultimately most art.
AI musicians giving you another album from your favorite band.
Exploring AI generated music and sharing your unique discoveries.
Seeing creative work as the last bastion of human work that AI can't take from us, but being wrong.
Feeling wonder at the achievement but also complete dismay that we've made ourselves irrelevant.
Basic income allowing us to look forward to the machines taking all our jobs.
All the advantages of AI just turning into more profit for billionaires.
Skating through a lucid fever dream and trying to make sense of the chaos, but it's really just chaos.
AI Dungeon being a good improv partner but a terrible game.
AI generated text being effectively sampled at an unknown granularity and having no idea if this is a unique sentence or if it's lifted wholesale from a Sonic fanfic.
Programmers getting worse as a discipline vs. getting worse as people.
Forcing everyone on Earth to participate in NaNoWriMo.
Building software on top of a teetering stack of dependencies 1,000 feet high because your company probably won't last out the year.
Programmers getting better in the same way speed metal guitarists are getting better.
Just making the thing and not caring how you make it because it just doesn't matter.
Not bothering working really hard to do the easy part really well because the hard part is what matters.
Companies being possibly good at their focus and everything else being good enough at best.
Some of your best friends being assholes.
The best programmers you've met being super sociable and cooperative.
Staying and asshole and flaming out because nobody wants to work with you or maturing and sanding off the rough edges and becoming more productive and less of a drag.
Not being sure if your co-workers are nice to everyone or just you because you have seniority.
The coming generation of programmers seeing programming as a hobby or a career rather than an identity.
Blocking the guy driving too fast on the freeway but then it turns out the guy driving too fast was going to the hospital.
Doing your best to live like people invented in storybooks.
Realizing that everyone around you has lives just as complex and nuanced as you or anyone you know.
The violence of walking past someone on the street and dismissing their entire context and history because you have no choice if you want to get on with your life.
Projecting an arbitrary order onto the chaos and definitely being wrong.
Definitely being wrong anyway so why not think a positive thing rather than a negative one.
Changing how you see somebody by imagining them differently.
Conceiving of a universe without yourself at the center.
Flying off the handle because you've had shit piled on you all day and not because you dislike Kole specifically.
Running late about 5% of the time you're driving and also being annoyed by about 5% of drivers going too fast because they're just irresponsible people.
Working hard to build positive interactions and trying to see the best possible version of somebody.
Instagram being a source of misery because you're comparing yourself to the prettiest people's prettiest moments.
Comparing your backstage to someone else's front stage.
Choosing to shape your world such that you're not walking around angry all the time.
Having a boat and the boat having a name.
Not giving your cat a name but permitting it to have a name.
Anthropomorphizing the objects you rely.
Calling it "the mud room" even though there's no mud and no room.
Naming furniture that hurts you "kneebreaker charlie" and not hating it so much because it's a little bit funny.
Thinking of an old car that's always breaking down as being like an old friend who's kind of a pain in the ass but you've been through so much together.
Being happier loving things.
A generic bunny holding an Easter Egg that nobody plays with until you give it a name.
The only time you've bought a plant in your life being that time they put googly eyes on a cactus.
Your roommate who took all the bows off of the presents under the tree and then shit on the floor.
Not wanting to be the skin dad.
Having animals to project love onto so your society is more placid and malleable.
Cats being way more lovable than most human children.
Empathizing with the kid crying on the airplane because you feel like crying too.
The kid who's allowed to scream in the grocery store when if you screamed you'd get thrown out of the store or arrested.
Putting hundreds of googly eyes on a Roomba because you can't just buy two googly eyes and calling it "Kos-ba."
Putting two eyes on the outside of the Roomba and the rest on the inside because you don't want to freak out the squares.
What's fruity, cheezma?
Trying to get your friends to follow the script of your joke but they keep making their own jokes instead.
Tweeting about there being no hits for "fruity cheezma" and now there being one hit for "fruity cheezma."
The cheese tea rocking the boba world.
Copping to a certain amount of midwestern provincialism.
The probability of inhaling boba being very high but it's great though.
Blowing a tapioca ball directly into the mouth of your enemy right as they're inhaling.
The end of your boba beverage being like The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
A dare than someone should not have taken and that someone having possibly been you.
Cream cheese and fruit going together.
The kind of logic you don't want to be applying to food.
Putting all your old food combo ideas on the menu without testing any of them because Fruity Cheezma worked out somehow.
Wanting peanut butter to work with sliced cheese because you can roll it up like a taquito.
Figuring out that milk and Cheerios go together because they're both kind of off-white so next you try orange juice and Cheez-Its.
Cheez-Its staying crispy in orange juice because they're so oily.
A Cheez-It being named Arthur and loving its mother.
The driver in front of you making a right turn on red from the third lane over because she was in a hurry to get to the library and walking up to her to ask for reparations.
A telling being told or not being told.
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1 hr 9 min
February 03, 202015. More Real Than Tower Records
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Lords:
Tyriq is working on video games including Catacomb Kids: https://fourbitfriday.itch.io/catacombkids and has a Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/FourbitFriday
Avery still made that solo album. https://averyburke.bandcamp.com/releases
Topics
5:12 Reading non-religious texts as scripture.
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. http://www.harrypottersacredtext.com/
Orphans of the Sky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky
Generation Ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship
Water. https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Water
Wookieepedia has removed Poggle the Greater so I guess their editors are just as serious-business as Wikipedia's.
Video Game Advisor. https://twitter.com/VGAdvisor
18:13 I just found out that "pitched battle" means "pitch" as in "sales pitch" as opposed to "fever pitch."
Pitched battle on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitched_battle
Pitched battle on Merriam Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pitched%20battle
24:01 How do you really use carrier pigeons?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
Pigeon racing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_racing
32:05 Larry asks: "Which ship is the best one?"
Earthships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
Dyson spheres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
Is it Hogwarts or just Britain? https://www.reddit.com/r/harrypotter/comments/ajmpqi/nonbritish_harry_potter_fans_what_are_some_things/
40:53 One of two ways of doing a thing.
52:17 The switch in ancient Greece from clothed to naked sports.
Microtopics:
Taking a bite out of a cartoon bird and leaving a tooth-shaped hole, like a cookie.
Empire Records now being more real than Tower Records.
Not remembering record stores.
Mowing your face into a lawn made of tiny green clones of you.
Trusting that in a couple years your record will be classic enough that dads will want it for Christmas.
Trying to glean philosophy and life lessons out of the Bible even if you don't believe it's real.
Trying to glean philosophy and life lessons out of Harry Potter even if you don't believe it's real.
Star Wars being more real than Tower Records.
Mixing methamphetamines and marriage.
Language changing to mean the thing people misunderstand it to mean.
Drinking tea and watching war as if it's a sport.
Wearing enormous flags so people can see at a glance how the battle is going.
Pantsed and unpantsed meaning the same thing.
The union of shells and the union of unshelledness.
The dude whose job it is to take homing pigeons away from home.
Homing pigeons basically being a rubber band.
Defcon attendees hacking the pigeon timestamp machine to win the pigeon race.
Buying a signed shot polisher from the guy who won the International Barista Championships.
Going to the barista gym up keep your skills up between barista gigs.
Coming back from your barista sabbatical and discovering all coffee is now made in node.js.
Not letting anyone else use the espresso machine you convinced management to pay for.
Being both a barista and a bard at GitHub.
Singing to GitHub employees a tale of the GitHub CEOs valor.
The Roman alphabet existing in the Star Wars universe.
Being a huge fan of Dyson spheres.
Shamefully burying your fanfic in the desert, like E.T.
Wanting to live in a pile of garbage.
Wanting to live in a desert house, but not in the desert itself.
Forming complex structures using simple rules.
Wizards just pooping on the ground and magicking it away.
Being furious when someone peels a banana wrong.
Orienting your toilet paper so it's harder for cats to unroll.
Cats sticking their paws under the door.
Being sad because the doors are too flush with the ground for a cat paw to say hi.
Bringing your guitar case to lure your cat admirer away from you.
Waking up screaming about raccoons.
A cat's ability to form a mental model of the world.
Unloading the front door from memory when you get to the second floor.
Never getting the dog you wanted so you get an iguana instead.
Waking up snuggling a cold handbag.
Whether lizards snuggle with sleeping deer in the wild.
Earnestly proposing a Utopia ruled by you and your friends.
Doing the Olympics naked being a week-long fad at best.
Soccer fandoms gaining political power and going to war with one another.
Soccer's popularity fading immediately after its invention, being just one of millions of microsports.
Going into the wrestling pit with a spring loaded revolver up your sleeve.
Voting somebody off the island of Earth.
Biting open your cell phone tooth and the liquid going into a mold in your stomach shaped like a cell phone and pooping out a cell phone.
There also being a mold for a cell tower in your stomach.
Being qualified to gatekeep a culture because you once dated someone of that culture.
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1 hr 9 min
January 27, 202014. Dad is a Cenobite
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Lords:
April is a park ranger at @aprilsaur.
Danny makes video game documentaries at https://noclip.website/ and is on Twitter at @dannyodwyer.
Topics:
4:26 Intentionally teaching your child the wrong word for something.
Dogtooth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtooth_(film)
It turns out the kid's mom was talking to him in English at the same time -- a bilingual household. https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13011269/klingon-as-a-second-language
The "I Can Eat Glass" project. https://www.oocities.org/nodotus/hbglass.html
14:44 Harbinger households.
https://boingboing.net/2019/12/03/harbringer-of-doom.html
21:29 Men's wallets.
31:45 Quill asks: "I've been planning to change my name recently. The first name that I came up with is 'Quill,' but I can't think of a good last name to go with it. Could you give me some suggestions, or some advice on how to come up with cool names?"
We used Hitch Switch to change our names and it saved us a lot of work. (It still involved a lot of work.) https://www.hitchswitch.com/
The Aphantasia study. https://www.eugencpopa.ro/wp-content/uploads/Afantazia-.pdf
41:17 Shen Yun commercials are literally everywhere.
Shen Yun 2019 official trailer. https://youtu.be/7H-kYoczCp0
Shen Yun is "essentially, religious-political propaganda—or, more generously, an extremely elaborate commercial for Falun Dafa’s spiritual teachings and its plight vis-à-vis the Chinese Communist regime." https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun
How to use an abacus. https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/intro.html
How to use a slide rule. https://www.sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Course.htm
Baby friendly movie theaters. https://babyfriendlyamerica.com/2016/06/movies/
49:50 Woodpeckers can withstand impacts of 100gs.
Woodpecker eating. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPhzGpSspSHx1cA1O-FAAtsFu34MZbg-t
A weasel riding a woodpecker. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/3/150303-weasels-woodpeckers-animals-science-weaselpecker-photos/
The best source I could find describing the mechanism of any self sharpening maw: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.201001546
57:24 Being an extremely unimaginative kid.
Microtopics:
Reading numbers off of a list because topics haven't been invented yet.
Giving someone a funny look where the funny part is that you're not looking at them.
Cows that are so cute you want to want to put them in your mouth, which would surely kill them.
The fuzzy cows only being fuzzy because it's winter.
Falling off a cliff being the only way to hurt yourself in Ireland.
The song they teach Irish children about American tourists falling off cliffs.
Age differences being insignificant when you're millions of years old.
Knowing two people but calling them both the same thing because one of their names is too hard to say.
Which animals are close enough to a dog to call "dog."
A perfect 1960s household but the dad is a cenobite.
Not being sure if you have bad luck or if you're just a bad person.
Product researchers studying what you like because everything you like fails.
Lying to researchers so companies will still make products you like.
Eating banana flavored corn flakes while you watch Milli Vanilli music videos on your Betamax player and Ralph Nader is the mayor.
Moving to a zip code where all your neighbors have your same contrary taste in products.
A wallet the size of four king-sized Snickers bars.
Finding paradise in the wrong gender's department at Target.
Feeling the thrill of being free of a giant heavy brick.
Having to buy an expensive, fashionable watch because otherwise your peers won't take you seriously.
Taking a photo of your ID and just showing the cop your Instagram.
Getting a non-folding wallet so your dollar bills won't have creases.
Explaining to the barista that the last guy put the crease in the dollar bill, not you.
Promising the barista you won't fold the coffee either.
Getting a note press so this sort of thing won't happen again.
Getting to say your cool last name into a walkie talkie at work.
Technically not appropriating anything because you're just using culture that's already been appropriated by someone else.
A day full of mostly making people happy, for a change.
Changing your last name to Ass and owing royalties to Ass owners.
An opportunity for some serious synergy.
Radio listeners celebrating other radio listeners.
Deciding to throw the blue checkmark people in with gen pop.
Waiting until you're on your deathbed to watch something to maximize anticipation.
The last thing you see before they turn off the dialysis machine.
Missing out on pop culture because you always click "skip ad" as soon as possible.
Advertising your audience into submission.
Trying to explain a slide rule without understanding what a slide rule is.
Watching Alien in the theater with a baby strapped to your chest.
Evolving to not kill yourself when you head butt a tree.
Having an incredibly fancy tongue.
Squirrels eating every single bulb from your string lights to humiliate you.
A peregrine falcon drowning a songbird in a creek while looking you in the eye.
Always being sure to catch the woodpecker with the beak facing away from you.
Letting the other kids on the playground do the imagining for you.
Deciding whether it's actually "great" to "e-meet" you.
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1 hr 6 min
January 20, 202013. Kurt Cobain Vocaloid
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Lords:
Shannon Strucci does video essays at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9DnjvObUcvvwrYbJ4-cLQ and is a film correspondent for http://www.strugglesession.us/ and is a teen superhero on https://www.criticalbitcast.com/
JP makes stuff at http://vectorpoem.com, especially game tourism mods: http://vectorpoem.com/tourism/
Topics:
2:43 The pressure to monetize hobbies or perform them for social media vs just having hobbies
13:25 If you could create a 5 acre island in the middle of the remote south Pacific ocean, what would you use it for?
17:25 Level design lessons from Hawaii
Goats for hire, preventing wildfires in California. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56opj5gJhc
Kalij pheasants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C63tykplkhU
28:30 "The 2012 Oakland Athletics adapted 'Movin' Like Bernie' into their celebration routines after Coco Crisp played the song for third baseman Brandon Inge in the team's clubhouse before a game."
Oakland A's Bernie Lean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJMBmsK5hXc
BOILeR season 2017 playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj5IcL4eAydWVS2hTWFIjB7YFJBwt4D3A
34:07 Fictions that, as a throwaway gag, exist within their own worlds (Remembrance of the Daleks, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
Dick Justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3epcX07t78M
Simlish pop songs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeTlCMqy3jFUU_eqNhjiPBO88SU2PXZqI
46:05 First time you tried your favorite foods? Especially if you first tried them as an adult
Brussels Sprouts are less bitter than they used to be. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo
52:06 Time Trap and creating mysteries from the outside in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Trap_%28film%29
A definitive Timeline for Primer: https://unrealitymag.com/at-last-a-definitive-timeline-for-primer/
The self-lacing Nike MAG. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NimGxU4Qnhk
Microtopics:
Being confused by the existence of two separate Shannons.
Video games where nobody bothers you, and arguably that being the whole point of video games.
Doing calligraphy on Twitch.
Doing calligraphy just for yourself and that being way better.
The cost of getting more than one kind of value out of something.
Having an audience and feeling the need to entertain the audience whenever possible.
Finally deciding to get a real job because you have a kid on the way.
Imagining having a job as a programmer and not being happy about it.
Doing creative work in private because you're not good enough to do it publicly.
Producing a complete song in five minutes when it takes five years to make a game.
Always being able to see the geological phenomenon that will take your life one day.
The base of the Sutro Tower basically being a Quake level.
Being shot at as you approach the Sutro Tower.
Seeing Batman's head and knowing which way to go.
DragonCon's failure to produce parchment realm maps.
Hawaii having lava, hostile creatures and good landmarking.
Playing your anime theme song on your phone as you show up at the manga and wall scroll store with your katana.
Having an animated gif that represents your identity.
How to turn Binding of Isaac into an e-sport.
Stupefyingly long TV series lifetimes.
Text-to-speech deepfakes.
Chopping up Garret's voice to create dialog for your Thief fan mission.
Measuring Ian McKellen's voice and sending the data to people who have never heard Ian McKellen so they have plausible deniability.
Living on your own and eating Indian food for the first time.
Discovering a new continent at the Indian buffet.
Not wanting to eat a salad because probably there are bugs in there.
Stepping stones to eating sushi.
Food preferences being heavily shaped by first impressions.
Liking Primer two different ways, ten years apart, and being right both times.
The important lesson being hidden behind the interesting puzzle.
Unsolvable mysteries that haunt you for the rest of your life.
Enclosing a narrative with another narrative.
Assuming the Wii will remain ascendant because it's 1989 and Nintendo dominates your culture.
The story turning to mush when it comes time to actually answer to the question.
The thrill of reactive, improvisational storytelling.
The strength of remaining vague about whether your show is supernatural or not.
Imagining what happens next in a story as a way of enjoying the story.
The nectar that mystery storytelling is trying to extract.
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1 hr 11 min
January 13, 202012. The Charisma and the Loneliness of the Moth Man
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Lords:
Laura Michet makes both indie games and huge megacorp games and just published a short story in Realms of Runeterra. https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Realms_of_Runeterra
Xalavier Nelson, Jr. is a freelance narrative director, currently making An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs. https://www.patreon.com/StrangeScaffold
Topics:
5:10 Moth Man. Discuss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman
The Leatherman, 10-fingered vagabond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherman_(vagabond)
The Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%E2%80%93Hopkinsville_encounter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mothman_Prophecies_(film)
Owls that look like aliens. https://twitter.com/MariettaDaviz/status/1195194263866429441?s=20
Storytelling, with Odds Bodkin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rISdBiNhzb0&list=PLR1edeZ72f3yI53_wj_3WOxSNwlS_1Y-b
18:19 Why aren’t there more types of chair in common use? We have so many chair types in global society and we use basically only Couch and Regular Chair chairs in public.
26:03 Peeing a thimbleful while pregnant, and other shop talk.
30:33 Are you more likely to trust any given dog or any given cat?
36:54 Would it actually be any fun to be an animal?
45:00 Advantages and disadvantages of different book bindings.
Microtopics:
Making an igloo out of rigid body, shadow casting boarding passes.
Cryptids appealing to adult males 18-35.
Cryptids losing their cryptid status when they turn out to be real.
Keeping your fingers because you are wise and have a cave.
Wikipedia pages that really ought to put the subject's finger count front and center.
Confusing Odds Bodkin with Odd Bodkins.
Booking your favorite banjo-playing grandpa to play at your game development megacorp.
Taking a bullet for a friend you wouldn't go to a concert with.
Becoming increasingly annoyed with Richard Gere and his relationship with the moth man.
Distinguishing thrones from non-thrones.
Snarling like an evil prince with your leg over the arm of your throne.
Whether there are more cats indoors or outdoors, especially in El Paso Texas.
Legal prohibition of attempting to disperse a large enough group of cats.
Convincing the judge that your rocking chair was not intended to disperse the cats.
Cat sovereignty.
Rampaging cat unions recognized by the UN.
Reagan sending in cat scabs to replace rampaging cat unions.
Being terrified of military veterans returning home and taking our jobs.
A Jim Stormdancer-shaped hole that an Air Force veteran is destined to fill.
The agent of the greater space, the arch-demon, the plane itself, the car itself, the boat itself.
The rage of seeing a teaspoon of any liquid.
Recording a conversation so you can decide later whether it's ethical to listen to it.
Immediately going to murder.
Trusting a dog to be your accountant.
A dog being much more likely than a cat to be helpful but also being more likely to maim you.
Being a jester for a cat's pleasure.
Being hyper aware of the dark side of dogdom.
Dogs representing in joy in a complicated world.
Needing permission to pee.
Cats not wanting to move to Hollywood.
Cats that are cognizant of a better world they can no longer have.
An animal with a sense of hubris, entropy and regret.
A larger squirrel being mean to you.
Getting the horny disease once a season.
Getting all your horny out of the way at once, like Spock.
Spraying eggs everywhere and not taking up anyone else's time.
When the page curves because the other pages are in the way and the image on the page is annoyingly distorted.
The stigma against the paperback being an act of class warfare.
Wanting the physical trophy of the book on your shelf as much as the experience of reading it.
Appreciating the people who have previously read the same copy of the book you have.
Renting Final Fantasy II from Blockbuster and appreciating the previous player's save file.
Being too mature for fart jokes and then being mature enough to enjoy fart jokes again.
Having to make a noise every time you get out of a chair.
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59 min
January 06, 202011. The Unfriendly Potty Tries To Put It Back
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Lords this week:
Jenni is let's-playing Flower Sun and Rain with Riff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDmj6Kt5p_g&list=PLQqC_GkS4_4YvUIsmDBnd5vX8W1Fme6vu
Jay is late!
Topics:
2:07 Trying to get immersion in a language when you don't know any native speakers & you're not in the country.
Look at that horse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5woNs9WRE
13:52 If you have scars on the inside of your cheek along where your teeth meet, that means your mouth is too small.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linea_alba_(cheek)
Mold-a-rama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold-A-Rama
18:45 When you're not expecting food.
20:38 Road trips in Germany: paying to pee, no tourist traps. (Though public transport owns for non-leisure trips.)
31:18 Thomas "Dolby" Robertson's early 90s online music service.
Manufacture of cheddar cheese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacture_of_Cheddar_cheese
Who coined the term "world wide web"? https://www.quora.com/Who-coined-the-term-world-wide-web
39:07 Being ok with admitting it when you don't know about something.
Quantum suicide and immortality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
One Terabyte of the Kilobyte Age. https://blog.geocities.institute/
Microtopics:
Ostensibly being in a hotel to stop an act of terrorism but first having to get someone's mojo back.
A portable computer that you call Catherine.
A time loop, here on Topic Lords.
Quitting that owl. Telling that owl where he can shove his heroin.
Duo Lingo being named after its founder and enforcer, Duo.
Gamification ruining your productivity because you can't help but care about these poorly-designed leaderboards.
This being a video games podcast now, I guess.
Putting in the effort to suck at a game so you can get more out of it.
Doing a couple squats and all the monsters dying and feeling like a badass because of all your gains.
Guessing that a higher intensity means a higher ratio of reps to jogging.
Guessing that lowering the workout intensity will increase your heart rate.
Squatting and catching the coins.
Being surprised that legal let them put squats in the workout game beacuse you can super fuck up your knees by doing squats wrong.
Learning Japanese so you can watch anime while also keeping an eye on that spider.
Asking your co-lord to stereotype an entire species.
Asking your co-lord about the personality of a spider when you made the spider up in this scenario.
Doing the equivalent of the look at the horse thing.
Explaining funny Youtube videos to each other.
A half hour of getting head massages and trying to make a face as if you're enjoying the head massage.
The mind whisk not working when you do it to yourself but a vibrating one might.
Not wanting to swear around clean boys.
Salvaging a terrible kale broccoli smoothie by adding rum.
Frying your terrible kale broccoli smoothie into falafels.
The only memory you have of a dentist being him telling you that you have a tiny mouth.
Not brushing your teeth or going to the dentist for four years.
Jim's good dentist costing twice as much as every other dentist and only being a 12-hour drive away.
The seam on a molded toy where the mold came together.
Knowing what the other person is talking about if it's the same thing that you were just talking about.
Going to the bank and giving them all your change and them giving you back half a black crayon and a couple of flatten pennies with dinosaurs on it and a lego.
Withdrawing all your money from the bank in black crayons.
Putting down the other half of your hot pepper bacon jam and peanut butter sandwich and later taking a bite, forgetting about the hot pepper bacon part.
A prank show that swaps out your half a sandwich with a different half a sandwich.
Getting food poisoning because someone on a podcast from the future gave you a bad recommendation and you paused it before hearing them say they were only kidding.
Searching for Jim Stormdancer who gave you a food poisoning recommendation on a time looped podcast but no results come back because that's not their name yet.
Realizing at the last second that a delicious gulp of Dr. Pepper is actually milk, then it turning out to actually be iced tea.
Beverageception.
How we all left fifty glasses of water in our room in case the aliens invade because that's a normal thing.
Milk not coming out of your glass when you try to drink because it's yogurt now.
Combination sleep mask and headphones.
Turning twenty half-full cans of Dr. Pepper into ten full cans of Dr. Pepper.
Not being able to take the last sip of anything because that sip is tainted.
Convincing yourself that if you just take a smaller sip it won't be the last sip.
Having five euros worth of pee vouchers because nobody actually accepts your pee vouchers.
Not having any concept of what it's like to drive without seeing tourist traps.
Figuring out what the German equivalent of Elvis is and instantly becoming a millionaire.
Starting to optimize your bathroom trips because now there's a currency involved.
The friendly potty making things weird.
The unfriendly potty trying to put it back.
Getting the smallest piece of chocolate imaginable at the end of your chocolate museum tour.
Helping the prince and his dragon friend make some chocolate shoes after the dragon accidentally melts the previous pair of chocolate shoes and melts them.
Brushing up on your chocolate trivia so you can get the sticker that says "Chocolate Genius."
Hiring a writer and telling them "it's a kingdom, and it's chocolatey -- go!"
Trying to convince museum attendees that you aren't exploiting laborers even though there are pictures of exploited laborers right there.
Theatrically fiddling with your synthesizers at because Channel 9 news is here.
Naming yourself after a music technology company because you also do music technology.
Missing an opportunity to name yourself after cheese.
Cheddars that have not undergone the cheddaring process.
Mistaking Thomas Dolby for Thomas Colby and cheddaring him but not getting cheddar for some reason.
Going grocery shopping with your mom and asking her for a candy bar and an Internet World Magazine.
Sticking with Gopher VR because the World Wide Web will never replace Telnet.
The term "World Wide Web" having been coined by Joseph McCarthy to describe Soviet influence in America.
Nodding along but feeling bad about not being able to connect with these people because you're 15 and don't know anything.
Being proud of not knowing about something.
Choosing to not be around people who make fun of you.
Programming being excellent practice for humility because you're demonstrably wrong all the goddamned time.
Wishing that you wanted to go outside more.
Synthesizer enthusiasts knocking over your trash can to look for patch cables.
Living on a canal and seeing a bunch of cool sea creatures all the time.
Spraying tap water into the canal to attract manatees and every one of them having propeller scars.
Watching shuttle launches from your back yard.
Slipping on frozen sprinkler water and somehow not hitting your head on your way down into the canal.
Every person ending up alone in the universe after everyone else has died.
Answering to Betty because you want to be polite and don't want to correct the person who thinks your name is Betty.
Betty Boop shooting to the top of the list of people you don't want to be confused with.
Being confused about whether Betty Boop is supposed to be sexy or a dog or both.
Betty Boop's apparent sexiness being like reading Shakespeare and not knowing what moiety means.
Judging somebody by the trucks you've seen with bootleg stickers of them on the back.
A bumper sticker of John Calvin peeing on whatever he doesn't like.
Inventing your own web safe palette.
Floyd-Steinberg fans high-fiving each other.
Good lording all around!
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1 hr 11 min
January 04, 2020 63: Topic Lords #63
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1 hr 6 min
December 30, 201910. The Entire Weirdness of Plants
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
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.
Support Topic Lords
1 hr 3 min
December 23, 20199. Ask the Propagated Cactus
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Shannon is a time traveler and an unemployed attorney.
Alex likes oranges and drove the getaway car.
Topics:
1:29 What if people propagated like plants?
How succulents propagate: https://collectivegen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/[email protected]
8:16 Aphantasia and technical work.
Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ): https://www.eugencpopa.ro/wp-content/uploads/Afantazia-.pdf
Alex scored 22/80.
Shannon scored 68/80
Jim scored a perfect 16/80 and needs to reevaluate his life, or maybe the test is totally subjective.
Fun fact: if you do not have aphantasia, you are phantastic! [Ed. note: "phantasic", but ok.]
19:24 Fruit cocktail and manufactured scarcity.
“We offer our maraschino cherries in the following sizes: * Plastic Drum (500 lbs)” https://leelanaufruit.com/maraschino-cherries/
25:59 Mike asks "What is the most famous meal of the day?"
Google has an opinion: https://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+the+most+famous+meal+of+the+day%3F
History of Breakfast: https://books.google.com/books?id=5LghYCqDJw8C
Breakfast Around the World: https://www.thedailymeal.com/travel/what-people-eat-breakfast-around-world-slideshow
30:39 Best smoothie ingredients?
33:55 Participating in religious ceremonies that aren't your religion.
Common religions with tradition of evangelism: Christianity, Islam.
Common religions without: Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism.
Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast: http://ohnopodcast.com/
59:10 Your friend works in a shower curtain factory. He offers you a free shower curtain with whatever you want printed on it. What pattern do you get?
You can actually get shower curtains featuring the shadow of a knife-wielding maniac.
Microtopics:
Not liking oranges because of orange soda and orange-flavored carsickness pills.
Recognizing guest lords from the time they were a time traveler and drove the getaway car.
Growing an entire additional self out of your self if you lose a limb.
Instead of everybody being related to Genghis Khan, everybody actually being Genghis Khan.
The tooth fairy growing clones of you from your teeth.
Each of your tooth clones also losing teeth.
Becoming a shark mom because you escaped a shark attack.
Barbershops installing incinerators so your hairs don't each grow into a full human.
A homunculus made of fingers growing out of your finger stump.
Every animal starting with the butt because the butt is the most important part of any organism.
A new self growing out of your severed finger but also a second self growing out of your finger stump.
Technical workers being worse at envisioning objects or scenes.
Imagining an elephant standing on one foot, wearing a beret, and singing Gizmo's song.
A cartoon elephant standing on its back right leg, on a ball, wobbling to keep its balance, in the savannah, wearing a human-size black beret at the edge of one of its ears, its trunk lifted up, mouth open, the uvula shaking, singing Figaro's Aria.
Thinking of a red cube on a white background.
Imagining Harry Potter turning left at a corner and then the book says he goes right and your mind movie having to backtrack.
An elephant's mouth probably having some teeth in it.
Knowing what a trumpet sounds like in the same way you might know what cinnamon tastes like.
Screwing yourself in a learning process because your teacher doesn't realize how good you are at faking it.
Reinventing the abacus with your body parts.
Turning the slot machine into a foodstuff.
"Oops, All Cherries" fruit cocktail.
Fruit cocktail manufacturers A/B testing cherry ratios.
Liking maraschino cherries because they're delicious.
Hating maraschino cherries because you hate almonds.
Maraschino cherries being flavored with almond extract because cherry pits are toxic.
Solving the murder and it was almond extract all along.
Star inflation in Guitar Hero.
Getting 40 stars being way better than your piddly 5 stars.
Not being able to release this episode because the information in it is too dangerous.
Big Breakfast inventing breakfast to sell more breakfast.
Being confused when someone eats lunch for dinner.
Breakfast looming so large in our minds because what counts a breakfast food is so heavily policed.
Drinking a smoothie and being like "what would be the ultimate smoothie?"
Saving your smoothie for last because it'll be the best one.
Refusing to put fruit juice in your fruit smoothie.
The tipping point at which your smoothie stops being a smoothie and stops being a sorbet.
Taking any cuisine and reimagining the fast food industry around it.
The manifold advantages of hamburgers.
Making chicken tikka masala portable by putting it in a samosa.
Making chicken tikka masala portable by running it through a food processor with naan and drinking it through a boba straw.
Mainlining chicken tikka masala through a one-inch boba straw.
Participating in religious ceremonies while not believing in them or knowing how they work.
Using a small child as an excuse to go to every church.
Trying to use a small dog as an excuse to go to every church but the churches not being super into dogs.
Using a small child as an excuse to do things you'd otherwise be too lazy to do.
Not knowing how to take communion and the guy with the piece of bread just shaking his head sadly at you.
Kneeling perfectly still for two hours in a Shinto ceremony and then suddenly having to get up and come forward and falling into the person behind you because your legs had fallen asleep.
Americans not really knowing how to squat either.
Hanukkah being always the same day on the Jewish calendar but being a roving day on the Gregorian calendar.
Not having any particular bad experiences with organized religion but thinking it's more trouble than it's worth.
Secular churches for atheists who miss the community of church.
Americans becoming atheist and eventually having to figure out how to get back what they lost when they abandoned religion.
The nuclear family only having been invented after World War 2.
Looking fondly on living in a dorm because you were living with a bunch of friends.
Living with a bunch of friends and everybody looking at you funny even though that's how humanity lived for most of its existence.
Avoiding groups because you're frustrated by group-think.
Accepting that a little bit of group-think isn't the end of the world.
Having a good one-on-one relationship with your wife and then ruining it by adding a kid.
Feeling like a boomer because you don't understand how your friends use emojis.
Adding a meta chat room where you try to figure out what the regular chat room is trying to say.
The chick hatching out of an egg emoji meaning "oh that's cute" but the deer emoji meaning "oh dear that's concerning" and the hatching chick with antlers emoji meaning "that's cute but also concerning."
The compromise between efficiency of communication and the difficulty of learning your new language.
Making your shower curtain out of chainmail.
A shower curtain with an image of what is exactly behind the shower curtain.
Having a clear shower curtain so you can see if there's a murderer in the shower without opening the curtain.
A clear shower curtain with a tuxedo body on it so you can take selfies that look like you wear a tux in the shower.
A motorized showing curtain with all the books you don't have time to read printed on them.
Not being able to wash your hair because you have to keep reading.
Allowing your guest lord to be a topic lady.
Not remembering the catchphrase.
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1 hr 3 min
December 16, 20198. I Hate This Gilded Boat
Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!
Lords:
Ryan Ike is a composer at @RyanIkeComposer. Where The Water Tastes Like Wine is now available on Switch!
Gary Butterfield is a podcaster at @GaryBuh (terfieldPodcaster). He will be torturing himself for your entertainment from Dec 20-23. http://duckfeed.tv/duckstream/
Topics:
4:45 How long do you spend on media you don't like before giving up?
19:05 What if food screamed when you ate it??
Barbershop performers usually sing major 7th chords in just intonation. For all the gushing over it in the citations, to my ear the "comparison with equal temperament" at the bottom of the page just sounds grossly out of tune. 31 cents flat, yuck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_seventh_chord#Barbershop_seventh
26:46 The SP-1200 and other fetishized creative tools.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_SP-1200
Making beats with the SP-1200. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npkxjOTkZBM
"'You feel the power in the click,' PewDiePie proclaims while taking his new gaming mouse for a test drive." https://manofmany.com/featured/pewdiepies-camera-desk-setup-gear-money
35:12 If you had anything close to Kojima's level of auteur power in your field, what would you do with it?
45:05 How would you be useful in a post-apocalypse?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
53:30 Why can't we run in a non-athletic setting?
Microtopics:
Introducing yourself like a Pokemon.
Graduating to being level two e-friends.
The Spider-Man channel, the Ice Man channel, and the Firestar channel.
Consuming things between now and when you die.
Making game as if people have nothing to do but play your game.
Being okay with never consuming the art you purchase.
Min-maxing your enjoyment you have before you become a pile of inanimate carbon.
Checking in on The Ice Man Christmas Spectacular and it's already snowing.
Failing to explain the Battle of the Bulge.
The intended cadence of using two question marks.
Topic Joker's Trick.
Associating the sound of screaming with everything tasty.
String cheese yelling "string cheese" as you eat it to raise string cheese awareness.
Everyone remembering where they were when food started screaming.
Deaf people all remembering when they got Subway and learned to hear.
David Fincher's Seven 2: Ate.
The wailing of the ghosts of Hades echoing through Hamilton Middle School.
The screaming and eating minutes.
The horrible price of being a Topic Lord.
All the layers of your sandwich singing like a barbershop quartet.
Humanity learning to photosynthesize.
The glucose in an IV drip whispering the time you'll die as it goes into your vein.
Mailing your representative to ask them to vote no on the Screaming Food Act.
The totemic power of a sampler with 256k of ram.
PewDiePie endorsing a particular brand of streaming microphone.
Making a cooking knife made out of dinosaur bones.
Recording a song with Kurt Cobain's guitar.
Recording a song with a guitar made from Kurt Cobain's body.
A rock legend being bone-morphed into a Stratocaster.
Being totally down with your bones used for something cool.
Being a Topic Knave.
Being called a genius until it breaks you.
Being confused about whether a boat is a fortunate or unfortunate boat.
Putting together a team to make the game to match your vanity soundtrack.
Making a soundtrack you could paint on the side of a van.
Auteur power inevitably turning you into a monster, and choosing to lean into that.
Living with the comfort hose pointed at your face.
Having no knees and a lot of money.
Eating yourself because you are among the 1% most self-actualized.
Dancing in a cage for a warlord because nobody needs your chiptune cover of Carry On My Wayward Son after the screaming vegetables cause World War 3.
Getting real good at the spoons because pianos are too heavy.
Accidentally starting fires with your thick prescription glasses.
Murdering every Applebee's employee so you're the best chef in your future village.
Being good with children even though you hate them.
Terrifying passers-by because you just wanted to get your shopping done faster.
Running to catch your yogurt like it's a bus.
Onlookers wondering why you're always breaking up with Janine every time they see you.
Thinking you're going to get a free sample but instead getting a sales pitch.
Talking into a celery stalk to get out of an awkward situation.
Support Topic Lords
1 hr 7 min