Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   unexpected appetite supressant
Friday, December 25 2009
So it was Christmas and, as always, Gretchen prepared me stockings full of goodies. But they weren't actually stockings, they were slippers substantial enough for a stroll to the brownhouse. This year's contents were the usual staples like nuts, booze, flashlights, and candies, though the candies tended to be a bit healthier than they'd been in the past, with packaging touting their vitamin C content. Several weeks back, Gretchen and I had felt both somewhat broke and largely satisfied with our material possessions, and we'd semi-jokingly agreed not to get each other any presents this gift-giving season. Since then, though, not only have we become less broke, but Gretchen bought some large pieces of furniture, proving that perhaps she hadn't been perfectly satisfied with her material possessions. Still, the only thing I got her for the holidays was a blaze orange baseball cap onto which I painted the word "VEGAN" in black acrylic paint. I gave this hat to her this morning, but then, in addition to the slippers and edible goodies, Gretchen proceeded to give me a configurable star chart and a number of books (including a couple teen-oriented pulp paperbacks by Madeleine L'Engle, two of whose books I'd greatly enjoyed as a child).
After I'd had my coffee and snacked a little on my Christmas treats, I went into the woods and brought back another woodcart full of the last of the super-dry wood I'd recently cut up.

This evening Gretchen and I went to a seasonal Christmas party. I won't say where or with whom so I can have more freedom in saying what happened. It was a pot luck at a house where people can lay around on couches watching teevee, eating pot brownies, and drinking Scotch if the moods suits them. I myself wasn't there long before a glass marijuana pipe was handed to me. I took precisely one puff from it and my evening was changed.
I hadn't been that stoned in a very long time. At first it hit me so hard that I feared I might have one of my trademark panic attacks. But that feeling eventually subsided and I even found myself being reasonable sociable. But what little appetite I'd had vanished just before we all sat down to eat. I made a perfunctory effort of going to the buffet and putting tablespoon-sized globs of various things on my plate, but once I'd sat down, it took me awhile to develop the fortitude to put something, a single noodle, in my mouth. I masticated it and it seemed to spread out like glue in my mouth. It felt like I was needlessly making my mouth dirty. All I wanted was water, lots of it. Gretchen was amazed to see me drinking something that didn't contain a detectable concentration of alcohol.
Later after helping with the dishes, I played a game of Balderdash, a board game where people compete by coming up with realistic-sounding definitions for extremely obscure words in hopes of tricking other players into selecting that definition as the the most plausible one. It's unusual to find a game where creativity (as opposed to wisdom or luck) is the talent being rewarded. But not just any sort of creativity is rewarded; one only gets points if one fools other players into selecting your fake definition. If you go crazy with the sexual or fecal imagery, you might get some laughs, buy you won't be playing to win. For my part, I was in it to win it, and my best plays were strange enough to be true, such as defining "rabitator" as "Someone who hides coins to be found by the poor." Having some training as a botanist, I actually knew the definition of "drupe," though I didn't remember the part about it having to contain a hard seed.


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