Saturday 6 November 1999

Comic book

Pic of the day: The 1986 reprint of the arch-Norwegian comic book "Ingeniør Knut Berg på eventyr" (loosely, "The adventures of engineer Knut Berg").

Yes, ladies and gents: In the beautiful mountain kingdom of Norway, the arch-hero is the engineer. In a world far away from Dilbert and his cubicles, the Norwegian engineer roams the realms of space and time, conquering everything in his path. Not least women's heart, since the Norwegian engineer typically is a man. Incidentally, there is still a lack of engineers here. And while we in theory have an immigration stop, this does not apply to people from the EU, and in practice most allied nations.

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Saturday! :) Relaxing all day long, all alone! Woo hoo!

Well, almost all alone. In the afternoon, I suddenly got a visit from an old Christian pietist friend. It was quite interesting, we talked about the needs of the world and the upcoming Armageddon. My friend is convinced by the many earthquakes recently that the end of all things are near. Oh, and ethnic wars, which Jesus predicted. (One will notice that for a long time, wars were not ethnic. Now they are.) I would certainly appreciate if Jesus would return soon, but I don't see things being quite as desperate as my friend.

This particular man seems to think way too highly of me, despite my attempts to explain that I'm not a saint, I was just seeking the truth. (I've found some of it, I sincerely think, but not all.) On the other hand, I am sure most of my pious friends of old have a rather sinister image of my life, and that of other people who don't regularly attend their fellowship. Many of them used to be convinced that right outside the door was a cesspool of depravity, where most people live in perversity and substance abuse. OK, perhaps most people do, but fairly moderate perversity and substance abuse. Like pinching backsides and drinking beer. Not that I do that.

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While on the general topic of pinching backsides, you know I love Italian food. Especially all things pasta, except when spinach is involced. And since it is Saturday, I naturally cooked my own meat-free pasta dish with lots of cheese. This time however I tried "Synnøve" pizza cheese: According to the print on the plastic, it was good for pizza AND pasta. Well, no. The melting point is too high. Sorry. The taste (vaguely cheddar) is not too bad; but I am not likely to buy it again next time.

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Also today I've fired up the old machine and played Master of Magic. Possibly the world's best strategy game ever, despite its poor AI and the fact that it runs on a rather narrow range of machines. Old PCs would not be able to run it, and modern PCs don't have this much free RAM available for DOS. There is also the issue of sound card compatibility. This is just too bad, since the game offers a dizzying range of races, types of magic, and heroes. The game can be replayed dozens of times with all new play styles. It has a cult following on the Net, the central node of which would be Jarvinen's Unofficial MoM page.

The dedicated MoM player will have guessed that the title of my site, the Chaos Node, is a concept from Master of Magic. It is actually not a mis-spelling of Piers Anthony's Chaos Mode, which wasn't all that bad a fantasy book for younger readers.

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Speaking of younger readers, here's a random piece of statistic from Psychology Today's Sep/Oct-95 issue. (Sure, it's been a while, but I doubt they are much different today.) At any random time of the day, 57% of boys 14-15 and 42% of girls same age said that sex had crossed their minds within the last 5 minutes.
I guess even reading Piers Anthony might be better than just let them sit with their hands in their lap, then.


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