Horseshoe Crab Blood Purity Test

I get sick a lot in the winter. This year, I didn't. Four months into the season and still going strong! But now I'm paranoid that I'll get sick, and so I see every sniffle as an indisputable diagnosis of some new animal flu. Winter gets under my skin.

Be the Beat

I just spent a little under an hour obtaining and fiddling with an erotic text adventure from my youth. It's called A Night With Troi, and you cannot fathom how embarrassed I am for admitting this. I put up a good facade of solidarity with my fellow nerds, but I have a threshold where my racial memory of swirlies and anti-proms kicks in and I start backpedaling so as not to be one of them. A pornographic (text!) game based on Star Trek (:TNG!) is far beyond that gentle Rubicon.

And it's not even good! Imagine: your partner disrobes, pecs/breasts almost glowing in the soft light. You embrace, the only thing separating the two of you a layer of glistening sweat. You whisper in his/her ear: "I love you." S/he stiffens, and says, monotone, "I don't understand the word 'love' as a noun." A tin-eared text parser sucks all the sexy out of the room. Getting the game to recognize your words is an awkward struggle, and even then it may deny you for reasons that aren't clear.

But because it's so clumsy and frustrating, there's an inestimable feeling of reward when you finally consummate your keyboard-clacking coitus. Around ten or twelve, when I was reaching the age of sexual immaturity, a I'd play strip poker games on my 133Mhz Compaq. No matter what Microsoft does, there is no Achievement that can truly capture the accomplishment of spending two hours at bad video poker just to see a boob.

A Night with Troi is some tedious smut, but its antique presentation and straight-up oddness really endear it to me.

Addendum: Actual gameplay footage!
>replicate lube_
The harmonics of the replicator play briefly, and the tube of lubricant you asked for appears.  You pick it up and nod in approval.