Have you ever walked along the beach and caught your foot in sea weed? Only to realize it was dog poo. But then to save face made up a story about an electric eel, a chocolate bunny and a jug of precariously balanced milk?

No? I thought as much. You guys sure live boring lives!

You feel there’s no tomorrow
As you look into the water below.
Its only your reflection
And you still aint got no place to go.
– Deep Purple (Sail Away)

(Yes, I took the pic)

Ka sisaliku tee kivil jätab jälje
Kuigi mi seda ei näe.

(A lizard’s track over a stone also leaves a trace
Even if we do not see it.)

- Karl Ristikivi

Rajat loved to talk. He also suffered from a gastro-intestinal condition brought on by an overdose of Diet Pepsi which caused him to ignore all bodily and verbal cues which told him to, “Shut your mouth and stop talking.”

He was religious to a fault which means he wasn’t religious at all. But what he lacked in religion, he made up for with an extra large can of bird feed. “Aaa Aaa Aaa,” he’d go as he fed the pigeons. And “Aaa aaa aaa” would go his elderly neighbour from her balcony window.

Unknown to Rajat, his elderly neighbour had the hots for him. One could tell she had been a beautiful woman in her prime. But now, in the even years of her life, she wondered what it would’ve been like to have macadamia nut tea with a dash of lime.

Meanwhile, Lime “The Sour” Lemon was planning his escape from the cold storage facility. Equipped with a spoon and a nearly frozen tadpole, he felt he could just dig a tunnel to China. Little did he realize that tadpole would grow up to be King Tuk-a-Luk — the last ruler of Sparta.

King Tuk-a-Luk peeked into the horizon at the dotted Persian ships. With 300 of his warriors, he started forming phalanxes until the Immortals told them they couldn’t play with no clothes on. Angry at being told off, he started the Xerces Corporation to manufacture printing equipment. His subcontractor misspelled it as Xerox — and the rest, as they say, is history.

So all was well in the Kingdom, until a malcontent by the name of Frank Vivala began agitating for revolution. Vivala, it is widely believed, was jealous because King Ralph was more handsome than he was; in addition, Vivala may have also been suffering some sort of degenerative mental disease brought on by sexual promiscuity. In any case, Vivala claimed it was unfair for the King to collect taxes without letting the general populace have a say in how the country was governed. Apparently in addition to his other flaws, Vivala was unclear on the definition of the word “monarchy”.

Welcome to the Kingdom of Loathing - a turn based RPG in which you have to fight monsters and complete quests while building up skills to move on to harder levels. What makes it different, is that this game is a reader’s delight! Some of the in-game monsters and items -

Spam Witch

You’re fighting a Spam Witch

You look into this seductive creature’s eyes and feel as if she can make your sword longer, your bank account bigger, your waist smaller, and show you the secret habits of barnyard animals. You fight to resist her charms.

Wolf Mask

When you put this mask on, you feel as if you’ve finally discovered the real you, the you that no one else can see. You are a wolf, deep inside. Well, actually you’re not.

Trouser Snake

You’re fighting The Trouser Snake.

This is the Trouser Snake, so named because it resembles a snake wearing pants. Pants with only one leg. So basically it just resembles a snake.

Sticky Meat Pants

This is one sticky pair of meat pants. Which, on the whole, is much better than a meaty pair of stickpants. Those’d be hard to put on.

If you’ve got time to kill, go ahead and indulge yourself in the Kingdom of Loathing.

There’s a time when a man needs to fight and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny’s lost, the ship has sailed and that only a fool will continue.

The truth is I’ve always been a fool.

– Edward Bloom (Big Fish)

Life may be tough, but I refuse to give up . Watch out for my paper at IJCNLP-08.

Jyoti was a hyperactive teenager. She just didn’t know when to stop. She tapped her feet incessantly on the wooden floor. “I wildy wonder if I can tap dance,” she wondered wildly. So she went to the kitchen sink, climbed on to the medieval tap and started dancing.

She was a tiny girl. Sort of like Thumbelina. But larger. People called her Fingerina. She hated that name. “It is demeaning to women,” she would say, “And pretzels.” She thought about pretzels now, especially the little boy she had fashioned out of mini hard pretzel rods, and it made her happy.

She thought of all the wonderful times they had spent together. That’s when she slipped on a soap sud and would’ve fallen in, had a spider not swung to her rescue.

Moral: Spiders may be good people but they are better insects.