Slate Night

Always eating the same old burgers, cheese sandwiches, greasy pizzas, French fries and other take out food just seems plain boring to me. Why don’t you let your curiosity guide you and try some new international cuisine the next time you decide to eat out? After all, who says you need to travel to experience the diverse cultures of the world?

And when I say ‘International’, ‘Chinese’ is probably the first thing that pops into your mind. But if you really want to explore the diversity of our planet you need to look beyond the Chinese restaurant around the corner. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut doesn’t count as Italian cuisine either. If you are wondering from where to start your journey, here are some ideas:

If you are looking for something truly exotic, Indian food should be just the right thing for you. From flatbreads like chapathi, naan, dosai, and poori to many other delicacies like steamed rice, tandoori chicken and spicy curries, the variety Indian food offers is endless. This is probably the ideal cuisine for vegans and vegetarians.

The world’s best gourmet kitchens are in Paris. French cuisine normally consist of an array of dishes prepared from vegetables, fruits, fish, sea food and meat served along with bread, pasta, crepe or rice and an assortment of cheeses and wine.

Italian food seems to be one of the most popular choices. After all who can resist the taste of a crusty and cheesy pizza or some delicious pasta? Some of the most commonly found ingredients of Italian food are tomatoes, eggplant, olives, garlic, pepper, cheese and meat. And don’t forget to stop at an Italian café for some tiramisu and cappuccino.

Mexican food is for all of you who can muster the courage for a really hot and spicy experience. It mainly consists of corn and beans, along with vegetables and meats loaded with chilies and other spices. Chocolate has also played an integral part in Mexican cuisine throughout history.

So are you ready to let your taste buds take you on a trip around the world?

It’s very rarely that I get any decent rhymes or tunes stuck in my head. Today is no exception. I’m making lemonade and suddenly there are Lemmings in my head: dozens of little blue squeaky things. They’ve constructed ropes and ladders of toothpicks and lemon peel and they’re wobbling away home. But where is home? I shake my head and they fall off, screaming into a jug of ice-cold lemonade. Lemons and Lemmings.

What exactly are Lemmings anyway?

1. Fat, herbivorous rodents that should under no circumstance be mistaken for guinea-pigs because guinea-pigs are actually cute!

Oh this is interesting! According to learned men from the 16^th century, Lemmings all fell out of the sky during a storm.

“Mass suicide” – That’s what we call the accidental mass deaths that occur when lemmings migrate in large groups.

Need evidence?

What I find most stunning is the (newly learned) fact that Lemmings (right) were based on lemmings (above).
The wee turf-haired creatures I sacrificed years ago in Lemmings Revolution actually made death cute.
Imagine a fat rodent dying. ‘Splaarffth!’ Blood, fur, guts and chipped teeth. Goddamit lemming, why can’t you be more like your distant cousin Lemming, and leave life in a way that makes the murder of small creature enjoyable?

I’m not old-school enough to have played (or want to play) the original game Lemmings released in 1991 by Psygnosis. Still, I’m a sucker for nostalgia and downloads that don’t need to be paid for. It’s time to get a copy of Lemmings revolution and another glass of lemonade.

Just need to strain out the drowned Lemmings, pop in a few ice cubes and
LEMMINGS REVOLUTION . . . is downloading. At third world country internet speeds. Thank goodness the whole game is only half a gig large. (If anybody wants to debate the ethics of using bit torrents, I’m not interested.)

Let’s get a little background information while this thing crawls its way to my laptop. The game I’m about to play was released in 2000 by Psygnosis and Talonsoft. It is the last game in the series to be made for PC. It’s also a lot more loyal to the concept than its 1997 predecessor ‘The adventures of Lomax’, where you control a single Lemming, unravel his story and weep over the fact that the Lemmings has conformed to being a standard third-person action game – something which by the looks of it, neither IGN nor Gamespot has bothered to review yet.

I couldn’t help but post this utterly mediocre (but mildly alcoholic) recipe for lemonade. It’s extra hot these days and I’m drinking a lot of the stuff, though not enough to get tipsy sadly. If anyone has ideas on how to improve my lemonade, I’d love to hear them!

LEMMINGS REVOLUTION is ready for action now, so without further ado, let’s bring on a good bout of cuteness, nostalgia and death.

Wow. I remember being amazed by these graphics: a spooky plank bridge snaking across dark water, lit by torches. A 3d ‘tree’ around which various deadly or inhibitory pitfalls are placed, the wobbling lemmings… Now I’m just amazed that I used to be amazed. It’s easy to see why it runs so smoothly on my craptop – (A laptop I’m borrowing for work while I take a break abroad and back home from university. It’s a Pentium mobile netbook, enough said).

The first level round, I choose ‘just float’ where all you need to do is equip each and every lemming with a brolly. In period I took to figure out how the tree spun, I managed to kill them all.
This was really disappointing because none of them cried ‘oh no!’ as they were supposed to. It’s the price that must be paid for bootlegging games, since I just don’t have the patience to download a better version.
The next four levels went smoothly. Take note: A ‘basher’ will take four steps swinging his arms in the air before realising that there’s nothing in front of him to bash, and that you’ve wasted his time and made him look like a fool before all his sheep-like comrades. He secretly hopes you’ll use ‘bomber’ on him next. That’s another thing I’ve learned so far. If you’ve got a frozen ‘block’ Lemming that you decide to blow up, he doesn’t have to die! Just watch the countdown and assign him a task when he sees the white light (immediately after ‘1…’). I prefer to save them with bash in such instances because it’s quite harmless in terms of random stairs and holes created in your tree.

I’m not too confident about getting the rest of my levels flawlessly completed. It would be brilliant to have a mouse right now but it looks like I’m stuck with my craptop’s touchpad, which by the way, doesn’t even come with a tapping function.

Hey! – does anyone remember another early 3d puzzle game centered on sheep? They were shiny, fat sheep that had to be rounded up in different, ways I think.
There’s time to research or remember that one anyway. I’ve posted my current progress below. The beginning level in the middle is where all my Lemmings died. I’m going to zig-zag my little Lemmings to their promised land and this should take just 8 levels. Still, it’s going to be great running through all of them. If I don’t find the sheep game too soon, I’ll probably write a Lemmings Revolution guide, and stick another recipe up while I’m at it. It’s nice to moonch/sip something home-made and yummy while taking a trip back in time.