I Play DotA, Watch Me Feed
In explanation of the title, 'feeding' in DotA terms means dying unnecessarily and accidentally giving the enemy extra cash and levels. It's highly unrecommended if you want to preserve your reputation among the regular cyber-cafe-goers, and even more so if you're playing online--where a mistake can get you ranted about in several countries, simultaneously. It's the kind of infame you want to avoid.
Yes, infame. Like, fame makes people famous therefore infame makes you... guess. C'mon. Three tries. That's right, infamous. Clever of you. But more of these mad words later.
There's an uncle in my church who's in the ICU at the moment under heavy medication and sedation. Apparently (as far as I know) he has varicose veins, and somehow a blood clot formed and went with the (blood) flow until it reached his lung, where it became fruitful and multiplied until it blocked the pulmonary vein. This condition is known as pulmonary embolism, but as far as the church is concerned it only means that the doctors are powerless to do anything about it.
Go on, you try suggesting that they cut his lung open and I'll be using you as a guinea pig for the first-ever operation of that sort.
Anyway, there was a prayer session last night to beseech God to help him, but so far the medical reports are depressing. (We've got an SMS network up to get five-hourly updates.) The sole bright news is that his blood pressure is up, so he's at least got a better chance of responding to the blood-declotting drugs the doctors stuck into him.
I hope he'll survive, because funerals are depressing and I've seen enough of those, thank you very much: my first memory of my great-grandmother is her funeral in So Hour, when I was about four or five, I think. Probably younger, since I do remember not wearing spectacles.
I shall now pass to happier topics, like DotA, which I've become infamous for--I have been diagnosed with severe addiction by my roommate, and he's spread the word that I'm to go cold turkey from now on. He's even locked up his laptop and told everybody to study harder (which means that I'm not allowed to play with the computer). A pity.
However, I did go to a cyber-cafe last Saturday night with Smooth for a round of DotA, and I immensely enjoyed it (although it was expensive). It turns out I do have at least some skill at farming and pushing (respectively, killing enemy minor units and destroying enemy buildings), and I didn't die at all because I kept on teleporting away as soon as my health bar dipped into the red zone.
Smooth thinks I was a bit too cowardly, but what the heck. The point is we won.
And another thing: I've noticed a few words in English that need better etymologies. Like "dessicated".
Dessicated, in proper English, means dried up and withered, like dessicated corpses or prunes or raisins. The word comes from the Greek prefix de-, meaning without, and sicates, meaning fluids. There is a passage somewhere that describes the Euphrates as the "source of all sicates" of the country, showing its importance.
Unfortunately, the usage of the word was discontinued after the introduction of the word hydro, water, because the Greeks didn't like the double sibilants of the original water and believed that it would cause Hades to bring dead people back to life--which, of course, would throw insurance claims into utter disorder and bring about the collapse of all society as they knew it.
Instead, they stuck a de- on the word as a neutralising force and threw it into the past tense to get rid of the evil double sibilant. And ta-da! we have "dessicated"!
I shall explain the history of "inferno" next time, if I remember to.
Yes, infame. Like, fame makes people famous therefore infame makes you... guess. C'mon. Three tries. That's right, infamous. Clever of you. But more of these mad words later.
There's an uncle in my church who's in the ICU at the moment under heavy medication and sedation. Apparently (as far as I know) he has varicose veins, and somehow a blood clot formed and went with the (blood) flow until it reached his lung, where it became fruitful and multiplied until it blocked the pulmonary vein. This condition is known as pulmonary embolism, but as far as the church is concerned it only means that the doctors are powerless to do anything about it.
Go on, you try suggesting that they cut his lung open and I'll be using you as a guinea pig for the first-ever operation of that sort.
Anyway, there was a prayer session last night to beseech God to help him, but so far the medical reports are depressing. (We've got an SMS network up to get five-hourly updates.) The sole bright news is that his blood pressure is up, so he's at least got a better chance of responding to the blood-declotting drugs the doctors stuck into him.
I hope he'll survive, because funerals are depressing and I've seen enough of those, thank you very much: my first memory of my great-grandmother is her funeral in So Hour, when I was about four or five, I think. Probably younger, since I do remember not wearing spectacles.
I shall now pass to happier topics, like DotA, which I've become infamous for--I have been diagnosed with severe addiction by my roommate, and he's spread the word that I'm to go cold turkey from now on. He's even locked up his laptop and told everybody to study harder (which means that I'm not allowed to play with the computer). A pity.
However, I did go to a cyber-cafe last Saturday night with Smooth for a round of DotA, and I immensely enjoyed it (although it was expensive). It turns out I do have at least some skill at farming and pushing (respectively, killing enemy minor units and destroying enemy buildings), and I didn't die at all because I kept on teleporting away as soon as my health bar dipped into the red zone.
Smooth thinks I was a bit too cowardly, but what the heck. The point is we won.
And another thing: I've noticed a few words in English that need better etymologies. Like "dessicated".
Dessicated, in proper English, means dried up and withered, like dessicated corpses or prunes or raisins. The word comes from the Greek prefix de-, meaning without, and sicates, meaning fluids. There is a passage somewhere that describes the Euphrates as the "source of all sicates" of the country, showing its importance.
Unfortunately, the usage of the word was discontinued after the introduction of the word hydro, water, because the Greeks didn't like the double sibilants of the original water and believed that it would cause Hades to bring dead people back to life--which, of course, would throw insurance claims into utter disorder and bring about the collapse of all society as they knew it.
Instead, they stuck a de- on the word as a neutralising force and threw it into the past tense to get rid of the evil double sibilant. And ta-da! we have "dessicated"!
I shall explain the history of "inferno" next time, if I remember to.
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