The Carrot or the Stick

I bought this little figure four or five years ago at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. I don't know whether I have a grudging respect for the crafty frog wizard for finding a humane way to press the turtle into service as his personal taxi--using, as he does, the carrot and not the stick--or despise him for taking advantage of the poor dim-witted creature. Either way, I do feel sorry for the turtle who, being made out of clay, will never reach the carrot he so clearly wants.

Apple II Memories

I got my first computer around 1979, an Apple II that hooked up to a TV set via an RF converter, and whose character set didn't include lower case letters. In the early 1980s I spent thousands of hours playing adventure and fantasy games; my favorite of all time was Wizardry, in which my brother Jeff, my cousin Scott, and I spent hours and hours building up our party of adventurers--Imok, Srizaxa, Sribob, and the rest.

*Sigh* It's been thirty years now, but tonight I recaptured a little of that long-gone magic when I downloaded an Apple II emulator for my Windows-based PC, and spent the better part of the last two hours playing--not Wizardry; that's too involved, and it wouldn't feel right without Jeff and Scott--but Montezuma's Revenge, another favorite from that era.