I should mention that Greg Knauss recently informed me that Paul Conrad is a stroke victim, so it's not really politically correct to take the sort of lime-and-salt pleasure in his cartoons that Kris/Leonard/Sumana take. Greg also passed along the following touching story:
[Conrad came to] speak at my high-school, seven million years ago, when I was a freshman.
After doing his spiel, he took questions, and someone asked where his ideas
came from. He, of course, said everywhere -- the newspaper, conversations,
even high-school kids. Did anybody in the audience have an idea?
So I raised my hand, he liked it, and it was in the LA Times the next day.
He framed the original and sent it to me.
I thought that was pretty cool.
Addendum: Ouch!
Wed Feb 20 2002 07:55:
Kris has a great insult on his page today: "I think it's written by Indie Rock Pete." And Airsick Moth has a bit of doggerel inspired by a particularly tasteless Paul Conrad cartoon.
Of course, the real puzzle is just figuring out what is going on, so maybe that's what they meant.
Wed Feb 20 2002 10:34:
Wow, Degeneracy got an XYZZY nomination for Best Puzzles. I don't think it deserves it, though, and I say that without having played any of the other games. As I argue in my postmortem, the actual puzzles are either based on vague ideas or are standard adventure game puzzles that trick you by looking like completely different standard adventure game puzzles (a good idea, but probably not the best one of the year).
