The Men of EGG

19:00 today Subfuture took Wormbo87, Wayfinder, Rel and I to Essen (previously, Una's) for dinner with his barter card.

I had orange, mango, apple juice for a drink, shared 2 of 5 deep fried camembert slices and cranberry sauce with Wormbo87 for an entree, had the special rabbit with saffron as a main course, and a flourless chocolate cake for dessert. Subfuture ordered a goldwasser schnapps for me.

Subfuture had a beer whose name I cannot remember, a mango-flavoured beer, and a small schnapps (fermented herbal blend of something?) that came in a small bottle. Apparently it tasted like Demi's spiced wine/herbal medicine he had last Tuesday. He had a dumpling with meat in it for entree, a schnitzel as main course, and something with bread for dessert.

Wormbo87 had coke, pig's knuckle for main course and a ricotta and lemon tart for dessert. He had to drive home from the station, so no alcohol for him!

Wayfinder also had coke, the dumpling with the meat in it as entree, the rabbit for mains, I'm not sure what he had for dessert and he had a bärenjäger schnapps.

Rel had an unnamed beer (it came in a tall half litre schooner, much like Subfuture's), mango-flavoured beer, the deep fried camembert for entree, the rabbit for mains, not sure what he had for dessert and something brown for schnapps; it was strong.

The camembert was delicious (remarkable how well the cheese went with cranberry sauce...) and totally unhealthy. I am going to need to try making it for myself.
The rabbit had the texture of chicken, but was apparently much more gamey; I wasn't sure if that was the effect of the sauce or otherwise.
The goldwasser smelled like nothing that I'd smelled before (in fact it was a very faint scent), and tasted exactly like the analgesic gel stuff I put on some of my mouth ulcers once. It was somewhat odd to be drinking it, despite the fact that it was obviously less viscous than the medicine. There were actual flakes of gold in it; my response to it at first was that drinking heavy metals went against all instincts of self preservation. When I tasted it and remarked on its similarity to ulcer treatment, Wormbo87 replied that he usually used rum for that purpose.

The bill in total was >$128; we tipped the waiters well since we'd essentially gotten a free three course meal.

Anyway, apart from the excellent free food (thank you Subfuture), the real highlight of all this was the talk that occurred over the 1-1.5 hours that we spent there.
There was some discussion about 4chan, the history of /b/ and how robot 9000, an IRC bot script was appropriated to try and combat the repetitive lameness that /b/ became, but didn't really work.
There was also much discussion about an idea that they had for an erotic calendar; they'd dubbed it "The Men of EGG". Names of people were suggested, but we didn't manage to come up with 11 (the final was going to be a group shot of them all); it was mentioned that Exposure may be asked to take photos; black and white with splashes of red were also suggested. Subfuture said that he suspected they'd get a rather quick 'sod off' from the women of EGG if they asked them to pose for such a calendar, except for perhaps Demi. A question was directed my way; my reply was that "My body is my own, and I do share, but not with everyone!" Rel was asked if Alternate Rel would be a possibility, but he replied that "like this one, I do not wish to share myself with everybody". (Apparently Alternate Rel is the one that takes over when the normal Rel is knocked out from too much drinking.) Wormbo87 came up with two poses for himself, mostly involving an apron and blood... and a meat freezer. (Apparently they had a New Zealander visit his workplace once; they took a photo of the New Zealander appropriately positioned behind a sheep.) Brief discussion of Selphie also happened; although she had been into burlesque before, she had since become a Christian and was hence no longer interested. Wormbo87 made a remark of EGG forgiving Geal'k for also being one, but I misheard him as having said something about including a picture of Geal'k in the calendar. After a short period of confusion over the words heard and actually said, there was a collective groan at what I thought I'd heard, presumeably from the rather disturbing mental image that it conjured. Others included Wayfinder, striking the Fearless Leader pose, or leaning around some server racks (Building 10 server room, photo shot voyeuristically from across the gap); Subfuture possibly in his hat and a monacle; Vlad; lycurgus, with something to bring out his boyishness; Wormbo87 with his kidneys (twin brother); elmin (the elf); the man defined by his coat, standing with it open and a child in front of him
I don't really remember what else was talked about. Wayfinder left for home at the lights, leaving the four of us to head back to the bunker to continue with working on buildings. The schnapps went to my head despite the food I'd had, causing very slight dizziness, and as we got closer to uni, an urge to run. Rel attempted to hold me back by hanging on to my hair, but a toss of the head showed that he would not succeed; when I expressed frustratedly that I had an urge to run, Subfuture's reply was, "Then run!" So I sprinted the short distance to the main entrance and felt better afterwards.

I'm not sure what is causing it; the urge was present yesterday, and the day before that too. Perhaps an excess of energy.

Left uni ~22:15 and missed the 22:25 train home, but the time was well spent in conversation with Wormbo87 while waiting for our next train to arrive. Turns out there is a dojo in Hornsby that teaches ninjutsu (also attended by Sophismata and his sister), and amongst many other reasons as to why he joined it (apart from the fact that self defence is a good skill to have) was that he got beaten up ~16:00 on the train once because he was a righteous prat and told three 15yos to stop graffitiing the train seats, and they consequently returned with 12 friends (of a variety of ethnicities; he remarked that multiculturalism was working well, they were all able to work together to beat him up) and gave him a concussion, black eye, quite a few wounds on the lips which took a long time to heal, and left him with the inability to stop shaking for a week afterwards due to the shock of it all. However they hadn't managed to be thugs properly, having failed to rob him and shown mercy by letting him get away.

I am glad that he seems to have recovered from it with his mind intact.
There was also talk of cadets (his younger brother is the head QM for the units of the region, from Dee Why to ... I forget where) and an incident where the 2xx cadet battalion were meant to be posing as poorly trained militia for the purposes of Reservists' training; unbeknownst to them, the Reservists pulled out and were replaced by a team of SAS instead, whose task was to keep laser sights on the heads of the cadet leaders for the week; they took trophies from their bunkers at night. There was also talk of the painting of good quality miniatures - not the Games Workshop ones, since those are just really for playing and don't have much variety, his work as a mechanic (and his boss's constant offering of an apprenticeship), some talk of his PE teacher, who was a Tae Kwon Do expert and introduced herself to them with "You will learn to kick ass, and then break his arm!"
He also showed me what to do if someone grabbed my wrist - actually he wasn't prepared for resistance the first time and remarked that I do have some arm strength.

I think I will have to work on that. But not right now, since it is 3:11.