Riding the Dragon! Chasing them Fairies!

I just started to pack about an hour and a half ago and feel like I've gotten nowhere. It's really quite obnoxious how much shit I've managed to accumulate in my life that has to follow me around. So far I've got a pretty solid pile of gear and toys packed up and ready to go, so I've just got to keep telling myself that looks good so I can give up for the night.

Mostly I wanted to take a break and spend a moment to review my first experience with the, now legal, Absinthe that I had last night. I'll preface this by saying up front it was nothing special. I did not "hallucinate" and didn't even get particularly "out of the ordinary" drunk. That seems especially odd since it was preceded by the always awesomely terrible experience of grape flavored Four Loko. I figured this would be an absolute recipe for disaster, but it really wasn't. To any of you who are now probably concerning yourselves with my health because I drink silly things like this I'd like to also note that this is the first time I've had so much as more than two or three beers in a night for the past several weeks since today was my first today completely off from both jobs in about three weeks. So no. I'm not a drunk.

But anyway, Absinthe... the magical blue and green legend from France or wherever they drink the stuff. It in no way lives up to the hype, but I also only had one glass of it. So what I can tell you is that it's probably not going to make you hallucinate like they say it will, but I can see how it'd get you dangerously drunk. The reason for this being that the stuff is about 100 proof, but in no way has any of that alcohol "bite" and "burn" that you're used to with other more familiar drinks in that alcohol content range. The reason for this is most likely because it's actually a spirit and has no added sugar until you do the whole silly sugar dumping ritual. Thus, it's flavor is pretty mild, like a not very sweet sugar water. It does however smell delicious. It has a very strong scent of licorice which is really all that makes it enjoyable. If you didn't know any better you could easily plow through several glasses or shots of the stuff and not realize that you were even drinking until it smashes into your face like a brick wall thirty minutes in. I think that's where all the hype comes from.

I did however notice after glancing through Absinthe's Wikipedia page (yeah, I said it) that it was as described on there a much more "lucid" or "clear-headed" feeling of drunkenness, which I definitely felt. But as I only had one glass, that's pretty inconclusive. I think I was mostly just in a real good mood on account of having a day off. There's that and the amount of sugar involved between that one glass and the Loko I had before it... that can all make one quite wired. Also there was a tiny dopey puppy there which is always exciting.

So in conclusion, Absinthe tastes somewhere between "mediocre" and "terrible", in no way lives up to the hype... but made for an enjoyable evening... until I woke up on Joe's couch and groggily realized how much crap I had to get done on this one day off. I managed to sign my lease, pay all my rent and utilities, drop all my library materials off, schedule a doctors appointment, make some pretty sweet quesadillas, get my electric service switched over, order some internet (which takes way longer than it should), get a hold of Doug to pick up his drums, and do some packing. Sheesh! I did not however get around to posting all that stuff I was talking about earlier on Craigs List, which was kind of my main goal. I guess there's always tomorrow. But I seriously need to get rid of some of this crap in my life! Please. Just take it!

Linoleum. Supports my Head.

Hey guys. Guess what. I have to move all my shit up a hill in the next two weeks and into two tiny rooms half the size but double the cost of what I pay now. Why you ask? Because it's all mine! MINE I TELLS YA! Plus a solid five to ten minutes off the drive to work. Oh yeah, and no gang warfare being waged a block over from my house. That's always a plus too right? There's also a hospital right behind my house for when I feel like using the "health care everyone has access to" and stopping into the emergency room to go bankrupt over getting a few tests and check ups done over having the flu or a cold or something. That all being said, I'm thinking about trying to get rid of some possessions to try and make this whole thing go a little smoother... plus I want that cash. Not only am I in the market for a new phone because mine can barely type, which is a major problem because for some reason no one knows how to make calls on phones anymore and only texts, but I'm also fittin' to get a new amp that actually sounds good instead of just super loud. All in toll that's about $900 of stuff. Shit man. I don't need $900 worth of stuff in my life!

Anyway, to whom it may concern, here's what I'm thinking about Craigslisting in the coming weeks:

-2.0 GhZ Pentium 4 tower, 1GB RAM, 120 GB HD, DVD-R/CD-R plus I'm throwing in a fresh install of Windows XP, mouse, keyboard (no monitor, I'm keeping that) and 5.1 Surround Creative Labs desktop speaker set - $275

-Excel Acoustic Guitar w/gig bag - It's in fine shape for beginners, I just have other nicer ones. - $75

-Fender FM 210R - 60 watt, 2x10, solid state combo. Like I said above, it's super loud and stays clean loud (a little bity on the high end, but you'll never have to turn it up past 3 on the volume) - $200

-Nintendo Gamecube - In perfect shape. it's worthless to me since my Wii can play all my GameCube games. - $10

-Stuffed Noid - AVOID THE NOID! No seriously. I have one of these. I'll post pics to prove it later - ONE HUNDRED AMERICAN DOLLARS (Euros preferred) final offer SON!

I'm keeping my eye out for more... I'm sort of looking forward to living like a hermit as I'll have no TV or furniture at all so I figure I might as well get rid of some other junk while I'm at it.

Oh, and to all of you other people who supported and put your faith into Obama and the Democrats to get us a single payer or public options in health care... yeah, I got duped too. They sold us out and are compromising to people who yell out "socialism" in a crowd without having any idea what they're talking about, carry assault rifles to town hall meetings, and pretend that being loud and rude makes them the majority. Oh. And there was also that lady who yelled "heil Hitler" at an Israeli Jew for supporting public health and then proceeded to sarcastically yell "waaahhhh!!" at him when he got offended. There was that lady.



But I guess that's what I get for trying to play nice with the two party system... It's back to being a godless, socialist, fringe, commie pinko unpatriotic traitor for me.

Nader 2012 ay?

Keep Yer' Web Hosting Hands off my Free Blog!!

Arghhh... I really wanted someone to sit on a porch and drink beers with me tonight. I mean, it is Monday after all.

Lacking that I sat here staring at the same internet I've been reading all day, listening to NOFX and thinking of witty quips from their songs to use to keep Adam entertained for the rest of the month (happy late August 8th to you all by the way) and when all was said and done I landed here on old Front Porch Affairs.

Well, this wasn't entirely spontaneous. My sister gave me a digital nudge to get back at it and I figure I'll see what I can do. In the meantime here's a quick throw down of what the happenings are. You guys ready? Let's rap.

-I'm almost making money for the first time in my life. So much in fact that I might actually buy an iPhone. Then the internet will know my overbearing and domineering presence! The downside is I actually have to spend time at work now to get that money. I've only had one day a week off for the past couple months when I got so used to four or five. Ain't life a sum'bitch?

-I just put on the album "Pump up the Valium" for the first time in a while and realized that whatever I did while importing or downloading that album several years ago to my library absolutely destroyed it and made it low-resolution unlistenable garbage. I might have the CD somewhere and could resolve this. The same thing happened with "The Greatest Story Ever Told" by the Lawrence Arms.

...that last bit wasn't really any new news. Moving on.

-We just had the grand opening for my job that I actually look forward to going to which is more than most of you schlubs can say! Now when people ask what I do I no longer have to go, "well, um... er... I kind of do this thing, where all this stuff goes on, and I run such and such... it's confusing." I can just be like, "I'm the Dumbledore of the school of rock". (Credit goes to Mike Sarason for that one)

-I recently signed a lease for a smaller and more expensive apartment than the one I currently live in. That was either a brilliant or terrible idea. Not really sure yet. But I move out in about three weeks which means no more living in a sea of beer cans, bugs, bad smells, and dude sweat. On the down side I'll no longer live in a sea of beer cans, bad smells, and dude sweat... but the bugs I can definitely live without. Seriously, I'm afraid some of the spiders on our front porch are going to fully evolve into demons and devour me one of these days.

-The Best Revenge is relatively back in full swing as we've been practicing for the recording of our full length and played our first full band show with Bomb the Music Industry a few weeks ago. Our next show is this August 16th (soon!) at 345 Warner (house show!) with a bunch of stupid good bands. We've got new songs, new songs, new songs galore! The best part is we get to practice at my work for free which means I barely ever have to leave if I really don't want to. For the recording of the album we're trying to sneak our way into the tracking room of my old Alma Mater at CCM and knock out drum, bass and guitar in there over the course of a weekend or so. Wish us luck!

-Speaking of BTMI, I'm totally digging this music video they did. It totally captures the aesthetic of the album which in turn did a great job of capturing the mentality of an entire, albeit relatively small in comparison, sub-counter-culture to the counter-culture. (Also, LOL at Jeff's face on the word "closed")



-That being said, as per usual I doubt my musical abilities and have recently started to force myself to practice any instrument for at least 30 minutes or so any time I have the energy for it after work before I go home. Lately it's been drums which are entirely self taught and probably quite hilarious to hear. I could also really use some piano lessons or something. My playing is pretty stagnated by playing Slackers songs with just the right hand and the left can no longer keep up.

-I'll probably never be able to get health insurance because I'm terrified that the people in charge are big pussies and will cave into the loudest opinion of the craziest mother fuckers lobbyist money can buy. I've had this rash now for like five months. My looks are important dudes.

So that's me. How are things with you?

Oh, hey Chris. It's 12:08.

Shaking off the dust, Stretchin out them Bones!

I was ready to have at it about tipping today after being demonized over on the Bad Sandwich Chronicles blog for posing a simple question about tipping to bartenders.

Should people tip $1 per drink no matter what, no questions asked?

I also posed the question to a number of online social hot beds and the consensus was that bartenders agreed 100% of the time, "Minimum $1 per drink NO MATTER WHAT" and pretty much everyone else agrees, "...well it all depends, but as long as it's 20% it's fine". I was ready to drag this out for the whole days post, but in lieu of that I just want to leave it at this; I already give you 20% no matter how shitty your service was because that is the "social norm" for service... don't throw this "the bartender gets stiffed when you tip anything less" or "if you can't afford the norm then you can't afford to go out" or "he/she will be a dick to you if you don't do it" crap at people (I'm not looking for a friend anyway... I'm looking for a drink). You want to talk about "getting stiffed" working at a bar... try working the kitchen. I got $6.25 an hour doing that. No tips. I also left an hour or two after the bartenders and servers had to do dishes and mop floors while they all yucked it up behind the bar having drinks. (For the record and to be fair, that was an exceptionally shitty bar.) If we come off as "cheap", then the bartenders come off as "greedy". I don't mean for this to be mean to my bartender friends out there... I know it's a shitty job and there's nothing wrong with wanting more money. We all want more money for what we do. I'm just saying, it's my personal opinion that it's one "social norm" that I, and apparently most people, disagree with. No one is saying "don't tip" we're just saying we think 20% is more than fair.


Okay, that dragged on a little longer than planned. What I really meant to get to was this...

I don't really talk about my music that often on here and I just finished my first blog update in like six months over on MySpace and then thought, "Does anyone still use MySpace?" So I figured I'd get a bit more exposure over here on the ol' BlogSpot and Facebook from the two or three of you who might read this and more importantly the one or two who might still be with me after I just went ball's out on bartenders.

If you don't already know, to bring you up to speed, I have a solo "project" called the Best Revenge. I was pretty active for about two years there and then kind of fell of the face of the Earth and have played a grand total of like 10 shows in the past year to year and a half. But I've still been writing and wanting to get back in to playing out regularly. So anyway, here's what I had to say over on the MySpace about a new album I've been working on:

Just finished our second practice for the new album recording... which I'm now starting over on from scratch and wow dudes! I think we'll actually have something that sounds pretty dope when all is said and done.

For those not in the know, which is pretty much everyone, my old college chum Zac Schmidt has graciously offered to step in on drums so that we can finally get this thing off the ground. Let me tell you, finally putting the right beats to these songs that have been sitting around for nearly two years is bringing a lot of life back into them. It's also awesome to be playing with someone who is a fellow recording nerd so that I sound less crazy when I talk about "here's what I envision for the part..." instead of "here's how it goes...". It's been pretty fun so far. He and I will be spending the next few weeks hashing it out and nailing down parts so we can begin the recording process all over again and do things right. Good stuff man. Good stuff.

Also, Jack Wright, of Pinstripes and NYC reggae act the Forthrights (in)fam(y)e has graciously offered to do keys and organs whenever he's in town. I think I've got Joe Powell, formerly of Brian's Moving Out, to drunkenly agree to play bass once or twice... I really need to nail him to that, but it shouldn't be hard seeing as he's also in my other new project (The [1985] Bears... keep an eye out!). Let's see... who else? Chap Sowash, also of the Pinstripes and Duppy'a Jamba has offered up his awesome talents in the brass section, so I'm trying to find all kinds of places where I can just let him rip because he's stupid good. And I think Robby Sager from Atomic Potato, or whatever they're calling themselves these days... and also formerly of the Best Revenge now that I think about it, might lay down a few things. Oh... I also talked to Jon (sorry I forget your last name right now) from Andy! (what a confusing phrase) several months ago about maybe playing banjo? That would be sweet. Holla' back at me dude.

All others, feel free to apply. I really want this thing to just be a massive smorgasboard of people who are more talented than I making my mediocre songs sound AWESOME! What I think would be really awesome would be a real good female voice to counter all my manly growlings. Anyone?

I also hear Butch Vig is on board to produce.
Really? No.

You're more than welcome to check out what The Best Revenge already has to offer on MySpace I guess... www.myspace.com/bestrevengemusic.

Remember when MySpace was all the rage and only really nerdy college kids used Facebook? The times man, the times!

"Things You Should (Not) be Doing with Your Food: Ish #2" or "My White Whale"

Now my other sister has also started a blog (awesomely titled Pizza Bribe) which she is academically obligated to populate on a semi-regular basis for school it seems. Hopefully having that competition will motivate me to keep up with this guy up to date a little better.

And now I'd like to talk about meat.

I cooked my first steak ever for my girlfriend Jen (<--- see I mention you!) on Memorial Day and it was amazing... despite the fact that I dropped it onto our soggy deck after I finished cooking it. But still we ate it... and legitimately it was one of the best steaks I've ever tasted. Apparently all it takes to make great steak is $3, a $30 charcoal grill, and eight or so minutes on each side. Seriously, if you like steak, I don't remember what it was called or the brand or anything, but we found it at Kroger. It's some kind of organic brand and you get two cuts of it that are correctly proportioned so that it doesn't make you TOO fat and it's only $6. The same steak I cooked for $3 would have easily cost $20 to $30 in a restaurant. Good lookin' out!

I on the other hand did not have quite as much success with my Memorial day meal... I attempted, for the second time, to create the Minneapolis staple Juicy Lucy, as made famous by "Man vs. Food". As you can see from the image here it's a burger in which the cheese is actually cooked into the burger and it's supposed to pour out all steamy, hot, and liquefied when you bite into it... Mine did not.

I believe my first problem is that I used Kroger's pre-rolled patties of ground chuck which is both not very good and not very moldable. I used two patties that probably came in a little under a quarter-pound each, seasoning both sides and topping one with cheddar cheese. I then attempted to simply place the second patty on top of the one with cheese and mold the edges together with my hands to seal the cheese inside. So now I had a burger that was a solid three and a half inches thick with some cheese in the middle that I expected to cook through.

Well I threw it on the grill and cooked it with the lid closed for a good eight to ten minutes. At this point all was well. It was in tact and I figured it was about time to flip it because eight minutes on one side for a burger already seemed like overkill. Well I scooped it up, tossed it over and low and behold, the outer layer of the thing is barely done and the side starts pulling apart revealing that the middle hasn't even started to brown over. I attempted to get it back to the first side for a few more minutes but I was already starting to lose hope. Four or five more minutes with the lid closed and I figured the sum'bitch had to be done on at least that side. I open the lid and smoke is simply pouring out everywhere. Pieces of the burger had started to slide off and detach falling onto my charcoals. I figured, "No big loss, this thing was too big to cook all that junk anyway," so I went ahead and gave it a flip... the other side starts pulling away into the grill and I'm now starting to see the inner core of cheese.

God damn it!

Well, this went on, back and forth to each side trying to get the damn thing to cook through; each time checking it a bit more meat falling on to the charcoal and stinking up the place. Finally I was left with a shell of a disfigured burger; cooked well done on the outside and still mushy and very pink on the inside with no signs of gooey cheese anywhere.

My second attempt at the Juicy Lucy was once again an utter failure. I nibbled on the cooked edges of it for a minute and then decided it wasn't even worth it at the risk of food poisoning as raw meat tends to do to me and tossed the thing. It was a sad day for meat.

I bitterly munched on my baked bean with potato chips on into the night wondering how the Lucy had evaded me once again and dreaming of our next bout together...

Old Games Mean More Old Truths!

First off. You chumps have been slacking. And by you chumps, I mean the other blogs I am subscribed to. I just scrolled through my Dashboard reading list thing and the top ten or so most recent posts all belonged to Brendan Kelly... I can only read so many posts full of references to male ejaculate before I need something else thrown in the mix. So to you five or six other people I'm subscribed to, get posting.

I have more news in video games this week because for some reason playing through Zelda just got me way back into older games. There was that and a long discussion about how X-Wings work. Mitchell, Kyle, and I were all discussing the finer points of how specific space crafts in Star Wars work and after a while we all came to the realization that our common knowledge on this subject was derived mostly from the Windows 95 classic "X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter"... I had to play it again. Well, we were at Mitchell's house and found that he still had a retail copy of the original X-Wing, which would have to do for the time being. As it turns out, when you pop the disc for a 17 year old DOS based video game it a computer running Windows XP it doesn't really care to work so well. I then had a project for the night. It seems the primary issue was that Windows only allocates a very small amount of RAM for the DOS command prompt and it's not enough to launch X-Wing. That was all fine and dandy so we altered a Windows Config file to tell it to take some more ram... that didn't work either. After a solid two hours of wrestling with this and scouring the internet for clues I sadly gave up for the evening and went home.

As a fun side note, I did temporarily break Mitchell's computer so that it no longer knew how to launch Windows... Oh man. That would have been funny if I didn't know how to fix it.

When I got home I went ahead and downloaded a torrent of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter... Yup. I illegally downloaded a 15 year old video game that I owned at one time... so sue me. The next day I burnt the ISOs to a disc, launched it up, and! ....nothing except a frozen installation menu. Well crap.

Thankfully a bit more searching found me a couple patches, one to make the game able to be read in XP instead of Windows 95, and another to make the audio work with newer versions of Direct X, and I was installing the greatest space flight simulation combat emulator OF ALL TIME! And I must say, while graphic enhancements haven't been kind to this game; the ship models are rigidly polygonal and "flight simulation" means little white dotsfly past your face and every now and again a clunky 3D model of a ship comes into view, but the gameplay is still actually kind of amazing. There's a pretty stiff learning curve which keeps you engaged for quite some time. I also remember the "realism" that I felt from playing it and what made it so much better than any console game being the amount of things I had to do to maintain control during flight. Pretty much every key on the keyboard has a useful function and many two button combinations also have a function and you have to learn them all swiftly maneuvering and dodging Proton Torpedos to stay alive and complete mission objectives.

The biggest downside of this game is the fact that we'll probably never see anything like it ever again. I don't think there's been a game ever since that required such an intricate mastery of controls. Everything now a days is, "right trigger right trigger, look around for new bad guy with joystick, move around with other joy stick to dodge... Oh shit there he is! RIGHT TRIGGER! RIGHT TRIGGER!! Blow his fucking head off!" Seriously, I'm so sick and tired of the same old re-skinned first person shooter/war game. How did the video game industry dupe us into this trend? Why are people willing to drop $60 plus $5 in presale reservation and then wait in line at midnight the night of launch to get "Shoot Dudes in the Face Vol. 187: This Time it's Aliens and a Few Different Guns!"?

Video game nerds are constantly fussing about going, "Why does Nintendo make so much damn money? They don't make 'hardcore' games for 'hardcore' gamers." When they say "hardcore" they mean those same old first person shooter rehashes because these games generally have the biggest developers attached to them, they have 'realistic', adult characters encountering 'adult themes' and the most up to date graphics... this apparently makes a game "hardcore". Nevermind the fact that Nintendo created a game and exercise device that is so fun to use that it got millions of people who normally sit on their ass blogging and watching Scrubs to not only get off their ass and use it, but they fight over the limited supply of the damn game. A tiny bit of innovation people... that's all I'm asking for. Then maybe I'll rejoin the Non-Nintendo or Square-Enix-"Games that were made after the year 2000"-Circuit.

Until then I'll stick with my DS and playing ROM emulations of my old favorites. By the way, I just beat Mega Man X3 the other night and god damn, does my thumb ever hurt. More on that later maybe... For now, I need to find something more useful to do.

One Down... 59,999 to Go!

How on Earth did Nintendo ever expect anyone to beat the first Zelda game without spending 99 cents a minute on the Nintendo Hotline (with your parents permission of course). On top of that... how the Hell did I ever do it?

I actually remember the first time I beat it because it was the first video game I ever "beat". It was totally awesome. I vaguely remember my mom being pissed because I stayed inside all day on a summer day to finish the last level. I was totally in awe, as if there should be some further reward for BEATING A NINTENDO GAME aside from a scrolling screen of text or two and then the words "The End". The real question though, is how the hell did I do it?

First think about this compared to most of today's games. Ummm... Lets see... what have I played recently? It's not the greatest example but it still follows most of the current game trends; I played Portal about a month ago for the first time. In that game the first few levels are there to orient you with how the game works... shoot this hole thing here, you'll go through it and end up there. From there on the whole thing is pretty linear... "No seriously shoot THAT portal HERE, then shoot the other one HERE! I SWEAR! It'll get you where you need to go! (BTW the cake is lie)" Three hours later I was done. I'll admit I did have to use GameFAQs for one puzzle, but aside from that the "hardest most mind boggling game ever" (as it had been hyped up to me) proved nothing but a fun physics toy that I was done with in one evening. Most of that was due to the fact that the whole thing is pretty damn linear and straightforward even with all the physics mind-fucks thrown in. That and I'm 23 years old. I can follow directions, even if they're subtle. A picture of a dude falling out of one portal into another to gain momentum at the start of the level means, that's what I'm gonna have'ta do to pass the damn level!

Now... Let's go back to another time called "1991 or so" where a precocious five year old was plopped down in the middle of a seemingly massive world with absolutely no directions and basically told, "figure that shit out!" That world was called Hyrule and the game was Zelda. Months and months, possibly years later... I don't remember when, but somehow I beat it before the internet existed. No internet. No directions. No Nintendo Power. No nothing... except for a tattered overworld map that may have shown entrance locations for the nine dungeons and nothing more that I remember coming with the game. I'm not sure if that actually existed or I'm making it up. Can someone confirm that for me?

To give you an idea of the sheer difficulty of this game lets take this scenario... My sister recently bought me the original Zelda for Nintendo Wii on virtual console. I'm currently blowing my way through it to reorient myself and then I will try to take on the secret second quest that I still to this day, two decades after the games release, have not beaten. Everything was going all right until I got to the seventh level and you go to a room which you can not pass and are faced only with a single Moblin (or whatever they're called) saying "grumble grumble". Oh shit! I forgot to get the meat, an item which only has one use in the whole game, you put it in front of this guy in this one dungeon to advance. For the life of me I could not remember which store it was in, and some of the stores are hidden under rocks, bushes, and bad guys that you either have to bomb, set on fire, or push to find. This item is sold in one of those stores. Well, after about ten minutes of globe trotting I remembered it's in the same store as the Blue Ring. Simple enough. I go and buy it, give it to the guy, and I'm moving right along.

Now lets think of that scenario from the perspective of the five year old who has never played this game, lives in a time when the internet does not exist, and can barely read, let alone make sense of what this monster thing means by "grumble grumble". To really blow your minds, consider the scope of this game. That item, should the dumb kid be able to figure out that the monster is indeed asking for something to eat, is sold in one of those hidden shops I mentioned earlier.

The way older games worked is that each screen was tiled and active object that could be affected were called sprites. Generally a sprite was either a character that moved, something that could be moved or acted upon in some way, or designated a border which can not be passed. In Zelda each screen of the overworld is about 20 tiles wide by 16 tiles high. This means that each screen of the game has about 320 tiles on it which could contain sprites. Of those sprite containing tiles lets say about half of them on each screen (give or take) are on a border or out in the open so that they can be pushed, blown up, or lit on fire by Link. And before I go on, here's another kicker; it wasn't until the third Zelda game that surfaces with secrets behind or under them were cracked or altered in some way to give you visual hints. These things were 100% hidden. There were no hints whatsoever to tell you "hey, bomb this wall!" So anyway, now we're down to 160 potentially active tiles per screen. But the overworld map is 24X18 screens so... now we have somewhere in the area of 69,000 tiles that maintain sprites that may or may not have secrets hidden under them that you may or may not to get to, to obtain an item that you may or may not have to feed to some monster, who then may or may not let you pass and complete the dungeon you've been stuck on for days. And the only clue, direction, hint, whatever you want to call it, that you have is "grumble grumble".

What the fuck?!

Before I go on... for those of you who have lived under a rock for the past twenty-two years and never played this game, here's the map I'm talking about:

Legend of Zelda Overworld Map

Now, the Angry Video Game Nerd recently had a gripe about a simillar issue with the game "Milon's Secret Castle" (yup, here comes another link... no embedable video for this one):

AVGN takes on Milon's Secret Castle

So in my honest opinion, the odds of finding what you need in Zelda seem way more stacked against you then they are in Milon's... however, I must admit that I didn't make it past those first two door's he mentions in that video in MSC at about the same age when I somehow plowed all the way through the original Zelda... it's a mystery I've yet to figure out.

So all this ranting and the original question still remains... How in the hell did I ever beat this game?!

All I really know is that the Zelda series is either the best or worst game series ever created. There's no grey area there... but I'll continue giving them my money because the bastards have had me mesmerized for damn near my entire life.