you have died of dysentery

Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, you have died of dysentery.

Not only is this one of the greatest tee shirts ever made, it’s also a hallmark of some valuable lessons learned during our formative grammar school years (by ‘our’ I mean the 80s latch key generation).  I’m not convinced that kids these days receive the same quality education that we benefited from.  Among other things, we learned basic survival skills that would keep us safe...if we were to ever travel across the great northwest...against insurmountable odds…in a covered wagon…hunting two dimensional animals…in the 1800s.

Why the sudden nostalgia, you ask?

A couple of weeks ago, I spent time in Oregon for work. While on the road, I saw a road sign that leads to the Dalles. This made me very excited. I wanted to attempt to ford the river with my rental car and not wait for conditions to improve. I wanted to trade something with a stranger, maybe my GPS system for 12 bullets. I wanted to shoot an ungodly amount of buffalo even though I knew that I can only load 100 lbs. in my rental car.

Well, this inspired me to rekindle a long lost childhood love - The Oregon Trail.I hunted the game down on the internets and was immediately mesmerized by the pixelized graphics and obnoxious music. And I got to share it with C-Monster who was astonished at how terrible the game looks - the same things that I think are terrific aout it. The simplicity was too difficult for her to deal with. I love it.

You can find an Apple IIe emulator and the game here. 

You’ll need both. When you are playing the game, you’ll be asked to “flip” the disk to side 2 which you can do with the menu tool on the right-hand side of the emulator. It took me a few tries to figure this out, but you will. I promise.

In my first Oregon Trail expedition in twenty years, I made it across the Dalles with only one other survivor. At the onset of the trip, I forgot to purchase clothing for my party – which included ML, Salma Hayek, Megan Fox, and Scarlett Johansson. If you know me, I always like to role with the punches so I took this to mean that we were headed westward to establish a nudist colony somewhere in an idyllic valley along the Oregonian coast. I must regrettably report that three ladies perished during the harsh winter months (unrelated to our lack of clothing, I'm sure). I was forced to colonize the new land with Scarlett. Tisk tisk.

I was pretty displeased with my score so I played again. I am attaching my high score from my two attempts thus far. I highly encourage everyone to download the software and recapture some of that elementary school magic. Please post your score in the comments section if you somehow best my great feat. I have a feeling that I will be doing this by myself. If you have never played, what are you waiting for?!

Return to the GreensandBrowns home page.