Dendro-dander

I fucking hate pollen. Here I am, saving money by opening my window instead of turning on my damn air conditioner. Then here's some beautiful-ass tree outside of my window, spraying pollen all over my room and things. Yellow dust, everywhere.

Now, I realize that I could simply close my windows, turn on my air-conditioner, be happy and quit complaining, but this shit was EVERYWHERE!!! From my keyboard to my TV, a fine gold powder which wasn't gold powder.

It's not like I can get revenge either. I can't reverse the situation, go outside and spray my genetic material all over this tree. It'll be exhausting in the first place, secondly I'll get hurt (probably.) Lastly, well, I'll probably get one of those little blue squares put over my home on an online map.

Why can't we arrest trees for being sexual offenders?

-The0

O Freeman, Where Art Thou?

I've had a little idea running through my head, and though I haven't really done the proper research, I think that it is very safe to say the Half-Life 2 occurs somewhere in Serbia. After a bit of looking, I found this picture of the Serbian Federal Parliament building.

Of course, I ran through the game really quickly and found a good shot of the Overwatch Nexus building.

Taking this in mind, I really want to know a couple of the other locations. City 17 is apparently Belgrade, Serbia. But where was Gordon Freeman dropped off? Where is zombie infested Ravenholm? Whose house got smashed under the Citadel? Where the hell is Half-Life 3!?

Valve has a very good practice of building real environments, and it shows even in their earlier works. Half-Life took place in a research lab hidden in Black Mesa, NM (Clever little wink: It's about 120 miles from Los Alamos, birthplace of the atom bomb.) I have actually been through Black Mesa a couple of times, on hiking expeditions with the Boy Scouts. On the very scenic route, I kept remembering and comparing the environment, color, and appearance of all the stone cliffs and reddish-brown mountains from the game to the actual environment around me. I found that it was really well captured, even for 1998 graphics and game engines.

I wonder if it's bad that my fonder memories of nature come from a video game.

-The0