So I've been having trouble swallowing food if I don't chew properly for a while. I guess it's part of getting older, but last week it morphed into a medical emergency. One mouthful of food got stuck and I actually threw it up. It must have done something in my throat, because the day after I vomited blood and my shit turned black (not just dark, black like ink). Turns out those are two very, very serious symptoms. If you want to get an idea of how frightening this was, write either one of those symptoms (vomiting blood and black excrement) into one of those medical sites that tell you what it could be. Both together are even worse.

And I was aware of how it's a bad idea to self diagnose, so I called up a line for medical advice from actual medical professionals and then did not calm down when they told me I needed to get myself to a hospital RIGHT NOW. I didn't need an ambulance or anything, because apart from having vomited blood and having black shit I felt perfectly fine, so I went to the closest emergency room. Then I kept on not calming down after they skipped me ahead of everyone else in the emergency room as soon as they heard my symptoms and immediately started doing every test they had on hand and then had me transported to the largest hospital in the area.

I was pretty much panicking at this point, having been stripped of my clothes and shoved into a hospital bed with like 15 different sensors attached to my body, while doctors showed up to draw blood several times, shove a camera into my ass, take blood pressure, monitor my breathing etc...

And then all the tests they had been doing just started to come back positive. All my blood values were finge, my blood pressure was fine, the camera in the ass said there was nothing to worry about. And nothing changed while they kept me in the bed. Eventually they just told me to not eat any solid food for a while and sent me home while they booked a time to shove a camera all the way down my esophagus into my stomach, and now they've done that too and just noticed that it was kind of tight which may cause some trouble with swallowing food, so they widened it during the test.

I must caused some mild bleeding when I originally tried to swallow, which bled into my stomach and then healed on its own before they could see it on their tests. Even with those symptoms which didn't just frighten me, but apparently mad medical professionals very worried, it turns out I'm just... fine? The feeling of relief is almost as powerful a drug as whatever they pumped into my system when they were shoving that camera down my throat, except I can read and write and form new memories now, and OK it's not quite as powerful a drug.

For the third year running, but the first since federation, this is your yearly reminder that US politician Dan Crenshaw wrote several guides for the 2002 JRPG Suikoden 3. The guides consist of the most comprehensive walkthrough of the entire game, a guide to the endings and story scenes and a list of all the things your private investigator can tell you about the underage girls who are part of your army because it is a JRPG from 2002.

Recap of the evidence gathered previous years:

1. The guides are written under the user name dan_crenshaw, which is a good starting point for evidence but by no means enough on its own.

2. The guides were written right after Dan Crenshaw finished high school, and stopped being updated once he started attending university, so he was the exact right age to be writing these guides and they coincide with a "break" in his life when we don't know what he did.

3. The email adress for providing feedback (dshaw999@bellsouth.net) matches a likely internet service provider for where he was in 2002.

4. He clearly poked his own eye out to be able to look more like main character Geddoe (see picture)

I am still curious if there are any reliable websites to find out how many Dan/Daniel Crenshaws there are in the US. The ones I have found were pointed out the previous years' iterations of this thread to be not too reliable.

EDIT: Forgot to link to the actual guides! Here they are: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps2/536777-suikoden-iii/faqs

I want to hear your theories! Please do not provide any sources beyond what is in your heart. I'll start us off with some likely scenarios:

1. The leg of Henry Kissinger's pants got caught in the wheel of his wheelchair, and because he had the consistency of wet dough, rather than ripping the cloth his entire body was pulled under and slowly bisected from the bottom up like a bucket of toy slime under a pizza cutter.

2. Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky were playing around with Kissinger's dad's gun and Henry Kissinger wanted to check if you could see the bullet through the barrel just as Chomsky was firing at an imaginary robber.

3. Unclear exactly how he died, but the winner of the Kissinger Death Tontine turns out to be a three time champion of American Ninja Warrior.

At work today a kid told me that I looked like Gorbachev when we were going through news (Gorbachev is dead). I don't, but with the kids I work with I am happy that he recognized that we are both bald and wear glasses. My closest colleague however, who was born in the USSR and whose family escaped Russia in the 90s told me that while I don't look like Gorbachev I do look like Lenin.

I have heard that I look like Lenin before, but always from family or friends who know my politics. Someone who knows nothing about my politics but who is very familiar with Lenin telling me this just made me so happy. Of course I model my looks after Lenin in some ways as a bald man in my late 30s, but I don't dress up or anything. Seems like I look like Lenin in a dumb T-shirt and shorts, and I feel beautiful even if that was not what was meant.

I know I am a few years late to this trend, but I did that thing that used to be huge on the internet and took a hammer to a bunch of aluminum foil and it actually worked! I thought it would be terrible, because every guide I found eventually suggested that you bring out your belt grinder and a bottle of aluminum polish, and I am not a metal worker, so I don't have that. Turns out you can get a very satisfying ball of aluminum with just the foil, a hammer, any kind of flat surface to work on and some toilet paper for polishing.

It's shiny and I made it and I can use it as a stress ball by just tossing it from one hand to the other and feeling the satisfying weight. I love it!