Aspirin

From TheKolWiki

Obtained From

Obsoleted Areas/Methods

Crimbo 2005

Advent Calendar

When Used

Aspirin

You put the aspirin under your tongue and let it dissolve. Tastes nasty, but man, is it effective!

You gain 101 hit points.

(You lose the effect Beaten Up).

Notes

• Found in the Advent Calendar on December 13, 2005, with the text:

An Adventer is You!

aspirin

You acquire an item: aspirin

"They can't all be winners, kid."

References

• The item's appearance in the Advent Calendar and the Advent Calendar text are references to the film Bad Santa. Billy Bob Thornton's character rips apart an Advent calendar belonging to the boy in the film and eats all the chocolates. Then he feels badly about it, puts a bunch of junk in it instead of chocolate, and tapes it back up. The boy opens it and gets a piece of junk, and Billy Bob Thornton's character says, "They can't all be winners, kid."
• The "tribal remedy, made from tree bark and stuff" is possibly a reference to the book American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. One of the characters in the book offers the protagonist an ancient tribal remedy for a headache, which turns out to be aspirin. Incidentally, aspirin (salicylic acid) was originally made from willow bark, and in 1853, Charles Gherhardt (a French chemist) created a process to "buffer" it with acetyl chloride and sodium, in order to decrease its stomach-upsetting qualities, yielding modern asprin, or acetylsalicylic acid.
• The "little, white, different" quote is a reference to the analgesic Nuprin, whose slogan is "little, yellow, different."
• It may also refer to the joke: "Why is an elephant large, gray and wrinkled? Because if it was small, white and smooth it would be an aspirin."
• The specific use of the term "buffered analgesic" in the description is probably a reference to the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game by Infocom, in which you must find and use a "buffered analgesic" item to solve an early puzzle. The use of a technical description rather than the term "aspirin" is just one of many small touches that combine to make that game famously difficult.
• It's likely that users received this item as a joke. Knowing that Jick doesn't like the number 13, the fact that an item that isn't that good is given on the thirteenth day makes it seem like a joke.

Collection

	TOP 10 aspirin collections
	1. albrong - 630 | 2. KlarEsc - 351 | 3. Minke - 200 | 4. There are some that cal me Tim - 191 | 5. Luc1fer - 101 6. hagrid333 - 99 | 7. The Spam Sauceror - 91 | 8. Xara - 88 | 9. Albrowne - 70 | 10. Barf_de_Bard - 60 Collection data courtesy of ePeterso2 and Jicken Wings