Kiko - Fu

February 27, 2026

When I went grocery shopping last week, I got lost in thought and drove like 6 miles past my exit. When I finally remembered that I was a sentient being piloting a vehicle, I took the next exit and turned in the general direction of the store. I ended up using GPS, even though I vaguely knew the way, so that I wouldn't drive past my turns again. I wonder if I am letting my phone think for me too much.

In maybe 2009 I took a road trip to South Dakota with a couple of friends. None of us had a smartphone at the time, so I'm pretty sure we must have printed out MapQuest directions to get there.

We stayed at a campground near Mount Rushmore, but midway through the trip we decided to backtrack to Rapid City for a day. I think the only reason we went there was to visit Dinosaur Park, which is a charming spot with cartoonish 1930s dinosaur statues (a WPA project) overlooking the city.

The view from Dinosaur Park that day. Why I didn't take any photos of the actual dinosaurs is a mystery.

Anyway, we wanted to eat at Olive Garden for dinner. Our sophistication knew no bounds. Except we got lost immediately after asking someone for directions to the Olive Garden. We ended up calling our friend Mindy (the poet laureate of this website) and begging her to look up the directions on the internet and guide us, turn by turn, to the Olive Garden.

I don't know why I'm telling this story. I guess to further underscore my previous point about being a brainless driver. Before the Maps app, there was MapQuest. Before MapQuest, there was Mindy.

In other news, I logged in to Neopets for the first time in an eon and discovered that I'm no longer filthy rich. Due to inflation, I am middle class at best. It seems that true wealth now starts at 100 million Neopoints, which I am not close to.

According to JellyNeo, the average price for a dozen eggs in Neopia is about 1,000 Neopoints. In the U.S., the average price for eggs is about $2.58. Based on this, 1 NP is .003 cents. My fortune is around 13 million NP, which is equivalent to $33,540 USD. Certainly not enough to retire on. The Meerca Chase grind continues.

Though my liquid assets are not substantial, I do have over 5,000 items in my Safety Deposit Box. Among them, 131 copies of a book called Kiko - Fu. Back when I was an active player, I would buy large amounts of consumable items when they were retired and store them for future profit. I'd venture to guess that I bought all of my Kiko - Fu books for less than 1,000 NP each (JellyNeo says they were 750 NP in 2008, which was years after I stopped playing). Now they are listed for over 900,000 NP.

If only my instinct for capitalism on Neopets translated to real life.

The stupidest thing in my Safety Deposit Box is 1,459 Golden Medallions. This is not a consumable item. It's a useless, nearly worthless toy. I'm 90% sure I bought almost all of these in 2002, when they were 1 NP. I had a plan to spend a few hours flooding the Money Tree with them. Twelve-year-old me was a little Neopets troll.

Despite being a troll, I met one of my IRL best friends on Neopets when we were 12 and 13 years old. We've kept in touch for over 20 years and still talk nearly every day. We've met each other's families. She came to my wedding. Neopets is awful now, but that cursed website still means a lot to me for this reason.

(It doesn't escape my notice that Neocities and Neopets have similar names. On Neopets, friends are called Neofriends. I often think of the people I interact with on Neocities as my Neofriends as well.)

And now to bring this dumb post full circle: the first time my Neopets BFF visited me in Minnesota, I got us lost while driving. Shocking. She later told me that my laissez-faire attitude around getting lost helped her become a less anxious driver. At least my brainless driving has has helped someone.