Well, to be fair, maybe we can work something out where you get two slightly maimed, ugly cats (one of which pisses your bed) for just the ten points… Deal?
There is seriously no way I’d waste any points on a workout room. You can do all sorts of improvised exercises off the side of your bed, so using your points for that seems wasteful. Plus, if you get the master chef, you know you’ll have access to other things (they aren’t going to cook on your bed, right?) that would facilitate this. Not to mention if you get a bathtub versus a shower stall.
Yeah, it seriously (for me) depends on what the ‘defaults’ are for food and medical care.
(And what’s the point of having board and card games without someone to play them with?)
ETA: I just realized that the “any book in existence ever” option is more interesting than I thought, considering that taken literally, it can grab stuff no longer in print, no longer on the Internet, and/or lost to history. Hmmmm.
Well, you guys wouldn’t have much choice, would you? Maybe the smell would be motivation for the Dopers to band together and fight whatever terrible turn of events led to me being in this situation. I’m not hoping just to chat with you guys for fun, I am hoping you guys use the Dope as a clearinghouse for info on the case, for communication with the press and my family, and for activism against whatever is locking me up. We’ll use our chats to catch up on how that is going. In any case, I’ll have water and I’m sure I can find something from my fast food diet to exfoliate with…maybe even some moist towlettes if I’m lucky.
I can’t afford both the five years and the computer, so the computer goes. I can be gone from my family, my career, and my life for five years and it will suck, but ultimately I’ll be able to recover and resume a fairly normal life, with that episode being a brief, regrettable blip. People leave for five years fairly regularly (overseas posts, etc.) and they generally can still integrate when they get back.
But 10 years is too long to do that easily. In 10 years, baby-on-the-way will have grown up without me (missing 0-5 would suck, but missing her entire childhood? No way.), I’ll probably have lost older family members, I’ll have missed my career growth period entirely, and probably won’t be able to recover. I’ll have missed my 30s, which seems to me to be the most critical period of my life.
Nope. I don’t care how miserable I am. As long as I’m alive and I’m sane, I’m doing what it takes to get out.
I didn’t think about using the work out room to include a pool! That pretty much would take over the roll of a shower, bathtub and sink. Hell maybe even swishing the chlorinated water around in my mouth will help keep my mouth a little cleaner, haha.
I’m going to replace my desire for the shower/tub/sink with the workout room and include a pool, Jacuzzi, etc. 
Yeah, I think evensven has hit upon the only real answer.
If you don’t want to go insane from solitary confinement, you HAVE to pick one of these three options: computer (40 pts), live-in chef (40 pts), or random doper (30 pts). People always claim they can go without human contact but actual science on inmates has shown that it’s just not possible without huge mental issues and breakdowns.
I’m tempted to pick the chef and the five years off, since I would eat great and probably learn everything the chef knows about cooking. On the other hand, he or she is going to be super-pissed at me for imprisoning them for five years. I’d be very leery of eating anything they cooked for me. And you would get real sick of one person after five years in super close contact. I’ll take the random doper, fast food, five years.
Here are the top five choices so far:
shower/bath/sink 18
computer access 14
junk food 14
hygiene 12
dog or cat 10
That’s 90 pts.
40 - computer
20 - healthy food
10 - cat
10 - bath/shower/sink
10 - medical kit
5 - paper and drawing supplies
I would really really love my art supplies, but they aren’t worth 50 points so I would instead spend 10 years improving my drawing, and sketching out ideas.
Working out would be a high priority, but I could run in place and do body weight exercises. Could I have a simple pull up bar with my extra 5 points?
The healthy food is a must for me - to include coffee, plus I find when I eat low carb I get less plaque.
Leaving my family for 10 years would damn near kill me, but if I could get past that I could be remarkably productive.
But according to the OP, the workout room is pretty open ended. Just fill it up with your favorite workout toys. Think of all the possibilities on how this can be abused for a measly 10 points:
- another area that can be potentially very large for you to be in, walk around and run in. You can multiply your ‘cell’ space by many many times. This will be important over 10 years.
- it can double as the bath/sink facility. Swimming resistance machines are a legitimate workout machine.
- it has work out ‘furniture’ - padded places to sit and relax other than your bed and toilet.
Easy.
40 - Computer
30 - Any Food
10 - Workout Room
10 - Shower/Bath/Sink
5 - Drawing materials
5 - Mirror
Computer: I get books, games, tv, movies, music, communication with the outside world…
Any food: I can learn to be a great chef, and have access to incredibly expensive foods (Kobe beef).
Workout room: Any fun workout stuff I want, extra space, get in better shape.
Shower/Bath/Sink: Can’t do without this.
Drawing materials: By the end of the 10 years I’ll have some masterpieces done.
Mirror: Nothing else for 5 points.
The only hard choice was leaving out the medical kit, but since I am isolated from the world most diseases can’t reach me. And if I get cancer, the medical kit is useless anyway. If I realllly stretch the concept of the medical kit, I would take it and the 20 point food instead of the 30 point food.
And medical care, unless we’re talking spaceship/moon/etc. in which case what high speed internet.
Computer, 40
Random Doper, 30
Healthy food, 20 (note that it WILL have to take stuff such as “no cauliflower” and “no cod” into account, since it says healthy and stuff that makes you throw up or stop breathing is, by definition, not healthy)
Workout room including shallow pool, deep pool and jacuzzi, 10 points
This is pretty interesting, and I’ve been pondering my response for a while, so here goes.
Entertainment:
40 points: Computer and Internet. A requirement, because it allows so many things - this will serve all entertainment needs, allow me to learn a great deal, supply me with porn, and let me work on things like writing, drawing, programming, creating computer graphics, etc.
Food:
30 points: I’ll take any food and the tools to cook it. With plenty of time on my hands, I should learn to cook some pretty good foods.
Other:
A shower, bath, and sink are vital, but others have come up with some creative multi-uses for other things, such as using a workout machine that requires/includes water to double as a bath. So…
10 points: Workout room. Like This_Just_In… said, I’ll request every workout machine that exists, thus forcing the size of the room up and giving me plenty of stuff to fiddle with. Some of the ones that use water will double as my bath, and the sink that comes with my kitchen will also provide me a useful place to cleanse things.
10 points: Medical kit. Pretty much necessary, because I’m certain I will at the very least get a headache from time to time, and I’ll probably have small injuries that could get infected if I don’t have proper gear to take care of them.
That all leaves me 10 points short of 100, and the remaining 10, I’m not sure what I would pick with them. I could go for 10 points for the ‘any book’ because, as others have said, it would give me access to books and knowledge that has been lost. Technically, as written, it would also give me access to any books written by any creature anywhere in the universe, including aliens that have never had contact with humans. Alternately, I could go for the dog or cat. I’m generally pretty solitary, but I have to admit actually touching another living creature once in a while is comforting on some levels. And assuming I’m not trying to rules-lawyer the ‘any book’ option into some massive (and likely unintended) advantage, that’s probably the best of the remaining options.
Internet, chef, and pot.
My chef will kill me long before ten years is up, because I’ve effectively ordered his imprisonment as well, and I will start to smell bad without soap.
OTOH, maybe my chef can cook up something into soap and shampoo – before he kills me.
Do I really need to explain the pot?
40 points…the computer that has high speed internet .
I assume this also gets me the radio, the skype, the tv and the books, written and audio companionship, and the writing equipment.
20 points…the pre-made healthy foods/meals.
I won’t miss the alcohol, but eating badly makes you feel sick and miserable.
For 10 points…the cat.
10 points…the workout room filled with work out machines. It is extra space. And I include a pool. So that is showering and doing laundry covered.
10 points… be without pain medication, without meds, wondering for the whole 10 years if I will get sick? No way.
That leaves me 10 points. I would probably spend those on comfy furniture and decoration.
10 : every single BOOK
30 : you will have ANY FOOD … to make yourself (assuming this includes stove, oven?)
5 : mirror.
5 : writing or drawing utensil you wish and all the paper you want. (can this include canvas?)
10 : workout room.
10 : shower/bath/sink.
10 : medical kit
20 : hygiene products (I’m assuming this includes toothbrushes, razor & nail clippers)
That’s my 100, although I’d gladly swap the workout room for a ten-pointer along the lines of “a hobby room with all the equipment that fits on one standard workbench to do 1 hobby of your choice, along with all the materials you would need for that” (I’d do leatherwork). But I see that’s 50 points, so no.
Have no idea why hygiene is so expensive.
Yes, seriously. I couldn’t spend 10 years of my life and not share it with a single living creature. It would take a fortune to make me give that up.
The “you can have any food” item could probably be used as a loophole here - you could have a succession of living creatures passing through. As it were.
Here’s what I’ve come up with:
I need the internet. Hell, I might even start a blog about the whole thing. (40 points total)
10 years without paper and writing tools would be horrible. (45 points total)
The gym is a must. It needs a lap pool, a hot tub, free weights, and a bunch of machines with wires and weights. (55 points total)
Give me all the food I could cook and a kitchen to cook it in. In addition to food this will give me some kind of soap and a big kettle to heat water in. I could heat some water, drag the kettle to the pool, then use the machines with wires to rig up some kind shower. Also I could use the sharp knives to trim my nails, hair, and beard (probably not to shave, though). (85 points total)
A mirror, just to bring it up to an even 90. (90 points total)
Before I spend my last ten points I have a question: can the kitchen have hops, good brewing yeast and other brewing supplies? That’s a legit loophole, right? None of that stuff is actually booze. I know I could make some kind of cheap booze with regular yeast and juice, but if I can’t have good beer I might as well just cut my throat with one of those sharp kitchen knives. If that works I’ll take a cat; if not I’ll spend ten points on booze.
Then what I want is an open doorway through which anyone may bring me anything I request and may visit at any time I allow and which can be used in any way a normal doorway can be used, with the exception that I’m not allowed to leave through it.. Forget your points–I’ll get my needs provided by my loved ones.
For my other 50 points I’ll have the deaths of the people who did this to me.
Just to let everyone know–all of the talk in here about pools in workout rooms and balconies and using the cook to make things for you that you need; basically everything that’s been tossed around and thought of–is all allowed. That’s sort of what I was hoping for this topic, too…for people to use their points to develop interesting ways to get other things that they need by using other facilities for the stuff.
Very well done and interesting replies.