Today’s Rave: Diplomacy

As you know (I think), I love board games. And among board games, one is the undisputed king. The rules are simple, but the intrigues, subterfuge, treasonous maneuvering and back-stabbing is as complex and varied as real life. I refer to the Avalon Hill classic, Diplomacy.

The rules themselves are almost laughably simple. There are armies and fleets. They each can move, hold, or support another movement. Attackers must outnumber their opponents to dislodge them. That’s about it, other than rules for convoying. But all movement orders are processed simultaneously, so it’s up to you, the hapless leader of your nation, to wheel and deal with others in an attempt to grab as much land as possible while feinting with the olive branch whenever necessary. Certain areas on the board are supply centers, and for each additional one you capture you can build an additional fleet or army.

The ultimate aim of Diplomacy is to position yourself, after a couple of years, in a position where you will be able to perform a backstab of such breathtaking arrogance and scope that you will climb over the corpses of both your enemies and friends to victory. Because once you break your word, no other country will trust you again. So you have to wait for that right moment.

The hilarious thing about the game is despite the ridiculously simple rules, your interactions with other nations are hilariously complex. For example, you might meet with a stated ally to discuss plans, then meet with a secret ally who you will leak information to in exchange for information on their partner. Then it’s off to meet with a supposed enemy who in fact you are faking a war with to get another country off its guard. It’s as ridiculous as you make it.

Every country has its own challenges to face: England’s relative isolation and naval superiority make it easy to defend, but taking territory can be problematic. Russia starts with four military units but is beset on all sides by enemies. Italy has dominance of the Mediterranean but has two central European powers breathing down its neck.

In short, Diplomacy is a game that relies simply on human nature to provide its challenges and entertainment – a winning formula. Not to mention, Diplomacy is one of the few games that actually teaches you a skill: in this case, negotiation. Trying to delicately broker a peace agreement before the entire continent plunges into all-out war will make you think twice next time you read about the diplomatic problems some countries are facing.

Today’s Rave: Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann is the voice of sanity. His show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, has been around for a while but I didn’t really watch it until I got home, as my folks catch it almost every night.

He fearlessly attacks the vacuous rhetoric and divisive strategies of the desperate Republican party, digs up political news that went underreported, and famously has a “special comments” section when the situation calls for it, generally when someone does something so sleazy it demands an immediate rebuke, in his opinion. He generally addresses the offender directly, using the ever-popular tactic of calling someone “sir” or “madam” as a euphemistic alternative to “asshole” or “bitch.” I’m sure you know what I mean.

His special comments are famous (or notorious, depending on who you are) for being extremely well-written, persuasive, and often poetic at times. Rarely do you see any high-quality genuine rhetoric (like Churchill) anymore, but he could probably get a job as a speech writer if it came down to it. You just wish whoever he was addressing was actually watching his dressing-down. They might be shamed into doing something decent for once.

Yeah, it’s a left-leaning program. I despise the words “liberal,” “progressive,” “conservative,” or practically any label that attempts to define any sort of political view as being on some sort of false spectrum. People for one idea are not necessarily against another idea. In a certain sense, I respect independent voters more than knee-jerk Big Two supporters, but in another sense, I think they fatuously refuse to realize the gravity of their situation. It would be weird to self-identify as a swing voter. You would know that your vote would essentially be worth more than the people who decided long before they stepped into the voting booth. By the way, some disturbingly large percentage of people don’t choose who they’ll vote for until they actually step in to the booth. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the number but I think it was around 5%.

The point is that “liberal” equals “sanity” just at the moment. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are divisive, angry, immature, and often racist scumbags (Limbaugh obviously more) who are so far away from sanity that we can definitely say that they deliver nothing but breathtakingly horrible lies into the minds of the supposedly large base of listeners/watchers that they have. This administration has done so poorly and left such a taint on the GOP that they have conclusively proven they have nothing substantive to say at this point, and no ideas worthy of putting into practice.

Hence the scurrilous and hateful campaign by McCain and his Alaskan lackey. It sure would be awesome if the Dems took Alaska.

Watch Mr. Olbermann on MSNBC. He will make you feel like everything just might be all right, after all. And we could all use a dose of that.

I wish I was getting paid for these endorsements.

Weird Poetry IV: Night In The Tropics

Heaving, huffing, harrowing heat
Like living in a smoldering blast furnace
Inhaling water like a fish
Drowning in the atmosphere

Thunderclaps punctuate these long nights
The horizon comes crashing through your window
The sound of another torrential downpour
Slashing across the house like a cloud of knives

Sleeping is not an option
In this sticky, sweat-soaked state
I just want to crawl into the refrigerator

The cool of morning arrives
And my fitful dozing tapers off into the deepest sleep
Attuned to nature
The calm after the storm
The calm in the soul
Peace

Weird Poetry II: Whisky Barrel Blues

Another uncompromisingly strange poem. I’ve been in a very weird mood lately, but the poetry seems to help. Incidentally, I’m no particular lover of poetry; I find it much more satisfying to write than read. But my love of language in general absolutely carries over into poetry (including haiku in Japanese, a wonderful type of Zen-like art). I believe it was Coleridge who said that poetry was “the best words in the best order.” To me, that implies laborious writing and re-writing but my stuff is almost entirely stream of consciousness (as if you couldn’t tell). Fatuous? Probably. Good? Unlikely. Interesting? I hope so. Enjoy.

Whisky Barrel Blues

What would it be like to drown in whisky?
Cascading golden spirit cleans out your entire being.
Death by inebriation occurs even before you suffocate.
A purgatory of liquid fire.
How ironic that toxins can yet purify.
Still, I suppose that is a matter of perspective.

The power to forget is an important one.
More important than the power to remember.
To forgive is divine, but to forget is easier.
Better for you, but not better for the one who erred (on the path of righteousness, of course).

Is God even capable of forgetting?
Of course He (or She) could forget anything (or It) He liked.
Remove it from memory and even the fabric of Time itself.
And then, in a heartbeat, remember it entirely.
Restore existence to it entirely.
It can pervade the cosmos on a whim.

God has it rough. Omnipotent beings have it rough.
Or however they want it.
After all, doing anything is as easy as doing nothing at all.

All along you knew.
No one else could save you. Only you could save yourself.
So what does it mean when you start wondering…whether you’re worth saving?

With this glass of whisky, I propose a solitary toast:
To the quote-unquote human condition.
No analogue in the known Universe.
Pour me another, bartender.
The night is young.
And I am very, very old.

Speed Screed: Whoa Is Me

I’m pretty worn out from starting my new job, creating media packets for the Rotary International convention in LA. My 8 hour day consisted of two activities: namely, tearing name badges out from a perforated sheet, and putting labels on envelopes. The mind-numbing boringness of the job does not actually bother me as such; I’m still making more money per hour than I have in Chicago up to this point. No, the problem is how my college degree is gathering rust as I do the necessary things to survive, such as work at lame jobs for money.

I’ve complained about that before, so I’ll leave it alone. But I’m working with 11 other temps from my agency, all 40-50 something women. Many of them are quite erudite and have a good sense of humor (as well as a heaping helping of wisdom) so I enjoy talking to them, as I am learning much. Nevertheless, as the only guy I never find the conversation drifting to anything I am very interested in unless I take control, which I do occasionally. Truth be told, I can always switch on my MP3 player and listen away when the conversation drifts to something like menopause. They always laugh at my situation when they start talking about stuff like that, but I just shrug. It’s a free country. I am greatly outnumbered, therefore they ought to talk about whatever the hell they want, and I can listen or not. Seems straightforward to me.

I wish we had an hour for lunch, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule for the most part. I had an hour for lunch at my university job, but I was actually at work for 8.5 hours, so I would have gone totally nuts without that break in the day. There are a million great places to eat near this place (Potbelly Sandwich Works, Al’s Italian Beef, a great cheap Chinese place) but I gotta hustle if I want to get food from any of those places. Some of the people thought we were being paid for lunch. That made me laugh. The only time I’ve ever heard of someone being paid for lunch is when they’re salaried.

I’m waiting for the outcome of the latest primaries before I switch the politics back on. I am also trying to choose a good piece of music that I’ve written to compare to Metalman’s Theme. Stay tuned.

Today’s Rant: Moment of Truth

It’s Pennsylvania time, baby. The results of this primary will pretty much throw the rest of this belabored contest into sharp relief. If Hillary blasts the hell out of Obama, she’ll interpret it as some sort of mandate to continue. But as a campaign analysis from the NY Time points out, if she wins but not by much, the result becomes much more murky.

Honestly, I’m tired of this whole thing. I do think that the venom being spat back and forth between the campaign teams is doing damage to their eventual chances against McCain, but worse than that is the polarization between Obama and Hillary supporters. I may not like Hilary all too much anymore, but Lord knows I’ll be voting for her if she wins the nomination. No question in my mind. But this battle has gotten so bitter than some supporters who would vote for one will not vote for the other, or, even worse, will vote for McCain instead.

This falls somewhere between retarded and brain-dead, with a side order of immaturity.

I hope that this is a minority of boneheads who don’t understand that someone actually has to win the nomination, and that if you actually care about your country you don’t throw a temper tantrum and vote against your own best interests out of spite. Whoever believes that either Democratic candidate would be worse than McCain must have been a swing voter to begin with, and an idiot to boot. If we weren’t following 8 years of the stone age under W, I could see there being at least some validity to that idea. But the fact that we’d just continue the downward spiral into madness with him at the helm is blindingly apparent.

By the way, McCain is not a “maverick” or a “straight-shooter.” He equivocates with the best of them, plainly saying something on record and then denying it or changing it later. Nevertheless, I actually don’t mind him as a senator. He’s done a some good in certain limited contexts and I like the fact that he doesn’t put up with lock-step Republicans (at least when it doesn’t suit him to also lock-step) but I sure as hell wouldn’t want him to be president. I mean, come on.

And by the way, W would have been fairly harmless or even had a positive impact on Texas if he’d just stayed there as governor. He apparently purposively passed a bill so Texas must have 11% of its power generated by wind by 2011, or 2016 (I don’t remember the exact date, but it was fairly soon as far as legislation goes).  You don’t want to elect someone to the presidency who is out of their league, unless they have the wherewithal to surround themselves with the best cabinet they could possibly find, and actually bother to follow their recommendations.

Incidentally, that’s precisely what I would do if for some reason I was forced to be President via circumstance. I would probably be paralyzed by indecision, since I wouldn’t want to take a wrong step and tank the country. There’s at least one job on this planet I can say with confidence that I am clearly under-qualified for, although I’m a damn sight better than W as I’m sure you would all agree. That’s not saying much, of course. Any one of you could do a better job.

So hopefully if Hilary concedes at some point (and this is an “if”) she will give a nice speech about how her supporters really ought to rally behind Obama and that it would be stupid to vote Republican out of spite, by reminding them (why would the need reminding?) what a catastrophe the current administration has been. That would pretty much be the best thing she could do if she didn’t get nominated. But a lot of people are suspecting she’s playing the zero-sum game, sabotaging Obama so she can get one more chance to run after McCain takes the presidency for four years.

I can’t bring myself to believe that. I think it’s preposterous. No matter how great of a president she thinks she would be, it would pretty much equate to treason to put your own interests over your country’s. I think it’s just a lie that Hilary-haters use to justify their unreasoning venom.

Let’s put our differences aside here, Dems. We’re messing up what was supposed to be a guaranteed election. If we let McCain win I’m going to be angry. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. Actually, I guess you do, or you wouldn’t be reading The Daily Tirade.

Keep your fingers crossed.