Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, September 30, 2016

PLUTARCHY: The Game of Global Rape and Plunder!

There should be a board game that's a cross between Monopoly and RISK.

Oh never mind. There is already. A bit ad hoc, and kind of confusing though. They're calling it "Riskopoly" - that's sound enough, I suppose. You can look it up. It seems to be more a fanfic slash boardgame than an actual product. They want you to use 2 boards, the actual Monopoly board and the actual RISK board! Heck, why not throw in Stratego at that point?

There should be a better board game that combines Monopoly and RISK.

It should be called OLIGARCHY.

Or if that's taken: HEGEMONY?

Or if that's taken, oh heck, the name doesn't really matter folks. Make up a word, and it will come to mean that if your gameplay's good enough.

PLUTARCHY. You can play as a military power, a megaglobal syndicate, or a rogue ideology. Better yet, each player gets to play as all three!

Over the course of the game, things can change. You might lose your military power entirely, and still win the game! Military powers have different goals, you can divest yourself of that (or of the syndicate business) and play all-out along only one line. Suppose you lose your armed forces, but gain an extra megaglobal syndicate? That's huge. Imagine if unbeknownst to the world - what if Coke OWNS Pepsi? Or unbeknownst to the world - what if Bayer OWNS Monsanto?

It would be a super-sinister development, with the powers-behind edging that much closer to Global Hegemony. Or whatever.

You can have as many rogue ideologies as you like, but everybody has to have at least one. Each lets you do different things, but liabilities apply as well - and your internal factions can begin to dissonate each other, if you're not careful to keep them divided, conquered and working separately towards your multifarious goals. Rogue ideologies include theocracism (there are a number of these in different flavors!), fanatisystem (same), absolutist relativism (only one of these really, the whole "all wrongs are equally false" deal - primarily used to undermine!), conspiriarchy, dogmagic orthotoxy, and more! Picking up two or three of these gives you a lot of flexibility to undermine, subvert, motivate and terrorize in a way people on the internet will be quick to justify and/and condemn.

Military power is probably best used sparingly, or towards areas where they don't have much media hookup. Of course, if you control enough of the media...you get a pretty acceptable risk.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Why You Might Want To Reconsider Casablanca As One Of The Best Movies Ever - What A Classic!

So because basically he's all "In one of the gin joints, in all of the lousy towns in the world - and then she walks in!" They had a history, you see, but you don't know that. You find out later. He'd already had a history himself: a real idealist, mercenary type. Running guns, participating in losing revolutions, he thought he was pretty much "all man" and knew the difference. But he had to take a little break in Paris, between gigs, didn't he? It must have been fate at hand, that day - because next thing you know, she meets this guy and they're being all coy and joyfully mysterious about their pasts. Drinking, smoking, implying sex, it was as if it was a game to them. A game they'd heard about before - no time for it, then. But now, it was a game they could both afford to play, because it was so plain they'd already secretly won. Somehow, by that point, what did the past matter?

As it turns out, plenty. He was kidding himself otherwise. He thought he was the one from the big dark past with shadowy crap in it, meanwhile she herself was just about as rough and tumble a revolutionary as he'd been - and worse, even more willing to sacrifice what's worth living for, even more willing to sacrifice everything for a hard, bad cause: whatever's right. Next thing you know, like a chump in the rain clutching a note, all the meaning in the world was running away and he finally realized that train wasn't ever going there. Somebody lied, or maybe somebody just didn't say the truth out loud. It amounted to the same thing: beans. One hill.

By then, naturally the only thing left with meaning in life was to go crawl to some Gottforsaken desert hole and act mister big shot in a white tuxedo jacket, play coy and mysterious with suave, brutal German honchos, wink sarcastically at the disgusting antics of that barbarous French sheriff, bandy a lot of banter with Sidney Greenstreet and assorted other characters, and then what? Everybody's sitting there by this point going, "the dialogue is delicious!" "How can this man possibly have so much savoir faire and yet care so little about it?" He can't. Nobody can. It's because they don't know the history. Then she walks in with it.

Ingrid Bergman was treated so cruelly in that movie, as you know. The story's famous, and as it happens, it goes that they shot both endings. All along the way - even in the flashback scene, where realistically she shouldn't have even been thinking about it! - the actress had no idea which man she's going to end up with! Much like life, really, but a cruel way to treat an actress. How's she supposed to describe an arc? When she knows somewhere out there, in the future, an alternate ending DVD extra has already happened - and was released. And was the real film, in that universe. And in that universe, everybody said "Ah! Casablanca. A slight film, a charming film, a film with wit and characters - not much heft to it, but at least there's a happy ending! That much is certain, those two were made to end up together, early, often, and ever after. What a piece of business."

And so she had no idea what universe she was living in. And she looked it! She looked like she came in from a better one, still had hopes of getting back there. But at the point of her crisis, she gave up on love for what was right. He, meanwhile, gave up on love because of what was right. That's also why he gave up on what was right, or had been. He'd found out by then what was worth living for. What's right isn't it. Not a broken man, just a bent animal in a white tuxedo jacket and a sense of style, both of which fit perfectly. And by then, she walked in.

God damn it I hope I never hear that song again. But if she can stand it, so can I.

I learned all those same lessons he did, when I first saw the film. And I was deeply moved because it was just a movie. That's what consoles us to these things, that's what reconciles us to movies. Later, I was sitting in a gin joint in some forsaken town in the real world, or what suddenly no longer passed for it: because all of a sudden, she walks in.

It's all a lot of history, and it never amounts to much. The right person got on the plane, that's all that matters. It took me forever to realize that the whole time, she didn't know who she was going to end up with.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Definition of the day: "terrorist"

A terrorist is someone who uses homicide as public relations, and is stupid enough to think this makes their cause look good.

Takes On: FOOD

Time to get back to basics: FOOD

Food, people, is one of those words that's just FOOD-NEUTRAL. It gives you the idea of something to EAT, but it doesn't really expand on that or fill in any of the details. Will the food be delicious? It might say more about you than the food, the answer you give to this next question: FOOD GOOD or FOOD BAD?

I think the human heart holds out hope that FOOD GOOD. Even though let's be honest, we've all had a lot of experience with the disappointment of a meal-gone-wrong. Or even a snack-gone-poorly. Does that put us off food?

What about involving FOOD in a sexual encounter, as sort of a playful, frankly childish maneuver? Don't play with your food, love. It's unhygienic, probably - although this may depend more on the FOOD factor than emotions do.

I remember the first time somebody brought my attention to the idea. It was my first, real love, you know - "X1" as I call her. Actually I don't! I just made that up, but I think I kinda like it! X-1. "Girl X-1." There oughtta be a manga. Anyhow, speaking of mangia, she goes "hey do you want to eat raspberries off my belly?"

Now this is kinkier than it sounds, because she knows what I'm really into is blackberries. Raspberries just seem seedy to me. But what are you going to do?

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Tough Topics #37-b: Slavery

The main thing people object to in slavery seems to be that it was racist. I wonder how the other aspects would play today, if the racist aspect could be fully and completely purged.

Would people sign up for slavery, if we could guarantee it were a multiracial institution with no race overrepresented, if we instituted strict requirements for clothing, nutrition, medicine, housing and humane treatment - a guaranteed decent standard of living, all you give up is your freedom? It'd be entirely voluntary: upon signup, slaves would first be sterilized, and owners would buy them from the government. It would be unconscionable to allow a generation of children born into slavery. That would ruin the market.

Would you choose a life of drudge work, no pay, no possibility of advancement, but at least you know you'll be clothed, fed, housed and taken care of? If you are like many people, you may already be choosing all the negatives from that list, pretty much. What price, hope?

One is reminded of recidivism. Prisons are drastically overcrowded and, we hear, dangerous places. And in case you don't know, people commit crime just to get back inside, where they know they're clothed, fed, housed, and to some extent, taken care of. Have recidivists been institutionalized - unable to survive outside?

Or have they just found that for the less privileged, the outside has become a crueler institution than prison?

Time to Take Pokemon Go to the Next Level. Who's With Me?

I want to get a Pokémon cosplay posse together, dressed up in all different Pokémon costumes and we go around ambushing these people while they're all distracted on their app.

Friday, September 16, 2016

What People Don't Realize Is #2

What people don't realize is, it would be a great children's picture book if a baby bee hummingbird got lost and was taken in and nurtured by BEES.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Tough Topics #31: The Intelligent Design Controversy

Another thing: those "Intelligent Design" people? Always talking about how "obvious" it is? Well how come they never point out how the vagina is almost the perfect opposite of a penis??!

I'll tell you why, it's because they're hypocrites. A bunch of sex prudes, refusing to even mention the best argument they've got, probably: creation's naughty parts. After all: come on! Could those parts have arisen at random? In tandem? Pretty suspicious, if so.

It's kind of a tipoff, how they do all these cartwheels everywhere to scrupulously avoid all the sex stuff like it was the plague. Like it was a pitfall, and they thought their name was Harry. Swinging on vines over quicksand and crocodiles, with all their nudity taboos hanging out, and their so-called sexual mores - meanwhile, a moray eel has a better idea of healthy and natural sex attitudes than these people do. Or most of them, anyway. I tell you it'd be laughable, if there were anything the slightest bit funny about how pathetic it all is. Trying to act all natural about it, walking around nude as the emperor's sweet patoot - but with the HUGEST FIG LEAF EVER on! Oh, of course.

Surrr-r-r-r-re. We totally believe you on that fig leaf, dude. We're so sure you need one THAT BIG.

Hypocrites.

Thursday, September 01, 2016

Taunts We Don't Know What They Mean #7: Bull?

"Buddy, you just opened a BULL SHOP in Chinatown!!"


Now.

That's a perfect example of maybe I ought to hold my boasts, taunts or even toasts a moment in mind before letting fly. Because after the initial incredulity, hostility, questioning-of-mutual integrity and everything else - we were both forced to admit that it worked out to a compliment for him! I mean, apart from the dubiousness of the whole enterprise, selling bull to the Chinese, which seems a bit exploitative - but clearly you want to be the bull of the shop, not the one who's got to clean up all the busted wares your curious customers have taken home with them, to put them back together broken-hearted. So much prouder of the pieces they carry out than what they had walking in.

I used to run a bull shop in Chinatown.

Interesting business. Customers are scarce, because we don't speak English. It's a bit of a ticklish dick move, that - "Don't patronize ME!" - seems to be the message on the front door sign. Unless that calligraphist has been making fools of our faith in her! Hey, maybe that's why people keep coming in? Depending on what those beautiful characters hung in the door really say, I'd be curious to.

What with the takeout business so brisk, we're thinking of offering delivery.