Unwanted Commentary

I was reading this article and thinking to myself, “yeah right, stupid paranoid science guy.” Stephen Hawking, pfft. Telling us we need to flee the planet to save our race. How insane is that, we’re just fine here, everything is dandy. You’re just being “crazy”.

Then, suddenly, I realize that was exactly what the Kryptonians were saying to Jor-El right before their planet BLEW UP! They didn’t listen to his warnings and they all died! And I don’t want to be one of those guys laughing and pointing, saying, “boy howdy, what a nincompoop”. And then the next minute curled up in the fetal position wailing mournfully as the earth explodes. No, I don’t want to be one of those guys.

So I think it’s fortuitous that Superman Returns has come out and that I bought my dad the 1970’s Superman movie on DVD for Father’s day. With these examples in my head I can now heed these dire warnings and begin construction of my very own escape rocket pod thing.

Posted by Jeff at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was happy to go to the aid of Paraguay, especially when it entangled me in a conflict with two world powers. Eire and Bavaria were two emerging powers, as was my own Sultanate of Granada, during the period leading up to the Victorian era and I was eager to “throw down” with them. I had gazed over the Pyrenees for centuries at the lush lands of the French and Germanic peoples, but felt that an Islamic invasion of Savoy and Burgundy would be far too costly and then what would I do with all those bloody Catholics anyway. It was, after all, not an inexpensive prospect getting all of those sods out of the Iberian Peninsula. All the while I could see that the Bavarians were piecing together a sizeable empire that stretched all the way up into Scandinavia and the tales of their brilliant army and shiny guns was hard to ignore. Indeed I was forced to focus not an insubstantial amount of my empire’s resources on keeping up with the Joneses and their military prowess over more cultural endeavors.

I had long ago cast aside my ambitions of uniting the whole Islamic and Arabic world under the banner of Granada, especially after getting my nose bloodied over that little affair in Egypt. I decided it was best if The Kaliphate continued to handle their administration of the region and the Moors of Al-Andalusia would look in more westerly directions. And it was that decision that saw the Sultanate of Granada’s demesne stretching from the Nile to Mexico and California as the Victorian Age dawned.

Thusly the call from tiny Paraguay and Columbia rang in my ears and I geared up my mighty war machine to go to their aide. The poor Paraguayans were being eagerly devoured by the armies of Bavaria and I saw this as an affront to my benevolent nature, though it would mean I’d have to hold off on consuming what remained of the Cherokee nation. Pffft. But the Bavarian colonies in Central America were delightfully exposed and my armies in Panama and Mexico well positioned to ensure that the entire region would be painted in Granadian White.

There were some fierce battles raging all over, but slowly I beat back those Germanic Bavarian and Gaelic Irish troops. I retook the lost Paraguayan provinces and started turning the screws on the evil Bavarian/Irish alliance in order to force a peace settlement that would see Paraguay’s lost land restored. And in the midst of my triumph I noticed that the fight no longer raged in South America, that the conquest of Irish, Brazilian and Bavarian lands was no longer occurring. As the tears welled up in my eyes, all my work undone, all those little Moorish soldiers who gave their lives, such waste!, I scrolled back through the logs only to find out that Paraguay had accepted peace with Bavaria under the terms those Krauts keep their seized lands. The war was over and nothing for it but to send my boys back home.

Posted by Jeff at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There’s nothing like fight a very bloody and costly war over the province of Egypt for ten plus years, finally getting the upper hand and then seeing your ally negotiate a peace settlement. Grrrr.

In other concerns, the USA lost to Ghana 2:1 and will now be experiencing the thrills and spectacles that is the German airport system. I hope they find it more exciting than the German soccer fields and I’m sure we’ll be as glad to see our boys come home as they are to be here. Too bad, really, I had a lot of anticipation for “our” team, a lot of hopes in this, my first real “watching” of the World Cup. Alas, it is what it is. We took it up the pooper, seemingly enthusiastically, from the Czech Republic 3:0 because our Team USA forgot that they were there to play soccer, maybe they got it confused with football? They came back to play spectacularly against Italy, despite bad officiating and due to a little luck they came out of that one with the draw 1:1. The USA owes Italy a lot, the Italians scored our goal for us when we couldn’t and then today they gave us the chance to advance to round 2 by kicking those rascally Czech’s in the nuts 2:0. Unfortunately Ghana gave us what-for.

I watched the stupid Mavericks lose the basketball thing too. Stupid Mavericks, they had a great season, but they should have won it all. In the end I think they lacked veteran leadership.

Congrats to the Hurricanes, who despite having a flushing toilet as their logo, managed to win the Stanley Cup. And let me tell you, that’s a trophy that makes my heart beat a little faster and tears well up no matter who wins it. It was great to see those Carolinians get a chance to enjoy it. And congrats to the South in general, see, the South is rising again. The Miami Heat won the NBA Championship and now the Hurricanes take the Cup. I have to think that the South is making the rest of the country pay for what happened to it a century and a half ago. Making them pay big. This line of reasoning is the only way that I can really accept NASCAR in any sort of realistic way.

Posted by Jeff at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still alive, still kicking. Life is good and I guess I've reached a nice equilibrium of contentment. The need to journal what I then considered to be my eventual downfall has disappeared and I’ve found it difficult to come up with a purpose for this bloggy thing in the aftermath.

I’ve been playing an obscene amount of Europa Universalis II, as well as a modded scenario for the same game. World of Warcraft has become a minimalist occupant of my time, though I still log in from time-to-time to start a new toon and kill n00b mobs for awhile. Pwn!

We just returned from a furious road trip that lead us to Vicksburg and then to New Orleans. Vicksburg was awesome and the audio tour around the park is pretty special, very beautiful country. It’s impressive that you can still see the trench and earth works 160 years later. Now, I’m a moderate Civil War enthusiast and I find it all fascinating, but after about two hours you do get a little tired of looking at little plaques and monuments and all those cannon start to look the same. We did get to see a demonstration of an Enfield rifle and 12lb Napoleon Cannon, pretty nifty. If you do go, don’t make the same mistake we made, take water and food on the car tour. Especially if you like to stop and check shit out along the way. They say it’s an hour, but it takes a lot longer and they don’t have any concessions inside the park.

New Orleans was an experience, we stayed in the French Quarter and indeed we walked through the French Quarter at night. I don’t want to say I was scared, but I was nervous, though I drew courage from the person walking beside me, who being a foot shorter and 120 lbs lighter seemed not the least bit concerned. I think the thing we took away from New Orleans is that they probably could stand to run a broom through the French Quarter and maybe scrub it up a little. It’s pretty nasty, stinky and dirty, but despite all of that, and Mom tells me it’s always been that way, I found the place thoroughly enchanting and I’d love to go back.

Posted by Jeff at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)