thank you, Michael T.

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.

colour me purple

Why Harvard wishes it were more like my alma mater...

it's here!

No, not Armies of Oblivion, though I will be hurrying home every night to check the front porch until that arrives.

But Here I Stand has finally been published. It's an update of A Mighty Fortress, a game published by SPI back in the 1970s that had wonderful things like Lutheran and Jesuit preacher counters, a religious debate table, and other good stuff. For someone fascinated by the religious struggle of the 16th and 17th centuries and the international power politics of the struggle between Ottoman Turkey and the Holy Roman Empire, the arrival of such a game is a dream come true. And for lovers of the Lymond Chronicles, who can resist the opportunity to captain Valois France as it steers its tricky diplomatic course between the Scylla of the Hapsburgs and the Charybdis of the Sublime Porte, or Henry VIII's England, playing Catholic Spain off against Catholic France while pushing money under the table to the Portestant German princes?

So, who's with me? Come! Let's play! (OK, not this weekend, as A. and I are goign to see my parents, but SOON!)

oh, and, speaking of games...

I have had Twilight Struggle sitting around for a while now; I'd really like to play it. Anyone want to give it a try?

Same thing with Wellington, Paths of Glory, Barbarossa to Berlin, and Empire of the Sun. Or pretty much anything on this page, plus a couple of hundred more.

I really need to stop trying to ride several hobby horses at once...

randomness

I was watching an old episode of "Smallville" the other day. Two villains (one played by the inimitable Rutger Hauer) meet at the quayside in Metropolis, complete with seagulls, ocean waves, passive container ships, etc. Er, WTF?

For those who are not familiar with it, Smallville is a TV series about the early life of Clark Kent, later to become Superman. The (fictional) locations it centers on are the small town of Smallville and the big city of Metropolis (plus the more recently invented Edge City). All of which are in Kansas. KANSAS. One of the 24 land-locked US states*. Odd.

Of course, in another episode, kids from Smallville High were swimming at a lakeside beach in the mountains. Mountains which, last time I checked, were about 200-300 miles from Kansas.


* (I think I have that nummber right, and, no, I'm not counting the Great Lakes or tidal estuaries like the Potomac or the Delaware rivers).