Darwin award nominee 2001

I nominate Osama bin Hide'n...er...Laden

I would wager he will be dead before the year is out. He desreves the Hitler trophy for suicide since he will go down in the history of the new 21st century as committing suicide by pointing a super power at his head and pulling the trigger. His death will also be one of the most expensive suicides in history. Though on a per/capita basis Hitler still reigns supreme as the committer of the most expensive suicide.

Making more fun of Osama:
Osama is a master of disguises as well as a master of...well... I guess being a cave man.

Currently he is in the guise of Osama bin Hide'n, though he has been spotted as Osama bin Run'n, General Frank suspects he will soon take on the persona of Osama bin Bleed'n followed by Osama bin Die'n. Later on he may apear as Osma bin Rotten and finally, in the future. he will be known as Osama bin Forgotten.

A Knight's Tale

Comparing this to it's romanesque counterpart "Gladiator" I would have to say that this films was much.....

Well it wasn't as artsy-fartsy. It wasn't a drama. It wasn't particularly well acted. It had an appallingly simple story.

In short it kicked Gladiator's sinewy buttocks. Gladiator is a ponderous, meledramatic, old movie copying, cliche' battle scene, gumbo of doom. A Knight's Tale is a funny, exicting, fastpaced, doesn't take itself seriously at all, chutney of sublimity. I thought the use of Queen in the opening joust scene was superb. I thought "this is actually going to make me laugh."

A Knight's Tale is right up there with the original Robin Hood, Robin And Marion, Henry V (both versions), and Beckett as grand medieval films.

Another film that could be showhorned into this lot is the Thirteenth Warrior. This film was another pleasant surprise.

The Amazing Mezmo

From T.A. Mezmo
TO: Friends
RE: New Vice President
Mezmo speaks the future:

Dick Chenny will resign in less than six months.
John Ashcroft, former senator who lost to a dead guy, and current Attorney General, will be chosen to succeed him.

Moral? If you are so unpopular that you can loose an election to a dead man you too can be Vice President.

Potential? If Bush needs to be replaced, say because the helium ballon that is his head comes undone from his body and floats away, then the looser to a dead guy will be President.

I love dis' Country!

Dufus is...well a dufus...but there is hope

George "let me be the Hurbert Hoover of my generation" Bush has just handed his buddys more doe to waste. At least we married couples get a break too...right???? A reduction in the so called marriage penalty won't take effect until 2011. In fact most of the tax cut that would benefit the most tax payers won't happen until the BIG DUFUS isn't even in office; as if that guy would get elected again. Oh sure we all will get a little check, big deal. The only thing keeping me from vomiting every time I see the, illiterate, verbally disfunctional, simple minded cobb-salad head, is that his energy policy will cause the good ol' US to throw him and his fellow cobb-salad heads out on their ears. Please note that all the people with any amount of brain power in DC are stepping, quickly, away from this dude. McCain, for instance, sees the 16 ton weight hurtling toward Bush's head. Jeffords is already gone. Only the blind Trent Lott and his ilk, like automatons, are robotically receiting the useless mantra of their dead religion. On the foreign policy front the Dufus is on his way to another Palestinian train wreak. With no agreement in hand, and a cease fire that isn't really happening, his team is going to try and stop the violence in the mideast. Sure they are. I really hope this dude doesn't get us in a war. It may just be paranoia but look what the dufus has been able to accomplish in such a short time. Nuclear destablization due to his uncoherrent and disjointed attempt at a missle defense sheild. Ignoring Russian economic problems (5,000 nukes and thousands of tons of bio and chem war agents up for grabs). Alienation of US military by keeping them out of the decision making process. Alienation of NATO by claiming, ignorantly, that US is sholdering the brunt of Balkan burden and will pull out. Alienation of UN by his party's unwillingess to pay our dues, causing the US to be ousted from the Human Rights Commission. All I can say is that if a Democrat was responsible for all the bull shit that the Dufus has done there would be more impeachment hearings.

On a good note the state of Washington's supreme court decided that it can still have an open primary. This is good since it might prove to be a precident for other states to become open. The importance of this should not be underestimated. If all states had had open primaries in the last general election we might be talking about what President McCain is doing instead of Dufus. Aside from financial reform the biggest hinderance to thrid parties and or outsiders is the closed primary where, as a voter, you are mandated to vote for only members of your own party. With an open Primary you can vote for who you want. Closed primaries benefit big party politics. With soft money reform a small victory can be acheived but we really need electoral reform to bring about a fairer system that is more truely representative of the will ofthe people.

As far as JM is concerned the last six months should leave little doubt as to who is the more politically astute. Acting as if he had won the presidency with a mandate for reform JM quickly assembled a winning coalition to move finance reform through congress. Relegating the Bush supporting conservatives to the sidelines, JM has pointed the spotlight squarly on himself and his agenda and now Dufus will have to pony up. Who is courting the Democratic Leadership? Who is the one man Bush seems to have to have in order to advance any of his agenda? God I wish the US would have got this guy as the President. If Bush is a Hoover wating to happen the J McCain is a Roosevelt. Remember that ol' FDR, that consumate political gamester, the guy that owned the smoke filled room, was a republican right up untill the time he ran for President.
PS: Angienva@aol.com thank you for all the info and keeping us McCain supporters together. I have forwarded all your mail to Donna, my wife.

Earth future

Using the concept that the entire universe (meaning all that is) is basically a giant fractal equation I predict the following for the future of the Earth.

What is the Earth? This is a question that many people just don't ask. They, in my opinion, wrongfully call the Earth a rock, a planet, or simply a body floating in space. I think this is a wrong description. That description, if accepted as a true and complete answer to the question, sets us on a very wrong course for defining our roll in the cosmos. Remember the universe is a fractal, at least in my own mind. That is if you look at all its parts it basically resembles all its other parts. You cannot really get to the "fundemental foundation" of the cosmos since it doesn't exists only an ever deepening fractal rabit hole.

What is the Earth? The Earth is a life form, not a planet. It has come into existance through cosmological procreation and has gestated for 4.5 billion years. It started as a signle cell life form. It went through a state of non-self awareness where all the cells developed, multiplied,
developed specilaization. It is a not a prepetual motion machine but it is very good at existance. Certain cells provide oxygen so that the other cells can exist and do their work. Other cells provide a caloric source for self absorbtion. Imagine that you only ever needed to eat once. Then you live only off your fat cells. Same concept. Earth was born with all the nutrients it needed to keep going for a very long life span. As with any life form the central nervous system and becoming self aware is the last stage prior to birth. Quite recently the Earth has become aware of it's own existance and is now pondering what it is for. At the moment it is wrong in its assumption but that is only a momentary lapse in judgement. Its nervous system is still trying to define it's existance relative to the body inwhich it lives.

As a fetus the Earth is aware of itself, but unware of the outside world. It has no idea of the future that awaits it. I predict that the Earth will be born into a larger cosmos and will have to mate with another life form such as itself in order to breed. The qeustion is where Earth lies in the larger lifefrom? Is it, like a bryne shrimp destined to be a fat cell in the cosmos? Only to be utilized as food. Or is Earth, once self aware, part of a larger cosmological nervous system? How this breeding occurs is open to conjecture. It cannot be denied that it is self aware. This being agreed to the fractal equivalent is a higher life form on Earth. Plants are life forms but they are not selfaware so we cannot use that part of the fractal equation as a guide to what the earth is. But the Earth could be the fractal equivalent of any animal with a central nervsous system. Is it a Brine Shrimp or a Human? Is it going to be used, like fat cell, or is it going to be used to define the cosmo's existance in a greater, and as yet unkown, creation.

Just some thought by a weirdo

SW II

From Yoda:
Bust a gut, I do, laughing at your mirth
As old as time I may already be. But Christopher Lee too is as old.
Check out the paste-job of his head on young punks body as he does his Jedi break-dance.

From Jar Jar:
Mee-sa been promoted to Grand Moff Yes-man of the soon-to-be emperor.
Lucas says hee'sa gonna clone me into the imperial crowd in Return of the Jedi.

From Anakin "Cry"walker:
Didn't you get it?!? Nobody understands my character!?! I am the chosen one! No I'm not I am full of pain because my little braided hair thingy is too tight. My eyebrow ridge is huge too. Is that a pimple on my nose?! Ah Fuck! Where's Amidala I gotta bone her. Oh no!
Now I have an erection at an inoportune time!?!? Ahhhhhhhhh I'm so confused! And to top it off I got my right arm cut off. Now How am I gonna....never mind.

From Obi Wan:
Shut up young one. You make me want to hurl. I, on th other hand, look like way more like a stud muffin in SW2. Though I think I need a tie- dye head band. Peace man!

From Palpatine:
I am evil be my boy toy! You know the only reason I am evil is that I havn't got any since...

Shmee:
At least my death seen lasted longer that Yoda's

Yoda Again:
A dumb desert scank, you are. My death scene? Significant it was.

Shmee:
At least I was a real person you silly wrinkled Kermit frog.

Amidala:
I'm not really into the whole "Star Wars" thing. I just do it for the money. Kinda like Alec Guiness.

Alec Guiness:
Don't compare yourself to me you American slack-ass.

R2D2:
Beep Pong Twitter

Translation: I'm a fk'n millionair and I have never had to speak a single line. I rule!

C3P0:
I seem to live a very circular life. Tatooine, space battles, back to Tatooine, space battles...Do you notice that when R2 gets shot he never just explodes, doesn't even loose a leg. Me? I loose feet, arms, my head...all the friggin time!

Boba Fett:
I am a puddgy faced kid!!!!!! Too much 4% milk.

Lord Dooku:
I kicked ass in Lord of the Rings and again in SW2. Pretty good for a guy who's older than most of the cast combined.

Smoke Hole

Say I found a real cool thing out about my property! I was covering up a pile of compost and turned around to see a smoking hole in the ground. I thought "hmmm? Firey opening to Satans bedchamber? Or severed burning power line?" I bent over to look at the little volcano to find a cable as fat as my thumb molten in color and smoking as the rain hit it. It was expertly placed so that a barefoot human could step on it.

I called PGE. They came out, four guys in red coveralls and gloves and hats, two trucks. The foreman scratched his head. "Yeah thats a big fat killer that is. Look at this thing Frank (name changed). " Frank, "Damn. So wheres it connected to?" Frank asked me. I told him it was connected, so I guessed, tothe barn braker box. They went over to shut it off.

"I already shut that off." I said.
Frank walked over anyway, checked the box, "Say this is already off."
"Yeah I shut it off when I noticed the smoking hole." I said.
"Did you turn this off?" Asked Frank.
"Yes." I said through cleanched teeth.
"Well Thats a good thing. But why is that line still hot?" Frank said.
"I''d say it's probably bypassed. Thats not good. You'll have to take the box apart and removed the wire that way." The foreman said.
"Me?" I asked.
"We only cover the line to the box. This hear line is your own private line." Foreman said with whimsy."

So I get to have a burning hole that can kill you in my yard until I get a private contractor out here? That doesn't sound good to me." i say. Foreman twiddles his waxed mustache and scratches his head, crotch scratching would be pointless in the heavy coveralls. He walked over to the breaker box and flipped another switch, one that was too hot for me to want to touch. The line went dead. PGE squad then left me standing in the gloomy twilight as the rain came down andthe cable steamed to a cold state.

Back in the kitchen, after a dinner of cold pizza and beer (actually it was pepsi but I wish I had a beer at the time) I dug through my evergrowing pile of home owner bull shit paper and found my home warrenty. "Electrical?" I thought. Did it say anything aobut it? Yep! I called the number and was informed that the call would be monitored for quality assurence. What the fuck does that mean. If I don't like the call will some champion of customer service jump onthe line and send the offending rep to the indernal regions? Who could say.

Early in the day, on NPR, I listend to a story about call-centers being relocated to Bangalore India. The empolyees study American accents so they can speak without sounding like their from the sub-continent. I only bring this up since the lady I talked to was difinitely from that region.

I gave her my policy nuimber and then described the problem. " Found this severed power cable in my yard....smoking .....and PGE say it could deliver a leathal dose of electrcity. yada yada yada..."
"Is the electrical line on the inside of your home?" She asked with only a hint of an accent.
I sigh, "No its in the yard."
"It is not inside the home?" She asked.
"My yard is not inside the home no." I said with slight sarcasm, but more with sense of gloom that I belong to such a race of troglidites. How in the hell did we ever get to the moon? Or figure out how to procreate? or breathe?
"Well if the line is not in the home then it is not covered by your policy." She said.
"Okay." I said with extreme minimalism.
"Thank you call again." Said Ms. Napahasapanalan. (not her real name or what she realy said.)

So now I have to pay some jerk to come and disconnect this stinking cable. Some butt-crak showing swine with a pension plan that will allow him to retire to his vacation home on Bermuda. Some fat slob who's gonna get 35$ bucks of my money just for opening his truck door and stepping onto my land. It sucks. The last electrician te be on my land, a slob I didn't haveto pay, was named Tiny. He drove a brand new Lincoln Navigator, had a huge gold wrist band and wore dark glasses like Sam Giancona. He could have been an extra in any one of a number of Gangster flicks.

I think, "Should I call Tiny?" I can envision the conversation this way:
Tiny, "So...tough guy...wah-chu need."
Me relating the cable story yet again.
Tiny, "That cable? Forget-about-it. It's like, you know, it never happened. No trace, no cable, no nothen."
Me. "What will it cost?"
Tiny, "For you? I'l make you an offer you can't refuse............"

Supreme court is full of poop.

Clarence "uncle" Thomas wrote for the majority that pot used for medicinal purposes can't happen. What a bunch of poop-heads. My doctor can perscribe me a bottle of demeral that could kill an elephant but he cant perscribe canabis that hasn't killed anybody. Canabis, unlike codine, valum etc, will cut the pain wiithout putting you to sleep. You may want to eat fifty tacos, but that ain't a bad thing if your under-wieght do to your illness. I guess its more important to those moralistic nazi fuckheads to let people live in pain and suffering so that they can fight their bogus war on drugs. To quote W.S. Burroughs "thanks for a nation of finks where know one's alowed to mind his own business."

While those ivory towered dickwads drink their cognac (a bottle of which is enough to kill some people) they can rest assured that people will live out their lives either doped into delirium or in agony. Thanks morons.

Lowest Common Denominator Continues To Plummet

Perchance did you see the Frontline program on Tuesday? It documented pretty much what the Onion was talking about. They had examples of the current level of sludge being pumped into the empty heads of our youth. I don't know what was more nausiating, the clips of such events as "Poop Diving", a show where a guy dons a snorkle and mask and jumps into a sewage treatment pond, or the neck-tied scum bags who will litterally put anyting on tv for a buck, trying to justify their existance.

I want to poke another hole inthe flimsy Dufus machine

Dufus wants a missle defense system. The question that nobody in the media or alive on earth seems to want to ask is why? Why have it? If the answer is to protect against small nuke states like Iraq then the system is not needed since no nation, no matter how idiological or extreme, is goingto accept itself being completely wiped from existance. A missle would be the stupidest way to deliver a nuke to the US. A missle is traceable. We would know exactly where it came from and take the appropriate, if terrible, action of destroying the offending nation. In otherwords Iraq would have to be led by complete idiots and as much as we would like to think we live in a cardboard world we do not. It would be national suicide to launch a missle at the US. No nation is going to do that. So what is the other answer to that question? To prevent a full scale strike by a large nuke power? Well lets say that the, for lack of a better term, Nuclear Bush, that we deploy is 99% effective at catching all incoming missles. That's a pretty effective system. I can't imagine a globally based system of anything being 99% effective but lets pretend. For some reason, that I can't imagine, Russia fires a full scale strike on the US and Europe. Thats about 2000 missles. The Nuclear Bush catches 1980 missles! Holy cow that is effective! Bush is vindicated! The system works flawlessly! Only 1% of the nukes make it through! This means total destruction and pretty much the end of the world, as far as humans are concerned. That 1% can pack up to 200 H-bombs. Remeber the multi-cluster warhead? Thats 10 H-bombs per missles. The US will take 175 and Europe 25 direct hits from 100 megaton H-bombs. Does any rational person think that we, as a nation, could survive being hit with that much firepower? That 1 % Is more than enough to totally wipe out every major American and European city. And lets not forget the 7000 nukes that we fire at the ol Russians and the other dudes we don't like. Closing time for the human race. A missle defense is not needed to contain the threat form little powers and is useless against super powers. I don't think the Dufus is that dumb. I think he's doing this to provide much needed boondoggle projects for General Dynamics, Lockheed/Martin, and the other players in the offense industry. One thing the missle Bush will do effectively is make Russia and any other power with semi large arsenal think about making it larger. The best counter to a expensive US missle Bush is a lot of cheap missles with as many warheads on them as possible. I really can't stand this jerk of a President. Oh to have the leacherous scumbag back in the white House or hell bring back Nixon! I can't see how destablizing asia with his nonsensical China policy and putting in jepoardy 30 years of nuclear treaties is helping make the world safe for anything. Besides the easiest way to do nuclear damage to the US is to ship a bomb in on a boat and blow it up in a harbor. Or ship in the parts and assmble it in an Apartment building. Missles are expensive, for poor terrorists, and big and hard to hide. They are traceable. Stick fon on a boat or in a van, it's way cheaprer. Once it goes off it automatically erases all traces of where it came form. Who would do we retalliate against? "Oh come on own up! Who did that?" Defending against that is something we need to be working on. Not some floating fart gas missle-bush.

We are idiots

Human beings are pretty much organic tape machines. We hear something and then play it back over and over again. Unlike a tape or CD we tend to garble the play back so, after main iterations the message is almost unitelligable. Such as this:

Original message: John's Dog has flees

Repitition: This guy I knows dog has flees

Repitiion2: That guys freinds dog has flees on its nose.

Repitition3: You know that reminds me, Johns got some flee bights on his nose too.

Repitition4: Flees tend to hang out on the noses of dogs and people. They like it (poor content being embelished with made up information)

Repitition 999: Today Congress has enacted landmark legislation banning certain types of chemicals thought to bring flee born viruses to the nasal cavity.

I listen to people talking to each other at work and I can tell if they are getting their info form a tv show. Most people try to pass off this info as some deep college induced knowledge that they had to struggled to attain. They spout off about all sort of shit. Experts on the Cuban missle crisis and Jazz abound. Funning thing is that the experts usually change their area of expertise just about a week after the latest round of PBS or Hitler Channel documentaries. If I bring up some other topic that hasn't been on tv inthe past week people get that 1000 yard stare and search their tv memory banks for info they don't have. If your going to talk about something you've seen on tv then just say so. Instead of trying to co-opt Ken Burns.

Worst Actor of the Universe Awards

What do I mean by that? The universe is somewhere between 15 and 20 billion years old. That is kind of a long time. In that time period certain actors have arisen that should never have been allowed to be on the silver screen. I do not consider the masses of lesser known actors and bit players. Only those that, through some fantastic failure in cinematic judgment, were allowed to play leading or semi leading roles in films tht were widely distributed. And there are many of them that have strove to rise to the level of worst actor i nthe history of the universe. I am sure that there are countless billions of other lifeforms that too have nasty thespians who should be squashed under 16 ton weights, but I can only concern myself with those that belong to the Homosapiens of Earth.

So without further mumbo jumbo here he is for all to recoil from and vomit at:

Joe Don Baker has no business being affilated with Humanity. In truth Humanity and the planet Earth itself should distance themselves from this being. No selfrespecting planet, solor system, or for that matter galaxy, should be seen in the company of this puffy, bejoweld, no-talent back-woods, banjo piken, shit hearder. Who or what in the name of all that is holy decided to heave this stinking pile of actor onto the breast of comely humantiy. Thankfully others of my race have taken up the standard and they too fight to keep this 220 pound rack of fatback off the screen and in the spotlight of denegration and woe. MST3K has done much to redeme the Earth and Milkyway with their constant attempts to further denigrate this macabre assemblige of san-talented idiocy. Yet they are now gone to the rerun-yard. Please don't let this pox and blight on the good name of Earth go un faught against. Do whatever you can to let the universe know that you too think JDB should be eradicated.

Joe Don Baker Porkapalooza!

More Megalomaniac concepts

Fright: This is a funciton of how feared your troops are. If the enemy is in Fright of you they will drop their weapons and run screaming from the field. They will abandon castles, town centers, they will "run away!" Like lemings, if faced with the sea they will rather drown than end up at your mercy. Certain kingdoms may be unable to be in fright of you should they be in a babarian state. You can even stop a war between to kingdoms by simply sending in your forces.If both kingdoms are in fear of you they will stop attacking each other and go back to a nuetral stance.

I was also toying with the idea of marriage. Medieval times were the high tide of marriage diplomacy. I think that you could secure an allied stance with a kingdom if you offer marriage to the other sides princess or prince. Of course you would not want a stupid allience. You would want a marriage based on the largest dowery you could take hold of. You personal glory rating would impact what king would be willingto offer his daughter to you for such a purpose. This Queen would be an NPC stationed at your captial town or imperial city. If she died then the kingdom from whence she came would go back to the previous status. You can marry as often as you need. However you cannot kill your wife or divorce her. This also brings up the subject of heirs. If you produce an heir and that npc is 21 years of age or older upon your death then there is no civil war and that heir will inheirit all your personal status unlike a chosen succesor who will use it's own status upon your death.

Texas crap

This is a colossal waste of money, time, and manpower: I want to know how much it cost the illustrious state of Texas to get their 50$ fine?

Atwater was driving her two children home from soccer practice in 1997 in Lago Vista, Texas, when she was stopped by a police officer who had noticed the three were not wearing seat belts. Texas law allows police to make arrests for routine traffic violations, except for speeding. The officer arrested Atwater, handcuffed her hands behind her back and took her to the city police station. A friend looked after her children and her pickup truck was towed away. Atwater's mug shot was taken and she was released after posting bond. She later pleaded no contest to the seat belt offense and paid the maximum $50 fine.

I assume the trooper is making about 45 to 50 k a year so he's pulling in around 20 bucks an hour. You have the police personel who took the mug shots, Then you have the court personel to do the paper work. I think that it cost way more money than 50 dollars to harras this woman. Oh yes lets not forget the amount of money spent bucking this case all the way to the United States Supreme court!!!! Admittedly she should have had her kids seat belted in the car. but that is not the point. Not even close to the point. We have really screwed up priorities if this is an arresting offense. This country is screwed up. Our whole neighborhood couldn't oust a drug dealer from a house up the street yet we have the money to arrest soccer moms. You can drive 100 miles an hour and get a ticket and go on your way, but not where a seat belt and your in the slammer. What a load of
crap.

The dufus hard at work pleasing the chinese

After pretending to act tough we now know how the big dufus was able to get the flight crew out of China. He caved on the sale of destroyers to Taiwan. So any time China wants to tell us what to do all they have to do is take some hostages? Way to go Mr. President! If Clinton did this he'd be up on impeachment charges again. As much as I think Clinton was a scum bag, and I disagreed with his China Policy of trade and look the otherway, at least he never bent over for China. I am so very glad that we have a strong leader in the White House. I only pray that he is not the Nevil Chamberlain of our time.

Orders and stuff for Megalomaniac

Sea born commands:

The Admiralty: Kings Lord Admiral is an npc that is available as soon as you are king. Like generals an Admiral can control a fleet of ships of any size and can be given commands to carry out. They can also be chosen to succeed as emperor.

Admiral level commands: Take fleet X and attack Y until Y has recieved Z% damage. Take fleet X and blockade port or town Y for Z weeks or months.
Take fleet X and patrol sea sinking all enemy ships rebuilding ships as required etc.

You have all the AofE commands plus several others. You can garrison troops on any vessal. You can order warships to blockade a harbor. If a ship in a blockade is sunk another one is built by the admiralty and sent to fill it's place. Ramming is another order. Ramming is not an order that does the ramming ship any good but will 100% sink an enemy vessal if the rammed vessal is equal or lesser in size than the ramming ship. You can outfit any ship with a steel ram. This can give the ship the ability to ram two ships before itself sinks due to damage.

Nasty things that can happen to your kingdom:

Famine: Everyonce in a while the crops will fail and when they do all work stops. Nothing can be constructed and the population falls by 10%. Famine is an equal opportunity killer in this game.

Plague: Not good at all. It can start in any TC and spread to adjacent buildings and people. Trade carts canbring it to other towns and ports. Ships can take it to other kingdoms. It is technically possible to kill off the entire population including solders and even you. People stop working turn sickly green for a few days then keel over. Nothing can be done but burn the infected structures down, sink ships, raze castles, etc.

Draconian measures must be taken. Quarentining the infected to isolated areas unitl they die is a good thing. Burning down infect structures, greek fireing groups of the sick. As your empire improves global civilization the chance of plagure breaking out gets slimmer and slimmer.
bizzare yet cool orders you can give to the entire population;

Once you are emperor you can give Edicts. And Edict has an effect on all the population of the kingdom recieving the Edict. You can quickly tell a kingdom to go on crusade. When and entire kingdom is told to go on crusade it mobilze all of it's inhabitents to go and attack the kngdom that is labeled as infidel. Once orderedthe kingdom will put all it's resouirces into troop creation and offensive millitarty action and all the civilians become skirmishers. This is a powerful command but can have dire consequences if it fails.

Megalomaniac even more devilish stuff

Capital city: This can be any town you have under your control provided that it has a Market, Church, Castle, and Town Center. Usually the largest city under your control will be the likely candidate. This function is allowed as soon as you are made king. The capital city becomes the imperial capital when you are made emperor. The capital city gets some automatic defensive advantages to a normal town. It automatically gets a wall around and paved streets at no cost to you. When defending the capital your troops will get a bonus on damage. The bonus on damage does not apply to mercinary forces. Once you town is made a capital it's church becomes the ecclisiastical center of your kingdom and any the first priest there or created is the bishop.

Road: These greatly increase your ability to move troops and goods to other town and regions. Speed is dubbled on roads. There are three types of roads. The dirt pathc is what is first available to you. It increases movement by 10%. The leveled path increases movement by 25%. The stone road increases movement by 50%. In order to build roads and bridges you need a royal architect, yet another npc. These are created in church schools. You need to have at least one to make any roads and the more you have the faster you can build roads since you can dispatch them to different regions for construction.

Bridges: Spendy and time consumming but worth the effort. Note that both roads and bridges can be destroyed. Bridges come in two varieties. The simple trus-bridge and a drawbridge. Both take time to research. Both types can be upgraded to fortified bridges that give more hit points.
Drawbridges can be further upgraded to tower-bridges that have some offensive capabilities.

Encampments: This is really a type of stance you can order an army into. If you order your army to encamp then they will erect tents, picket there horses, and dig a trench around their paremeter. This heals them very fast and provides a defensive bonus if attacked. It takes time to encamp, similar to erecting a trebuchet. They cannot move unless given the order to break-camp.

El Presidente' SCHRUB!

The dufus is at it again! Just when you thought that the failed Texas athletic supporter couldn't get any worse he rises to the occasion! Today we learn that he has slashed the budget for traking Russian nuclear material! Thats right boys and girls, our beloved dufus has cut programs that help us track plutonium, uranium, and warhead stock piles in Russia. Even his republican appoligists are backing away from this stupid move. What an idiot. I don't know who's worse Bush or that Rice chick. Of course Rice's role as national security adviser is perfect for her since she has sooooo much experience comeing from that intellectual think-tank otherwise known as the Chevron Corporation. Bush should be impeached before he starts WWIII.

PS I am not going to capitalise dufus since he is not worthy of a proper noun.

More additions to Megalomaniac

Once you are king you can also bribe the church. In AofE churches and the clergy go around making troops well and converting the enemy to your cause. Fine and dandy but the real church had other attributes. Forinstance Henry VIII made himself the head ofthe church of England thus gaining for himself a cut of all that lucerative collection-plate doe and taxes paid by pesants to the chruch for using church owned land to live on. The first cleric you create in your captial city is the defacto bishop. Once he is bribed you are the head of the church and you can get 20% of all the doe collected. This doe is a function of how many people live in your kingdom. Another thing you can "research" in the church is Simony and Indulgences. Simony is the charging of fees for religoius services. Indulgences is a bribe a person makes to God so that they get a few years off of pergatory. Both Simony and Indulgences were frowned on by the historic church but accepted nonethless as means of making more doe. Simony and Indulgences at 5% each to the level of doe you can collect from the chruch. Be aware that if your personal glory rating falls to below 10 those you have bribed will cease being your buddy and you will lose the benifits.

Homage is another thing to help you make money and control other kings. If you conquer a kingdom its land is added to your kingdom and its king, if not killed, is made a vassel to you. As a vassel this petty king must make payments to you on a yearly basis. the payment is 1 gold peice per person and structure existing in that kingdom. If you order the king to make more farms and people the king will then have to come up with the payment. if the vassel cannot come up with the doe the computer will tell you this and you can decide to ignore it and let him pay what he can. Tell him to reduce the exess towns and population (kill them all) so that the payment eqates to what is actually existing in the kingdom in question. If you choose
the former then your glory rating increases ir you say 'fuck you pay me!" then your glory rating falls but your kingdoms renown rating goes up.

As a vassel the king must also come and send troops to fight for you if needed. A vassel's troops behave just like your own troops. Vassels may also ask you to help them if a unfreindly comes raiding them. If this happens you can: Ignore them, Tell them to fight it out with their own troops, help them by sending your own troops in. Ignoring their crys will not cause them to leave your service, but your glory rating will suffer. If too much is destroyed that will adversly impact the income from that kingdom. If you tell them to fight it out with their own troops they will do everything to kill the enemy including invading that other territory and destroy it. This is risky for a couple of reasons. One the vssel might noght have enough strength to do it. Two they might kill off a potentially lucerative kingdom before you have a chance to conquer it and make that king a vassel. Sending in your own troops allows you to control things. Your glory rating goes up if and the renown rating goes up if you win. With your own general there you can order the vassels troops to do your bidding.

General is a special unit, like an assasin or a bishop. If there are no generals then the army is under the direct command of the king. As your power grows you will find it tiresome, likethe boy with his finger in the dyke, moving from mini-crisis to mini-crisis. A general is handy in that you can order him to control a given group of troops. You go to a seperate map screen and order him, via way-points, to carry out numerous functions. Example: You create a general in a Barracks (big buck but worth it) You select the troops (unlimitted number) and place them under his command. Then you go to a strategic map screen that shows the world minus all the graphic bullshit. On this map you draw the route he will take to his objective. You order him to move under stopping to attack nothing along the way. Once at the objective, say attacking a castle, you tell him to "lay seige" then you tell him how long the operation will last. If he takes more than 50% casulties he must retreat to the start location. If he is there for more than three months he must retreat to the start location. Once this is done he takes charge and goes about his duty. the point is that you are free to do other things whille the general is doing your bidding. Generals can also become emperors.

Further details on Megalomaniac

The opening scenarios using the halflife engine pit you in an every-man-for-himself set of battles. Your regiment will not attack you nor will they come to your aid if you get in trouble. Most are outdoor battles but a few would require you to hack your way into a stronghold or burn down a town etc.

The REVOLT chapter of the game adds a high degree of complexity to the game. The preceeding chapter of State Building is basically a clone of AofE.

In the Revolting chapter I made mention of assasinations, mercinaries and bribary.
Assasins are special units that you can create in a town structure called a beer hall. The assasin costs big bucks but can move through enemy terriroy without getting killed unless he is found out buy an Intelligence officer. This unit is also a beer hall creation and is the unit designed to counter an assasin. The assasin unit is a single use npc in that he will die in his attempt even if he is successful. Assasins are armed with a crossbow but it is not a long range weapon and so the assasin needs to get close. It is also an autonomous unit in that is out of your control as soon as you turn him loose. You go to your list of kings and generals and select the dude who is to be assasinated. Once that is done the assasin travels on his own to the location of the hit target and will try as often as he can to kill the guy until he is killed or dies killing his mark. If
you wish to call him off you will haveto hunt him down with your own forces and kill him. If the assasin is able to kill his target your plot will not be discovered and the nation the mark once lead will not attack you. Should he fail there is a 50% chance that the mark's country will launch an attack against you. And your personal glory rating will fall too.

Mercinaries were always a popular way to bolster your army if you were a poor slob of a king. Macheavelli didn't think much of mercinaries and warned against employing them. In the game I use Macheavellian rules for mercinaries. You can hire them from freindly lords for a specified length of months. Once they are in your command they will attack anything you order them to attack. Yet if they are outnumbered they will break and run. If the are garrisoned near a town, even one of yours, and they are not under orders of some kind, they will begin to attack the locals and burn buildings. If there receive no orders for more than a month they will go wild and you'll have to kill them. Mercinaries are best used for bolstering a force for use in a pitched battle where you have the upper hand. They pay no attentioin to your personal glory rating. Once their term is up they automatically leave and return to their home land.
Bribes can be a most effective and less violent way to revolt. In the game, during this chapter and onward, you can bribe any npc in the world. You can bribe clerics, knights, kings, castles, beerhalls, anything as long as you have three things. Money, a high personal glory rating, and your army must have a high renown rating. In otherwords you not only need the money to buy but the nature to intimidate. Bribed troops are loyal, unlike mercinary forces, and will fight even in death defying battles. However they cost more to bribe than mercinary forces cost to hire. The cost to bribe is tied to the stats you have and the stats of the king under whom they are presently serving. Once bribed they will remain yours unto death unless your personal glory rating falls below 10. In that case even your own troops will abandon you. Bribing kings is tough unless you have a huge amount of cash and the power to back up the cash with the not-so-subtle threat of war.

The chapter of Monarchy, where you have to attain the throne of your kingdom, adds further complexity. You have all the tools at your disposal that
you gain during State Building and the Revolt, but you also have to start paying attention to your kingdoms overal world rating. There are fifty kingdoms on the planet and your kingdom fits somewhere in that order. If you want to be emperor you have to get you ranking to number one. Not every kingdom who is listed as numero uno is an empire. Not only does kingdom have to rate number one but it's army must have the highest renown and the monarch must have a high personal glory rating. Once you have acheived that then you are, without doubt, the emperor of the world. As you claim more territory and vanquish your foes your kingdom expands and it gains in rank and stature. You should do freqent comparrison rankings with your neighbor states. If you see that you are inthe acendency you can try to bribe a kingdome off or take it over. If your overall rating (GRWR) is twice that of a neighboring state they may wish to have you become their overlord. As overlord you gain all the advantages of the wealth and troops of the subjegated kingdom without having to conquer it. If you decide to conquer a state you must reduce it unitl its GRWR is low enough so that it seeks
refuge under your rule. Only a kingdom that is adjacent to your domain can be subjegated without conquest. As king you must also continue your role
as leader by establishing farms, towns, castles, etc. You can also send exploration ships out to check out the big wide world. As your exploratio parties find more kingdoms your ranking will change.

Once you have beceom emperor your characters day are numbered. Eventually it will die. In selecting a successor you go to the list of generals and kings and you can literally select anyone under your control. You will notice there each character has a personal glory rating, an army renown rating, and a kingdom ranking. You want to pick a person who has high ratings. The higher the rating the less chance for a civil war to break out upon your death. However you also are given the age of each character. Since the life span, throughout history increases, at each time you choose the age matter changes. In the beginning the average life span is 45 with a maximum age of 65. So one way to choose is to takethe youngest leader with the highest rating. That way your emprie won't change hands to often. If you choose king Ulfwaln the sextagenerian he may rule well but may die before he can choose a successor. The main thing is that you don't know when your character will die. The likely hood that your emperor will die in a given year increases as he or she gets older. Chooseing a new emperor is an ongoing problem you will face many times in this phase of the game.

The last number you must deal with isthe world civilization level. It is a summary of all the ratings of all the kingdoms of the world. The higher that number the longer people live the less lieklyhood of war or plague and the higher all your emperors rating become. As this number rises new technology and society emerges. The main thing to emerge is the Senate. Peace leads to people demanding freedom. However, as in real life, the npc population is still pretty busy just tryingto survive. The kings are the first to see the need to cooperate with each other to achieve goals. You will be asked if you will permit a senate being founded. if you say no, depending on your rating, there might be war.

Bills do not come to you that often. The bills that come and their nature depend on the overall level of cililization of the empire.

I'll let you know of any other rules that pertain to this cool game ofthe future.

Megalomaniac

Title: Megalomaniac
Style: Realtime / Turn based game of global domination and overlordship Number of Players: 1+ human and 1+ai

Setting: Real and or vitual worlds generated by editor or random generation.
Description: You select a nationality to belong to. You select your sex. The computer generates some specs for you and your character apears in the ranks of a regiment of skirmishers. The view of the coming battle field uses the Half-life engine. You can see your other cohorts. They all seem hell bent on marching off to attack an enemy you spy to your front some 100 yards away. The battle ensues and you must fight your way to survival. If your side wins then you advance to the a new rank in that army. If your side looses, but you live then you are enslaved and have to escape a camp. If you escape then you advance to the next rank in your army.

Next you are given the choice of infantry or cavelry. The cavelry gives you great speed and increases the damage you can inflict on the enemy, but reduces your manuverability and the types of weapons at your disposal. Once you choose you are put in the ranks of a like regiment of either infantry or cavelry. If you choose a Pike then you are part of a pikemen regiment etc. You fight another battle. If you live and are victorious you are advanced again. If you live but are captured then you must escape from the dungeon of a castle.

If you live you are put in command of the regiment inwhich you have been serving. Now you have control of how the regiment attacks. There are nine other npc's to order around. Now the game takes on the AoE engine accept closer up. You can equip your fighters with varioius weapons and armor depending on availability in the location and the type of regiment you command. Before the next engagement you can go to the lord general and get a map of the area and see where your regiment fits into the overall battle. The battle begins and you must acheive your regiments objective with at least yourself serviving. If your side looses you are put in the tower to and you must escape.

To live is to be rewarded! The lord general makes you a brigade commander. Now you have three regiments under your control. You can select the type of the two new regiments; infantry, cavelry, skirmishers, archers, seigers. The next battle is for you to fight alone. Your brigade is sent into a distant march to acheive a goal. Once the goals is achieved you are sent to your next assignment. Each one is slightly different requiring you to use different tactics and skills. As you achieve goal after goal your brigade recieves new equipment, skills, and renown. The renown level will become very important in the near future.

After ten or so campaigns, if you have lived, your brigade has become famous throughout the kingdom as a kick-ass oufit. You recieve word that the king is dead and that three sons of the dead king have split the kingdom and are waring with each other to claim the crown. You are given three letters, one from each prince, begging you to fight for their cause. You must choose which to fight for.

Once you choose you are put into the army of that prince. Each prince has a different demeaner and this changes for every game. Because you are the most notorious lord general in the land you are put in charge of the entire army of said prince. You must fight and defeat each of the other princes. You must also build units as they are lost, develope technology to serve them, and keep them supplied. Your view of the kingdom is broader now resembling the AofE engine.

The other princes are fighting not only you but also one another so you can use this to your advantage. Since you are the lord general now you have brigade commanders to deal with. You must order them to move their own mini-armies into position and fight. The more you are victorious the more they listen to you. The more you loose the less likely they will be to perform.

After you are victorious, of rather if you are, then the new king gives you a domain of your own to govern. You can take your old brigade with you. It is a remote location that you are expected to develop and defend. You must build some towns and fortifications and fight off the nasties that try to attack you. After your domain reaches the status of State, you can go and try to win over as many troops of the kingdom as you can and then try to dislodge the old king from his throne. IN short you can revolt! From a strategic standpoint the deck is stacked against you. The king has lots of troops and castles. However there are "other" options. You can use an assasin to rid the kingdom of it's monarch. If you have enough doe you can try to bribe the troops to your favor. If your really loaded you might try to bribe the king himself. The more succesful you are as an administrator of your domain the more easily you can grab power. You can even use allied lords from other kingdoms to help you in your quest for power; beware of using too many mercinaries they need doe to keep working for you and they don't like hanging around doing nothing.

If you revolt you better do some daring victorious fighting or the troops you have won over will defect back to the king. Should you loose your revolt you will be put back into your state. Your state will be plundered and you'll be poor and without troops. You'll have to rebuild all that to fend off the nasties that want to take your lands. You can always revolt again since there is no time line here.

If you should be successful in ousting the king, the crown is then thrust upon your head. You now are the king! but the king of what? A pimple of a kingdom on the world stage. The world map beckons and you see your kingdom as just a tool. A tool you can use to build an empire that will span the globe! You see those neighborning states who dislike you and those you have good trade relations with. How do you start? Do you build a mighty invasion force and attack? Or do you launch trade missions and build alliences through commerce? Unlike AofE the economic power of your domain has a direct impact on your ability to through your imperial weight around. In the Megalamaniac world there are dozens of other states, some small, some vast, all striving for the same thing. Your state always has a rating. The higher the rating the closer your kingdom comes to being seen as the seat of empire.

Should your kingdom flourish and gain wealth and military might you have other options given to you. You can order a neighboring kingdom to attack another kingdom and fight to the death. You can tell them what to build. Be wary of sending another naiton to it's doom. Your power also comes from victory. If your commands result in failures then you kingdom's rarting will fall and you might get ordered around yourself. Should this happen you can always say no. But then you will have to be prepaired to fight that king who did the ordering or suffer sanctions or blockades.

When your kingdom reaches the summit of power and it is seen as the seat of a world empire, and you are seen as the emperor, things do not stop. The world needs structured government in order to advance. You could systematically genocide your enemies out of existance but that would leave the world in a barborous state that would cease to be under your control. Your empire can only exist as long as the nations that make it up continue to exist. Yet empires are not nation-states. They are an ensamble of states each with competing voices and goals. Your task as emperor is to maintain the glory of your domain and keep the states in line. A never ending task?

Well sort of...You see, although the game has no time limit your character does have a lifespan. And when he or she is old, and scared up, they will eventually die. Another task you have is the choosing of a successor. If you do not do this intime your empire will be ripped asunder by civil war and one of the petty kings will be thrown up as the new emperor, the seat of government will move to that region and you will be faced with dealing with things from that standpoint. The wise thing to do is go to the list of kings and generals and choose the one who you like the best and move them to the imperial seat before you die. The civil unrest will still happen, but war might be avoided.

As your empire continues forrests are harvested and regrown, as long as you don't cut down too many trees. Fisheries will also recover should you not over fish them. And the population can get huge as long as you maintain a balance of people to resources.

Somethings to worry about: If you choose to lead the armies of the empire yourself your army will get a big bonus in strength and damage infliction. However if you are killed then the empire will devolve into civil war and the next strongest lord will be the new emperor. Once you are emperor you can, at any time,. choose your successor. This is something that should be done prior to your death but not to much in advance. If you choose to far in advance the person may be killed in a battle and you can only choose once. This means instant civil war upon your death. The other problem with choosing a successor to early is that the guy instantly gets a big head and if you faulter in your managing the empire he of she might decide to attack you and take the royal purple for themselves, ergo civil war. Try not to choose a successor until your old and gray. Once chosen you choice is made and cannot be undone.

As the empire keeps the level of civilization steady things progress and new technology and society will develop. After a long period of time your kings decide to tell you that they want to meet in a capital of some kind to better govern the empire. This is the begining of a senate. YOu can choose the location of the captial. The senate will start sending bills to you for approval. These bills establish law, army barracks locations, new weapons, advisements on wars that shouldbe fought etc. You can always say no to them and some of them you should say no to. But if you thwart their will too often you may face civil war. As the senate continues to develope the emperor will have to spend more time dealing with them. You can always kill them all but you better have a huge personally glory rating. Each emporor has one and it increases with good decision making etc. However even if you kill the senate it will simply reconvine with a new bunch.

After another long time interval the kings begin to relinquish power to a new class of leaders who, up unitl now have been weak little snot balls. The class is town mayors. Each town has had a mayor since its inception with a town center. Spontaneously the empire has an election and the senate gets bigger as these mayors are elected. The kings still command your armies but are now nolonger involved with infrastructure. The civil senate gives you bills far less concerned with military matters and more concerned with benifits for society establishing university systems, graineries, hospitals, civil police forces, and most ominously, restraint on the powers of the nobility. Right now you can order a king to take his army and attack another king and nobody, as long as you have a high glory rating and you kingdom has a high power rating, will thwart you will. If you aquiess to this bill to regulate the king's power they will tell you no more often and when they do say yeas it will only be after a vote by their populations. This makes for even more intrigue. You can send in your own army and terrorize the poppulation into follwing you. But terror is a double edged sword. If you do this too often you will be on the road to civil war.

Another landmark bill to come to you is the civilization of the army. This puts building of arms and armies under the control of the senate and as emperor you must get senatorial approval for war. This may stick in your craw and hence will not be a bill signed soon by a typical megalomaniac. Should you aquiess to the senate your personal power in the senate will fall, ergo they will be able to now overide your vetoes. Yet civilization rating of the world increases so that your empire gains more stuff and culture. If yo usay yes to this in order for war you must get a majority vote in the senate then get your commanders to get their kingdom's assent to your request. You can avoid the second vote by leading the troops yourself but watchout for the unlucky arrow in the head. Your old brigade, long considered the preatorian gard, can still be lead by you without any such voting though in this empirial world a single brigade is mighty small. The significance of this bill cannot be overstated. The relinguishing of power by the emperor to the senate means the begging of the end of your dynasty as a real force. It will benifit the world but not you.

The last bill you will see is a bill ending the title of emperor. This bill is triggered, as are all the bills, by the level of civilizationi of the world. At this point there is no need for a dictator any more. By this time you, as emperor, are advising the senate on what to do not the other way around. You are given three choices. You can say no and try to hold on a little longer, you can auger in and give up the throne entirely, or you can ask for a general election on the viability of your throne. If you are a glorius emperor you may pull off the coup of coups and become a constitutional monarch. You will have the palace, the gold, and the respect, but none of the stress of governemnt. At this point the music swells and the game is at an end. If you choose total abdication you are lionized as the father of the new world and eventually will be the focus of a new religion. If you choose the first course you will be asked again, in a year, if you still hold on there will be war. This war will pit you against your enemies and most likely will lower the civilization rating to the point where there is no senate. However your death will be the main goal of the war and if you die and your empire has a low civilization rating a civil war will ensue.

This game is not a single night game. It could take weeks if not months. The game time is quite slow compared to AofE. But the rewards are huge. As the game progresses you go from a petty skirmisher to the hights of empire and then death. Then you will be personified by numerous emperors, each with names and character, you will face struggles in war and at peace. You will plot and face plots. In the end you will face your own
dynasties oblivion and how you deal with that final struggle will tell the ages that will come what kind of an empire it really was.

Who makes the game?

Nobody does. It needs to be made. For now it resides in the software of my own brain.

The big Dufus Caves again

Our dimwitted, fart smelling, Dufus of a president has now caved to the meat industry and relaxed testing of school lunch meat for samonella poisoning. According to the Big Dufus, and those pitchforked imps who advise him, our kids can drink more arsenic and consume more bacteria and breath more pollutants. But hey the corporations that bought our Dufus of a president will get a break. I hope all those idiots out there who were moronic enough to waste their vote on Nader realise how much he fucked things up. Was it really necassary to allow our nation to ingest more poison just so the green party could prove a point? As lacklustre Gore would have been, all this shit that has gone down in the last few weeks would not have happened. I hope all the Naderites enjoy their arsenic. What the greens need to do is infiltrate both the democratic and republican parties. Not waste their time and votes in lofty circle-jerks that accomplish nothing. A divided opposition to corporate power is the surest way for them to walk over us all. We need leadership that moves us in the right direction. This takes time. The greens seem to think that revolutionary change will happen if only their side would be listened to. Clap-trap! In a country of 280 million people and opinions it takes a long time to move the naiton in any direction. Millions agree with Bush?! Does this make for watered down laws and national direction changes? Yes but even though these bits of legislation are watered down and murky they were at leasst moving in the right direction. Now, with leadership who should where NASCAR like jackets with all the corporate sponsor logos, we are seening 12, and in some cases 20, years of right-direction legislation dulled down even further and stopped or reversed. Opposition to this power cannot be divided again no matter how illustrious the candidate for the green party happens to be. I hope these people see that there was a clear difference between Gore and Bush. I'll toast Nader with the arsenic.

Rant now finished.

Notes from afar: Interesting thing about living in the sticks

At night it is fucking dark. I mean holy crap it gets black out there. On a cloudy day where there is no moon the metro area is nothing but a really faint gray haze to the west but around our house night is seriously good in its attempt at earasing reality from view. I guess thats why so many farms have those damned anoying vapor lamps. Yet even when you stand in the light the surrounding area is as dark as the inside of "W"'s empty head. One hartening sound you hear is the din of hundreds of frogs all hoping to get layed. What I can't figure out is how all ofthem start and stop at the same damn time. MY two dogs find the area a bit of a mystery. "Where is our turd filled backyard?" they yelp.

So far so good.

Bush is so @#$ Stupid and so are the Excite freaks

To those of you who might agree with the freaks in the Excite forum I do not apologize for the following rant:

I use Excite as my news service and the place I go to to answer stupid polls. I have to say that I am almost diametrically opposed to almost every poll result on Excite. The latest poll is "Do you favor the air strikes to uphold the no fly zone in Iraq." You are given the 'yes' 'no' or 'not sure'. I answer no because I think that the airstrikes are bogus and nothing but saber rattling from Bush II "son of Bush". Going to the forum to discuss this stupid poll I find that all the turds in it are tape recorders playing back the one-liners and non-policy-positions of Bush and his lame assed staff or the non-policy of the jerk that was in the office before him.

How can America choke down the nonsense that Iraq, or for that matter at little saudi terrorist Binlawden, are real threats to us. If anything they are nats, anoying but hardly worth the trouble to swat at them. Meanwhile we have real trouble brewing when Russia fires off a missle that could contain a multi-cluster warhead. Of course we don't have a response to that now do we. We can't send a carrier task force to rattle our sabre at
Russia. Here we have a nation whos military hasn't been paid in years. A nation that is racked with nazi-like nationalism and xenophobia. Compared
to Russia, Iraq is a sublime and steady rock of predictability. So what do we, the Super-power, do? We opt to forget about the anti-balistic missle
treaty and toy with the idea of igniting an arms race with the very county who's population blames us for it's troubles. Back in the soviet days the Russian people harbored no hatred for us. They hated their government but not us we were the good guys. Now, after having their economy ruined via disasterous foreign intervention, and a load of anti-american propaganda fed to them by the old authoritarian socialists, who are now saying "we told you so." they don't like us much and won't take to listening to America when it tells them what to do.

It was a nice thaw while it lasted, at least for us.

As for the dunderheads who are devout believers in the golfwar credo of "make my day" foreign policy, they are going to be in for a very rude
awakening when the power they rattle their sabre at just stairs at them and rattles back. In my opinion the cold war is an unwinable and unstoppable
war. We thought the enemy was soviet Russia but the real enemy is oblivion. It might come out of Russia or China or out of the US itself. We will forever be struggling to keep ourselves from falling off the edge of sanity and ending the world. I hope the struggle lasts forever, because if it ever ends we will have fallen off that edge.

Continuing onto another topic: Schools

"Do you favor school vouchers to allow kids to go to private schools?" No fucking way. Vouchers are little piddly-diddly amounts of money that will not send an east LA latino to private school. Vouchers will only help rich people. Do they really expect me to believe that a $500 dollar voucher is going to help me send by kid to St Mary's? Hardly. That might pay for one weekend school retreat but that's about it. Bush is a skankhead for pushing the lie on people. Give my district a voucher of 100% funding and I'll support it. Bush is for schools what Tonya Harding is for good-sportsmanship. Keep your goddam tire iron off our school's kness you texas small-peckerd bastard.

The dunderheads online want good schools but think that they shouldn't pay any property taxes to support them. They want to go to the store and get all their food free, and they get cranky if they lose a board game, and their development has been arrested at the age of fifteen and has been scentenced to life, and they are pissed because they have to pay $1.55 for unleaded while the world pays $4.00, and they eat 25% of the worlds resources, and they want to live forever, and they all want to be the emperor, and they all want to have the deathstar,and they all are puzzled why the rest of the world is sick of them.

fini

Age of Empires

[4]

Game scale (1-5) 1 being totally sucky and 5 being Il Magnifico

I load game and skillfully leave the documentation in the box since I know how to rule the world and don't need any rule book to tell me how to do it better. I quickly grasp the concept of fornicate more pesants to do all the grunt work. I make all the mistakes a would-be ruler makes. However I learn form them. Soon the turd slurper CG-enemy comes-a-knockin on my town's door. A cute little regiment of briton infantry from the evil Aethelfrith. I spent about a nano-second trying to be freinds with this scumbag only to have him rebuke me. Since my town is amply protected by multiple gard towers most of the enemy is dead before they get to my town center. The morons that do find their way there are horrified to see a castle defended by a dozen or so longbowmen. I guess the CG Aethelfrith considers them the lost regiment since none of them return alive.

Meanwhile, not very far away, I have my army corps of engineers. This is an army of nine peasents surounded by heavy cavelry, crossbowmen, and pikemen. This corp specializes in shock construction. Since I am trading with two other CG idots, one of whom is stupid enough to be freinds with me, I am roling in gold. I cant spend the stuff fast enough. Stone is trading at the 4 to 5 gp's per stone and I don't really care. I buy it by the 100 stone. My engineers mercilessly begin to encircle CG Aethelfrith's town with a dozen towers and a castle or two. He freaks and launches ilconsidered attacks against all the fortifications but it is no use. He's doomed. I send in me occupation force in and slaughter all the peasents and monks, blast down the churches and the pathetic CG Aethelfrith gives up. The Black Prince sends in some monks to pick up relics that are now up for grabs.

The Black Prince is my bro. He's been my freind and we have made a happy alliance for a long time now. So what do I do? Change my status with him to enemy and kill his monks and take the relics for myself. Then I go back to being freinds with him. His kingdom is richer than mine but it is harmelss so I don't worry about him. After thrashing one CG enemy I take my ACE south into more enemy territory. I build a couple castles on two opposed escarpments and then wall off the region. The little green pukes down there are like locusts chopping down trees. I decide to make them the new enemy of the moment and send an army in to hurt them.
There is a big battle around their town cetner, wich is destroyed, but I have to withdraw to the saftey of my to forward castles. By the time my army has regrouped I have created more troops to repalce the dead. I then run into the population limit. I need a bigger army so I go to my own town and kill peasants. I then build seige engines and send them south to serve as artillary support for my invasion army.

Meanwhile the green fuckers are attacking me and I loose a castle. So what! I build another one. I discover, to my fiscal horror, that two of my trade carts are missing. That little green fucker killed'm. I build three more after killing another lumberjack peasent, and send them to the green turd to trade. My town is practically a ghost town. About half the peasents are with my invasion army as engineers.

The artillary has arrived at my marcher castles and I imediately launch my strengthened army in two divisions at the green gothic enemy. I order all units to stand ground. I find this to be the best offensive order of all. It forces the dickwad computer into attacking you and, like the civil war battles of old, the battle hardware favors the defender. Each division splits into two wings and creartes a kill zone about the size of the enem town. My two huge divisions keep good order. Gothic attackers are killed by the knights and swordsmen while the longbowmen sweep the town of villagers. The artillary blasts down another town center and then a barraks and a stable. The computer, being the stupid bastard that it is, cannot get it into its head that might makes right. All it would have to do is mass it's own forces and drive north around my army and it would force me to abandon the attack so I could save my own city. Or it could, as general James Longstreet used to say, hit me "on the end" and break my fomration apart.

What does the might dual PIII 750 do? It sends irregulars to slap at me as if to say, "icky human go away and stop hurting me." I am grossly disappointed in the lack luster tactics of this green foe. I break off the attack and retreat to give the PIII time to regroup and come at me. I want a more interesting battle. Nope. I finally give up and move my army back in.

When I deam the moment right I order all the knights and infantry to be as agressive as possible and they sweep though the area killing things. I
order the artillary to cease fire so as not to hammer my own troops into the dirt. I box them up in longbowmen and move one division back to the
marcher castles. Then I move the other east, and in a moment or two the green dude gives up.

Now it is noly the dufus Black Prince. My bro, compadre, commrade in arms (thats a joke I asked for his help once and he didn't do squat.) So what do I do with him? I send in the ACE with seige engines and blast open a big space in the center of his domain. I build a big fortress with two castles and I garrison half my invasion army inside it. I Shut the gate and leave it alone. I turn the diplomatic status to enemy for a moment or two and let the garrison and casltes, spew arrows all over the place killing the princes peaseants and soldiers. Then I go back to being freinds with him. He starts to build more soldiers and every once in a while I go in and teach him who's emperor.

So do I like this game? Hell yes I like it. However I would change it to make it better in a couple very important ways.

1. To make this game live up to its name I would allow for a CG enemy state to be terrorized into surrender but still have it's own troops. If your own domain loses to many troops then this enemy ceases being under your thumb and revolts.
2. As your territory increases you should automatically be given the opportunity to appoint NPC governors to regions. These governors would do your bidding. You give them an order such as: Defend region from any incursion. They then use the regions resources to do jsut that. Or you could say: Attack neighboring region. The governor will do it. However if the empire becomes too weak they me split off and become enemy states that you have to reconquer.

Familyman

This film should have been the crowning turd in the waterpipe but it was not. I liked it. It was an idea that has been done to death but was done so well that I just came out feeling good. When he woke up in the messy bed and the kids were screeming and running through the house that was great. That was real. I thought "man would I want to stay in that world?" Then I remembered that I do live in that world. The guy chose it over the millionaire lifestyle. I guess I like the movie because of just that action.

Big Kahuna

[6]

You know this film had great acting and terrific dialogue but salesguys jsut don't get all cerebral when they are out in the field. Sorry that is bullshit. They don't postulate on the existance of God or their own lives meaning. All they do is sleep, sell stuff, eat food, go to bars, shit and go bakc to sleep. Taking this film on face value you'd think that sales guys are fucking monks in polyester, their eye's trained heavenword. Not so. This film was a pet project by one of my favorite actors Mr Spacey. Remember I think Spacey should be a Jedi. He'd kick ass.

Castaway

You know this film is so sucky that I wish I could cast it away. What a waste of film, story, actor, etc... It didn't show me anything I have seen before. My idea for a castaway story is that the guy ends up on the island and all he has is one fedex package. he opens it and finds college text books for a physics professor. After burning a couple he decides that he might as well read them since he might go nuts. So after 4 years he has read and re read them. They range from Max Born's book on Einstien's Theory of Relativity and textbooks on quantem mechanics to cosmology. In the package there is a treatise, written by a cambridge mathamatician. It is an attempt at a Grand Unified Theory, a theory linking quantem mechanics with general relativity; a theory of everything. It is unfinished. After four years of solitude the castaway is now, not only an expert spear fisherman but a phycisist. Without the external nonsense of the modern world his brain has adapted into a hunter gatherer / physicist of the highesrt order. Then he stubs his toe on a rock. This seeming trivial injury is fatal in his current surroundings. He knows it. So he does what he can to write down on his cave wall the equations necassary to describe the workings of the cosmos. As he finishes the camera tracks back out accross the ocean and out into space and you are left with the irony that the secret to the future of the universe is housed in a cave on a southpacific island.

Gone in 60 Seconds

[2]

Dull dull dull or god it was dull. I kepts waiting for the KR500 and you had to wait all the way to the end and then they CGI'd it over a bridge. Sucks.

The Perfect Storm

[3]

As soon as I finished the book I knew this was going to be a film and I knew it would suck. The Book is written in a very journalistic way and reads more like a magazine article than a novel. It is a great book. Junger goes into ocean mechanics, history, and fishery detail that is totally lost in the movie. For instance his anecdotal info is riveting as well. Take the time a rogue wave blasted out the bridge windows of the Queen Mary, that's 90 feet above the water line, and she came within a degree or two of capsizing. Or the time, in the 1850's when a fishing boat came across a note in a bottle with the last words of a crew that hadn't been heard from in a year. One of the more interesting twists in the book is Junger's description of how the people left behind have to willfully extract the men from their lives. It is just a mater of faith that the men are dead since no boat, or bodies were ever recovered. The film also plays fast and loose with the facts. First of all there was no distress signal sent from the Andrea Gail. The rescue helicopter that picked up the crew from the yacht was not enroute to the AG but to a japanese fisherman when it went down.

But despite all that the film just wasn't interesting. The characters were dehumanized. The filmmaker had a clean slate for dialogue since none of the men survived. Yet all he could do was bullshit lines that weren't memorable at all. There could have been much made of the fact that, aside from Tyne, all the other men didn't much like fishing. It was a dead end job that they wanted to get clear of as soon as they could. Bob Brown's character was accurate but his animosity toward Tyne is not. Most sword boats are only in port for afew days at a time anyway.