Posted on January 26, 2010
Prison Rolls Saving Throw, Inmates Lose
The geek half of the Internet (the remaining 50% being divided equally between bored housewives, cheating husbands, ambitious business majors and porn) is abuzz this morning with news of yesterday’s decision by the seventh circuit court of appeals to uphold the decision of a Wisconsin prison banning its inmates from playing Dungeons and Dragons. It seems that some murderer by the name of Kevin Spacey Singer filed the appeal after the prison’s big, bad warden stormed his cell and absconded with his entire collection of game manuals and whatever other D&D ephemera he’d managed to squirrel away while serving his sentence. The appeals court decision cited a concern that the playing of D&D somehow mimics the power structure of a gang and, as unlikely as it sounds, could eventually produce some sort of rabble-rousing collective of spotty-faced dungeon masters that would threaten the safety of other inmates, presumably through the use of an imaginary vorpal blade of +2 summoning or perhaps by way of a particularly nasty die roll. The reasoning behind the judgment doesn’t actually stand the test of reality, of course – not when you compare the real world stat sheet of your average gamer to that of his in-game alter ego, but I suppose the court had to figure out something to say that was a bit more technical than sticking out their tongues and going “Neener-neener! You’re in prison, you twat. It’s not supposed to be fun!” Read More
Posted on January 21, 2010
Road Trip!
Some folks have commented to me recently concerning our excursion to Disney World, and each of them has invariably asked the same question: “Why didn’t you take a plane?” The easy answer would be to say I don’t like flying, but that’s not entirely true. I have no real problems with airplanes other than simple annoyances that are fairly easily dealt with or at least temporarily endurable for the short duration of the flight. One of these things would include the hilariously inept and ineffectual security measures put in place after September 11, 2001 that make our flights neither safer nor more enjoyable, but that do seem to have the curious effect of irritating every single passenger so far past the point of intolerance that they come back around the other side as docile cattle, willingly being herded through checkpoints of steadily increasing invasiveness. And, armed with their Ziploc bags and unshod feet, the passengers walk in single-file confidence as machines bleep and bloop and give the guards virtual reconstructions of their naked naughty parts while falsely believing that any of it does any good. It’s a theater of delusion in which I want no part. Then, of course, there are the more mundane aspects of air travel, things like: lost luggage and mishandled baggage, infuriating and inexplicable delays coated in the saccharine-laced rhetoric of smiling automatons and, of course, the flight itself. I’m sorry, but unless I’m on some intergalactic space voyage to a distant star and totally dependent upon the ship’s life support systems to shield me from the terrible vacuum of outer space, I don’t really want to breathe the same barely-scrubbed, recycled oxygen as a whole plane full of people who are farting and burping and coughing their way to Orlando. And don’t even get me started on the toilets… Read More
Posted on January 19, 2010
Happy Birthday To Me!
Yesterday marked the beginning of my thirty-fifth year on this good, green Earth, yet I don’t really feel all that much older. I definitely don’t feel any wiser, which is no great shock considering that I’m already the Smartest Man Alive and have been for quite some time. No, if anything, all I feel is a little bit more tired and slightly more rundown, with just a hint of smug satisfaction that comes from having been through my life thus far and not having surrendered to its various afflictions and miseries. Not that it’s been all bad, mind you, but in my experience, whenever life is at its best is when some unexpected turn of vicissitudinous woe leaps from the murky depths of wretchedness and slaps me across the face like a wet herring. So, it is with a substantial level of apprehension that I approach my future, considering just how great things are right now. Past experience has conditioned me to expect the bottom to drop at any moment… Read More
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