Today's Twilight Imperium Game, And My Radio Station Comments

I'll fill this in fully in a couple of hours. For now, I'm headed off to the Rock 104 radio station room, so I can get some of that on-the-scene training that Mr. Guscott tells me is so essential. They're there 24/7, unless they go out and cover some event, and my card key will get me into the building anytime, so I'm headed over now.

So, uh...bye. Back in a few hours, maybe less.

Edit: Uh, guess I'll update in the morning. I'm tired now. Not that anyone reads this these days, anyway. Honestly, this is getting to be a serious drag.

Well, it's morning. And here's the update.

Twilight Imperium. Boy howdy, is that ever a fun game. I mean, really. We began with an "accelerated start," which means that we all started off able to capture a couple extra planets than we normally would be able to. Combine that with the fact that my side of the board was rife with awesome planets while the other side was pretty much a star desert, supernovas everywhere and asteroid fields cluttering up the place, and I got a great start.

The real fun began when I researched War Sun technology, along with my friend the University (one of the races) across the table. I worked hard and spent lots of resources getting all the fiddly little prerequisites to get that, as it meant that I could build the unstoppable war machines known as War Suns. Death Stars, basically, but without the copyright infringement. Then, of course, someone had to play the bill Shared Technology (you can vote on bills in this game, pass laws, lots of fun), which passed overwhelmingly, which meant that my neighbors could copy my War Sun technology without any of the prerequisites. The long and the short of this was that every player had a War Sun by turn 3, something almost completely unheard-of. "There goes the neighborhood," I was heard to comment. "Even the University's got the bomb, er, the War Sun now."

My race was the Naalu, a bunch of psychic space mermaids, basically. We had the awesome racial ability to always go first. Always. I exploited this fully when it came to attacking, troop deployment, technology research, all that sort of thing. Grand fun. Especially when it came to all-out war between me and Mike, who had the Federation of Sol, I believe it was, the only earthlings on the table. "Their weakness is that they're balanced," it was explained to me. I...guess that makes sense. Most of the other races played were horribly overpowered, like my always-goes-first ability. Though attackers gain no specific benefits, the ability to always decide where conflicts are held is invaluable.

War Sun aggression continued. Soon, everybody had two War Suns, at least nearly everybody. Louis didn't have a single one for most of the game, though he ended up winning because he wasn't part of the four-player blood feud that was myself, Mike, Vic, and Matt. It went sort of like this:

Me x Mike
Vic x Mike (somewhat)
Vic x Matt
Me x Matt (by proxy)

I outmaneuvered Mike, and through a succession of lucky rolls, destroyed half his battle fleet not two spaces away from his homeworld. I had to contend, though, with the fact that though I destroyed one of his War Suns, he had five Dreadnoughts in production, and those things are nearly as scary. By the time I built up enough to make my move, he had his second War Sun rebuilt and ready to go.

We had another epic battle, but this time my victory was far from complete. Though I scrapped his entire fleet, I had nothing left but two damaged War Suns, no Fighters, no Dreadnoughts, not even Cruisers or Carriers. He could have moved in and mopped the floor with me. At that point, though, the game ended on account of we had to go immediately. This, of course, meant that we first spent half an hour picking up every piece, every chit, every scrap of cardboard with weird symbols and putting every card back in every deck.

I in particular had trouble with the deck of planet cards, the ones that gave information on the planets one could capture. I was handed the incomplete deck and told to alphabetize them, which I did. This took some time. Scarcely had I finished when someone gave me what I believed to be the second half of the deck and added, as an afterthought, "Oh, alphabetize these too." Annoyed, I turned back to the deck I had already alphabetized, only to find it nowhere to be found. Someone had picked it up in their vigor. Scowling, I alphabetized this new deck, and after no small amount of interrogation found the other part. I painstakingly put both decks together, and this time I was secure in the knowledge of a job well done, and most importantly, a job completed.

So, as any student of literary foreshadowing has no doubt already predicted, someone then plopped a third stack of previously unmentioned planet cards. From on high the command came, "Alphabetize these, too."

ARGH!

But we got cleaned up, finally, and went to the mall. Vic bought some new clothes, which she likes, and apparently the whole exercise of going shopping was to make herself feel pretty and dissuade herself of the notion - a previously unshakable notion - that her swollen cheeks made her look like a chipmunk. I pointed out, logically I think, that her lacking of several vital chipmunk characteristics, e.g., fur, tail, paws, etc., would tend to disprove this, but she was adamant about her chipmunk resemblance. So nothing for it but she had to go shopping.

The shopping complete, I dithered around at home a bit, getting a little work done on this stupid political science project I have due (I don't want to give details, it hurts my brain just to think about it), then I went to the radio station. WRUF, 103.7, Rock 104. Hopefully, my new workplace.

It was great. There's this somewhat complicated board with switches and knobs and slide-y things all over it, and lights go on and off depending on what you're trying to do, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on it at this point. The jocks - the DJs, they call them "jocks" - were very helpful each time I came, each of them showing me what I needed to do and asking if I had any questions, answering all I asked, etc. It was very neat.

Low-impact job, too. I inquired as to one of them, a sprightly girl named Summer, as to the pay of the position. "Minimum wage," she said. "But who cares? We get paid to sit here and occasionally press a few buttons, maybe talk into the mike twice or three times an hour, and answer the phone. It's the easiest job I've ever had, and it's pretty fun, too." Later, she said "I could come here and get paid to listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. Or, I could go home and not get paid, where I would listen to the radio, watch TV, and go on the Internet. I know which one I want to do." This is gonna be great.

Obviously, I'll start with the terrible shifts to begin with, the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. most likely, but as time goes by I'll be able to upgrade my shifts to some time when I actually intend to be awake and alert. Until then, I'll just have to rely on truly legendary amounts of caffeine, and catnaps before I head in.

So that's about it. The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day has just got to be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejweI0EQpX8 I don't know if anyone here knows what kinetic typography is, but for those who don't it's basically moving text to match the spoken words that the text matches. Hard to explain, but just watch it. This one is Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First."

REPLIES.

Before I begin, I would like to make a quick note. I lagged on this update, leaving it until, well, until tonight. I was even thinking of leaving it for tomorrow morning, when I noticed I had a comment on this unfinished post, by a guy by the name of Enish. He said that he read this blog, without even knowing who I am personally. Not only does this mark the first person who reads this blog that I don't know IRL, that I know of, but it really was a breath of fresh air, honestly. It energized me into finishing this post. It gave me hope, basically. To a writer, feedback and an audience are everything, and his note reassured me that I have both. I'll formally reply next post, but for now...thanks.

Steve: All right, but you being my last reader is a disquieting thought. It makes me wonder what about me drove everyone else off but kept you interested...You tell me to buy bottled algae without informing me of the terrible string-related deaths it could cause?!? I'm never taking your shopping advice again.

I was going to post this in the main blog, but this is more addressed to you. I went on a shopping run that would please even you, I think:

Package of baby spinach leaves
Bananas
Organic orange juice
V-8 "Fusion" fruit-vegetable juice
Package of broccoli
Elbow macaroni
Parmesan cheese

Except for the last two (old habits die hard, dangnabbit), I can't see you finding fault with anything I bought. What do you think now, nyah?

Magic has, I believe, improved as a result of the power creep. So much more is possible now, and not everyone does the same thing. In Mirrodin, it was obviously broken, and everyone did the same dang thing. The new sets, there are many, many paths to victory. There is no one broken card like Skullclamp that everyone just groans at, no single combo that everyone exploits. They're powerful but balanced. Vic was a little woozy, but mostly coherent.

I'm not going to...what? And as for "every cell phone can take a picture," no, they can't. My cell phone can't take a picture. My cell phone is nearly ten years old. It's the same brick that my parents bought my sister when she entered high school. It's got a new faceplate, but it's a brick all the same. And yes, fine, I'll use my digital camera to take a blasted picture for you. Eventually.

Shut up about milk. Twenty-seven days.

Jake: You should be. Tell the others to post. Hold knives to their throats if you must, but get them on here! Megacon plans are still in the making.

Bye.