...And Welcome to It

So, well, I went a couple of days without dirtying up any virtual paper.

Last week-end, since the long legged lovely who I spend my time with was busy, I went out and bought Morrowind, which you may or may not know is an old game, but unlike Oblivion (its' sequel) is possible to be played on my two year old machine. So as a result I've become some kind of mad, addicted fool. And I'm not even sure if it's a good game.

OK, that sounds strange, but I tend to plunge in, moving from fight to fight at high speed, rarely letting the story, or the depth that they've included (something like 500 books are written into the game) catch up to impress itself on me. I've got a big case of "Let's see what's on the other side of that hill!" syndrome, and a big interest about what the next quest is, versus what the current one I'm working on is. And of course a power-gamers need to see how powerful I can make my character.

As for the game itself, it reminds me of an MMO, in the size and complexity of the world, while all being designed for one person. Which suits me a fair bit, since my biggest problem with the MMO market is that the ultimately, you're just one of many, rather than being the hero I tend to want to be-well, that and I like my gaming to be as anti-social as possible. I play video games to avoid people dammit!

Hey! Day 2!

Well, it's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Last night I went to the grocery store. In a bid to cut a few minutes from the trip I went to Dierbergs, rather than driving a little longer to get to Shop'N'Save. Apparently Dierbergs highly values their oranges, and refuses to sell them in the big momma bag that I prefer. Nope, it's individual only for them. And since I was pretty much opposed to going two places on the way home, I bought bananas instead.

And oy! I suffered the banana stone in the gut syndrome. I'm not sure what it is, either an over sufficiency of potassium in my system, or just a general bodily rejection of any food that is neither fried nor formerly alive, but every time I eat bananas, I get a hard, hurt-y feeling in my stomach like my intestines were wrapped around a rock. It goes away after a couple of hours, but until it does I'm pretty much relegated to sitting there, holding my middle, wishing I could just go to the bathroom. And yeah, that's probably more visual than you really wanted, but hey, it's my blog.

So, since sleep was right out the door for the duration of the tropical fruit to work it's way through, I sorted all my various MP3's. So now, if I'm listening to Bob Seger, it's really Bob Seger, as opposed to, say, George Thorogood. My iPod thanks me.

But that's not enough! Oh, no. Now I want to get it all sorted by Album as well. Let no metaphorical OCD rock be unturned!

Enough for now, may be back later.

Hey, long time since I've done anything here. I'm glad to know my chicken scratchings are still immortalized; at least they're as immortalized as any ephemeral arrangement of electrons can be. Heh, I just wanted to use the word "ephemeral".

I must say this thing is a somewhat sad, derelict little thing. I originally intended it to be yet another of the conservative poly-blogs. I was going to hit the jackpot one day, get Insta-lanched, or blogalanched, or whatever you call it, and my deep ponderings would be read by people across this great land, and my opinion would be courted by the Powers That Be.

There's only one problem with that dream. There are already a Hell of a lot of people chasing it, most of them more qualified than me. Heck, if you're supposed to blog about what you know, I'm pretty much stuck with swords, role playing games, and science fiction, and even those have people more qualified than myself treading the Internet fantastic.

And it doesn't help that the past year, or decade, has seen me dealing with crashing depression. In fact it was a year ago that the VA, who I had gone to get an appointment with a therapist, tried to commit me. Blech.

But in the intervening time, I've made some new friends, found someone I love deeply, and maybe, just maybe, am climbing out of the hole I periodically fell in. I also abortively took a drawing class, and just in general tried to find something that would excite me enough to do more than sit like a lump absorbing the internet one page at a time.

So's anyway, I need to write, to practice, to improve to what I thought I was in my mind. And I'm going to do it here. So if you're interested you can see it. I'll write about politics if it interests me, or books, or movies, or swords. Heck, I might even link to porn if I feel so motivated. But by God, I need to do something, and I might as well do it here. And as always, you're welcome to it.

Yep, here's another one. From the Economist this time. It's yet another person explaining "Why Bush won" or "Why Kerry lost". But I think there's something a little more substantial to this one.

The Dutch seem to be taking on their "New Nazis". Good for them.

Charles Krauthammer nails Edwards to the wall.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the
work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John
Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up
out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of
demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain,
raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?

This is the kind of gaffe that ought to be election-losing. It's particularly insulting in the wake of the recent death of Christopher Reeve. Read it all, and then consider whether a vote for Kerry is really in your future.

Lynne Cheney is letting Kerry have it, today over Kerry dragging her family onto the podium.

I agree with Mrs. Cheney. It was a low blow, and cheap, to bring up someone else's children in a debate like that. And he reached for it. That kind of thing tells you the kind of person he is. Judge accordingly.

Not much news and analysis today. I watched debate, and in the other room my sister watched the playoff game. Cards won, Bush won. It was a good night.

Let me tell you, (hey, I sound like John Kerry!) I don't think anybody in St. Louis was hoping for a St. Louis-Houston match-up. But (sounding like John Kerry again!) our boys in red pulled it out, and we can count on more great things to come.

I understand the Yankees (Boo! Hiss!) also won last night. We need a Yankees-Cards series. It's the perfect red state, blue state matchup. And like in the election, the blue states are going down, man, down.

Now on to the debate. I find it hilarious that Dem's, who always claim to be the party of the little guy, always seem to want to elect patrician elitists who want to tell the rest of us what to do. There seems to be a deep-seated royalty issue with them, something that is not as apparent in the Right. Yes, I know the right has been full-on in supporting the President, but you ask any conservative what they disagree with the President on, and Bam! out come a half dozen issues that people think could have been better decided.

Now do the same thing with a Dem? Waiting, waiting? Crickets.

So, anyway, Bush won the debate last night. He had the issues, he defended his policies, and put Kerry on the defensive. And he was warm and fuzzy in a way that Kerry was not. My only regret is that more people watched the playoffs (Go Cards!) than watched Kerry get whipped like the new kid at a boarding school.