Fun With Politics

I’ve been off as well. And, I can tell you what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been e-fedding and playing Age of Empires.

E-fedding is e-wrestling. For those of you who are uninitiated, it smacks of a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and the WWE. Like D&D, there is roleplaying, but unlike D&D, you don’t have the variables of the dice, or magic, or elves/trolls/fire monsters at your beck and call.

You have a character that you use, and that character can have any background that you wish to give him/her. You write roleplays that involve your character with the other characters in the e-federation....basically, you build a storyline with them. Sometimes you are creating a feud, and sometimes you are working an angle that describes an alliance with another wrestler. You write a fixed amount of roleplays a week, and you compete with people that are doign the same thing, with their character. Whoever is judged to have the best set of roleplays is the winner of the match, and a third person writes a ‘wrestling match’ that your character either wins or loses at.

The winner or loser is not known until the end of the match, and there is a fair amount of competition. The successful writers win ‘Titles’ of varying levels, like a real wrestling federation would bestow.

Now, like D&D, people can fall into the trap of taking the whole kit and kaboodle too seriously, and they get upset when their character loses, or they quit, or they pine away, and complain online (usually in what’s called a ‘OOC’, or Out Of Character, chat room). Those kind of people, should they get rolling, break e-federations up. The good e-feds have people there that look at it as a hobby, and an exercise in literary practice. That’s how I look at it, and I think that it’s a better hobby than sex blogs or shooting small animals.

If you want to read some of my stuff, you can do so here. I’m thinking of putting them all together, and seeing if they would make a good novel. I guess you can decide. Don’t mind the R-rated sections....everyone’s overage.

Now...Age of Empires.

In this computer game, you start with three little peasants and a village center. That’s it. You have to build your entire empire from that. You can train more peasants, find berry bushes to pick, cut down trees, mine stone or gold, or hunt elephants and antelope. Eventually, you have to amass enough food and new structures to make a scientific breakthrough, and that allows you to build more advanced structures, like a marketplace and an archery area. The ultimate way to win is to make it from the Stone Age, through the Bronze Age, and to the Iron Age, where you learn to build temples, and a wonder...when you get the Wonder, you have to defend it for 1000 years, in order to win.

It isn’t like Civilization, where you go until the nuclear age. This game has a definite start and stop date. However, there is a thing that happens that happens with all such games.

The computer cheats.

I’m sitting there, slowly building walls and picking berries, and the other guy shows up in a chariot and catapult. What the hell is that all about? I can’t get how the computer can develop these things while my guys are still learning how to read, write, and count their toes. Well, it happens in Civ as well...I’ll be riding a horse, and the other ‘empire’ will fly over me in a B-2 bomber. It is a real morale-breaker.

So, I’ve bneen playing that, e-fedding, and otherwise working hard at work (imagine that!). I’ll try to get on the blog a little more often...and I’m sorry for not posting more.

And....the Libs are still whackos.