Here’s the boardgames I got for Christmas.
Android
Agricola (2 Copies*)
Dominion (3 Copies)
Kingsburg (2 Copies)
I guess people really know what to get for me. 🙂
(Technically, one of those copies of Agricola was for Tim, but we don’t really need two in the house.)
I can only come to one possible conclusion about the popularity of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. It’s everywhere. Everyone’s reading it. Everyone’s talking about it. But it’s utter crap.
Twilight, you see, is the lowest common denominator of vampire fiction.
A young girl meets an older vampire. And then he tries to push her away, because he’s a vampire and she’s not. And then she finds out. But they’re in loooove. (For some reason.) And also there’s evil vampires, and a feud between vampires and werewolves (who are native americans.) But love prevails.
I think I liked that story better when it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Well, without the clear foreshadowing to a conflict from Underworld/White Wolf/Dracula vs. the Wolfman, or wherever the whole “vampires hate werewolves” schlock-meme came from.) Compared to the acting of Twilight’s male lead Robert Pattinson’s acting performance, David Boreanis looks like Jim Carrey and Anthony Hopkins rolled into one.
The characters lack any depth, complexity, or real motives for their actions. The vampires seem to be broody for broodiness’s sake. The lovers pursue their love because they love each other- and they love each other because she smells nice and he’s mysterious. And the bad vampire is bad because he’s bad.
The lessons of this movie are damaging: teen love at first sight is true and pure and noble, if someone is a complete asshole to you then you can someday have a healthy relationship with them, and it’s okay for teen-girl masturbation-fodder to somehow become a bestseller with movie rights.
There’s no horror in the vampiric condition in Twilight; you get your pick of powers from your favorite White Wolf splatbooks, you never have to sleep/rest/go into a coffin, you can go outside during the day if it’s even vaguely cloudy, and you get to be good looking, immortal, and mysterious. Oh, but you have to be in high school forever. (Oh noes, high school! Perhaps an 22 year old actor wasn’t the best choice to play someone who’s supposed to be perpetually 17?) Also, if you go out in sunlight, people might find out that you’re DAVID BOWIE. Wait, what?
I earned a “Smilin’ Jack Point” for my work on a Savage Worlds Left 4 Dead mod.
Texas-born and bred, raised on black ops and wetwork, known throughout the back rooms of presidential palaces the world over. She used to be the world’s most expensive assassin, now she only works for fun. If you can find her, in Paris perhaps, or Milan, or the Florida Keys – then maybe, just maybe, she’ll take your mission. No warlord is safe, no tyrant secure, no fortress unassailable, when she’s out and on the prowl. She can drink the Russian army under the table and still shoot a dime out the air at a thousand yards. She can argue constitutional law and orgasm at the same time. She’s all-American, but she ain’t no cheerleader. She is Elite. …SPECIAL POWER… Once per game, Elite may take one of her discarded cards and return it to her hand, so she can play it again.
I recently got AgriCola as an early Christmas present, and decided to try my hand at the solo variant of the game. Read about my adventures here.
So I was vacuuming.
I have three cats. Two of them, Munkie! and Boris, are deathly afraid of the vacuum. Natasha doesn’t like to get to close to it, but she’ll stay in the room and watch you, and scamper to someplace else when you start getting near to her.
So I get the vacuum out of the closet, and start getting ready to vacuum- uncurling the cord, plugging it in, etc. Boris and Munkie! are watching from opposite sides of the room.
I turn it on. Immediately, they both run towards the basement door. We have a catflap in that door.
BAM! They collide right in front of it. For a moment, they’re on the floor, stunned and wondering what’s happening. Then they recover, and get in the catflap and down those stairs.
