This is my answer: Despite their agonizing nature, I sort of miss college essays. They gave me a chance to demonstrate how well developed was my art for bullshit. That is, after all, the primary lesson of university: how to lie your way through life and earn money while doing it. Apparently, the money part didn't sink in, but the bullshitting comes in handy all the time. The following games have had a significant impact on my life and self-esteem: (in order of discovery) STANDARDS: BOARD, PAWNS, MOVEMENT, ARTISTRY, SENSORY PLEASURE, & LINGERING EFFECT RATING: 1-4 (1-low, 4-high) ASTERIKS per standard, totaled & compared. - DARK TOWER: A giant black plastic monolith towers over four nations, each a quarter of the board (circular) with a frontier between each. Each nation has a plastic tomb, ruin, bazaar, & sanctuary. The tower is an electronic thing, which randomly dictates your game. Made for kids, it does indeed capture and enhance a child's imagination, imposing phony romantic ideals about valor and bravery. It's a shame that they are phony, because they're representative of an ideal long extinct, and this board galvanized my ability to dream even though I could never beat my older brother; BOARD: 4. The pawns are detailed knights of an extensive variety, only four but ranging from a full-armored epee-wielder to a canvas-clad ax-man; PAWNS: 4. The movement is simple but open for orginality and strategy... Plagues and Getting Lost two factors that help make this game different every time... the game seemed to take ages as a kid but is too short for adulthood, in hindsight, though: MOVEMENT: 4. The artistry is extensive and original, a giant pink beast, a crazy-looking-horned Wizard, etc. ARTISTRY: 4. Sounds accompany each move, SENSES: 4. Overall, the lingering effect has been a prominent element in my adult personality... I take on the romance of Dark Tower in my every day affairs, I treat basic and simple events with an intended hyperbole-drama. LINGER: 4. OVERALL: 24. - SURVIVE: is a game that caused me great trauma, but I had fun along the way, the board is original (4), the pawns are too simple (2), the Movement is scary (4), the Art is plain but effective (3), SENSE EFFECTS (1) (silent, with very little imagery), and the OVERALL LINGER is a 1 since I never won the fucking game... TOTAL: 14 - TRIVIAL PURSUIT: BOARD - Well, the pictures of history are a good idea, and the wagon wheel shape, representing the rolling wagon wheel of time or the giant fallen log of the days of our lives, spinning out of apparent control headed down the hills of roamnce into the giant eternal maelstrom of happenstance... 4. PAWNS - Pie! - 4. MOVEMENT - Round and round that wheel and across those wondrous spokes of florescent victory: 3. ART - Mediocre, really: 2. Senses are not a part of the game, it's cerebral... 1. & The Linger is an ineffectual lack of emotion: 2. Overall, TP is fun once in a while... 16. - SCRABBLE: makes me obsessive compulsive and I love it... The board is plain and ordered, anal really, perfect rectal glamour:4. The pawns are letters, including the "big fucking Q!" - 4. The Movement is down or left, only down or left, but creating the in-between multi-goodness is extremely rewarding: 4. The art is non-existent save that of the players and is therefore open for subjugation: 4. Senses are not part of the game but the imagery of the order of words and the beautiful chimera thus fetussed is worth a 4. Overall, it never gets too easy: 4. Overall:24. - CHESS: Well, Never has a game birthed in me the anal desire enough for me to make a set of my own, so it's a definite 24. Here's why: The board is blank, ordered, open for strategery personal. The pawns are various and inventive, my personal favorite liekly the bishop even tho' the knight is most important. The Movement is time-honored and universally accepted as demonstrative of the brutal powers of warfare, both incredible and hideous. The Art is different in every set and therefore never static. The Senses are rarely involved, except for the times of agony and despair, but the head is newly oiled with every move of every game. The Linger is an on-going and ever-growing need to improve. There's wherefore Chess is a perfect 24. - PARCHEESI:... 0. This brings me to country music. Why? Well, the state of things in Nasville and its digital limbs is like Parcheesi... low. This being, there remains the desperation and woe that is the root of all good country music... and it remains here in Chicago, not in Nashville, not at all, but on the streets in the form of Urban Dijn and in the bars in the form of Cryin' Brian... Urban plays shows, too. They each have the enviable distinction of being Honky Tonk Singers, balancing their integrity against the blasphemous modern pop-country stars' whoredom that has ruined the brand of country music. Amen, sing on, oh, woeful ones. Speaking of cats, have you ever met Pussy Galore? She's a tiger-housecat who likes to sleep in the boxes of board games, she likes Dark Tower, too. Nashville has been descended upon by California-Brand Vultures, and they've turned the Grand Ole Opry into a SuperMall. Smells like Los Angeles, while the marina-feel of downtown reminds me of Maine or Monterrey Bay, in Tennessee... Not Unlike Wailuku, which is the proletariat center of Hawaii, where country singers range from the obscenely bad to the tolerably poor. In Chicago, the country bars are better than the blues bars which tend to the whims of the stupid-frat-boy-blues-guys, because they have a dive-like sense of drunken poverty (i.e. Carol's), and in Tupelo I've never heard a country song sung. Tupelo is a good crossword answer though, which brings me back to Scrabble, both of which tend to expand my vocabulary. For example, where I once may have said "fertile", I now might say "fecund." Where I once may have said "mimed," I now might say, "aped." The best in Chicago is the SunTimes (blank & NYTimes). I have doubts, though, on the legitimate sense of doing this essay (this is the "???" part). I do, however, feel, vaguely gratified for having written this. One reason is the base participation in the www, two reason is simple writing activity. Three reason is elusive and distant. But I am happy to write for Supah and I promise that next time I will at least try to do something of validity, be it profound, be it platitudinal, may it at least be of purpose on purpose. Thank you for letting me snack on your time. -aDp. (12/12/2000) |
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