REMEMBER: I'm out of town the next two Wednesdays! No RussCon April 26 or May 3! Marty wants to meet instead at Dobie Mall Food Court, same bat-time, same bat-channel, but different bat-place.
14 of us, and only 7 games played. Some long-absent RussCon regulars returned: Jonobie and James!
Devil Daniel showed up way early to assert his dining table rights and regale me with the tale of his camping for 11 days in Everquest, waiting for a specific monster to spawn at a spawn point which regenerates every 72 minutes, and 95% of the time wouldn't spawn the monster he needed for his quest anyway. One time the right monster appeared, but before he could attack it the server went down. 11 days of sitting there waiting, and finally he succeeded. Man, I had no idea that game could be so fun! No wonder Everquest is so popular!
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Game Results:
Democrazy 6 Dan 5 JeffF 3 Bob 1 Alfred -1 WendyWhe -4 Jonobie -4 Torres 4 Bob 3 WendyWhe 1 Dan -1 Allen -3 Tayu 2 Bob 0 WendyWhe 0 Mu 5 William 4 JeffF 2 Alfred 0 James -2 Jonobie -4 Vino 5 Steve 4 Daniel 2 JP 0 Clayton -2 RussW -4 EveryManForHimself 6 Dan 5 Daniel 3 RussW 1 Steve -1 JP -3 Allen -5 Bluff 6 RussW 5 Daniel 3 Steve 1 Allen -1 JP -3 William -5Democrazy apparently involves underwear, because we outside the game kept hearing them talk about the color of people's underwear and whether they were wearing boxers and who won because they were wearing red panties and so forth. Not sure what that was about, but that game may be worth playing with the right people.
Vino took over 2 hours, but it should go quicker if everyone knows the rules. It was a cool game, although the strategy was initially nonobvious. Apparently I caught on too late! I want to play it again. It has no chance and no hidden information. It does have secret simultaneous selection of which 2 of 9 regions will you operate in, so there's some luck in that sense; if several people all happen to pick the same region, it's likely one of them will get screwed. That goes with the territory in this sort of game (cf. Downtown).
Every Man For Himself was good silly fun with high toy value. 7 boats, lots of seamen (huh-huh, I said "seamen"), secret voting disks, and even a Big Stick. Lots of voting each turn: which boat springs a leak, which boat advances, and which passenger to throw overboard! It's marred as a serious game by too much kingmaking at the end, but it was still quite fun.
William may be losing his Bluff mojo, or maybe it's just the negative energy from sitting downstream of Allen, who officially Hates This Game. This one came down to a good close tense finish, with me & Daniel each having 1 die left. I bid one 3. He raises to one star. I raise to two 2s. He raises to two 3s. I challenge and reveal my 2. Woo-hoo!
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Evening's Soundtrack:
The Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica, Chantmania
Faith No More, Angel Dust
Nine Inch Nails, "The Perfect Drug" Versions
T.H.C., 11 song demo tape
Tool, Opiate
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Rank ratings: 0.6923 Dan (3 games played) 0.5714 Daniel (3) 0.5556 JeffF (2) 0.4444 Bob (3) 0.2857 Steve (3) 0.1429 RussW (3) -0.1111 William (2) -0.1111 Alfred (2) -0.3333 WendyWhe (3) -0.4286 JP (3) -0.5000 Clayton (1) -0.5000 James (1) -0.6923 Allen (3) -0.8889 Jonobie (2) New Win ratings: 0.6923 Dan (3) 0.3333 William (2) 0.2222 Bob (3) 0.2143 RussW (3) 0.1429 Steve (3) -0.2143 Daniel (3) -0.2143 JP (3) -0.2222 JeffF (2) -0.2222 Alfred (2) -0.2222 WendyWhe (3) -0.2222 Jonobie (2) -0.2308 Allen (3) -0.2500 Clayton (1) -0.2500 James (1)Dan is the Devil next time! (Which will be Wednesday May 10, because there's no RussCon at my house for the next 2 weeks, remember?) Then Daniel & Bob, then William, then Russ & Steve. No one wins the Dedicated Award; when 8 of us all played the most games, and that's only 3 games, then the award seems awfully diluted, don't you think?
WendyWhe wishes it publicly clarified that she did not in fact pull off a rare and dangerous Reverse Brady Maneuver on April 5, due to a victory in a game that was not recorded. So there.
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Links:
Headless chicken immortalized in sculpture:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/03/31/headless.chicken.ap/index.html
And here are some pictures of Mike the headless chicken:
http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/headless_chicken/mike.html
A Star Wars site with all sorts of stuff, including some fan comics and art. The Jawa Force comic book was neat, retelling Star Wars from the point of view of the Jawas who sold the droids to Luke's father. Sort of a fan version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. And I thought Ivy's portraits of Queen Amidala were quite impressive. I'm sure there's tons of other neat stuff here too.
http://www.theforce.net
I knew plush, cuddly-soft and oh-so-huggable Cthulhu dolls existed. I didn't know they were handcrafted with love, available in any solid color of your choice, as well as plaid and paisley for those of you who like your evil with a generous helping of bad taste:
http://www.tccorp.com/outsider/doll.html
The politics of Dilbert:
http://www.freespeech.org/normansolomon/dilbert/
Unusually impressive optical illusion, Find the Black Dot:
http://udel.edu/~jgephart/fun2.htm
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Remember: Don't come to my house for the next 2 Wednesdays! Go to Dobie Mall Food Court. Your eyelids are getting heavy. You will perform my bidding. When you awake, you will recall nothing.
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hey hey we're the monks...
people say we monkey around
but we're too busy chanting
to put anybody down
Russ