Maybe A Little Partisan

I think maybe there was a time when I wouldn't bother to explain myself, and I'd just say something along the lines of, "Well, fuck that guy." These days, I qualify even my strong opinions pretty heavily.

On the other hand, Robert Novak is a douchebag. It's just now he's a douche with brain cancer.

I don't wish brain cancer, in particular, on anyone. It's awful, and scary. But, on the other hand, he didn't stop being a douchebag.
And, to a different extent, he's a political pundit, so he's basically paid to say mean things on television, to write them in print, and to post them to the internet. But he and his opinions remain vile and debasing. When Rove wanted to leak Valarie Plame's identity over the air, Novak is who he turned to. When he was questioned about it on Crossfire, which is as pathetic of a televised political debate could have gotten, he opted to storm off the set.

And when he returned to television, he had been picked up by Fox News, that paragon of journalism, the only place I've ever seen a French politician asked why his nation hated America with a straight face.

He's hit pedestrians, cheered cock, dog, and bull fighting, and involved himself with the bogus Swift Boat Veteran campaign to smear presidential candidate John Kerry. Looking at his resume, you wonder if he deserved some kind of karmic backlash.

Even so, I don't wish brain cancer on him. He's pretty bad, but I reserve my true distaste for the Right's worst villains. Novak is a tool, metaphorically and literally, but he's no Dubya (whose incompetence made him the focus of eight years of roll-backs in civil liberties, damaged our economy, and put our soldiers uselessly in harm's way), Cheney, or even Nixon who is a person that if I could choose, I would put directly in the Oval Office in George's place from the beginning, assuming that his hunger for living brains could be limited to one a day, I think we would have saved lives.

In fact, Novak opposed the war in Iraq, and actually served in the military George Bush pretends to have been a part of. At the same time, I take a very guilty pleasure in the thought that, until he beats his illness, he'll be taking a haitus from writing. I can do without it.

[AD&D] Coping Mechanisms

"We are playing D&D tonight, and maybe I am bored with being Gregnar, the Fighter. I have a lucren hammer hook-fuchard, which is the most rediculous pole arm I could find. Or maybe I made it up. I don't remember.

They all look like point bits soldered onto a clothes pole to me. This is how I imagine they made weapons in the dark ages. The Lord was like, "Hey, let's fucking war on some dude." and the villagers didn't have, like, swords, so they just got tree-trimmers and shit. It was better if the handle is longer, so you're not so close to the other guys point bits.

"All I want to do is give this cow some hay!" said Gregnar. "And maybe get some milk."
"Too bad." Says the Lord.
"Man." Says Gregnar, somewhat disappointed."

Actually, so, AD&D doesn't make any sense, but sometimes Brent wants to play it anyhow. Between you and I, I am tired of trying to make AD&D make sense. What the hell are those saves? Vs. Dragon's Breath? Vs. Petrification/Polymorph? How did they think of these things? No. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I just assume that they are laws of nature.

Law of Getting Your Ass Turned Into Stone By a Motherfucking Beholder or Some Shit, We Don't Know. Why Are You In Front of A Beholder, Anyhow? This Wouldn't of Been An Issue If Your Dumb Ass Had Just Stayed In Waterdeep.
They had to simplify it a little, but that's the gist.

I am not sure how many apprentices had to be turned into stone for the sages to get the appropriate numbers on the Save DCs, but they did. These are specific, if maybe poorly-formed laws of nature. In addition to gaining class levels, where once you level up, you just take something that maybe you were training for.

Or maybe seems appropriate. Like, you can't explain anything else, so now you're a Thief. Which is ok, I guess. Dude, disarm that trap. Seriously, Gregnar almost lost his hand last time.

So, now, in the D&D of my imagination, there isn't any abstraction. Fighters really can fall off cliffs or get shot a lot with crossbow bolts, and who cares? They've got a lot of HP. And being a Paladin kind of sucks, because alignment is really pretty nonsensical. You're Lawful and Good, not just because that's what you were inclined to do anyhow, but because that's the team you play for. There are other planes, and shit, and they're fighting, and you're like minions of cosmic forces too grand to begin to comprehend, because you're not clued in. All you know if that you get Searing Light three times a day and undead are bad. Evil is the same way, except with more spikes and they poison you sometimes.

Also, fiends. You know.

Don't try to reason it out. The rules are natural law.
Man. But I still don't get all those goddamn pole arms.