I'm fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
every attack
every attack
fighting back
fighting back
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting
fighting back
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Happy Snakesgiving!
Some years ago, I tired of the seemingly vacuous sentiment of Thanksgiving -- a holiday celebrated in much of the United States by demonstrations of excess. Excessive gorging, drinking, feasting on fattening foods and then, when the coma wears off, stampeding the malls to spend what little you don't have.
So I started to celebrate "Snakesgiving," a more irreverent holiday, and to greet people with a cheery "Happy Snakesgiving" and, if possible, a snake of some sort: rubber, wood, flesh....
HAPPY SNAKESGIVING!
This got me in a little hot water at airport security a couple Snakesgivings ago. I often travel with a thumb piano. It's an anti-stress device that helps melt away airport delays. Inside luggage, however, the metal tines look like Freddy Kruger fingerwraps, resulting in baggage examination. Fortunately, many security clerks are African Americans who recognize the cultural significance of this musical instrument and let me bypass the body cavity search.
So, anyway, it was Thanksgiving day and the thumb piano resulted in a search. When the officer opened my luggage, there was a three foot serpent on top. Wooden, of course -- I would never treat a live animal like that -- but realistic. The officer took a quick step back, looked up at me, and I smiled and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"
Fortunately, this year I was traveling by fuel-efficient Ford Econoline van, and not generating any of those dropping-polar-bear-size carbon bombs like all you airplane travelers, or slowing down our nation's economic recovery, like those who walked this Snakesgiving and missed opportunities for productive work. The snakes were loaded in the back of the van.
SNAKES A LOT!
The snake is an interesting, egg-laying, skin-shedding, cold-blooded vertebrate with spooky eyes and a forked tongue. In religious lore, the snake is associated with temptation. He's right there with Adam and Eve at the beginning of everything and is pretty much associated with the end of all good things, the bliss of Eden, the joy of ignorance.
Bam, just like that, humanity is now doomed to suffer because a snake whispered in someone's ear, "You know, you could do better." The snake is associated with truth, with opening your spooky eyes to the difference between good and evil, waking up to reality.
The snake says, "take a cold, hard look around." The snake is one chill dude -- cooler than cool -- loose, slippery, hard to pin down: he speaks with forked tongue. He is associated with transformation because he sheds his old skin and gets a new suit any time he needs one.
Voodous worship the loa Damballah, the snake god, who is associated with the creation of the universe (the egg) and whose cycles can be used to divine fortune. When the Africans who originated voodou were forced to hide their religion in the new world, they used likenesses of St. Patrick for altars to the snake god, Damballah.
St. Patrick was the Catholic slave-turned-priest who is patron of Ireland. He is credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland. Therefore, it was not sacrilegious to Catholics to place snakes around icons of St. Patrick. In fact, the snakes are often built-into statues of St. Patrick and many other religious deities.
The shimmy of the snake is the definition of duality -- yin and yang, back and forth, side to side, rock and roll. The instrument of the snake is the rattle. The rattle is the egg. The egg has the seeds. The seeds are the origin of all life. Simple theosophy.
BACK TO SNAKESGIVING
So I'm driving this van full of snakes across America headed for my brother's house in Frederick, Maryland, via my daughter's house in Nashville, Tennessee.
Along the way, I notice that about half the cars have a glowing blue device on the dash somewhere. This is strange. I've been driving these roads twice a year forever and this is the year of dashboard navigation.
In fact, once I got hip to the trend, I found a way to prop my iPhone onto my dash for stylish no-hands GPS updates. It's like watching the airplane tracking channel when they first put screens in seats. For the most part, though, I steered clear of any bluescreen drivers.
The other thing I noticed was about one fourth of all passenger vehicles had a rack of clothes in the back seat. I don't know if more Americans are living out of their cars or not, but they certainly are prepared to do so at a moment's notice.
By the time I got to my brother's house, I forgot I had a snake tucked inside my hoodie, and it just sort of popped out when I hit the front door. "Ooops. Happy Snakesgiving!" He was startled because I was startled because I'd forgotten about the snake. But the snake was plastic and my brother has hosted Snakesgiving before and is wise to my foolishness. He didn't even smack me.
TWO FOX
The next morning I did what I've done every Snakesgiving for a very long time. I went for a walk in the woods and picked enough "flowers" to make a respectable wildflower arrangement. This is easier at my brother's place; a brisk 20-minute walk through the neighborhood park and you are in farmland a.k.a. condos-in-waiting, where you are not likely to be arrested for snipping some solidago or liatrice or oak leaves.
My brother's dog, Alice, adores me. She's a border collie and a bit dainty but can be coaxed to investigate the manhole-sized boroughs we find dotting the creek. One of these years, we will run into Mr. Skunk and I will no longer be allowed to take Alice for walks at Snakesgiving. We rarely run into snakes.
This year, my oversize Bed, Bath, and Beyond Bag was stuffed with autumnal foliage and we were about ready to turn back for home when there was a great rustling in the woods along the creek.
The crashing and snapping was too heavy for squirrels. I thought deer maybe and realized Alice was off leash. Just then, a red-and-white fox jumped out of the brush and after him, another. Then then both stopped and looked us over and I laughed and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"
Just then the two fox ran toward us, getting just a few feet away before darting on a rampage across plowed-over corn. Alice was tempted to follow (me, too) but she held her ground and we watched them zig and zag for acres as a vulture flew above.
My brother, Kelly, often tests me about how animal spirits can be used to divine advice. He only made fun of me once this Snakesgiving, when he accused me of "talking to animals" and I reminded him I also talk to trees. He wisely didn't take the bait.
FOX ONE
My brother, Barry, who hosts Thanksgiving with his wife, Donna, stays out of these discussions. His job is to talk to plants, more or less, for the National Cancer Institute. His recent work with red algae has led to promising results for sufferers of HIV, ebola, and other illnesses.
Barry's Ph.D. is in "psychopharmacognacy." That sounds exactly like what I studied in college, but it's completely different. It involves isolating medicinal uses from natural compounds, as opposed to synthetically manufacturing drugs in a lab. He does the sort of far-reaching research that sometimes hits gold, as opposed to what the drug companies specialize in, which is narrow modifications that steadily sell and steadily improve.
Barry teases secrets out of plants and his wife, Donna, is a plain, old-fashioned pharmacist who works at the hospital monitoring patient drug regimens. They are both scientists, but there is a crucifix in the entranceway and beneath it are the folded leaves of palms brought home, one suspects, from church the Sunday before Easter.
The origins of Voudoo are also in pharmacy. Voudou priests and priestesses were first and foremost root doctors. They understood, through apprenticeship, the medicinal uses of plants as handed down through generations. First came the healing, then came the religion.
Plants were described as being invested with spirits. In some ways, these ghost stories are shorthand formularies for treating illnesses, along with legends of their use. When you hear cooks speak lovingly of the way ginger dances with garlic, you are on the slippery slope of Voodou.
My brother, Barry, is a bit of a gourmand. One Snakesgiving, from which I was absent, turned into an Iron Chef competition. He will appreciate the analogy between cooking and gene splicing and backwoods catholicism.
FOX TWO
My brother, Kelly, is, in fact, red and white and has a good, bushy head of hair. He looks volpine in his publicity shots (that means "foxlike," Kelly). And he has a reputation for cleverness.
Kelly and his foxy wife, Cristy, trumped all the other gossip at Snakesgiving with news of their purchase of "a big spread with a creek in it." Fox habitat. At squirrel prices. In the outback of Virginia. A place we can all use, with notice, to rest our weary bones.
I've tried to explain to Kelly several times how to talk to animals. The secret is in listening, not talking. He doesn't have the patience to hear the animals, let alone talk to them. But he is a bird lover, so there is hope.
The day after Snakesgiving, Alice and I went even further in the early morning chill until we scared up a family of deer that were sheltered in a stand of woods between two cornfields. We watched them leap off, half with white tails raised high, the others smaller or immature. About a dozen in all. I hoped we didn't send them in the direction of hunters.
So this is how it works, Kelly. Animals represent archetypes, some of which is a result of collective knowledge about their behavior. A robin is often a harbinger of spring. Robin's egg blue is a shade that is widely understood and requested. The word "robin" itself is a collective archetype of color, sound, and behavior. What is interesting is not so much what I think seeing a robin "means" as the fact that you think the smudge that just passed you by is a robin. The fact that I saw a fox and not a field of corn means something.
And the fact that I saw two foxes playing on Snakesgiving Day means this: I can feel free to enjoy my time with my brothers without fearing the wolf or the vulture. As long as I am with my brother, neither are likely to strike.
And the herd of deer, the fragile food staple of the wild, said much the same: Your family protects you. Stay together as much as possible. And the fact that I "divine" this wisdom from these animal friends says something about me. And that's voodoo.
Happy Snakesgiving!
So I started to celebrate "Snakesgiving," a more irreverent holiday, and to greet people with a cheery "Happy Snakesgiving" and, if possible, a snake of some sort: rubber, wood, flesh....
HAPPY SNAKESGIVING!
This got me in a little hot water at airport security a couple Snakesgivings ago. I often travel with a thumb piano. It's an anti-stress device that helps melt away airport delays. Inside luggage, however, the metal tines look like Freddy Kruger fingerwraps, resulting in baggage examination. Fortunately, many security clerks are African Americans who recognize the cultural significance of this musical instrument and let me bypass the body cavity search.
So, anyway, it was Thanksgiving day and the thumb piano resulted in a search. When the officer opened my luggage, there was a three foot serpent on top. Wooden, of course -- I would never treat a live animal like that -- but realistic. The officer took a quick step back, looked up at me, and I smiled and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"
Fortunately, this year I was traveling by fuel-efficient Ford Econoline van, and not generating any of those dropping-polar-bear-size carbon bombs like all you airplane travelers, or slowing down our nation's economic recovery, like those who walked this Snakesgiving and missed opportunities for productive work. The snakes were loaded in the back of the van.
SNAKES A LOT!
The snake is an interesting, egg-laying, skin-shedding, cold-blooded vertebrate with spooky eyes and a forked tongue. In religious lore, the snake is associated with temptation. He's right there with Adam and Eve at the beginning of everything and is pretty much associated with the end of all good things, the bliss of Eden, the joy of ignorance.
Bam, just like that, humanity is now doomed to suffer because a snake whispered in someone's ear, "You know, you could do better." The snake is associated with truth, with opening your spooky eyes to the difference between good and evil, waking up to reality.
The snake says, "take a cold, hard look around." The snake is one chill dude -- cooler than cool -- loose, slippery, hard to pin down: he speaks with forked tongue. He is associated with transformation because he sheds his old skin and gets a new suit any time he needs one.
Voodous worship the loa Damballah, the snake god, who is associated with the creation of the universe (the egg) and whose cycles can be used to divine fortune. When the Africans who originated voodou were forced to hide their religion in the new world, they used likenesses of St. Patrick for altars to the snake god, Damballah.
St. Patrick was the Catholic slave-turned-priest who is patron of Ireland. He is credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland. Therefore, it was not sacrilegious to Catholics to place snakes around icons of St. Patrick. In fact, the snakes are often built-into statues of St. Patrick and many other religious deities.
The shimmy of the snake is the definition of duality -- yin and yang, back and forth, side to side, rock and roll. The instrument of the snake is the rattle. The rattle is the egg. The egg has the seeds. The seeds are the origin of all life. Simple theosophy.
BACK TO SNAKESGIVING
So I'm driving this van full of snakes across America headed for my brother's house in Frederick, Maryland, via my daughter's house in Nashville, Tennessee.
Along the way, I notice that about half the cars have a glowing blue device on the dash somewhere. This is strange. I've been driving these roads twice a year forever and this is the year of dashboard navigation.
In fact, once I got hip to the trend, I found a way to prop my iPhone onto my dash for stylish no-hands GPS updates. It's like watching the airplane tracking channel when they first put screens in seats. For the most part, though, I steered clear of any bluescreen drivers.
The other thing I noticed was about one fourth of all passenger vehicles had a rack of clothes in the back seat. I don't know if more Americans are living out of their cars or not, but they certainly are prepared to do so at a moment's notice.
By the time I got to my brother's house, I forgot I had a snake tucked inside my hoodie, and it just sort of popped out when I hit the front door. "Ooops. Happy Snakesgiving!" He was startled because I was startled because I'd forgotten about the snake. But the snake was plastic and my brother has hosted Snakesgiving before and is wise to my foolishness. He didn't even smack me.
TWO FOX
The next morning I did what I've done every Snakesgiving for a very long time. I went for a walk in the woods and picked enough "flowers" to make a respectable wildflower arrangement. This is easier at my brother's place; a brisk 20-minute walk through the neighborhood park and you are in farmland a.k.a. condos-in-waiting, where you are not likely to be arrested for snipping some solidago or liatrice or oak leaves.
My brother's dog, Alice, adores me. She's a border collie and a bit dainty but can be coaxed to investigate the manhole-sized boroughs we find dotting the creek. One of these years, we will run into Mr. Skunk and I will no longer be allowed to take Alice for walks at Snakesgiving. We rarely run into snakes.
This year, my oversize Bed, Bath, and Beyond Bag was stuffed with autumnal foliage and we were about ready to turn back for home when there was a great rustling in the woods along the creek.
The crashing and snapping was too heavy for squirrels. I thought deer maybe and realized Alice was off leash. Just then, a red-and-white fox jumped out of the brush and after him, another. Then then both stopped and looked us over and I laughed and said, "Happy Snakesgiving!"
Just then the two fox ran toward us, getting just a few feet away before darting on a rampage across plowed-over corn. Alice was tempted to follow (me, too) but she held her ground and we watched them zig and zag for acres as a vulture flew above.
My brother, Kelly, often tests me about how animal spirits can be used to divine advice. He only made fun of me once this Snakesgiving, when he accused me of "talking to animals" and I reminded him I also talk to trees. He wisely didn't take the bait.
FOX ONE
My brother, Barry, who hosts Thanksgiving with his wife, Donna, stays out of these discussions. His job is to talk to plants, more or less, for the National Cancer Institute. His recent work with red algae has led to promising results for sufferers of HIV, ebola, and other illnesses.
Barry's Ph.D. is in "psychopharmacognacy." That sounds exactly like what I studied in college, but it's completely different. It involves isolating medicinal uses from natural compounds, as opposed to synthetically manufacturing drugs in a lab. He does the sort of far-reaching research that sometimes hits gold, as opposed to what the drug companies specialize in, which is narrow modifications that steadily sell and steadily improve.
Barry teases secrets out of plants and his wife, Donna, is a plain, old-fashioned pharmacist who works at the hospital monitoring patient drug regimens. They are both scientists, but there is a crucifix in the entranceway and beneath it are the folded leaves of palms brought home, one suspects, from church the Sunday before Easter.
The origins of Voudoo are also in pharmacy. Voudou priests and priestesses were first and foremost root doctors. They understood, through apprenticeship, the medicinal uses of plants as handed down through generations. First came the healing, then came the religion.
Plants were described as being invested with spirits. In some ways, these ghost stories are shorthand formularies for treating illnesses, along with legends of their use. When you hear cooks speak lovingly of the way ginger dances with garlic, you are on the slippery slope of Voodou.
My brother, Barry, is a bit of a gourmand. One Snakesgiving, from which I was absent, turned into an Iron Chef competition. He will appreciate the analogy between cooking and gene splicing and backwoods catholicism.
FOX TWO
My brother, Kelly, is, in fact, red and white and has a good, bushy head of hair. He looks volpine in his publicity shots (that means "foxlike," Kelly). And he has a reputation for cleverness.
Kelly and his foxy wife, Cristy, trumped all the other gossip at Snakesgiving with news of their purchase of "a big spread with a creek in it." Fox habitat. At squirrel prices. In the outback of Virginia. A place we can all use, with notice, to rest our weary bones.
I've tried to explain to Kelly several times how to talk to animals. The secret is in listening, not talking. He doesn't have the patience to hear the animals, let alone talk to them. But he is a bird lover, so there is hope.
The day after Snakesgiving, Alice and I went even further in the early morning chill until we scared up a family of deer that were sheltered in a stand of woods between two cornfields. We watched them leap off, half with white tails raised high, the others smaller or immature. About a dozen in all. I hoped we didn't send them in the direction of hunters.
So this is how it works, Kelly. Animals represent archetypes, some of which is a result of collective knowledge about their behavior. A robin is often a harbinger of spring. Robin's egg blue is a shade that is widely understood and requested. The word "robin" itself is a collective archetype of color, sound, and behavior. What is interesting is not so much what I think seeing a robin "means" as the fact that you think the smudge that just passed you by is a robin. The fact that I saw a fox and not a field of corn means something.
And the fact that I saw two foxes playing on Snakesgiving Day means this: I can feel free to enjoy my time with my brothers without fearing the wolf or the vulture. As long as I am with my brother, neither are likely to strike.
And the herd of deer, the fragile food staple of the wild, said much the same: Your family protects you. Stay together as much as possible. And the fact that I "divine" this wisdom from these animal friends says something about me. And that's voodoo.
Happy Snakesgiving!
Monday, August 17, 2009
I'll Always Have Paris
DIPLOMACY
I learned a new game at my brothers' beach retreat this summer. It's called "Diplomacy." I think you'll like it. Here's how it goes.
My nephew, Tom, brought a crate of games with him, but was most keen to play one called "Diplomacy." The game had won a Nobel Prize, to hear him tell it. It was "Kennedy's favorite." There were "dozens of online discussion groups devoted to it." Books. Web sites. Entire universities, it seemed like. Students battling students for World Domination.
Well, (partial) World Domination, anyway. After the first turn, when I tried to move my troops, Risk-like, around the edge to the other side, Tom laughed. "You can't attack across the edge of the board."
"Why not," I asked. "They're next to each other."
"No they're not. North America is in between them," he said.
"But North America is not on the board," I protested.
"Precisely. It's not the whole world."
So onward we proceeded in our game of (partial) World Domination, in which, as is the case in the real world, none of us knew or understood the rules.
Tom had *read* the rules. He waved around a clutch of papers in 10-point type printed off the Internet -- sixty four pages, or something like that. We were all free to read them, too, which we declined. We preferred to squeeze the rules out of Tom as we needed them, and then berate him when we failed to ask the right questions or even understand what he said.
Playing the game, as in real life, is a lot different than reading the rules. So Tom didn't really understand the rules either until he saw them in motion, played out in a series of troop movements followed by resolution sessions.
Tom announced that it was okay if it took several days to play the game. We all groaned. Then we set aside a table that had been my dressing table and it became the Diplomacy Table around which our vacation would revolve.
RISK
Diplomacy is a lot like Risk. I don't know if you have ever played Risk. It is not like Monopoly. In Risk, the entire Earth is in play, you start with troops and territory, and you slowly add troops and territory or you die. When everyone is dead except one player, the game is over.
Risk can take hours to play. It would take days to play, except the game's inventors realized this pacing problem and added a trigger mechanism: cards that are exchanged for increasingly large sums of armies. In Risk, the world has a built-in destabilization plan. One player reaps a sudden, disproportionate windfall, then wipes out the others. Come to think of it, that is very similar to the real world of late. Risk is a study in globalization leading to destabilization.
Diplomacy has no such trigger. So impossible is it to accumulate enough strength to take over the world that they left two-thirds of the world off the board. The game was still too long, so they made it so you only have to hold eighteen "supply centers" and you win. There are 60-some countries in Diplomacy but only 30-some supply centers.
In Risk, the wheeling and dealing, bargaining, alliance-building, and double-crossing usually happens right in front of you. With a wink and a nod, two players agree not to attack each other, and to wipe you off the face of the Earth instead. Risk can lead to sore feelings.
The best Risk player I ever saw was Leo Drolshagen. Of course, he's German, as were the makers of Risk, most likely, and certainly the makers of Diplomacy. My nephew, Tom, who is a game aficionado, says that "all the best games are designed by Germans."
Drolshagen never lost. My brother, Mike, who was one of the best Risk players I ever saw, could not beat Leo. I had four brothers, and four sisters, and Drolshagen had a younger brother who played with us, too, and none of us could beat him.
That's frustrating, because it means first of all that Risk is not a game of chance -- it's a game of skill, like chess. Secondly, Leo Drolshagen has more skill than any of us. Period. That turned out to be true. He got some ungodly SAT scores, went to Vanderbilt (I think) and went on to become an M.D. and no doubt a nuclear physicist as well. He probably designed the European Economic Union.
Anyway, the worst Risk player I ever saw was my good friend, James Scranton. His stock in trade was unpredictability. No one could ever predict his moves because they were always stupid, and we knew he wasn't stupid, but he played like a complete moron. That was his strategy. Randomness. He would attack for no reason, without goal or strategy, and it irritated the hell out of whomever he attacked. He was the wild card in the game. I never saw him win. He never even lasted very long. But he always managed to put a monkey wrench into the game that left everyone else sore.
My ex-wife, Storme, was an excellent Risk player, which is not necessarily a good thing. Her strategy was to build slowly. She preferred to attack the least amount possible to get her card and gradually build strength. In my family, you do not let someone hold a continent in Risk. Ever. Period. To your dying last troop. You are socially obligated to break continents. Not so, Storme. She would let others hold their continents and took offense if you tried to break hers.
I am an attack player. I like David and Goliath odds, and the dice always give the edge to the attacker. I will go for as much territory as I can, as fast as I can, even at the expense of wearing myself thin. It's all conquer, conquer, conquer with me (and many of my eight siblings). Except that I will hew to the creed of self-sacrifice to break a continent.
Let's just say that if you play Risk, and your wife has a hold & build strategy and you have a lay-waste strategy, you are going to go to bed mad some nights, and that's just not healthy for the relationship. When Storme and I played with James Scranton, I was surprised there wasn't blood shed. We both wanted to kill him, whereas Storme and I were just furious with each other.
It was much the same with my siblings. I hated the way all of them played. I particularly hated games where I got rubbed out early, sacrificed to some scumbag alliance between siblings who were a little quicker than me. My nephew, Tom, says Risk has too much luck in it. I guess that means he doesn't win every time. But Diplomacy supposedly has all the luck taken out of it. There are no dice, no cards, no sudden windfalls. A better way to say it is that Diplomacy is all talk and very little action.
MORE DIPLOMACY
After a couple of rounds of all of us knocking up against the rules and trying to figure this game out, I could see my situation was hopeless. My nephew, Tom, who held most of Asia, had made an alliance with his fiance, Laura, who held Northern Europe. Under their mutual non-aggression pact -- sealed with a kiss, no doubt -- they agreed to leave their flanks open and take their troops forward to the front lines.
Tom and Laura have played enough games to know that it's best to align with your girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse -- for diplomatic reasons -- when playing any sort of game. What was he going to do, attack his future wife in front of his assembled family? Not a chance.
So Laura took me on in Europe and Tom took on Uncle Barry in the Middle East and my brother Kelly was rubbed out pretty fast in Turkey. That left my niece, Olivia, who was on my flank with nowhere to go except to attack me or her Dad. I cut a deal with Olivia.
MONOPOLY
When I was about Tom's age and in college, I had the pleasure of teaching Monopoly to an Israeli who had never played the game. That he was a Socialist at the time, and I a Libertarian, made the experience even more delightful. We started this lesson one night in a pub in East Lansing.
As the other players were explaining the game, the Israeli asked, "How do you win?"
And my friends said you won by getting all the property. And I said that's not true. And they said getting all the money. And I said, "No."
"You win by being the last player in the game," I said.
And they looked at me very oddly and huffed, "And you do that by getting all the property or all the money."
And I said, "We'll see."
And so we went on explaining the rules and then playing the game and no one thought anymore of it -- except me. I decided then and there to try to win Monopoly without having the most money or the most property. I made deals to exchange the property I bought for free rent on other players' properties, or for a percentage of the take, such as 15%, for a color-coded set-maker.
After about two hours of play, I was out of property. I looked for every opportunity to go to jail and hang there, because that was the safest place for me. Between GO money, free rent, and my cut of other players' rents, I could handle any Chance or Community Chest setback. I proceeded around the board, loop after loop, just scraping enough money to pay rents due.
Houses went up, hotels went up, players lost everything, but no one could get me out of the game. We had been playing for five hours. I was safely in jail, when finally my Israeli friend said, "I give up. I cannot play any longer. You have won."
Then everyone agreed I had won. They also agreed that I had ruined Monopoly for them forever and that what I had done was contrary to the whole spirit of the game. That was maybe my happiest moment on planet Earth.
FINAL DIPLOMACY
So here we were on Tomahawk Island, on the outer banks of North Carolina, indoors, playing a game of (partial) World Domination that did not even include North Carolina, and everyone is mouthing off about not knowing the rules and hating this game, and no one is mouthing off more than me.
But I calmed down when I finally saw what a sweet little setup the fates handed me. I made an alliance with my niece, Olivia, that she could rummage through my flank and take countries at will while I held off the female half of the Tom & Laura lovebirds up in Europe. That was okay with Olivia.
Laura was not too happy with my strategy, since it meant battling her to a standstill while giving Olivia a free pass but, hey, by that time I had zero interest in the game. I could see I was between a fiance and a niece and I had no chance, so I fell on my sword. That's diplomacy.
As my pieces left the board, however, a new reality settled in. I held one country: Paris. It is a supply center. I can stay alive as long as I can hold Paris. I would lose to any attack from two armies. However, I had a pact with Olivia. She agreed to never attack Paris. She further agreed to support me against attacks on Paris from Laura. Since Laura could only attack with two armies, she would never be able to take Paris as long as Olivia supported me.
And so it came to pass, my friends, that in the game Diplomacy I outlasted everyone. Once Olivia had consumed the territory around Paris, I was safe from attack. I was in the game, but I never attacked nor was attacked. I neither had to move or defend myself. I stood, motionless, in Paris, while around me great battles were fought and won and lost.
Because someone can win in Diplomacy by taking only 18 supply centers, the game could come to an end without me ever having to relinquish Paris. In fact, the game ended when everyone got tired of playing. I wonder if that is how the real world will come to an end one day -- everyone decides to stop fighting?
While some will say Tom won Diplomacy, because he was the most likely to capture 18 supply centers -- or because he achieved his victories without having to attack his fiance -- I feel as though I won. Any game for (partial) World Domination where I can spend the entire time peacefully in Paris is my kind of game.
# # #
I learned a new game at my brothers' beach retreat this summer. It's called "Diplomacy." I think you'll like it. Here's how it goes.
My nephew, Tom, brought a crate of games with him, but was most keen to play one called "Diplomacy." The game had won a Nobel Prize, to hear him tell it. It was "Kennedy's favorite." There were "dozens of online discussion groups devoted to it." Books. Web sites. Entire universities, it seemed like. Students battling students for World Domination.
Well, (partial) World Domination, anyway. After the first turn, when I tried to move my troops, Risk-like, around the edge to the other side, Tom laughed. "You can't attack across the edge of the board."
"Why not," I asked. "They're next to each other."
"No they're not. North America is in between them," he said.
"But North America is not on the board," I protested.
"Precisely. It's not the whole world."
So onward we proceeded in our game of (partial) World Domination, in which, as is the case in the real world, none of us knew or understood the rules.
Tom had *read* the rules. He waved around a clutch of papers in 10-point type printed off the Internet -- sixty four pages, or something like that. We were all free to read them, too, which we declined. We preferred to squeeze the rules out of Tom as we needed them, and then berate him when we failed to ask the right questions or even understand what he said.
Playing the game, as in real life, is a lot different than reading the rules. So Tom didn't really understand the rules either until he saw them in motion, played out in a series of troop movements followed by resolution sessions.
Tom announced that it was okay if it took several days to play the game. We all groaned. Then we set aside a table that had been my dressing table and it became the Diplomacy Table around which our vacation would revolve.
RISK
Diplomacy is a lot like Risk. I don't know if you have ever played Risk. It is not like Monopoly. In Risk, the entire Earth is in play, you start with troops and territory, and you slowly add troops and territory or you die. When everyone is dead except one player, the game is over.
Risk can take hours to play. It would take days to play, except the game's inventors realized this pacing problem and added a trigger mechanism: cards that are exchanged for increasingly large sums of armies. In Risk, the world has a built-in destabilization plan. One player reaps a sudden, disproportionate windfall, then wipes out the others. Come to think of it, that is very similar to the real world of late. Risk is a study in globalization leading to destabilization.
Diplomacy has no such trigger. So impossible is it to accumulate enough strength to take over the world that they left two-thirds of the world off the board. The game was still too long, so they made it so you only have to hold eighteen "supply centers" and you win. There are 60-some countries in Diplomacy but only 30-some supply centers.
In Risk, the wheeling and dealing, bargaining, alliance-building, and double-crossing usually happens right in front of you. With a wink and a nod, two players agree not to attack each other, and to wipe you off the face of the Earth instead. Risk can lead to sore feelings.
The best Risk player I ever saw was Leo Drolshagen. Of course, he's German, as were the makers of Risk, most likely, and certainly the makers of Diplomacy. My nephew, Tom, who is a game aficionado, says that "all the best games are designed by Germans."
Drolshagen never lost. My brother, Mike, who was one of the best Risk players I ever saw, could not beat Leo. I had four brothers, and four sisters, and Drolshagen had a younger brother who played with us, too, and none of us could beat him.
That's frustrating, because it means first of all that Risk is not a game of chance -- it's a game of skill, like chess. Secondly, Leo Drolshagen has more skill than any of us. Period. That turned out to be true. He got some ungodly SAT scores, went to Vanderbilt (I think) and went on to become an M.D. and no doubt a nuclear physicist as well. He probably designed the European Economic Union.
Anyway, the worst Risk player I ever saw was my good friend, James Scranton. His stock in trade was unpredictability. No one could ever predict his moves because they were always stupid, and we knew he wasn't stupid, but he played like a complete moron. That was his strategy. Randomness. He would attack for no reason, without goal or strategy, and it irritated the hell out of whomever he attacked. He was the wild card in the game. I never saw him win. He never even lasted very long. But he always managed to put a monkey wrench into the game that left everyone else sore.
My ex-wife, Storme, was an excellent Risk player, which is not necessarily a good thing. Her strategy was to build slowly. She preferred to attack the least amount possible to get her card and gradually build strength. In my family, you do not let someone hold a continent in Risk. Ever. Period. To your dying last troop. You are socially obligated to break continents. Not so, Storme. She would let others hold their continents and took offense if you tried to break hers.
I am an attack player. I like David and Goliath odds, and the dice always give the edge to the attacker. I will go for as much territory as I can, as fast as I can, even at the expense of wearing myself thin. It's all conquer, conquer, conquer with me (and many of my eight siblings). Except that I will hew to the creed of self-sacrifice to break a continent.
Let's just say that if you play Risk, and your wife has a hold & build strategy and you have a lay-waste strategy, you are going to go to bed mad some nights, and that's just not healthy for the relationship. When Storme and I played with James Scranton, I was surprised there wasn't blood shed. We both wanted to kill him, whereas Storme and I were just furious with each other.
It was much the same with my siblings. I hated the way all of them played. I particularly hated games where I got rubbed out early, sacrificed to some scumbag alliance between siblings who were a little quicker than me. My nephew, Tom, says Risk has too much luck in it. I guess that means he doesn't win every time. But Diplomacy supposedly has all the luck taken out of it. There are no dice, no cards, no sudden windfalls. A better way to say it is that Diplomacy is all talk and very little action.
MORE DIPLOMACY
After a couple of rounds of all of us knocking up against the rules and trying to figure this game out, I could see my situation was hopeless. My nephew, Tom, who held most of Asia, had made an alliance with his fiance, Laura, who held Northern Europe. Under their mutual non-aggression pact -- sealed with a kiss, no doubt -- they agreed to leave their flanks open and take their troops forward to the front lines.
Tom and Laura have played enough games to know that it's best to align with your girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse -- for diplomatic reasons -- when playing any sort of game. What was he going to do, attack his future wife in front of his assembled family? Not a chance.
So Laura took me on in Europe and Tom took on Uncle Barry in the Middle East and my brother Kelly was rubbed out pretty fast in Turkey. That left my niece, Olivia, who was on my flank with nowhere to go except to attack me or her Dad. I cut a deal with Olivia.
MONOPOLY
When I was about Tom's age and in college, I had the pleasure of teaching Monopoly to an Israeli who had never played the game. That he was a Socialist at the time, and I a Libertarian, made the experience even more delightful. We started this lesson one night in a pub in East Lansing.
As the other players were explaining the game, the Israeli asked, "How do you win?"
And my friends said you won by getting all the property. And I said that's not true. And they said getting all the money. And I said, "No."
"You win by being the last player in the game," I said.
And they looked at me very oddly and huffed, "And you do that by getting all the property or all the money."
And I said, "We'll see."
And so we went on explaining the rules and then playing the game and no one thought anymore of it -- except me. I decided then and there to try to win Monopoly without having the most money or the most property. I made deals to exchange the property I bought for free rent on other players' properties, or for a percentage of the take, such as 15%, for a color-coded set-maker.
After about two hours of play, I was out of property. I looked for every opportunity to go to jail and hang there, because that was the safest place for me. Between GO money, free rent, and my cut of other players' rents, I could handle any Chance or Community Chest setback. I proceeded around the board, loop after loop, just scraping enough money to pay rents due.
Houses went up, hotels went up, players lost everything, but no one could get me out of the game. We had been playing for five hours. I was safely in jail, when finally my Israeli friend said, "I give up. I cannot play any longer. You have won."
Then everyone agreed I had won. They also agreed that I had ruined Monopoly for them forever and that what I had done was contrary to the whole spirit of the game. That was maybe my happiest moment on planet Earth.
FINAL DIPLOMACY
So here we were on Tomahawk Island, on the outer banks of North Carolina, indoors, playing a game of (partial) World Domination that did not even include North Carolina, and everyone is mouthing off about not knowing the rules and hating this game, and no one is mouthing off more than me.
But I calmed down when I finally saw what a sweet little setup the fates handed me. I made an alliance with my niece, Olivia, that she could rummage through my flank and take countries at will while I held off the female half of the Tom & Laura lovebirds up in Europe. That was okay with Olivia.
Laura was not too happy with my strategy, since it meant battling her to a standstill while giving Olivia a free pass but, hey, by that time I had zero interest in the game. I could see I was between a fiance and a niece and I had no chance, so I fell on my sword. That's diplomacy.
As my pieces left the board, however, a new reality settled in. I held one country: Paris. It is a supply center. I can stay alive as long as I can hold Paris. I would lose to any attack from two armies. However, I had a pact with Olivia. She agreed to never attack Paris. She further agreed to support me against attacks on Paris from Laura. Since Laura could only attack with two armies, she would never be able to take Paris as long as Olivia supported me.
And so it came to pass, my friends, that in the game Diplomacy I outlasted everyone. Once Olivia had consumed the territory around Paris, I was safe from attack. I was in the game, but I never attacked nor was attacked. I neither had to move or defend myself. I stood, motionless, in Paris, while around me great battles were fought and won and lost.
Because someone can win in Diplomacy by taking only 18 supply centers, the game could come to an end without me ever having to relinquish Paris. In fact, the game ended when everyone got tired of playing. I wonder if that is how the real world will come to an end one day -- everyone decides to stop fighting?
While some will say Tom won Diplomacy, because he was the most likely to capture 18 supply centers -- or because he achieved his victories without having to attack his fiance -- I feel as though I won. Any game for (partial) World Domination where I can spend the entire time peacefully in Paris is my kind of game.
# # #
Friday, July 3, 2009
iam
i am the deertalker
the napsnagger
the toetwitcher
the pupchucker
the mental noggin
the monkey monger
the social hider
the cardboard riner
seer of sepia
slicer of earthworms
speaker of stories
doctor of nocturn
fever slapper
party napper
giftmas wrapper
snowcone mapper
corndog
redbeard
crawdad
scootslide
smell the power
ice the lightning
steer the bob-lo
fear the shagha
know me and be loved, be smacked, be healed
the napsnagger
the toetwitcher
the pupchucker
the mental noggin
the monkey monger
the social hider
the cardboard riner
seer of sepia
slicer of earthworms
speaker of stories
doctor of nocturn
fever slapper
party napper
giftmas wrapper
snowcone mapper
corndog
redbeard
crawdad
scootslide
smell the power
ice the lightning
steer the bob-lo
fear the shagha
know me and be loved, be smacked, be healed
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