I've picked better places to live for a month. There isn't a desk, per se, and there's just the one table, which can't house both my computer and a game, which is a great shame. I suppose that just means more time spent on "work."
I've written a 2000 word dissertation on how terrible wargames are and why I love them so much. I'm trying to decide whether to complicate my life by posting it. We'll see how piqued I get as the week progresses.
Been watching a lot of the World Cup. My two favorite teams are USA (semi-obviously) and France. They're having somewhat different tournaments. I've been rooting for France in five straight World Cups now, but rarely has doing so been this huge of a pain in the butt. Also interesting is watching the furor in the United States over the whole World Cup project. This is the month where soccer is most popular in the US, drawing by far more coverage than for other events. The Champions League final was buried in pay-per-view in most areas, most Major League Soccer games are on weird channels, the fan base for particular EPL teams is fairly diffuse, etc. Many Americans are upset at how their countrymen only become soccer fans every four years; they somehow don't deserve to root for the US (or small countries, or whoever) since they're not huge fans in the other three years and eleven months. (Same with politics, honestly. All these Johnnie-come-latelies coming out of the woodwork every four years and pretending to like one presidential candidate or another--fie on them! If they can't be bothered to follow politics daily like a real politics junkie, they shouldn't get involved now. Wait, what?)
The most popular way for Americans to entertain themselves during the World Cup is to sit around and think of the best ways to Fix Soccer. Billions of people enjoy watching and playing soccer, so clearly something is desperately wrong with it. The primary goal object is usually to increase scoring, reduce draws, and avoid bad calls (this last being especially urgent in the US at the moment). Most of the ideas are cockamamie for one reason or another and I won't bother ticking them off.
There is, of course, a game link here. Western chess is also often considered "broken," with fears that the game is suffering from "draw death" with few actual wins, not much active play, etc. And every time there are plans to Fix Chess--offering cash bribes for wins, changing how you set up the pieces, reducing the time on the clocks, or whatever. And some of this actually happens, especially jiggling with the time controls. But the game soldiers on, being played by hundreds of millions (billions?) in tournaments, park benches, and homes across the world. And besides, every now and then the number of draws goes down and attacking chess returns when some new generation develops some new weapons and then all the worries are forgotten.
I'm also reminded of a period a few years ago when some gamers were worried that Eurogames had run out of gas, that the project was dead, and we'd have nothing but our old games to play. Then Caylus came out, inspiring a new kind of game, and Agricola came out, and a new explosion of good to great games hit the market and all this was forgotten.
I suspect the same will happen with soccer. Some teams will start opening up play, they'll be successful, and, like all successes, will be imitated. That's how it goes in every other sport, anyway, and I doubt the beautiful game is really all that different.
And now back to figuring out who, exactly, in the French camp I need to be cursing out. There are at least six plausible candidates, and I feel like I can only pick one target.
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