Off The Wall

Tonight, I will post something non-political. Well, actually... by the nature of what I am posting, it is inherently political, but the content will make an attempt to be non-partisan.

The chair of our polisci department, Dr. Charles Burke, had installed on to the computers in the cybercafé what is probably one of the most addictive games ever created... and, yes... more addictive than The Sims or Roller Coaster Tycoon. Who could have thought that that was possible? Well, find yourself a copy of The Political Machine. The Political Machine, a great release from Ubisoft, lets you manage a Presidential campaign against another candidate for forty-one weeks. Of course, it's not true-to-life time... but it's amazing. You can control advertisements on the radio, print, and television. You can hire lackeys to do dirty work and appear on the television circuit to boost your ratings.

But the ultimate goal, of course, is to win the electoral college vote. I've already won several times the electoral college vote, but was creamed in the popular vote (we're not talking losing it like Bush, either... but a wholesale ass-kicking.)

That's that... the game is like crack. You do it once... well... ya just can't stop. Except you can't have crack babies by playing the game. Which, I guess, is a good thing, really. (Apologies to any crack kids who may, perchance, ever read this.)

Now... something serious. Tomorrow night is the second of the debates, being done in a town hall format. I would expect President Bush to do better than he did last Thursday... which... yeah. He's just not quick on his feet, and he needs to work on that. Senator Kerry should do fairly well in this, though. His public speaking skills are so well-honed that he should "beat" President Bush, but hopefully, speaking from the President's point of view, not as handily as last Thursday night.

I wish that they'd allow any serious or relevant question to get asked, and not just filter through them and allow only certain questions be asked. That's stripping from the point of having any sort of debate at all. Let us just have these (x) questions be asked and keep that there, in spite of literally the millions of other things that could be asked. It's a damn shame.

With that being said... I'm definitely doing a drinking game and then posting tomorrow night. That should be interesting. Should be reasonably coherent, as well.

No more for tonight.

-rl