Where laughter is faintly heard.

Here lies the ramblings of a man stuck in a dead-end job, with two kids, a wife, and no dog.   Often repressed, usually depressed, adventures of life through the slog.

The universe is full of Assholes

I have been playing Spore by the guy who made the games I used to enjoy and now makes games where you can go to the toilet for 45 minutes (in this, he really nailed reality for some people.)

Due to limited game time, I have only played in short bits and made it to the space stage last week with a wholly belligerent race of dog-mouthed dragons who fly around in their viper VII trying to scrape together an existence next to a hippy race of bears and a grade A asshole race of something my dog pooped out.  Why are they pissed at me?  I guess i ignored their requests for a handout one too many times and they really needed the money to fund a Nigerian church or something.  Both races seem to have a never ending supply of planetary semen as their colonies dot every system within three jumps reach from my home system.

I have a weed trade with the hippies as i thought it would bring in the dope money, but all it does is make it possible for me to get a “really good deal” to buy it from them for all of the money I have.  Turns out, the hippies are really pyramid schemers with an Amway franchise.  they make the 419′er race look like amateurs.  They don’t pack much into their ships however.  The one ally ship i could take with me blows up as soon as the enemy radar tracks it.

I hadn’t saved in a bit, and after an hour or so, the A-holes declared war on me and proceeded to take 2 of my 4 colonies as I hadn’t been able to get from one colony to the next and kill 8 heavily armed and health regenerating enemies with my pee shooter and complimentary missile gift (next best weapon costs almost as much as the hippie’s cheapest bid price)  while they swarmed my one city and gave it a heavy kick to the groin.  After i finally respawned after getting shivved myself, I found that they had set up shop in my old city and were using my people to fly the grapes into what passed for their mouth.  Oh yeah, and my more established colony was also gone too.  Hoo-freaking-ray for me.  I went back with a vengeance and kicked them off my planet and found i couldn’t make the other city surrender, so i had to raze it.  I got 14k from that and needed to spend 97k to restart my own colony.  That 97k is from the hippy race, not my own, btw.  they can help me seed the universe cheaper than I can.  Am I missing something, or is the game now favoring another race to win?

After losing half of my systems with no way to repopulate them and an enemy race who then attacked both my two colonies at the same time, I quit spore.

Maybe this whole limited install deal isn’t so bad after all.

Imminent loss

My stepfather, whom over the last 15 years has been a model for me, is dying.  He has COPD from a lifetime of smoking and been in and out of the hospital.  He has always improved enough to go home, but this last round of hospital visits has been overly stressing to him and I do not honestly believe he will survive the year.  The obstacles in his way are too strong and his health is worse than it has ever been.  We are not sure he will get out of the hospital this time.  I am worried for my mother as she has never been one to share emotion, and yet I can see it in her face and body language.  I know she has already accepted the eventuality of his death, but it is a stressful time for her.  I have little to offer her as my manager has already made it known that I cannot take time off to help.  It’s a waiting game we all fear we’re losing.