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Showing posts from November, 2019

I'm Running for President

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Note: This post is intended as an oration by myself, hence the notations throughout.  There are certain cadences, syllable elongations and forces of voice intended for certain moments for it to be properly presented.   I am here today to announce that, after close consultations with family and friends, I am running as an Independent write-in candidate for President of the United States.  Given that this election will be held in the year 2020, I think it is important to keep vision and perspective in mind.  I’m not sure we’ve had much 20-20 vision in politics lately. And that is why I am running for the Office of the President.  It is a constitutional office, obviously, but it is more than that and this election is more than just an exercise in democracy.  The Office of the President is the singular summit of our government.  It is the absolute height and the absolute limit of personal power in the United States of America.  This election comes at a time when we are deeply pol

The Matrix at 20

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As the film opens the camera slowly zooms into a series of numbers on a green monochrome PC monitor.  Then it goes even further into a zero...and keeps going, giving the viewer a sense of moving into the Matrix. Back in 1999, my friends and I were all about The Matrix .  We couldn’t get enough of it.  We quoted the film, discussed the film, and wowed each other with subtle things we noticed in the film.  The movie was simply an extension of our friendship in way that few films I’ve encountered have before or since. “There is no spoon,” “Free your mind,” “It’s our way or the highway,” “Welcome to the desert of the real” were more than just lines of dialog that resonated with us; they were part of our jokes and our musings.  Everyone I knew that saw the film enjoyed it.  They enjoyed it for many reasons.  It was a terrific, fun action film, it had a surprising, almost bewildering, amount of depth to it, its special effects were groundbreaking, but, most of all, it was cool . The c

Gaming Hood’s Tennessee Campaign

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The opening moves from Hood's Last Gamble .  Hood's army marches north from Florence and Tuscumbia, each corps stacked with its own supply wagons.  Forrest's cavalry scouts ahead.  Schofield is entrenched at Pulaski with a cavalry detachment attempting to protect his rear.  This screenshot is from a Cyberboard module of the game that I created for my personal use. Long-time readers know that I augment my interest in military history by playing wargames.  My recent fixation on the battles of Franklin and Nashville (along with Stones River) inspired me to revisit a couple of older games I have on the subjects as well as to acquire a new one. Back in the 1990’s I played the Civil War Brigade Series games more than anything else.  That series has been discontinued but not before it covered well over a dozen battles of the War Between the States both large and small. I own 10 of them. In 1992, Dean Essig , one of the great designers of my time, developed Embrace An Angry