Happy Fucking New Year

Well. The week that rang it in was pretty dang shitty. Work has been rough, two holidays in a row will do that.

But I’m pissed at a friend right now. He’s a really good guy in so many ways. But, there is this game, Carcassonne, that I really, really like to play, that he introduced me to. We play the game with reasonable frequency.

Its just that he doesn’t play honestly. By that I mean to win for himself. He plays to foul others up. Of course he does end up winning in the end anyways, so the effect is the same, its just the means are, well, dirty. By analogy, if this game was long distance track running, he would end up running into his opponent to topple them to the ground. Of course, he would still suffer slightly, but his opponent would suffer more because they didn’t expect to be toppled to the ground, and as such spent more time to get back up to speed.

Another analogy. In business, it is illegal in many instances to sell a product below cost with the intention of running your competitors out of business.

Instances like this end up being a game of seeing who can hurt the other more before one party loses.

So, tonight half way through the game I just got pissed and stopped playing. Not a literal walking away from the table, but I was placing my pieces down in such a manner as not to score any points. When I had the simple possibility of scoring points I did not announce or score them. More or less if someone is going to play dirty, I just would rather not fuck with it. Especially when its a game, and not about survival or something life threatening.

To the unnamed person: I’m not playing Carcassonne with you for quite sometime, and yes I’m serious about it this time.

To anyone else in the Cincinnati area who likes Carcassonne: Need somebody to play with?