Real time strategy games fit into the same subset, for me, as subcompact enthusiasts. Yes, I am comparing lovers of all things *Craft to rattle-can primer small cars with exceptionally loud exhaust systems. They are an ingrown subcultural phenomenon that has it’s own internal logic, it’s own internal hierarchy of coolness, and most importantly, looks _completely_ retarded from outside it’s own walls.

I try to play RTS games. This is something of a fabrication; I am harried into playing RTS games by my roommate, who will try some new brand of top-down disentertainment and then, daily, pester me to play the game, each time I sit down to my computer, and sometimes when there are no computers around, say during dinner on the other side of town. Finally I will get tired of saying no, we get home and fire it up. He will then best me like a seasoned athlete competing against a special olympian and then look uncomprehendingly on as I demolish my own base after 20-30 minutes of him toying with me. He shakes his head without understanding my unwillingness to get into a minimally 5 hour long give and take battle (starting at 8pm) in a world devised by idiots, using a “standard” user interface methodology that could at best be described as “halfassed” and more accurately “piss poor”. I then explain that I _do not_ play RTS games. To which he responds, “You play them all the time”. My mind balks at this, but I cannot seem to break the chain.

Let me describe the perfect RTS game, for RTS gamers. Are you prepared? First off, it doesn’t matter what the setting is, it should be designed entirely as a vague formless world full of moving pointers, which can be skinned however the player sees fit, as it simply does not matter what it looks like, they are all the same. There should be no more than three, but no less than two resources to manage. Ideally, regardless of skin, the resource management should have a nonsensical display value. Instead of displaying how much you have of something, it should display the angle of the tangent of the curve on a plot of usage. This should be represented by a colorwheel, with fuscia indicating negative angles, and magenta indicating positive. Any single attack should be of blinding magnitude, regardless of it’s actual efficacy, preferably each bullet should cause a minor nuclear strike type effect, whiting out the screen for both players. Any important building such as a power generator (windmill for those playing with the elf versus dwarf skin) should be made of compressed cardboard, able to be destroyed out of hand by anything that happens by. The button which controls whether an action is acted out or cancelled should be random, or controlled contextually by how many times you have clicked each button in this round, indicated on screen by a shift to the right or left hip of a small indicator figure. For example if you have clicked the right mouse button four times but the left mouse button nine, and the azimuth of Uranus is even, you must _left_ click on on action icon, but then _left_ click on the screen to make that action take place. In all other cases, you must left click on the screen to select a unit and then right click somewhere else to have something happen. Incorporating control clicks and shift clicks is an easy and utterly acceptable way to obfuscate this more.

Another important design consideration is unit memory. They must not be able to determine anything by themselves. If the game engine includes a “queue” for actions or building, it should be unusable. No preempting the queue, and if anything else is clicked in the five minutes prior to or after the commands are given, the entire queue should be wiped. If you click on an enemy with a flying unit (refer to left click right click determination table above), it should fly there, attack, and then either hover over them exposing it’s soft, vital underbelly, or actually land in the midst of them to await the kiss of oblivion. If you click with a scout unit, it’s default action upon seeing an enemy should be to drive straight through, white knuckled, bearing the bullets with single minded determination, then park in the appropriate zone and stare down the enemy, waiting for death. Any sort of super unit must be slow. That is because, as we all know, all decisive and effective strategies for battle involve a huge, slow moving, hard to kill behemoth.

Finally, all RTS games should be shipped with a slightly-too-long trepanning bit for your drill, so you can properly enjoy it.

XP makes my laptop useable, not only because the software I use on a daily basis runs on it acceptably (Colibri, various games that make use of OpenGL, and also the camel-breaking-straw Cisco VPN Client), but also because startup is 40% faster (using my calibrated patienceometer) and every single task is noticeably faster. It has been very nice to not be tethered to home for my vpn usage, so I can do various afterhour tasks from any location that has decently fast internet, meaning that while I am still working a lot of afterhours events, I am less likely to be viciously angry during them. This is good, because I tend to work a little less erratically when I’m not cursing at the top of my lungs and scaring the dogs.

I said I’d post more about my (paternal) grandmother’s timely-and-expected-but-still-very-sudden death, and I’m about to do so. She was 82, and had lived a very long life. She had stopped “living” (in the “enjoying the bounty of Earth with your senses” sense) entirely six years ago, upon the death of my grandfather, and effectively some four years earlier when she fell in the tub and broke her hip. She eschewed physical therapy for an alternative healing theory that I will call “sitting around and waiting for death” at that time, and every moment spent away from her recliner, or better yet, her bed, was a painful one filled with self-imposed doubt and fear. I know her only as a shrewish but relatively affable old woman, who the world once whipped (with a substance abusing husband and a natural aversion to social activity) and thus redirected the rest of her life to the study of large type mystery novels and harsh judgment of others. I loved her, in the way that one loves family that one cannot really stand, I certainly did not hate her. She was always that paper-skinned old woman to me, the one that asked “why” instead of doing ten times out of ten, the one that saw the difficult stairs in front of a building instead of the treasures within, the wait for the table instead of the delicious food, the opportunity for betrayal instead of the promise of friendship. She was so much like me I couldn’t bear it. She taught me that cynicism was a lifestyle that had to exist twenty four hours a day, and that comedy that did not mock someone else was a watered down sauce. I remember her favored method of dispensing knowledge, the head forward, shaking, as if the truth had to be flung in droplets from her baby soft jowls. It had a formula. ‘Aaron, you have to understand, this man (or woman, or group, or car, or official, or job, or country) was a (disgrace, poor family, pile of junk, idiot of the first degree, embarrassment to the crown, etc).’ Followed by a point by point burning of their most disappointing or damning features. She would then make her one unique gesture, a kind of laugh-bray-shiver that involved holding her hands up as if warding off the whole affair, as if this were something at the same time funny and terrifying, a joke we should all get but be frightened of. I worry that I will become like her in my old age, unable to enjoy anything, merely serve as the counterpoint to someone elses enjoyment. Anything above subsistence level was an indulgence, a childish want. That we should want more than one set of sheets was silly, food that tasted good? As long as it tasted good while still being cheap. Gifts were for children. Chances were given once, if that, and then trust was gone forever.

Once, upon realizing that I had made a mistake leaving college, I came back home, and asked for the opportunity to go back to community college, asking effectively if I could live with either grandmother to save the cost of renting a place. My paternal grandmother looked at me very solemnly, with all the warmth she could muster, and mentioned how proud my grandfather would have been that I came back begging for a second chance at education. I began to weep, because my pride had been demolished, but I was happy that I would be able to reorganize my life, head back down a better path. She then informed me that, and these are her words, “the family simply c[ouldn't] waste the money for that again”. I stared up, red eyed and not comprehending, until I saw that face, and understood the comment for what it was. No second go, you made your bed, that’s where you’ll lie. I think that was effectively the last time we spoke. The past seven years have only been pleasantries and polite conversation.
I don’t hate her. I don’t _exactly_ hate her. Didn’t, since hating the dead is sort of ridiculous. But I did loathe her a little.

I’m glad she didn’t suffer, and the effects on my dad have been disconcerting, but my own reaction to it is mixed relief and distant sadness. I hope she’s happy wherever she is now.