Asymmetric

1. The Asymmetric clan was returning from our weekly outing at Best Buy when my son spotted a, mmm...I'm guessing 1990 Dodge Caravan with a ladder and a for-sale sign- $1500.00. I made a ladder joke. My son asked:

"Papi, can't they trade it in for $4500.00 in the clunker thing?

"You have to buy a new car to get the money. These guys probably can't afford it."

Pause...Think...OK. Then my wife asked:

"Y que hacen con los carros?" (what do they do with the cars?).

"They destroy them." For you visual learners:

[Am I being a regionalist when I say that Southerners seem to have much more fun with cars?]

My wife then wondered why we didn't give the cars to Mexico or Iraq. I said:

"Amor, Nelsito: You guys are just too naive to understand the steel-trap, progressive logic of Democrats. The benefits of their ideas may not be easily apparent to the proletariat, but rest assured, if they aren't in our best interests, they wouldn't do them."

2. Get a real lefty a little tipsy, and they'll admit that Che and Castro are their ideal leaders. In the case of the moronic Diane Watson, you don't even have to get her drunk:

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”
And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…

S/T: Mrs. Malkin

3. 40% of Japanese men sit down to pee. A little further South, in the land of their former enemy, Australia, more women are choosing to pee standing up.

For a certain kind of mind, the world would be a better place if the standing up, sitting down ratio amongst both men and women were 50%.

Maybe I'd better be quiet before congress comes up with a "Cash for Commodes" program to ensure urinal justice.

4. My friend alerted me to an exhibition of abandoned-store art:

I hear that were going through a golden age of abandoned-store art.

5. I receive the Dell catalog. This months' featured a new laptop called the "Adamo" pictured- sort of- in the ad below:

Yes, because when I want a new laptop, I always ask superficial, ennui-stricken pouty teens with eating disorders what they're using.

I assume that the "Intel" is inside the laptop.

I felt flattered when my friend commissioned me to write a song for his new game, Yikerz!** and immediately set about to conjure a work worthy of both Yikerz! and my grandest musical ambitions.

I followed the usual pre-writing process: I played the game for two days strait days on an ancient California Redwood; meditated; locked myself up in a Native American sweat box, completely naked except for twelve Yikerz! pieces; took a magnetism course at the JC; learned the etymology of the word "Yikerz." I really immersed myself in everything Yikerz! to cultivate a suitable frame of mind.

I then stocked my summer retreat with luncheon meats and Pepsi, sealed the door, and went to work.

"The song must be bold, yet delicate; original, yet comforting, as if one were listening to his mother coo a lullaby; contemporary, yet for-the-ages."

I eschewed the overdone cantata form and found Free-Form Jazz too restricting. I tried to add lyrics to the experimental Bollywood-filmi-Prussian-death-dirge fusion I had on the shelf. It wasn't right. I had hit a mental block.

My friend Joe Weezle called,

"Yo, my nizzle! Wassup with the Blozzle?"

He invited me to the club so that we could clock the hos, drizzle some forties, and generally, get crunk.

"Fo shizzle, but one of my Gs needs a song"

"Is that for Yikerz!?"

"Fo shizz"

"Yo, we got that"

It was a revelation! They had managed to prism the torment of ideas in my head into one thin beam of genius. I offered to pay, but he insisted that he needed to reciprocate for the street cred I gave his rap ensemble, the 5-Star Generalz (I came up with the idea of putting a "z" at the end of the name).

The podcast above is the result. "Yo, you solid, Weez. Azymmetric, out"

Warning!

Middlebrow conformists ("square bears from Delaware") not attuned to the current trends in urban art might not understand the meaning of the work outside of its native context. You can try to live the life of an oppressed ghetto child (or read the article describing it in this month's Utne Reader) or just try to open your mind to new ideas, for once.

Others might be offended by the language. Good! That shudder of disgust you experience as you listen to "Yikerz" is art shaking you, awakening your pathetically ignorant self to the truth. Now, go out there and live!

This is 5-Star. I was supposed to kick it with them that night, but grades were due the next day and I had to correct a bunch of papers.

**This post is only a joke. My friend might like 5 Star Generalz, but I doubt it. This song has nothing to do with his game.
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Before I start my review, let me answer some questions that I'm sure are gnawing on your liver:

Will the fact that my friend designed and markets the game influence my review?

Yes, but negatively. You see, I find the Yikerz! inventor irritating. He's somewhat of an outcast in our gaming group. Whoever is DM (never him [shudder]) most often relegates him to the gruff looking for adventure at the keep and bends the rules so that his initial "test of prowess" is usually the last we have to deal with his seriously defective characters (Gnome thief-illusionist: I've never seen one of those before). God help us if he survives the initial encounter and we have to endure one of his "authentic" gaming brogues ("Not bl[oː]dy likely"). Although we pride ourselves on our rationality, gameplay with him deteriorates to such a state that we sometimes fear the otherworldly retribution of Gary Gygax (RIP).

Wow, Aristotle was right- catharsis can generate a serious rush. Mean? Don't worry; he doesn't read this blog. He's probably on some Russian gaming forum asking how to avoid magic missiles ("What if I drink two potions of Dex?").*

Why is Yikerz! in the "tech" section of your blog?

Yikerz is based on a concept called "magnetism" invented by Benjamin Franklin. The casual reader of American history is unaware of this fact because Franklin's role in making magnetism readily available to the consumer is overshadowed by Franklin's discovery of electricity one week later. Indeed, electricity occupied almost all of Franklin's interest forthwith.

It wasn't until Dutch master Nicola Tesla built upon Franklin's novelty to invent the swinging magnetic ball set, which the generous Tesla named after his inspiration, Sir Isaac Newton, who, flattered upon hearing the news, sent him a box of soft cookies.

Tesla was able to smuggle an original sketch of his Newton's cradle in the interior of an android he invented for the purpose. Prescott Bush had the other copies destroyed.

Not content with bringing joy to millions of middle managers, Tesla toyed around with the Newton Cradle until he found a way to provide the world with a limitless source of magnetic ball-generated energy. The solution to humanity's most pressing problem never had a chance: Prescott Bush got wind of the discovery and goaded GM into firebombing Tesla's laboratories in Prague after Tesla couldn't come up with the protection money, forcing Tesla to take a job in America designing elevators for Bill Pullman.

Bill Pullman, elevator magnet

Why the exclamation point?

It's shorter than "Yikerz, the game that engenders strong feelings and astonishment."

Yikerz!

The Review:

So, how's the game? I must forgo my Schadenfreudian delight today, as Yikerz! is actually the best non-nerdy (girls can play too) game I've encountered since Jenga.

Why?

There may have been a time when I was willing to pour through pages and pages of rules to play a game, but that's definitely not today. I was actually dreading some kind of Eva Mendes-like learning curve when my friend invited me to a Yikerz! tournament at his house. I was fully immersed in Yikerz! within ten minutes.

Eva Mendes

To play, you open the small triangular bag containing the figuratively fossilized sweat of my friend's brow; take out the four squares, twenty magnetic thingies, and the two page instructions; peruse the rules; and divide the magnetic blocks between the players. You then take turns placing the pieces the squares until one, the winner, rids himself of his last shiny block.

Fun? Well, yes. Simple? Yes, and no. Yikerz (sorry, exclamation point got stuck) is that rare game, like Checkers, that's easy to understand, yet deep enough and with sufficient variability to last a snowed-in weekend in the mountains.

Reconfiguring the squares serves the dual purpose of changing difficulty levels and impressing your friends with your pseudo-origami skills. A steady hand is necessary, but a strategy is required to become proficient: You need to know the properties of the pieces to move the other players' far enough from your potential resting spot to avoid a "collapse," or a joining of blocks. You can place the blocks on their sides- there's really a lot to do here.

Or, you can do what the youngest Asymmetric staff member, Antonio (8) did and just play with the blocks. He spread the blocks out on the carpet and crashed one piece into the middle, creating a very satisfying chain reaction.

Anyways, it's a good deal and I'd be willing to guarantee that you'll find some aspect of Yikerz interesting.

Warning!

There are other games based on magnets. I haven't played them, but I'm sure they suck.

*My friend is actually a nice guy and soon-to-be husband (err, to somebody else).

**For the Yikerz song I wrote for my friend, go here.

***Wiggles 3d Yikerz site here.

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Comrade Chad here, spitting truth in your eye. Lot's of buzz from the hate-talkers (yeah! you, Nelson) about releasing the Libyan anti-imperialism activist, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi (some of you pigs use only part of his name- that's wrong! Also, learn to pronounce it! I've been taking lessons from the dudes at the Free Palestine! movement here on campus).

I've been following the case on D...N!!! and the circumstances under which the Scots convicted Mr. Al Megrahi are suspicious: for example, we know that Mr. Al Megrahi was declared guilty on January 31, 2001. That's a full 11 days after Baby Satan's putsch. That would have given KKKarl Rove plenty of time to activate the Republican hate machine and pressure the Scots into doing the empire's bidding.

Even if Mr. Al Megrahi did assist in taking down the corporate-owned plane, doesn't evolution suggest that civilized people should show compassion to murderers? Haven't the most successful societies always had light sentences for men involved in man-made disasters? I know San Francisco has a very progressive justice system. I flew up there for an anti-globalization conference and everybody was very concerned about the reproductive rights of non-aligned sex workers. More so than in the fascist Irvine cul-de-sac where my dad lives.

Kenny MacAskill and RenaRF from the Daily Kos are right. Compassion has defined the Scottish people since the beginning of that great society. Think of the groundbreaking negotiations held by William Wallace with his English counterpart, Edward I, despite Edward's infamous homophobia. Think of the blows for tolerance struck by that Army of justice, Royal Scots Greys. The progressive philosophy of David Hume and Adam Smith.

Nobody except Chaos Kid from the Progressive Action Forum has mentioned the damage done to the environment from the CO2 emissions of huge airliners. Downing aircraft may even save lives in the long run, according to his iPhone app, Calculate Capitalist Damage.

Add the psychological impact of colonialism and living on the same planet as Sarah Palin and you have a lot of factors both calling into question Mr. Al Megrahi's "guilt" and mediating circumstances if he did strike a blow for his oppressed brothers.

Then, as always, there's right-wing hypocrisy. Let's say that Mr. Al Megrahi did assist in downing Pan Am flight 103: is that any worse than what George BeeazelBush did during his regime? Are the people of Libya any worse for welcoming their hero than the people of KKKrawford, Texas are for welcoming theirs? Compare below. Uncanny, isn't it?

Hero's welcome in Libya

President George W. Bush Homecoming in Crawfor Texas.

Ingloroious Bastards* almost did something impossible: it almost made me root for Nazis. More on that later.

I'm sure I disagree with him about everything and although I don't know first hand, he seems like quite an unpleasant fellow; however, Quentin Tarantino is a genius and Inglorious Bastards ranks up there with his other great accomplishment, Pulp Fiction.

The story is every right-thinking, historically-minded person's fantasy: avoid a past disaster by killing one or a few of the individuals responsible for the event- in this case, Adolf Hitler and his gangster friends; and to mete justice on the evil- the same as above and everybody who follows them.

The American government recruits Jewish-Americans to go behind Nazi lines and terrorize the Germans. They do this successfully. The "Inglorious Bastards'" terrorist credentials in good order, IB changes gears and turns sharply into a Dirty Dozen, mission-behind-enemy-lines storyline. There are actually two plots to destroy the Nazi high command: the one by the IB and the other by an incognito Jewish theater owner.

Why genius?

First, the acting is phenomenally good. I've heard some criticize Brad Pitt's accent, but it sounded fine to me. Christoph Waltz as the Sherlock Holmes-meets-Heinrich Himmler SS Colonel, Hans Landa, is magnetic. It's fun to hear Teutonhottie Diane Kruger speak German.

Diane Kruger

Next, Quentin Tarantino forgoes cinema conventions (while holding true to Tarantino staples). Except for one soldier, Tarantino doesn't show us the recruitment or training of any IB (I learned that it will be in a prequel). The protagonists of the two anti-Hitler plots never meet. No character growth whatsoever. Yet, he makes it work.

IB is really a series of verbal confrontations, starting with Landa's knowing conversation with a French dairy farmer hiding Jews, and moving on to IBs' interrogation of a German patrol, a standoff in a basement bar, and several other magnificent tète-à-tètes (or as Brad Pitt's character, "Aldo the Apache" might say...ahh, never mind). One might think it odd that an action movie's most exciting scenes are spoken spars, but Tarantino's conversations have the feeling of action, as if you're watching them knife fight with words. Brilliant.

Risky, near-cheesy, distonal touches like super-imposed arrows pointing to Nazi hierarchy don't distract as much as delightfully surprise.

Politics/Message:

Quentin Tarantino is a nihilist.** I'm not. I don't think that all violence is absurd and I make distinctions between the proper conduct of war and barbarism. In one "chapter" of the movie, the IBs act like Nazis. It's not that they eschew protocol to satisfy their rage like some soldiers do in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers- they enjoy it and consider it part of their mission.

Remember when liberals would criticize some of America's tactics in the War on Terror as "stooping to the level of terrorists?" I actually agreed that the United States could disgrace itself in war; I just didn't think that water-boarding spies and terrorists, as opposed to uniformed soldiers, and bombing terrorists hiding near civilians, qualified. The IBs' behavior certainly does and I just can't get behind that no matter how just the cause.

I felt very uncomfortable when the audience I went to see the film with cheered IB cruelty; IB sadism almost made me sympathize with the Nazis (I was able to stop myself in time).

IB isn't obnoxious in this regard when it deals with the anti-Hitler plot instead of the IBs' mundane Nazi hunting.

* Yes, I know it's spelled, "Inglourious Basterds," but I'm an English teacher and I don't get the joke. Thanks for making my job harder, Quentin.

** Nobody's really a nihilist. It's impossible as it goes against our nature. Some come close, however.

P.S. Inglorious Bastards is a remake of an Italian move which I'm watching tonight.

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