GC back at CU

Games Club is back at Columbia for the season. Last night was largely social — talking about games more than playing them. Also politics and other stuff. Including the burning political issues of the week: fonts, kerning, and the IBM Selectric. Just goes to show that no matter what your area of expertise, it can get dragged into the political sphere.

I did play one game: Monkeys on the Moon. A bit more thinky than you’d expect for the premise, but fun and interesting. If it cost $5 less, I’d probably buy a copy for myself. There are six money tribes, with each having a currency (influence) associated with it. Each round, each player gets to play one Civilization card to advance one tribe’s tech level, gaining influence with that tribe, but losing it with the opposing tribe (or possibly gaining you Monkey Scorn, which loses you victory points). Influence is also used to buy monkeys in auctions. Monkeys are loaded into rockets and launched to the moon. Filled rockets are worth victory points, and launching them gains you a bit more influence. Having launched lots of monkeys from a given tribe is also worth victory points based on how civilized that tribe is. So the game does reward thought, but since your array of potential decisions each turn is fairly small, it doesn’t invite endless noodling like Goa does. And every so often you get to shout “Monkey Scorn!”

Speeches

I watched the first half of Zell Miller’s speech at the GOP convention before I couldn’t take anymore, and not just because the compression of the video stream made it seem like the turncoat was being applauded by an army of giant alien insects. Then, minutes ago at the pizza parlor, I heard a bit of an old speech by some al Qaeda bigwig, and I wondered: Is someone else’s rousing rhetoric always creepy?

King’s “I have a dream” speech — surely one of the most stirring pieces of political rhetoric in the modern English language — must sound like a nightmare to a racial separatist. I guess Objectivists and anarchists must find Kennedy’s “Ask not” inaugural address pretty creepy.

Cheeeeap brush pens

I discovered last night that my Pentel Color Brush had fallen out of my pocket at some point in the past couple days. I’m hoping it’s on the floor at the office waiting for me on Monday, but I stopped off at Hudson County Art Supply anyway, just to see if they’d decided on a price for the things.

They had. Five bucks each.

That’s both for the Pentel Color Brush (which I haven’t seen anyplace else for less than $8) and the Pentel Pocket Brush (ditto, but not less than $18, though that’s with four refill cartridges, and this only comes with two, but still). So come on all you NYC cartoonists, it’s just a $1.50 PATH trip and a five-minute walk away.

I picked up another Color Brush ’cause at these prices, what the heck, and I like fiddling around with those grainy fibrous lines, but the Pocket Brush has become my favorite marking tool of late. It’s what I used for those two sketches below, but the tower to the left (done at Worldcon) was done with a Pigma Micron 005 super-finepoint.

( Melorne facial studies )