Monopoly: International Edition

From Peter David:

Monopoly alert: Spread the word

While attending Toyfair, I found out that Hasbro is putting together an international version of Monopoly, and instead of street names on the board, there will be city names. The color coding remains the same: The most valuable real estate will be on blue spots, for instance (normally occupied by Broadway and Park Place), and then green, yellow and so on. There is currently a vote going on that is open to anyone in the world with a computer, and you can vote once a day for up to ten cities. The top vote getters will be on Broadway and Park Place, and the rest will be apportioned to the remainder of the real estate.

Now how, you may ask, is the United States faring in this international voting? The answer: Miserably. Of the twenty eight properties on this quintessentially American game, only two US cities are making any kind of showing, and neither is in prime real estate. New York is #8 (relegated to the much less tony yellow section of the board), while, Las Vegas is an abysmal #23. What’s number one, you may ask? The most popular international city?

Istanbul.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Personally, I think this is an abysmal state of affairs. Istanbul the number one city of international Monopoly? The best thing one can say about Istanbul is that it’s a catchy song covered by “They Might Be Giants.” But “New York, New York” is practically an anthem.

According to the woman at Hasbro I spoke to, the website where the voting is going on–www.monopoly.com–is getting 10,000 votes a day. That’s not all that much. A concerted web effort can turn this around.

Obviously I want to see New York nestled in the top spot, with more US cities occupying as many of the rest of the valuable properties as possible. Knee-jerk patriotism? Unreasonable nationalism? Well…yeah. You got a problem with that? If the residents of freaking Turkey should be allowed that indulgence, so should I.

We’ve only got until February 28th to get it done, so spread the word to all and sundry. Feel free to repost this anywhere and everywhere.

PAD

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I’ve always wondered if other people think about things and experience things the same way I do.  I think I have a very addictive personality so that, when I get into something, I really get into it for a week or two, sometimes more, and then forget about it for months until I get *really* into it again.

Reading, for example.  I’ll pick up a book, read it in a week, and pick up two more.  I’ll read during my lunch hour, get home and read, read before bed on Sundays.  Then I’ll set them down, half finished, until months later, when I pick up another book and remember all of the 30 books I bought on my last reading binge even as I go out and get more.

Recently the same had been happening with video games, or, one video game in particular.  I have been playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas almost every day for the past two weeks.  And it’s *hours* of playing, too, it’s not like I go at it for 20 minutes and move on to something else.

I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s weird that I binge on things like that.  I’ve had it since Christmas when Katy got it for me but recently really got into it as I discovered there is SO MUCH to do inside the game.  The designers intended it to be played over a number of months, as opposed to a few hours or so.

For example:  in the game, you can look at your stats.  I’ve logged a total of 20 hours and am only at 19% completion of all the missions and side tasks.  Half of the time I get distracted and just have fun running around the city causing trouble, but even that counts to the overall game because you can defend your ‘hood from opposing gangs, wage territory wars with other gangs, and increase your criminal rating (you get one point when you kill someone, with the highest score being 1,000,000 points - I think.)

Anyway, I’ve played it so much and have not yet gotten sick of it that I’ve decided to NOT play it the next few days.  In fact, I will play no video game until the end of the week.  It’s not that I’m neglecting anything or failing to do anything else that needs to get done, but still, I’ve been occupied with it for the past two weeks, then get on here to make a blog or talk to a friend and then realize…

…I got nothing to say.

I should spend my time doing other things that actually give me something to talk about.  Or, say, work on certain business so I can get out of this nine to five routine?  My obsessiveness even goes into that — I’ll spend hours all excited about working on a new web site for the business and then the next two weeks saying, “man, I gotta finish that up.”

Unless you want to talk about how yesterday I flew over a skyscraper, jumped out of the plane and watched it crash into the streets below, and then sky dove off the building while shooting at a SWAT helicopter…

…or how I had to kill a valet worker and steal his clothes in order to pose as a valet, steal the D.A.’s car, drive it to a secure location and plant drugs in the trunk…

…or kidnap a music executive who wouldn’t listen to a friend’s demo and drive his car off a pier…

…yeah, nothing to say.

Anyway, does anyone else have an addictive personality?  Do you realize how much you love a TV show and then spend the next 36 hours doing nothing but watching the DVDs, not even sleep?  Or is that just me?  It’s probably just me.  I suck at life.

I wish I could get back into my addiction to fitness, because, man, I’ve gained some weight.

15 pounds since Christmas!  Some of that is muscle weight (hell yea it is), but a lot of it is GUT FAT, because my pants no longer fit the way they used to, and a lot of my shirts are tight right around my bitch-tittie area.

Back when I lost weight, I got rid of all my old clothes so that I wouldn’t have to go and buy new ones incase I ever started to get fat again.  Yesterday I was walking down the hall at work and caught myself thinking, “I should use some of my birthday money to go and get some new clothes, these don’t really fit anymore.”

::shakes head::

But now that warmer weather is here (?) maybe I can take up running again and do it err’yday.

You know what I’ve always wanted to do?  I’ve always wanted to end a story with the words ‘End of Story.’

Or, period.

That’s it.  End of Story.

Period.

Gross.

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Sirius and XM are merging. WTF, mate?

It has been speculated about for a while but I never actually thought it would happen. There are pros and cons, for example, now that there is only one satellite radio company, they can likely jack up their prices a few dollars, and crush any would-be competitor, Wal-Mart style. On the other hand, the content I’m now getting will double, I think satellite radio as a whole will have more credibility, and, who knows, any competitor would have to revolutionize the industry to gain an advantage.

(Want to hear my idea? Good. Eventually I think all this copyright bullshit mess will be straightened out, and people will have Satellite Radio’s that include local channels much like Satellite Television does now. Anyway, the way the entertainment industry is going, people want things on-demand and with them at all times. So I think the radio of the future will be a device you can take with you anywhere that will have hundreds of channels like it does now that you can listen to, and if you really like a song you can choose to download it. It will also have a menu that you can scroll through and purchase things, iTunes style. The same will eventually be true for your television. They will have removable hard drives - or whatever the futuristic storage equivalent is - and you will just download everything or have it on-demand from a cable company or something.  ADAM PREDICTS THE FUTURE: This will all be kicked off by Apple when they introduce their own next-gen gaming/media console in 2013.)

They sent me an email and at first I thought it was a dream or something because it was so surprising. Kind of like how JJ Abrams is in charge of the new Star Trek movie. I’m not saying “it’s a dream come true,” because that would be dorky.

*****

In other news, here’s a good theory about Lost:

DO BLACK HOLES EXPLAIN IT ALL?

Simply put, this not-so-simple theory posits that the electromagnetic anomaly beneath The Hatch was a black hole. No, I’m not joking. Check out thetailsection.com, which has been hosting a proverbial symposium on the subject since ”Not In Portland” aired.

THE CLUE: An Other named Aldo was seen reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. The book was open to the page that discusses black holes.

IF IT WALKS LIKE A BLACK HOLE, AND TALKS LIKE A BLACK HOLE — IT MUST BE A BLACK HOLE! From Wikipedia: ”A black hole is defined to be a region of space-time where escape to the outside universe is impossible…. [O]bservers outside the event horizon cannot see any events which may be happening within the event horizon… Within the black hole is a singularity, an anomalous place where matter is compressed to the degree that the known laws of physics no longer apply to it.” Sounds like The Island, doesn’t it?

WHAT THIS EXPLAINS: Among other things, why Desmond was unable to sail away from the island; why the island is seemingly invisible to the outside world; why the island is a twilight zone for physics-defying phenomena; why The Hatch ”imploded” instead of ”exploded.”

WHAT THIS DOESN’T EXPLAIN: Among other things, why the Others have been able to commute off the island via submarine; and why Locke, Eko, and Desmond weren’t sucked into the anomaly along with The Hatch.

POKING HOLES IN BLACK HOLE THEORY: A key contention of this young, still-in-process theory is that The Button inside The Hatch was regulating the awesome energies radiating from this black hole/anomaly. But if pushing that computer key was really so darn important — like ‘’saving the world” important, according to Kelvin — why didn’t Dharma devise a more reliable Button-pushing system? Two guys in a hatch (volunteers, really) following instructions from a dubious industrial film that conspicuously fails to spell out the stakes? THAT is Earth’s defense against the catastrophic consequences of a throbbing wound in the fabric of reality? Please.

THE ALDO FACTOR: What should we make of the fact that the Hawking/Black Hole clue came attached to a guy named Aldo? Perhaps more proof for the theory. ”Aldo” means ”elder, older one” in German — interesting, given Aldo the Other looks like he’s barely 18. But are looks deceiving? Given the mounting clues suggesting some kind of time-warp phenomenon (”Mittelos” — the Others-backed company that recruited Juliet to the island — is an anagram for LOST TIME), maybe the Island-indigenous Others are much older than they look.

SOME ”OTHER” ADVICE: The literalism with which the Hawking/black-hole clue has been interpreted and applied reminds me of something that Michael Emerson (Ben/Henry Gale) told me when I visited the Lost set in January:

”The little tidbits may not necessarily be revealing of the master plan, but they’re usually not empty, either. The whole thing about my original name, Henry Gale. Okay, so it’s Dorothy’s uncle [from The Wizard of Oz], so you think, where are they going with that? Well, they don’t have to go anywhere with it. Just free associate — about her trip to Oz, a fantasyland that has certain purgatorial dimensions… I don’t think [the executive producers] stay up all night researching this stuff. I think it just falls out of them, and it kind of thickens and enriches the whole.”

APPLYING BEN’S WISDOM TO BLACK HOLE THEORY:  Saying ”the island is a black hole” is as misguided as saying ”the island is Oz.” In fact, it might be as misguided as saying ”Oz is a black hole.” After all, couldn’t Oz be described as a ”region of space-time” where ”the laws of physics no longer apply”? Instead, think analogously. The Island isn’t a black hole — it’s just like a black hole.

THEN AGAIN: Isn’t Ben a big fat liar?

*****

I bought an Xbox 360 the other day. It’s pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Anybody who knows me knows that Mortal Kombat is my fravrite. So discovering I could download and play UMK3 with other people around the world was pretty much the highlight of my day. Paperboy, too.

There is a new game for the 360 called Crackdown that I want to play, and dammit, some day I will.

Anyway, I’m officially out. Like Britney Spears’ mind.

What happened ?

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They SOLD OUT!

Everywhere!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (that’d be sweet, you should call me if you are–if you have a phone. I imagine those living under rocks probably still use rotary phones.) or are over the age of 60, you’ve no doubt heard that the “next-gen” of gaming systems are officially released now, with the Xbox 420, the Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii all officially for sale.

The thing is, I missed out! Last year around this time the Xbox 360 was the first console released, and I never realized the demand of the things. I told myself then that I’d be waiting in line for the Playstation 3, so that I could buy two–one for myself, and one to put up on eBay for more than double what it’s worth so that I can both turn a profit and essentially pay for the one that I kept.

Well, I found out they were released two days after the fact! I was frusterated. I thought that I could get in on the Nintendo Wii action, because those were in less demand but still were able to be sold online for a little profit. The only difference was that I don’t usually like Nintendo–they are a little too cartoonish for my liking, and there isn’t really many games that are available on it that I liked. But Katy really wants one so I thought I’d give it a shot, maybe as a Christmas gift or something.

But the more I learned about the Nintendo Wii, the more I really ended up kind of wanting one. They’ll be releasing more “mature” content for it, and the controllers really do look innovative.

Anyway, if you’ve been to any stores recently, you’ve probably seen the “sold out” signs posted around the electronics area. They’re nearly impossible to find (hint: Walmart will be refilling their shelves with Wii’s tonight at midnight.)

I’m getting off track. This is why I get frusterated writing blogs! Bottom line of this entry: this year was the first year I stood in line at the ass-crack of dawn trying to get a gaming system.

That’s right, I’m officially one of “those people.” Your good friend Adam hung out with the kids, the soccor moms, and the creepy 40 year old guys who live with their parents.

I was on “the forums,” as we geeks refer to the internet messaging boards, and got some tips about when the next shipments were supposed to hit stores. I was on the phone with a few stores throughout the week trying to ask the managers when they expect to get some in. Surprisingly, everyone was pretty nice about it. I can only imagine how many calls they got asking the same thing.

So, after some research, I determined that Toys R’ Us was the best deal. They opened at 9 on Sunday morning, so I thought I’d get there around 6. I knew they’d have at least 23 so if the line was long, I’d go wait by Circuit City, who didn’t open until 10 and would probably have more (I didn’t know how many, but they confirmed they’d be getting some in the day before.)

Well, I went to both of those stores around 5:30am, and the lines were already pretty much around the building. CRAZY. So I went for plan C, and headed to Target.

I got there around 6:00, and they opened at 8:00. It was ass cold, so I bundled up and brought some magazines. I didn’t read any, I just stood in line behind the 11 people that were there and shook my legs, trying to keep warm.

At about 7:45 the store manger came outside and handed out tickets for those waiting in line (at least, the ones that got there early enough. They only had so many.) People were happy, because now that they claimed their prize they could wait in their cars until the doors opened!

Did I get a ticket? Well, I’ll just say the person in front of me got one, and the person directly behind me did not.

…

I have to get to work now, goodbye!

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