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Congress is srs bsns.

Or... "A lesson on how to do the bare minimum in Congress, with style."

That subtitle's a joke, but it is almost completely my main aspiration here. Okay, so I should say thank you for believing in me and thinking I could do this job and properly represent you in Congress. I did warn you, however, that I was just a blocker and I had no intentions of getting involved in eUSA's affairs again.

So, I'm kind of ticked off that I now face the possibility of having to deal with this (buggy, increasingly worse) game in a big way again, for a whole freakin' month. This article is mostly dedicated to me whining about being elected against my will, yay, and won't be half as well-written or polite as my articles were back in the day.

I'm so mad right now that I'm going to arrange my thoughts in the form of a list (remember how I love lists?).

1. I won't accept any leadership positions offered. Don't get me wrong, I loved being the Whip back in the day (a year ago...) but I'm mostly a two-clicker now and I'm going to do my best to stick to that, because I have way too much going on in my life to add eUSA Congress to the mix. I was, however, elected, which means if I resign, that's one less person doing anything and that's something I can't stand for. eUSA deserves better than that.

2. I'm not reading half the sh*t I read when I was in Congress before... I refuse to let my life get sucked away by this darn game, especially when I could be doing something fun. Oh, and despite the meme that I never read anything, when I was in Congress, I read everything. It was a large part of why I was so "successful" as a Senator, but hey, I don't even want to be here this time, so you can't expect that kind of dedication from me again. And don't hate me if I get Congressional procedure wrong, cos I'm not going to particularly try to learn all that... um, stuff... again. It's changed more than once since I was in Congress anyway.

3. The Congress Helper Script, an absolute must for all Senators, doesn't work on my Firefox because I screwed it up years ago trying to improve my computer. And yes, I've tried to reinstall Firefox, get my computer repaired, etc. etc. -- whatever, it's not getting fixed. I will, however, view the source code to make sure the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the correct one every time before I click Yes on a donation.

4. I've donated my winning gold to the CBO (5 gold... I got 4.99 from the map), dedicated my two proposals to the CBO Donation Thread (which means they'll be used to donate money to the CBO, not for annoying lulz proposals), and will hold all of my citizenship approvals for use by the proper immigration authorities. If the past couple of terms are any indication (yes, I've been glancing at approvals per term...), they probably won't even need them.

5. On that note, I'm not volunteering to help my alma mater, IES, beyond using up my citizenship approvals. Despite the fact that I literally wrote the IES Tier One Senator guidelines in my former capacity as the founding IES Chief of Staff, and would have no trouble slipping into that role, I'd like to echo the fact that I only want to be a two-clicker now -- a two-clicker who volunteers to block to keep a Hun out of Congress and somehow gets elected to Congress anyway. Ah, well. What's done is done. I'll keep saying that until I get less angry. Should happen any day now...

6. I thought the Congressional Sing-In was a fun idea the first time MedyPi and I joked about it, and I'm glad it's still continued to this day, so I decided to sing in this song. I think it sums up where I'm at and how I feel about Congress these days in general rather well...

7. I'll update my newspaper if anything interesting happens in Congress, but I wouldn't bet on it being particularly eventful. I'm not going to let you know if Congress decides to change the way they wipe their butts in the morning, or whatever other ridiculous little procedural things Congress comes up with that don't even affect the rest of the eNation. It's stuff like that that made me quit Congress in the first place (well, that... and Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, heh).




Snapshot of me on my way to Capitol Hill earlier today.

To do the bare minimum in Congress with style:

~A. Familiarize yourself with and always follow Congressional procedure. Be sure you've read the stickies before you get started.

~B. Read and comment on various topics of the day.

~C. Follow the directions in all the mass-mailings you get from your Congressional Whip or other members of the Congressional leadership. This usually means visiting the forums to post an approval/disapproval or vote. If your Congressional term's doing Weekly Sign-Ins, post on it regularly.

~D. Always check your Alerts, New Events, and Country Administration pages religiously (sometimes something important pops up but it's not in your Alerts). That means once a day at minimum, but hopefully more often than that.

~E. Donate your winning told to the CBO, volunteer your two proposals for donations, and give your citizenship approvals over to IES.

~F. Never vote on non-donation proposals without checking with the rest of Congress. Sometimes, a country will propose peace in an attempt to screw our country up, for instance, and you don't want to be one of the fools who voted in favor of that. As for donation proposals, use the Congressional Helper Script: If it's red, don't click Yes! Check with Congressional leadership first to see if everything's all right.

~G. Never click on links sent to you by unknown persons -- sometimes the phisher will even impersonate someone you do trust, like the President. When in doubt, don't trust, don't click, and check with Congressional leadership. Sure as hell don't register for any unknown forum -- all Congressional business is conducted on the official eUS forums only.

~H. Never believe someone who says they have approval for USA citizenship and just need you to press the button; always check with proper citizenship authorities first; for this term, that's IES Director HobbitTon. You may also speak to ICE Director Laxsnor or someone from the CTF; when in doubt, double check with the IES Director or ICE Director. Applications for USA citizenship expire in five days, so you've got time to be thorough.

~I. Never approve anyone for USA citizenship without doing a proper background check, even if their name looks familiar! More than once, an enemy's been approved because someone didn't do a proper background check because, hey, they thought that guy's name looked familiar. Geez. The proper citizenship authorities can help you out if you're unsure.

~J. Never click on ads when you're on your citizen account; there are scripts that can lead to major problems for you, such as an auto-resign script.

~K. For that matter, never click on any links when you're on your citizen account. Pizza the Hut got citizenship when a trusted eUS citizen posted a link in the Congressional IRC rooom!

~L. Speaking of the IRC room, be sure to hang out in both the public and private Congressional channels. Sometimes important stuff needs to get done quickly and the easiest way to get a Senator on the line is IRC. For citizenship matters, the main IRC room is #IES.


PROTIP: Look both ways before deciding on a proposal.

If I'm forgetting something, let me know, because it's been nearly a year since I was in Congress. If you think that's not the bare minimum, let me remind you that you can also:

1. Read every darn topic in every Congressional board and subboard, including the last few of the previous term, to make sure you're up to speed on what's currently happening and what's just occured, sometimes as recent as days before. The incumbent Senators will be up to speed and you'll want to be, too!

2. Volunteer to be a Tier One Senator with IES. This will entail spending hours a day interviewing potential candidates for eUS citizenship and writing lengthy files justifying your stances on particular applicants, with whom you'll also be corresponding on a near daily basis.

3. Accept a leadership position. This usually entails spending even more time checking for the latest news, alerts, events, and talking to people outside of Congress for various coordination purposes. You'll also be mass-mailing Congress to make sure they get their butts on the forums and don't cast any in-game votes that end up hurting the eNation (such as voting yes on a misleading peace proposal designed to remove an MPP!). You'll also be in charge of moderating the forums, making sure discussions stay civil and on track, locking and moving topics to the archives, update the stickies, etc.

4. Pioneer new legislature. You'll have to be familiar with the proper way to set up legislature and be ready to back your position with facts, figures, logic, and reason. Pictures usually help too, funnily enough. Graphs rule.

5. Propose new ideas that could lead to better interagency cooperation in the eUS government, improved infrastructure, a well-informed populace (particularly the newbies), and a healthier economy. Remember that Congress is in charge of making a good budget -- and that usually means listening to various government organizations and military branches to get the best idea of where the money should go. A great budget is one in which no one group is 100% happy, but everyone's getting what they need to keep up their efforts to best serve the eNation.

Now, you could just sit there and vote for the 1 EXP per vote and use up your two proposals as lulz at the end of the term to do the bare minimum, but I said "with style," mmm-kay?




Taking aim at the issues... or am I aiming at Max? 😛

I guess that's all for now. I'm sorry in advance that my articles won't be as cool as they used to be.

For the record, I realize I'm technically breaking with FEC blocker procedure by not resigning myself, and that it's not fair that I get elected without going through the proper party channels. But hey, this is where we are now, and I really think it'll be better for the eCountry at this point if I at least do the bare minimum rather than resign. Yeah, I'm a little chaotic like that.

I'm Back Again, eAmerica,
~Katherine "Astra" Gallagher