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Weather Report




A tune for your listening pleasure...
Won't Get Fooled Again
(with thanks to rainy sunday for suggesting it)



And a poem to clear the mind...

II.

Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?

-- Pablo Neruda, from The Book of Questions



Quinn Under a Dark Cloud

Given the sturm und drang that swept across the e-American eRep press this week regarding the brouhaha over Kyushu, I thought this might be a good time to take a break from the daily grind of paper-pushing in Congress and scrambling around like a madman to get out the next edition of the Socialist Freedom Press to reflect on these events, their aftermath and the responses to them.

Or I could just talk about me.

First off, I was as surprised as anyone when I heard about the declaration of war on Japan. I'm not part of any grand councils, not a member of the US Military, and have only been around eRep since the last day of the Scrabman administration. So I had no idea that this plan had been in the works for months.

And I was already in a bad mood when it was announced.

The gorilla-powers of former-PEACE had announced the formation of the new PHOENIX alliance, thereby be-smirching the good name of us regular ol' Phoenixian's everywhere, which exasperated me.

And I'd interpreted as kind of a cheap trick just to win the election citizen Jewitt's promise to invade the UK. Very much in keeping with his Steven Colbert avatar, I thought, you know, that kind of a weird sort of humor where it's hard to tell what's "real" and what's not, what's a joke and what's serious.

So, anyway, whether it was intended as a joke or not -- and I must say I re-read that article several times without finding any clear "ha-ha" in it, not to mention the fact that Mr. Jewitt did officially set goals of taking regions from the UK -- that was pretty much what led me to support Josh Frost's bid in the recent Prezzie election, despite my mild enthusiasm for the Jewitt/PigInZen team in the prior election cycle.

Then of course Jewitt won the election.

Which irked me further, since basically I like John Stewart better than Steven Colbert and I make all of my important e-life decisions based on analogies to TV shows. (Guess who's a "Robin Hood" fan! 🙂

Then to top it all off, the day war with Japan was proposed, I'd just had 100 or so people over to the house for a big holiday party and wasn't looking forward to cleaning everything up. And now I had to decide how was I going to vote on a war. Grrrr.


It Starts to Rain

I should probably indicate that I have Brobdingnagian-scale respect for Jewitt. Alright, I don't know him personally, but he's on my friends list. I enjoy seeing his shouts and his knowledge of the game is prodigious. Why, just the other day -- I'm not kidding -- I finally learned how to include good hyperlinks in PM's thanks to Jewitt. (So, thank you, Mr. Jewitt.)

Plus, the new reincarnation of Ajay Bruno had recently accused Jewitt of being a Russian spy, which I thought was hilarious. Well, I guess that's neither here nor there, but I still thought it was hilarious. Not hilarious like lauging-out-loud, falling-off-the-chair, pee-in-your-pants hilarious, but pretty damned funny. My point is, you don't get those kinds of itchy-keen-wild-eyed attacks on your e-character from infamous back-from-dead alpha-male gay-bashing religous zealots unless you're a pretty friggin' significant target. So that notched my respect for Jewitt up another click.

And like I said earlier, I'm no military genius in the game. In fact, I'm not much of a joiner. Big crowds of people and mob mentality kinda spook me. Even when out on parade with the Bear Cavalry, I'm always the one wearing a funny hat. But knowing something about what Japan had gone through after Indonesia walked over them in WW3, this immediately struck me as a questionable thing to do. So I decided to think about it for a while. And of course I still hadn't cleaned up after that party, which was also weighing on my mind like a damp mop.

And then it started to rain, both literally and figuratively.

We'd had our first snow of the season over here where my meat-and-bones avatar hangs out. By evening it had turned into rain with howling winds. And it started to rain here too, on my shouts list and in the newspaper columns, with all sorts of nasty invective about Japanese people.

And that really bummed me out. I know there's alot of 14-year-old boys who play eRepublik and I don't begrudge them the occasional bone-headed comment. In fact, there's very few things that happen in the game that have any impact on my emotional state. Basically, I'm a humorless old codger who's seen way too much suffering and carnage in real life to be terribly moved by anything that happens in a browser game, even if it is massively social.

But I do have a great-aunt who happens to be of Japanese heritage, and I always loved her alot, and she was interned during World War 2 (the real one), though she'd committed no crime. So all those "Kill the Japs" and "I stand ready to kill Nips" wisecracks, not to mention all the predictable and banal references to sushi and Godzilla, managed to disturb my hard-won equanimity.

By this time Arjay Phoenician, who I also have immense respect for by the way (and who I also sympathize with for having his fine name ripped-off by those former-PEACE no-good-niks), had started publishing -- in classic Arjay style -- a series of passionate screeds about why it would be wrong to take Kyushu by force and calling for the impeachment of Jewitt. That was, of course, followed by a barrage of potty-mouthed screeching from the aforementioned 14-year-olds herd, who just couldn't fathom that anybody would have the balls to stand up and violently disagree with the e-powers-that-be.

Oh crap. It was at that point I started writing my "farewell, dear e-world" letter. It was going to be a beautiful death, a perfect seppuku: fast, poetic and startlingly dramatic.



And then I thought, nah, that's kinda lame. And besides, what would all my adoring fans do without me? So I got onto the IRC to see what those 4 or 5 other crazies in the SFP who actually know who I am were up to...


Quinn Gets Out an Umbrella

So there's my good buddy Arjay screaming for Jewitt's head on pike. And over in the IRC, a number of radicals have already packed up their bags and headed off to Kyushu to man the barricades in a show of international solidarity.

Meanwhile I'd been PM'ing back and forth a bit with rainy sunday, mainly to gripe about what a lousy day it had turned out to be, but also to see what she made of the whole situation.

I knew there'd be a hardcore contingent in the SFP who'd leap at the chance to take a stand against an unjust use of military force against a small country. It may be a thunderbolt of horrificness to some, but this is not the first time something like this had happened. From what I've heard 'round the ol' e-water cooler, even some pretty famous e-Americans have jumped over to help out the other side from time to time when they thought something was rotten in Denmark.

And of course I knew there'd be SFPers who don't see it that way at all and who would support the US side no matter what. That kind of nationalist loyalty is pretty common amongst far-left parties in eRep and the SFP is no exception. For example, I remember being kinda shocked during WW3 (the virtual one... oh wait... never mind, guess that's obvious) when I found out that the French Parti Koinmuniste (which is a hilarious name, by the way, but you need to speak a little French to get it) had endorsed that country's participation in assaults on Canada.

For me, a big part of the fun of eRep is not only making friends around the world, but working on a strategy that could potentially transform the entire e-world. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the whole war-game business too, but that's just one element and frankly, a bit old-hat. I like difficult challenges, so for me the game is about creating an international "space" in which to experiment with alternative economics and politics. I don't give a crap if the admins make their money off of war, war and more war. Good for them. That's an excellent money-making scheme.

But as Neruda asked, "Is there anything sadder than a train standing in the rain?" You can, of course, interpret that however you like, dear reader. (And after all these words, I'm pretty sure it is just "a" reader.) After all, it's poetry. For me it evokes the motionless anxiety that ensues from merely responding to reflexive conditions, that feeling of being caught in timeless vacuum, waiting for something to happen, when you know for a fact, when the train finally does start to move, that it will be the same old thing, going to the same old destination.

And then there's all these new folks coming into my little home at the SFP, or getting really active for the first time. What kind of example would I be setting if just got on the train with everybody else?

So I voted No. And knowing the sh*t-storm that would ensue, I used the next couple of editions of Socialist Freedom to do my tiny little bit to make sure that those who had dared to express doubts, to question, to walk away from the herd, even if just for a little while, had a voice. And I don't regret it at all.


Quinn Philosophizes

e-Life will go on, pretty much as it always does. Until the next "shocking" eevent comes along that allows them to express their righteous indignation at whatever puts a wiggle into consensus reality for a moment or two, the "e-America-right-or-wrong" contingent will continue treat Arjay Phoenician like their favorite whipping-boy. It's kind of becoming an e-American tradition for outspoken people to be hounded out of the country, almost a badge of honor. Yawn.

Players will continue to defend their own nation's role in the game. The admins will continue to tweak the the war module and, bless 'em, make more money (or not) as a result. There will be good articles, bad articles and mediocre articles written every day.

This whole shebang has made me consider my own desires a bit more. For one thing, I've gotten pretty over-extended. My dogs -- two very delightful Australian Cattle Dogs -- suffer because I play eRepublik instead of taking them for a walk. My Facebook friends don't hear from me anymore.

So I'll pull back a bit. I've already resigned from a couple of projects and probably won't run for Congress again this month. Try to spend more time and energy on the parts of the game I really enjoy the most like writing, helping to do what I can to organize that alternative "reality", working more with newer players to show them the ropes, stuff like that.

Yeah, not a great philosophical moment, but at least it looks like it's stopped raining. See ya 'round.