No One Camps out on Black Friday. The Lines are too Long.
I did. for the first time ever, and probably the last, my daughter and I camped out in front of Toys ‘R Us so I could save a whole $20 on a Zune. A Zune that I had already ordered from Amazon, but which wouldn’t be in By Christmas.
We saw the doorbuster price in the paper, and ecided that if she was game, we would spend the night together and try to get it. We did. We got the 6th of 29. We got a Spring Horse for the toddler, and a couple things for my nieces, and took off after it got too crowded to shop.
And we leaned a lot. We learned for most people, this was their Idea of fun. The family in front of us had people at several stores. they were constantly getting one or two people to go get coffee for the crowd. They were friendly and polite, and had no clue what they were waiting in line for. They were just out to save money and have fun.
And that was the same with most people we ran into. The savings were not why they were out. It was to spend time with brothers and sisters, talk about kids, make some memories and have outrageous stories to tell.
Like the guy who never got out of his truck except when the line started forming to say ” Just so there’s no trouble later, I was here first.”
Or the family at Best Buy who bring three full tents at 8:00 A.M. Thursday and fry their turkey in the parking lot. They Line up thirty people when the doors open, grab the tickets for the Door Busters, then sell them off to everyone else.
And there were a few of those. People who had no joy, no fun, no sense of the silliness of the whole thing. But they were few and far between.
In the book and soon to be released movie “The Golden Compass”, the titular device is called the alethiometer. It is a clockwork device that can answer any question. In the books, written by Phillip Pullman, the golden compass is entrusted to Lyra, a little girl with a big destiny. She is a pawn between two warring factions, neither of which she can trust.
However, Pullman has said he is an avowed atheist, and that the trilogy is his answer to “Narnia”, the Christian themed fairy tales by C.S.Lewis.
And therein lies the controversy. By using her own intuition and internal moral compass, Lyra can overcome the machinations of the Church, and eventually confronts God. The Golden Compass is purely rational and mechanical. There’s no need for spiritualism in Pullman’s universe.
I’d like to see how much of this subtext makes its way into the movie. The books are great fantasies and rousing adventures. The world Pullman creates is vibrant and believable. And Although the critics would have you believe they are nothing but propaganda, the issues they raise are kept fa enough in the background that they have to be teased out. It’s really no more Anti-Church or anti-religion than, say “A Wrinkle in Time” was.
My Daughter is having friends over tonight to play board games, primarily Apples to Apples, the family friendly game they have just discovered.
Beyond the warm and fuzzy fatherly feeling of providing a safe, fun environment for teens, I’ve also got a pretty nostalgic feeling coursing though my system right about now.
Of course, we can’t have that, so I’m trying to get them to play the Zombies!!! boardgame.
This is one of the best Screw-Your-Neighbor, Beer and pretzels, Throw-out-the-rules-they-only-cause-fights games ever.
Basically, it’s a race to escape the Zombie hordes. Each tun players add a tile to the evolving board, ad a couple of zombies and move their player token around to collect health and bullets. If they enter a square with a zombie, they hae to try to kill it, or get injured. So fa so good, so Traditional, so boring.
Four Things set this game apart:
To win you have to be first to reach the helicopter. We always play the random rules: putting the helicopter in the bottom have of the board tile deck so we never know when it will come up. This means there is always someone who ends up a tile or two away, and others who have to cross the entire board. which means the only way to win is…
To play Action cards. action cads are a separate deck dealt to players three at a time. hey allow you to either help yourself ( No Fun) or totally screw the guy who ’s winning. You can also cause havoc because…
Players move the zombies. Yes, you can clear a path for yourself, but it’s much more fun to block your enemies as they try to reach the goals of the….
Customizable expansions- the basic set plays in a small town. However, expansions take place in a military base, a mall ( Of course) and the woods. This can be mixed an matched any which way. Want to play all night? Add everything. Want a short game? “The End…” expansion ads fast moving zombie dogs.
Now, As you can guess, hte game isn’t really “deep.” There’s not a lot of strategy beyond just blasting away and playing hate on your neighbor.
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boardgame.
