If anyone out there was wondering, I didn't die. I was not offended, nor was I giving you the silent treatment. My online life was broght to a screatching halt my a week long sojurn to Ripon WI, where I learned what cattle feel like when they get packed into boxcars, among other things.
In less cryptic terms, I when to Badger Boys State, where 900 other selected boys and I ran a simulated state, repleate with city, county, and state goverments. We had to attend classes, get law degrees, and pass ordinences. Vituraly all laws passed at the city level where excuses for something to do with our new found power (like outlawing the word "red"). The fun resided in the court system (where the previous law was found to violate freedom of speach).
While it was passed off as a learning experience, Boys State was really a game. It selectivly recreated American Goverment as closly as possible. If we are to classify it, it would fall in line with other sandbox games, like The Sims, Black and White, and Sim City. They have vague objectives, but most of the time, they're what you make them to be. You may think that the point of BBS is to get elected, but I didn't (having no real issues to vote on neutered my whole "human rights and private property" speech and made me look like a nerd). Instead, I looked at what I learned, like parlementery procedure and the two-party system, and relized that I could not have learned them without doing. On the less obvious front, I learned how to be humble and not proud.
But without being in any position, I got bored though the week (more correctly, after my cellphone battery died, depriving me of my slashdot/chess fix). So I aimed for what no one else did: the underground. All the other boys wanted to be theses grand judges and mayors, who inspire their followers to the ends of the earth. I, on the other hand, was a one man mafia; I flipped a few choice beds and fanned the flames of intercity war (while framing other cities) and I expropiated BBS Bucks (the game currency) to help balance our city budget.
Hey, someone had to give our law enforcement something to do, lazy bums.
1 comment:
You weren't the headmaster of the "drive-by oranging" were you? Or maybe that's the 2005 session that I'm thinking about.
I'm the dude who took all the pictures at last year's session, theres a good chance you seen me roaming about, snapping photographs.
It's so much more fun as a counselor; I'm glad I have the opportunity to continue going back.
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