Increase your RoManhood

You know what I don't get?
Junk mail ads for penis enlargement.

I mean, this has to be the worst marketting strategy on the face of the planet. Suggesting that my penis isn't large enough is NOT a catalyst for 'winning-me-over.' In fact, if you did that on the street, it'd be a catalyst for a bloody nose and a concerned rant to any passing females. You see, for those of you who don't know about this cool thing called email and the spam that comes with it, such emails will say things like: 'ahdjaas bigger penis! sdhsd' or, more accurately to my mockery, 'Increa$3 your manhood guyz.'

Why not go with the equally debasing, "You sir. You look like a man with a small penis, want to make it bigger so you can finally please a woman?" Somehow I doubt this would work either. Maybe it's just a tough product to push, but insulting your customers you'd think would get you off on the wrong foot.

Imagine a dating service, another spam-esque operation, having it's subject line as:
"Hey loser, you look like women flee from you. Come to our dating service where you might actually make something of yourself you worthless guttersnipe.." I know that's all there hidden in the undercurrent, except maybe that guttersnipe jibe, but if an email had that as its come-on, I don't think many males would partake. And of course this tirade isn't even taking into account 'Make your breasts bigger' spam.
http://www.joelminty@hotmail.com <--- I'm not a girl! J-O-E-L. But I guess since spam is computer automated, such mis-logic will never be acted upon. But still, I find it funny to laugh that daily porn star Peter North probably gets dozens of spam suggesting he 'increase his girth.'

Meanwhile, Civ III continues to bother me.
It's deep, which makes it interesting, and I also believe that's the root of why it's so addictive. But I wish it had a save prompt, or something, because I'm AlWAYS forgetting to save. I go extended periods of peace without saving because, well, why should I? I'm not attacking anyone. Then someone invades me randomly and it's too late. I traded SO much crap to Greece over the last game, we even allied up to war on the British - which ended when we both signed peace agreements. Then, for some reason, within a few decades they decide they hate us and backstab me. Oh well. At least the computer's read Machiavelli.

I still always feel skimped on battles. Maybe it's my enjoyment of Warcraft 3 and Medieval Total War which causes this. I'm generally more of a warlord than an entraprenuer, although I love empire building as well. But at least in medieval, when the battles happened I had direct control - even if I felt my army broke ridiculously soon, or that enemy units should've died more, or whatever. At least I was the hand that guided the fight. By the numbers is annoying to begin with. It's even more annoying when in order to not make the game really easy, the numbers system has to be skewed a bit. Now I'm sure everyone goes, "Yeah right" to that - but empirical testing is how things work and in my experience defending 1.2.1 spearmen of the computer get ridiculous bonusses for no reason. Is there a reason? Tell me. There aren't any little fortresses built, I'll tell you that. Legionary's have 3. Longbows 4. If we're rolling dice, or some other formula, a legionary should hit 1/2 the time, while a spearman defend 1/3 of a time. It just doesn't play out like this. So there must be other factors. Or there's something built in like in the EA NHL games wherein if it's late in the game the computer is STRUCTURED to score goals to make things 'exciting.' The problem is, of course, if you're playing EXTRA well, you can't thwart this because the game 'decides' to let ridiculous shots in from miles away in accordance with its rules of difficulty. I handle random goals a lot better in the 2nd, let me tell you. Anyone who's played a full season of an EA NHL game after learning it well surely has to agree. In 2003 (I think) they finally admitted it, and called it "Heroes" and gave them to your team. Funnily, they never worked as well for you.

It's bending the rules to make the difficulty more accurate. It's ok, in the long run, because it makes things more 'realistic' (AKA, in NHL hockey it means you lose a bunch of games - which is good in the long run, but unfair in the short - and in CIV it means the game takes a long time to learn and to adapt to its rules before you can dominate - but sacrifices some logic at the micro level to do so) It's basically a case of choosing macro over micro - which is fine, and usually makes for fine games, but can be VERY frusterating in particulars. I've sworn off any EA NHL hockey game forever on this account. Unless they fix things up.

I think I'll give CIV 3 one more try, now that I learned a lot from my last run at things. It's not a huge loss if I don't get into it, my friends who have been view it as an affliction anyway.

Of course, this should be taken with a grain of saltpeter.