Things that are pissing me off this week

1) Simcity 4000, Formosa is pissing me off. I loaded up this stupid game to write an article for the June issue of The Taichung Voice, the theme of which is 'city government'. In the article, I describe the comical events that unfold as I tried to design and manage a smooth and efficient Taichung as opposed to the actual Taichung in which we live. Since I had no idea what I was doing, my Taichung was a catastrophic mess of pollution, mismanaged finances, and angry citizens. But after I submitted the article (only 32 hours over deadline), I figured I could go ahead and play the game a little bit more, understand the dynamics, and quickly master it just as I master all other things I attempt in my life. And I picked Kaohsiung instead of Taichung because the terrain is a lot more forgiving there. Five fucking Kaohsiungs later, I am still building catastrophic messes of pollution, mismanaged finances, and angry citizens. Since this is the Formosa version, there should be a couple of options in the game to make city building easier: Bribing Central Government officials for lucrative federal investments, taking payoffs from gang figures to ease the financial situation, and most importantly, the ability to launch a White Terror period to throw all the angry citizens in jail.

2) Rev. Creighton Lovelace of Danieltown Baptist Church is pissing me off. You start talking about flushing objects that people consider holy or sacred, and there goes the Bible, the American Flag, Gibran's The Prophet, etc. And then somebody is going to try and flush my Barry Manilow cd's, and then there is going to be trouble.

3) Giblets is pissing me off. Making war on the sun. That's just crazy talk. The sun is not the enemy, heat is the enemy. And the problem is compounded by all that cheap, low quality heat being imported from China. Nothing that can't be solved by simply dumping all the extra heat into the Grand Canyon. Foolish Giblets.