I mentioned in an earlier post that I generally play games with the intention to win.
There are other variables involved when you sit down to play with friends, or over the Internet, or with strangers.
Sometimes there’s a conversation to be managed, which requires splitting attention. It’s uncouth, where I come from, to sit and deliberate for as long as I’d really like. In certain games, the designers have made a mistake, and the best strategy is one which isn’t actually the most fun. Sometimes the best play is to screw someone over so thoroughly they’ll never play with you again, or even play the game again, and, practically speaking, it’s not an option.
But the goal of the game is to satisfy its victory condition, and if I’m playing the game I trust the designers enough to agree that if I follow the instructions, I’ll have fun.
I wouldn’t chalk myself up as unusually excellent at any game, with a distribution that probably hovers around average. It’s difficult to estimate exactly, of course, but let’s put it like this: I’m not at all embarrassed to share my online chess or Scrabble ratings, —they’re available upon request— but I’m not good enough at either to hyperlink just as a brag.
There are some easy improvements available, like buckling down and memorizing the opening moves or the short words. I won’t deny that outside any individual game, I can be a bit of a scrub. It’s a tendency which anyone trying to improve should attempt to curb,
Within the game, though, once the clock starts or the tiles flip, I try to win.
The same goes for visualizing the game: when holding a sprint or studying a tabiya, it helps to get in the right frame of mind.
It’s good practice to approach hypotheticals with the intention to get them right. That is, after all, the entire point of a hypothetical question: to come to an admittedly speculative conclusion about the real world.
So there’s no reason to lose to a rat.
It’s likely there will be more on Britain in the near future of this publication, but my concerns lie with my countrymen.
A rat is approximately the weight of a football, and considerably shorter and smaller. It is not particularly smart or strong, nor especially ferocious. It has no tactic with which to defeat you, and one blow from you will end its existence.
We humans are K-strategists, which means that we invest heavily in each individual; rats, being r-strategists, have survived to the year 2023 A.D. by reproducing in much larger numbers.
A pack of coordinated, sapient rats? That’s a question, though it should have the same answer. One rat? On its lonesome?
I’m feeling kind of sick right now. A little tired. A little nauseated. My already-imperfect lungs aren’t functioning at peak levels. My head hurts a little.
A rat?
Put me up against a rat at its earliest convenience, and I will punt it however high and far is convenient for me.
I’m aware that this type of thing can seem like ‘I’m-so-tough’ posturing; genuinely, I don’t intend that. I mean to drive home that it’s a rat, and I need you to understand that you, too, can beat up a rat however you choose if only you put your mind to the task.
“I don’t want to fight the rat.”
That’s fine. If you’re reading this newsletter, you probably won’t have to.
“I don’t think I can fight the rat.”
I am attempting to convey that you can fight the rat, if you seriously think through what happens when you, a human, are tossed into an arena with an animal smaller than your shoe. Fight! Win!
“Is this really about the rat?”
It’s not not about the rat.
“I get it. Stop putting words in my mouth.”
Make me.
What, you’re going to demand that I do anything when you can’t fight a rat?
“I can fight a rat.”
There we go, that’s it, that’s all I want to get across, because isn’t that better?
Joking about losing to the rat is destructive, even if not all that much, even if you backtrack, even if you know you can beat the rat:
You know what happens when you joke about losing to the rat? You end up losing to the rat: