Hot Heart

This is actually kind of worrying: how utterly inept, if not corrupt, the mainstream media is. http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/the-medias-trump-ethics-failure-crediting-the-president-elect-for-an-anti-corruption-stand-he-didnt-make/ Although, in the UK, we're very much used to that sort of thing. Also, I meant to mention this before, someone put forward that Trump sees being President as like being King rather than someone who serves the people and it explains so much. I mean, he's just incredibly stupid. He is a man who interrupts himself while speaking. He pauses mid-sentence, trying to find the right word or a better way to say something and he fails every time. That old quote of him talking about Lincoln is doing the rounds again and it is truly something. I am dumbstruck that anyone could see him speak for more than ten seconds and think, "Yep, that man should be President of the United States of America".

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Played this a bit much trying to clear it in a few days over the holidays and started getting quite sick of it a few missions before the end. There's a lot to love about it but also so many niggling little problems. Overall, though, it's a really enjoyable experience. Once you get used to the ship stuff it becomes quite addictive, building up your fleet and taking on more and more ships. There are some quite nice missions in there, also, where it just gives you a large area and you can take a few different approaches; even some of the more scripted feeling segments work quite well. The meta or "true" narrative stuff was entertaining also. I liked seeing Abstergo's internal video presentations on previous assassins (Altair, Ezio, Connor) where they criticise them and "pass on the property". Especially amusing when the American guy narrating it (deliberately?) screws up names and pronunciations, e.g. keeps referring to Ezio as "Enzio" I kind of want to go back and become master of the seas but it seems like it might be a laborious process and I kind of just want to move straight onto Syndicate now. There's certainly a lot of stuff for completionists; perhaps too much. p.s. It feels weird rating the missions, considering how old the game is now, but maybe someone at Ubisoft/Abstergo is logging it somewhere.

Christmas was a bit much for my parents' aging cat

So, I've been fucking obsessed with XTC lately (they are kind of like the Beatles who never got their due) and received a book going "behind the songs" for Christmas, which is actually some old interviews with Andy Partridge that went up on the XTC MySpace page (when that was a thing about 9-10 years ago). It's a really interesting read with a lot of cool songwriting insight and also does a decent job of getting across a sort of band biography in the process. One of my favourite observations is about the opener to Black Sea: Respectable Street (a sort of mockery of the middle class). Virgin made them rerecord it for a single because the BBC wouldn't play it since it contained words like "abortion" and "contraception" (this was 1980)... only to have the BBC reject it still because it says a brand name with "Sony Entertainment Centres" (same reason the Kinks had to change Coca Cola to "cherry cola" many years before). Anyway, there's a fun little addition in the single version that appears in the very last verse at around 2:15 with the "Sunday church and they look fetching" line. Here: That "aaaaaaahhhhh" vocal bit. That's actually the drummer thinking he'd fucked up and yelling in frustration. They noticed his yell came out very close to the song's key and adjusted it slightly, keeping it in there.

Watched a couple of things with the family over Christmas. The Way Way Back One of those indie coming-of-age films, this being by Jim Rash (Dean from Community) and Nat Faxon who previously adapted/wrote The Descendants. I actually bought this for my sister since she loves that sort of thing (we watched her requested copy of Kings of Summer last year). It's got a good cast with Steve Carrell playing a horrible passive-aggressive step-dad and Sam Rockwell playing a sort of charming underachiever alongside Toni Colette, Maya Rudolph and Allison Janney. Some of the characters feel a little thin but it's amusing enough. West Side Story My oldest sister is a massive musical nut so she was determined to watch this. Admittedly, I don't think I'll ever be able to get in the right frame of mind for most musicals. You've got these street gangs prancing around, letting out their aggression by twirling about and then chasing each other and dancing at each other. It's all well choreographed of course but it LOOKS RIDICULOUS. Anyway, it's an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet but also given a political stance with regards to immigration and integration. It has some catchy tunes and is obviously a lavish production all in all. There are some really smart lyrics in there and everyone knows "I want to live in America!" One of those films that I appreciate more than I enjoy, I guess.

So, I finished S2 of Rick & Morty a while back (I was waiting for Netflix to get it) and my friend is a fucking liar. He said S2 wasn't nearly as good as S1... but it's brilliant. Just as good as S1, if not better. There are so many neat ideas in there and lots of great moments, and that finale was a real shock.

I received Codenames for Christmas and we got to play that the same day with a large gathering at a family friend's. I think it went down well for the most part. I felt sorry for the player who, when their team pretty much had to try and guess a bunch of words so they wouldn't lose, went straight for the assassin. Also managed to get in some games with the family. First up is Lord & Ladies, which intrigued me from the moment I first found out about it. It's a sort of parodical take on old Victorian upper classes where you start with a Lord or Lady and then take on staff (nannies, gardeners, chauffeurs, etc.) marry suitors and have children, whom you then marry to other suitors and so on. It gets nasty, however, because you can play "Gossip" cards on other players at any time to cause negative effects such as making them lose all their money, having a child discovered to be illegitimate or even having it "discovered" they were having a secret affair with one of the servants whom they then marry. Thing is, Gossip cards don't work on their own; one player plays the first one and then it's up to another player to play an exact copy or the "True" card which confirms any gossip. The aim is to end a round with 18 status and it seems fairly balanced between how you attain and hold it (staff, children, awards for most gossip, etc.) and the ultimate winner pipped it with a tie break with 1 more gold. But the greatest thing about this game? The main Lord/Lady cards and offspring cards are effectively easy-wipe "tiles" so you can both name them and draw extra details. One sister delighted in building a family containing Lady Humps, Lady Garden and Lady Lips as well as Lord Vader. We also had Lord Almighty. It's all great silly fun if you don't take the nastiness of the Gossip cards too seriously (Lord Snoozanne married his nanny!) and sometimes they're just funny in themselves when you force a young Lord to marry the old Butler. Definitely a good joint gift for my sisters, so I'm very pleased with it. Also played How To Serve Man with my sisters and they got into it once they grasped the worker placement mechanic. Plus, had a go with the Epic Spell Wars expandalone, which we didn't mix with my original set (since this was my sister's after she loved the original so much last year); it adds a few new interesting mechanics with blood magic and creatures so you get some more interesting possibilities. I think just a neat little addition like the "Reactions" was also cool since it lets you do stuff even if you die before getting to do your spell... like retaliating and taking down your attacker with you. And a few days before Christmas I played some more games with my regular group, less one player, and took on Burgle Bros. again since that's a max of 4 players (and one friend hadn't actually tried it before). We actually managed to win but it was so close and took a bit of luck with the event cards... and the tool cards... and the building layouts. Not to take anything away from some of our expert planning too. Felt good to finally beat it on the third try. Yeah, take that, game!

Grabbed the Witcher 3 expansion pass while it's in the PS4 sale. It's not as if I'm trying to rush through ACIV: Black Flag to play Syndicate but also want to play Life is Strange and a bunch of other games...

Small update Tried one of my new purchases from Action Phase Games, who made one of my favourite games (Heroes Wanted) but have been publishing lots of neat games lately; this being one of them. Kodama: The Tree Spirits You take on the role of someone trying to please the kodama by growing the bestest tree in the forest and becoming the new "forest guardian". You do this by adding branch cards to your starting trunk and scoring points as you create chains of the different features (clouds, stars, caterpillars, mushrooms, flowers and fireflies). Each player has a trunk with one of the types of feature and take turns adding a card across three seasons made up of four turns. Turn by turn you score for each card based on the new features you add that chain back down the branch to the trunk. There are rules with how you can place a card in that it must connect to a branch without blocking features on that card or overlapping another card and you can't place a branch if it would score you more than 10 points (the idea being that it encourages you to "branch" out and make a beautiful tree). There are also "decrees" for each season (bonus scoring opportunities) and each player gets four kodama at the start for further scoring opportunities. Each kodama has a different scoring condition and you will use three of them across the game, playing one at the end of each season. Essentially, you are trying to rack up points branch by branch but you really need to keep an eye on your kodama in the long-run because they can score you seriously big bonuses. The tree of the player in the photo had a kodama awarding "4 points for every branch card within two of your trunk that has your trunk's feature" and he has 7 of those things, netting a whopping 28 points where most of us were just pleased to maximise the 12 points ones where you score 2 points for each different feature *somewhere* (since there are only 6 different types of feature). Really enjoyable and easy to grasp game with some nice artwork. Next up was Takenoko, which I've actually played before but I think I forgot to mention. It's from Antoine Bauza (Tokaido, Samurai Spirit, Ghost Stories) who really has a thing for Japanese culture, huh. There is a hex board that you build and irrigate but also send a farmer round to grow bamboo and a panda round to eat it. Each player will have some secret objective cards that will score for hex layouts (there are green, yellow and pink types), specific bamboo stack configurations or just collections of different coloured bamboo the panda has eaten. The first to achieve seven gets a bonus 2 point card and then everyone else gets one final turn, and you only start with 3 objective cards (1 of each category) So from turn to turn you will manipulate the board state by moving the farming or panda and other things, with everyone either helping or hindering each other. It's okay but it can be a bit hectic to actually try and figure out what other people are trying to achieve and sometimes you can just get lucky with which objective cards you pull. Then we finished with Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game starting with the "first three episode" run (it treats the pilot as two episodes) since this group hadn't tried it before. I think if you start with this one (as a new player naturally would...) then you might have a bad first impression because the first episode is kind of bullshit. I mean, I know co-op games are meant to be hard but this episode's deck contains one card that can completely fuck you if it winds up near the top of the deck. Like the beginning of the pilot, you are trying to recover salvage before an Alliance Cruiser catches you... except this uses a shuffled deck so the Cruiser might be the first card and most of the three salvage you need towards the end. Which is what happened in our game. The additional problem is that it also adds Alliance Gunships that get stronger with the Cruiser out. It boils down to either not having enough "Money" to recover salvage and repair the utter beating your ship is taking balanced against not having enough "Fight" to destroy the gunships (there is no way you can destroy the Cruiser with your early decks). Needless to say, Serenity got blown up pretty fast. Instead, we moved onto the Bushwhacked, Shindig & Safe run which is really fun. Bushwhacked has you trying to uncover the Reaver survivor as he keeps hiding if you're not quick enough, Shindig has you taking on Atherton Wing (one player managed to use Zoe's cool "Shotgun Blast" which insta-defeats a card it uncovers, except he can't be defeated unless he's hit you first) and had us surviving relentless "Dance" cards that gave us Flaws (character specific things that wreck you) and Safe had us putting out flames (hurting ourselves in the process) and rescuing the two captives... while herding cows and defeating the Grange Brothers. All in all, I still really like it (particularly with my difficulty adjustment tweaks) and it really does become a full co-op experience turn-to-turn as you build your decks and get "co-ordinate" cards that can support people on their turns.

Hey, more of that guy who people suspect is really a robot. Oh, and Blade Runner also.

Star Wars: Rogue One Firstly, you can see the love and attention that's gone into recreating the look and feel of those earlier Star Wars films. It's got all the little details. However, It takes a little while to get going but it's never exactly boring. The way the earlier stuff is pieced together just leaves a little to be desired. That said, however, once the gang are together it's rather well-constructed. There's a sequence at the mid-point that gives you everything: the character conflict, suspense, drama and then you get to the big finale that manages to combine multiple fronts almost effortlessly. Some of the cast get a little short-changed (and they're great, too!) and I can't help but feel the two "leads", while good, are lacking charm. Overall though, really good.

Nah, nothing new in the Rise of Iron story. There are quests which are just to get you to check out the new things and a record book if you want to earn shaders and stuff.

Yeah, I've not been playing much (mainly because my friends haven't) but I enjoy sparrow racing and am looking to do the raid challenges and such so I'm just chasing that higher light level at the moment, really. PvP can be fun from time to time.

Update! First up, Star Trek: Five-Year Mission Pretty straightforward co-op game. You take on the role of crew aboard the Enterprise (the boards are double-sided so you can play as original series or TNG, or mix both) each a unique skill. You then take turns drawing alerts from simple (blue) to tough (red) and try and solve them by rolling and placing dice on the appropriate symbols, with some of the cards introducing detrimental effects. There's a limit to how many of each alert can be out so there's a need to balance long-term and short-term placement since you select which colour of dice you want to take from the collective pool each turn. Thematically, the colours are meant to represent different things (combat, engineering and something) but we just breezed straight past that aspect without much thought. You keep going until you get 10 points off the alert cards (only those that feature the Federation symbol or whatever it is. In the image above it's the glare-y pile). There's some other elements such as receiving/healing injuries, fixing the ship and special abilities on some of the alert cards. Kind of like Star Trek: Elder Sign, I guess, except my memory of Elder Sign is that it can really kick you when you're down whereas this just feels like the worst that can happen here is having not so efficient turns but at least you can usually do something to contribute. It might also appeal more to Star Trek fans, who might pick up on the thematic stuff. Then had a five-player game of Argent: The Consortium It's a bit of a slog going through all the rules (and fitting it on the table) and it's never going to be a quick game, but I still really like it. It gradually escalates as people get more spells, treasures, mages, etc. and discover which are the real endgame conditions to chase. We still played with the basic setup so we didn't get to see some of the most interesting rooms but it still had lots going on. The "scoring" was pretty interesting as we gradually discovered who had earned the favour of each voter and the person most people thought would win just lost it. A couple of us had figured out one guy was chasing "most mana" but we couldn't quite keep up with him and he wasn't close to winning anyway so there's this real need to be efficient with figuring out what spaces are the most rewarding. It still felt quite balanced in that chasing certain things tends to set you back in other ways so really you're looking to just squeak ahead in a given category at the last moment. Anyway, it took a while to play (I don't think it was especially long compared to another worker placement game like Stone Age) but due to the nature of the endgame conditions I think it's a continually engaging experience (unlike Stone Age) and will probably go quicker when everyone's more familiar with the rules. Then we finished up with 6 nimmt! This is actually an old(ish) card game from a German designer (the title translates to "Take 6") probably with it's inspiration from old games like New Market. You have a deck of 104 cards, numbered from 1-104 (I know, right?!) but each one will feature a certain number of bullhead symbols (bear with me). Each person is dealt a hand of 10 cards and then 4 go in the middle. Then each person will pick a card, with all of them revealed simultaneously and then added to the rows based on some simple rules. The cards are placed in ascending order and must go in the row with the smallest difference (e.g. if there's a row with 23 and 37, and someone's played a 42 then it must join the 37 row). The twist is that no row can hold more than 5 cards and, therefore, if a person would ever have to place a card in a full row they must take all 5 cards into a personal "bull pen" and have their card begin a new row. There's a bit of tactical play/risk management in that you might choose to play a card lower than every possible row so that you can then choose which row to replace since some might only have two cards or a lower overall number of bull heads on the cards. A round goes until all 10 cards from each player have been played and then you count up how many bull head icons are present in each player's "bull pen" with the game ending once someone gets 66+ and the winner having the lowest total. It's a neat filler game that provides plenty of "emotional responses" for such a simple ruleset, especially when, thanks to your own calculation, you see someone else eat a huge stack of bull (wait...). It helps that I squeaked the win with some smart risk management (the second round was really tough for me with so many clumped together low numbers). Highly recommended game.

So, The Dawning (Christmas event) is now going on. As is fitting with the season it seems quite rewarding because you get presents to open each day (usually just materials and strange coins but I hear there's a chance for other cool stuff) and there's extra treasures and things to earn. They've added strike scoring too, with some new exotics (different flavours of Thunderlord) and Ice Breaker is back. They've updated some old strikes too and improved the boss fights for some (you actually fight inside the Omnigul room now!) And Sparrow Racing League has returned! With two new tracks (and new music for the old tracks). I'd forgotten how much I both love and hate it. The new tracks are really neat and it feels awesome when you nail a racing lane but also I hate how little bumps can completely fuck you up and how annoying other (bad) racers are when they knock you about while racing horribly. On the plus side, SRL is so rewarding that post-race drops can get you to 400 light since they increase incrementally based on what you have equipped. After a few races, I got some pieces in the 390s and saw others getting 400s (already being 400 themselves though...) so I'll probably stick with it to help boost myself a little more for when I find time to raid over the holidays.

Actually, a loose cannon is unmoored, rolls backwards, fires once and takes down the ship with it. Even stopped clocks are right twice a day though... unless they're digital, then maybe just once. And Trump's not going to them either! Anyway, here's how badly the DNC fucked up. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html

I don't know. It might be fun to unpack it but I'm not confident it could live up to any theorising.

I finished S1 of Westworld. On reflection... eh, it was good, I suppose. It feels too much like an Abrams or Nolan joint in that it sacrifices proper story and pacing for "ooh, twists". First of all, this was essentially a 10.5 hour prologue. Some of the strides taken during the finale feel too sudden or half-baked because they laboured the actual developments for too long. And then there's this serial issue of, I don't know a better word but... dissonance. It doesn't really explore its themes because it's too focused on making you pick apart the storytelling rather than the story. I'm probably sounding harsher than I really feel but I was hoping for something more. I think there's a lot of cool things to discuss but I fear much will be about essentially shallow sleight-of-hand.

You're a robot, Ethan. A ROBOT. This are me: https://goo.gl/rECasy Small update on the board gaming front with some D&D5E musings: Argent: The Consortium You play someone at a magic university (sort of Hogwarts-ish) vying to take over with the chancellor resigning. This is done by using your team of mages to fulfill the desires of the voting consortium, each with their own different criteria (in the vein of "most sorcery spells", "most divinity spells", "most mana", "most gold", etc.) This is a worker-placement game with all sorts of twists. Firstly, the end-game scoring varies from game to game because the consortium of voters does not use the whole deck and nor are all of them known by everyone at the beginning of the game (there are 12 total, 2 begin face up and then players get to "place a mark" each in order to look at another different one). This means that the "value" of certain places will vary depending on what voters are looking for. Secondly, the university itself is incredibly modular, being made up of all sorts of rooms which are also double-sided. This changes the abundance of resources or types of actions available from game to game. Thirdly, your workers are mages of different types. Red mages can wound other mages to steal their slots... except green mages who cannot be wounded. However, you could cast a spell to affect a green mage... but if it's a blue mage, they are immune to spells but not wounding. There are also speedy Purple mages who can be placed as a fast action (a free action before the main action you must take each round) and Grey mages who get to be placed after casting a spell as your main action. Since most of the rooms and their spaces only resolve at the end of the round, there all sorts of fighting over spots or drafting "tempo" teams (purple mage then spell then grey mage to get out 2, possibly 3 mages a turn depending on the spell). Fourthly, the spells! As the game goes on you can learn and upgrade spells which let you do all sorts of weird and wonderful things, each based around its school of magic (sorcery, nature, divinity, planar, mysticism). Some are aggressive, some are defensive, some allow you to manipulate time (extra placements or turns) or enter the shadow dimension (extra slots not usually available). Anyway, if you wanted to wipe out a room of mages with a fireball or use a whirlwind to rearrange a room, it's possible. There is a lot of little stuff to learn but its mostly intuitive and incredibly easy to teach with everything explained on the cards along with icons for "at a glance" experienced players. I think it could get a bit hectic during later rounds with lots of players and spells (and mages) flying back and forth and it's a real table hog, but otherwise infinitely replayable and great fun. Star Trek: Catan I'd never played Settlers before but I had an idea of what to expect. There are planets with different resource types and numbers, you build outposts and spaceships, etc. What lifts it above normal Settlers, I'm assuming, is that there are Development Cards and uh... People Cards? Development cards are for extra resources, stealing resources or moving the Klingon ship (usually on rolls of 7) while the People Cards are crew members from the original series who let you break the rules in small ways. They are swapped around quite freely so you can try and adapt depending on the game state. That said, it's still about rolling and seeing what you get and then trying to make trades and building/buying more stuff, etc. Simple, relatively relaxed gameplay. Problem is it sounds like 3 is the only viable player count (which we had) but the game dragged on for over 2 hours... It is not engaging enough to last past 1 hour, I feel. D&D 5E So, with a friend running a cool little Pathfinder campaign for us and getting a few of us into Critical Role, I was inspired to try my hand at creating my own campaign. Rather than use PF, I opted for 5E because it's meant to be the most accessible and it would be something different to try. My general thoughts are that, yeah, this is the best edition if you're looking to get into fantasy tabletop RPGs. You have 3 core books: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide & Monster Manual, which give you everything for crafting your own campaign. There is also a starter set as well as pre-gen characters if you really want to start with the basics. The SRD is online and completely free which also gives you plenty of options without spending a penny/cent. When the Critical Role DM decided to switch from Pathfinder to D&D5E for the broadcast it was based on it being much easier to handle combat (especially for large groups like theirs) because there weren't so many modifers flying around. Overall, I have to agree, it does a good job of reducing the overheads for DMing and most modified/modifiable interactions inside and out of combat can be handled via contests or applying advantage or disadvantage. It's up front about how modifiable things are in such that maybe Intimidation is normally a Charisma-based skill but if you've got some hulking great half-orc you could opt to make it a Strength-based intimidation instead. And advantage/disadvantage is an inspired little system in that for the D20 roll the character rolls two/twice and takes the lower/higher result. Attacking from stealth? Advantage! Trying to shoot someone in melee range? Disadvantage! It also works for things like ranged weapons. Rather than subtracting 2 for each excessive 5ft or whatever, you just say that out of range = disadvantage. Sure, it doesn't have the most granular detail like Pathfinder but it allows it to be more flexible and smoother, with greater scope for improvisation without tripping over other rules. Anyway, I had fun DMing my first proper session the other night. I'd done a lot of prep with a couple of different paths they could take after trying to tie their party together neatly (first short session was a little introduction setpiece with a collapsing tavern) as well as random encounters to liven up any journeys (and try and get the party up past their squishy level 1 status) but it's true that you can never really have too much prep. To assist their journey I had a trader who would give them a ride in exchange for protection, but stupidly didn't really prep anything in case they wanted to have a conversation with him (I'd assumed they'd mostly want to rest properly after their first near-death encounter). So I was just making stuff up in a terrible accent that went between "farmer" and "Irish". I think the most fun though was when they got the goblin encounter. Three goblins is classed as "Hard" but then there is a Goblin Boss who is CR1 on his own (equal to a 4 x level 1 party but probably at a disadvantage being only one of him). I decided that the three goblins had grown sick of their boss and tied him up in a chest to go and throw him in a river, so they could fight the goblins then not resist the lure of the locked chest making it a two-part encounter for maximum exp. The party stumbled upon the 3 goblins heaving this chest along and when they were spotted saw an opportunity to attack the trader: cue fight. With the goblins dead, they attempted to smash open the chest but failed and heard a muffled and distressed cry. Worried, the rogue picked the lock only to discover the angered goblin boss inside who still had his dagger and was able to cut his ropes (I still wanted him to have a weapon but not be too tough). They got the story reasons with a quick line "You little shits forgot to take my knife and now you're gonna p... huh?" Everyone rolled initiative but the goblin boss was going last giving the party the opportunity to mollify him. I had not prepared for that! Cue an exchange where the goblin explains what happened in basic terms and manages to get two of the party to return "his gold" from the goblins they killed. They manage to sell him back one of the scimitars before he gets into a heated exchange with the bard who is trying to get him to pay a toll or fee for being rescued. It was hilarious fun as I was scrambling to play how the goblin would treat money (he can't really count very well but knows "lots" or "over hundred" of gold) and where he calls home ("woods") as well as coming up with a suitable name (Grek) which he can't actually spell but tried to explain with a throaty enunciation. After all that, and to the trader's surprise, they let the little blighter go... maybe to be seen again, with the bard even writing a song about him. I think it was a success overall though, and my improvisation was better than I expected (or my friends were very accommodating). Everyone was playing their roles well too, so I look forward to more adventures and I know the areas in which I can improve.

It'sa me! Calm, Spontaneous, Ambitious, Gregarious, Deeply Immersed, and Practical https://goo.gl/YsqiUc I feel like most of that social stuff is because of Destiny though. My board gaming one is simply Greg(g)arious https://goo.gl/rECasy

No, things are either great or terrible, and it was terrible. It sucks. Booooo. Anyway, I'm liking most of what I'm seeing. I'm sure I'll come to like the new characters (although, I know the people who created ones like Mordin left the writing team after 3) because nothing is standing out yet. I almost don't want to see too much more before it comes out anyway. The combat seems a little "busy" but then I think 3 could get like that (and I got used to multiplayer where there is no "pause" to gather yourself) and it looks like there are lots more cool options. Onto what I do hate... those "big creature kills you" animations. They were shitty in 3 with those big brutes or banshees where it just happens sometimes if you're too close for a couple of seconds; there never seemed to be any consistency for what triggered it. Fortunately, the jetpack makes you a lot more mobile so maybe it's easier to avoid being too close in the first place.

He did?! DEEEEEEEAAAAAAN! BAN HIM! BAAAAAAAAN HIIIIIIM!

Got Life is Strange since that is £5 in the sale. Also picked up a light card game called Lords & Ladies where you play posh people who hire servants, marry their offpsring to certain suitors and spread malicious gossip. You know, a nice family game for Christmas.

It strikes me as a little odd that there are people who did not see this coming or did and just didn't care. Like, there are people so stupid that they'll fall for this Crooked Hillary crap when it's pretty clear that Trump is far, far worse and has never done any form of public service (quite the opposite, in fact). Even if the Clinton Foundation felt like "pay to play" or whatever, Trump was never going to drain the swamp. On the other hand, you have the GOP who clearly didn't mind Trump continuing his course because either a) if he'd lost they could hope to brush it all side as an anomaly or b) the win meant they could sneak everything they wanted through and then rely on impeachment or just sheer ineptitude/frustration to remove Trump from the presidency. It's pretty clear that Trump is such a stupid, vain, petty man that the right people behind the scenes have been able to manipulate him enough to get their way and just leave him to do his thing. At the end of the day, Trump just wants to be able to say he was President and look out for his own greedy, self-serving interests. I seriously think something needs to be done to stop this shit show before it really gets going.