When I showed up for our last league night I was looking and feeling quite scattered. Unfortunately, this year I am serving on Academic Senate at CMU, and the meeting dates all this semester coincide exactly with league meetings, including the times that additional weeks get skipped. As a result, I will only be able to make it just in time for the start of our league meetings and Joseph will have the responsibility of setting up the Smackdown and checking people in. When I arrived and started trying to double check Joseph’s attendance sheet, I found that he had missed a few people and I got a little frustrated and complained that he isn’t very good with names. Linda said it sure sounded like I was throwing Joseph under the bus and I joked that Joseph is always happy to go under the bus for me. Then I felt bad for being a bit of a jerk and made clear to everyone that in fact, Joseph is an invaluable league assistant without whom it would be impossible for me to keep the league running!
Last time was our third night of Season 23, so we started a new pair of banks. The current set are known (by me and possibly Joseph, if no one else) as Democritus and Heraclitus. These two pre-Socratic philosophers make a natural pairing for a bank rotation, because there is a tradition of referring to them as “the laughing philosopher” and “the weeping philosopher.” Baroque painters loved to depict them representing those opposite attitudes. In reality, they didn’t quite live at the same time. Heraclitus was already gone when Democritus was born. Heraclitus is known mainly for various cryptic aphorisms (hence his other nickname, “The Obscure”) and for his belief that fire, representing change, was the fundamental principle of nature. He’s also my favorite pre-Socratic philosopher. Democritus is best known for having the most developed early theory of atoms.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that I played bank Democritus, because I can only laugh at a night in which I managed to both set a personal best on Godzilla, have probably a personal top 5 game on Indiana Jones, and then also struggle to eke out 5 million on Metallica. Meanwhile, Tim was also in my group and managed to competely tear up Godzilla and then have a great game on Indiana Jones too, so those games were treating us well.
With only half of everyone having played each bank, the results aren’t too meaningful yet, but as things stand, Mike has the lead so far on Bank 3 (Democritus) and Danny on Bank 4 (Heraclitus).
Our Tuesday Night Smackdown game was Ghostbusters, and the B division played James Bond. Danny won with a walk-off on Ghostbusters (which he then didn’t actually walk off, but finished playing, because it was a great game) and I somehow managed to win on Bond, a game that frequently kicks my ass, including this past Friday when I got completely pulverized on it at RLM Amusements’ weekly tournament in Grand Rapids.
I’ll be seeing everyone soon, though don’t forget that I won’t be around until shortly before the start of league due to my Senate service. We’ll have a Smackdown game TBD, which Joseph will get started for everyone when he arrives about 6 pm. See you soon!