Dragon Poker, Psychopathy, and Thunderbird

What can I say, I’m a man with a diverse field of interests. Lately, I’ve been egging on an idea of a Filipino version of dragon poker, a fictional cardgame by Robert Asprin in his Myth series (If you want a copy of the ebooks, post your email ad below). I’ve already had a bit of experience in creating cardgames, my first created cardgame deck (a blend of Magic the gathering and Pokemon) was borrowed by my younger brother to share and teach his other classmates at their catholic school how to play it. Unfortunately my drawn illustations and blasphemous card names (like demonic clown) caught the attention of one of their nuns, and I had to write a letter of apology to prevent my younger brother from getting a ridiculously low grade in his values. So I’m goin to try my luck again with this pet project. Since my brother and the rest of the family isnt here in the country anymore, I couldnt imagine it being worse, and It’ll be the only sort of fun I’ll be having since I’ll be starting my abstinence from computer games this coming wednesday, first day of the second sem (it’ll be my sort of birthday gift to christ this coming december).

Call it a Psychopathy month for me, I’ve just read a couple of articles from a magazine about it, namely the October issue of Reader’s digest and some old back issue of New Scientist, I stumbled upon three articles in the internet (whose addresses were among the many bookmarks I lost after formatting my hard disk), and three Psychopathic movies, American Psychopath 1 and 2, and Equilibrium. I know equilibrium seems to be a bit far off to be called a Psychopath movie, but believe me, in the absence of human emotions, relying on reason alone leads to absence of moral judgment. Machiavellian, as they say. Anyhow, after I’ve read the reader’s digest article, Psychopaths among us, I wondered if I myself am a psychopath. Chasing chickens, making cats do somersaults and pumping dogs were one of my childhood hobbies after all. So I checked out wikipedia for a Psychopath test... well, here’s a checklist plus my comments if you didnt want to bother clicking that link. (it might link itself back to this page as all of my bulletin posts do).

1. Glibness/superficial charm  —> Nope, well, yes, if you count scowling as charming…
2. Previous diagnosis as psychopath  –> Nope
3. Egocentricity/grandiose sense of worth  —> Yup, I do count myself as an ubermensch
4. Proneness to boredom/low frustration tolerance  —> Yup, I easily fall asleep during boring classes
5. Pathological lying and deception  —> Yup, “I didnt do it” is my second most favorite expression. My first is “Ha?”, a rather dumb phrase I’m trying to replace with the more eloquent “Pardon?” (got that one from jem jem).
6. Conning/lack of sincerity  —>  Nope, I am a practical person. nor am I a politician.
7. Lack of remorse or guilt  —>  Nope, I am constantly bullied by my conscience.
8. Lack of affect and emotional depth  —> Nope, I guess at a superficial level I may appear so.
9. Callous/lack of empathy  —>  Nope, I bleed when friends hurt. thats why I smile to ease the pain.
10. Parasitic life-style  —> If you consider constantly borrowing notes and food from my classmates as parasitic, then mark me guilty.
11. Short-tempered/poor behavioral controls  —>  Yup, I always throw a tantrum whenever my computer crashes and I havent saved my documents.
12. Promiscuous sexual relations  —>  Nope, I take pride in being such a prude.
13. Early behavior problems  —>  Yup, Like what I said, I used to waterboard cats. oops, did I say that?
14. Lack of realistic, long-term plans  —>  Nope, I think World Domination is realistic enough for me.
15. Impulsivity  —>  Yup! No, wait! I think I am!
16. Irresponsible behavior as parent —>  Yup, I used to let my babies in SIms 2 be taken away by the social service department. hehehe
17. Frequent marital relationships —> Yup, I look for nice breeding schemes with aliens and vampires in Sims 2 Nightlife.
18. Juvenile delinquency  —>  Yup, I sent my Sims 2 teen characters to the military school.
19. Poor probation or parole risk —>  Nope, i hope not in the future.
20. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions —> Nope, as I said earlier, my conscience never let pass an opportunity to beat me up.
21. Many types of offense —> Yup, I once poked a classmate of mine in kindergarten with a pencil, gave a black eye to my gay classmate in first grade, and had conducted plastic enema to a friend during highschool
22. Drug or alcohol use not direct cause of antisocial behavior —> It depends.

11 yes/maybes out of 22. Hmm. Not bad.  I’m too lazy to become a psychopath. What a tiring chore it must be, going around killing people and cooking their brains.

I may be a bit nihilistic, or may have a deluded sense of grandeur sometimes, but that’s the way tortured artists should be.

~~~
Slight pause here, I ‘ve just continued this post. I was hoping to add more to the subject above. But anyway, I just finished configuring my POP3 account for Yahoo mail. You see, having multiple email addresses can be such a pain in the rear, so I got myself an email client, Mozilla Thunderbird, and configured it to retrieve my email accounts in yahoo, google and hotmail. Whereas, I would log-in to three separate sites and log-in one by one, now, I just click on my “Get Mail” button, and voila, I get all of my mails at the same time. The only bit of problem I encountered was when I found out that the free yahoo mail doesnt have POP3. YPops helped me with this one though. Thank god. I still have to download a hotmail version too, since the free account doesnt have POP3. I’m also gonna try getmail, web2pop, mailgov, or mrpostman, in case ypops doesnt run smoothly.

So, that’s it for now. Wish me luck with my filipino dragon pokers, or should i call it tikbalang poker?

And I am not a psychopath. I cant believe it took me two hours to finish this post.