Two brothers, Keith and Glenn, are sitting in the office of their family business, a buffet style restaurant, discussing business. It is not going well.
Keith- I don't understand.
Glenn- Why are we losing our place in the world?
Keith- We need to think hard.
Glenn- To think smart.
Keith- We need to come up with a solution that will lead us back to prominence.
Glenn- Well, not back to prominence, because we are prominent. We need an idea that will keep us in our rightful place and crush the competition like so much insect underfoot.
The two brothers think for a moment.
Glenn- I wonder what grandpa would do.
Keith gets upset at this comment.
Keith- Oh no. Not this again.
Glenn- What?
Keith- This mindset. This way of thinking. This notion that we can solve all of our problems if we just do what grandpa would do in this situation.
Glenn- Hey, Grandpa Jefferson founded this buffet style restaurant. Through his hard work and agile mind, he built this business into what it was when our father took over. Our father left this restaurant in our hands, but we failed to live up to the legacy that this business had. We need to go back to the old style of business. We need to go back to the way things were run at our founding.
Keith takes a second to put his argument together.
Keith- Glenn, Grandpa Jefferson operated in his time. He built an institution that has stood the test of time, but he didn't do that by blindly sticking to the past. Grandpa Jefferson brought together the best ideas of the past, developed some new ones, and left enough room to allow for change when necessary. If Grandpa Jefferson had not developed a new way of business, a revolutionary way of business, he would have been overrun by that British place within months.
Glenn- True, but just because times have changed does not mean we should abandon our principals.
Keith- I am not proposing that.
Glenn- That's what it sounds like to me. To me, what you are proposing betrays the principals that our grandfather founded this restaurant on. Principals like letting the people decide what they want to eat, and what amounts of food they want to eat. Principals like letting the people be free to visit the buffet table as many times as they want, even if they visit the buffet table three, six, hell, even fifteen times if they so desire. And drinks! Have you even thought of drinks? The very drinks our grandfather loved and adored.
Keith- No, I love drinks as much as the next guy.
Glenn- Well, I don't believe you. I bet you can't even name Grandpa Jefferson's favorite soda, can ya!
Keith gets up from his chair in a huff.
Keith- It's Sweet Strawberry Sarsaparilla. The same kind of Sweet Strawberry Sarsaparilla we serve to this day! But we aren't talking about Sweet Strawberry Sarsaparilla, we're talking about keeping this buffet in business. If we don't start turning this place around, and do it fast, we're going to be taken over by that Chinese place across the street. Is that what you want?
Glenn contemplates what Keith has just said. Keith takes a deep breath and sits back down across from his brother.
Glenn- Perhaps we can make slight alterations. Not anything too drastic, we don't want to lose our loyal customers. Maybe something cosmetic. Like pulling out the carpets in favor of some hardwood flooring.
Keith- Some green hardwood flooring?
Glenn- No, regular hardwood is much cheaper. We could stay open later.
Keith- Yeah! The chinese place makes a killing late at night with the stoner community.
Glenn- I bet those pot heads would love Sweet Strawberry Sarsaparilla.
Keith- Of course, everybody loves Sweet Strawberry Sarsaparilla.
The two brothers continue discussing things, eventually coming to a common understanding about a way forward for their family business. The business flourishes once again, untill the Chinese place sees it as a threat and blows it up.
END SCENE
Red Impressions: Fable
Not too long ago, I started playing Fable. Not Fable 2 or Fable 3, the original Xbox release of Fable that I've owned since the game was released. I've tried playing this game several times in the past, but this time I was determined to play this game through so that I could go on to play the other games in this series which I have also owned since release. I tried this, I really sincerely did. I played Fable for about a week before I decided to stop.
I've been trying to figure out why I decided to stop playing Fable. I'm not an RPG hater, games like KotOR, Final Fantasy XII, and Mass Effect rank among my favorite games ever. Hell, I even named a character in The Hawk: Consequences Of Mayorust after two characters in Final Fantasy VIII. So why didn't Fable hook me like other RPGs? I think I know why.
I ran into a similar problem with Oblivion, which, while I still think is great, also didn't hook me in. It's not a problem you can avoid, this problem lies at the very essence of this game. Some would argue that the problem I have with Fable is this game's charm. The problem I have with Fable is all the medieval aspects in this game. The weaponry, the clothing, the cities, the speech, the chairs that people sit on, it's all medieval and I don't like it. Truth be told. outside of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I dislike anything with any medieval elements in them.
So, that is why I stopped playing Fable and probably will not be playing any other games in the Fable series. Perhaps if they drastically change the game environment, I might play Fable 4, but I doubt it. Hopefully, the game I play next will hook me in better. Let's take a look at Dragon Age Origins and see if that's possible.
Shit.
So, this is a real thing? Not a parody? Really?
The Events Of Friday
The first piece of this blog post, entitled "The Buffet", is a political satire about the debate going on about how we should be making decisions in America. It is a comment on how people on the left and the right side of the isle disagree on how relevant the feelings of America's founding fathers are to our governmental decisions. The grandfather referenced, named after Thomas Jefferson, is supposed to represent the founding fathers. The right wing stereotype was named after Glenn Beck, former host on Headline News and current Fox News host. The left wing stereotype was named after Keith Olbermann, who, as of Friday, former anchor and host on MSNBC.
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I wrote "The Buffet" on Tuesday. It's based on an idea that I had over the previous weekend that I started to put together on Monday in it's current form. It is not meant to be a tribute to Keith Olbermann. I used Keith's name because he's one of the persons people think of when they think of a prominent liberal. It's who I think of when I think of a prominent liberal.
There are three shows that I value more than any other to give me my information of the world. The first is Radio From Hell. This radio show is proof to me that liberalism is alive and well in the state of Utah, even in the face of the very conservative people in power. The second is The Daily Show. Cable television shaped the person I am today, and The Daily Show is among those shows that shaped me. The third was Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Truthfully, Countdown shaped the way that I articulate myself as a liberal. I no longer go absolutely completely berserk about the things that conservatives do that aggravate me any more. I am calmer, more well reasoned now in my outrage. Countdown taught me the value of not saying that something is fucked up, but to show that thing and let the audience figure out that what they are seeing is fucked up.
And now it's gone. Now Countdown is gone, and a unanswered question still remains. Why? Why did this happen? Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, tell us why. You should do this because we, the audience, are looking at this situation, asking the question why, and not getting an answer causes us to look at this situation and figure out what we are seeing.
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