Downloaded Tropico 5 yesterday. MAN am I glad that I didn't buy that piece of crap. I bought Tropico 3 years ago and was really burned by the experience. Terrible game. The only reason I bought it was because the original Tropico was great.

It's a game where you rule a fictious island in the Caribbean. But what sucks is the totally linear nature of it. The game is divided into stages. In the first stage, you're colonial governor and have to lead a revolt against the ruling country. But...what if you don't want to? What if you want to continue to be a territory? Too bad. That doesn't fit the narrative.

Then it's WWII. You can either side with the Allies or the Axis. But...the Allies always win. So siding with the Axis is totally foolhardy. You can't change history.

Then it's the Cold War which I think is the final section where you have to deal with the US and Soviet Union. I don't know what happens here because I quit.

The first Tropico was mostly about ruling your island, making the people happy, winning elections, et cetera. Or you could rule over them with a strong military and not worry about keeping them happy and winning elections. There was the US and Soviets in that game too but very nominal.

Now it's just not fun. And they really skimped on the character appearance options. There's three faces, three races, about eight outfits, and maybe ten colours to choose from. Not nearly enough. Not that it really matters because your avatar is hardly used in the game. But it's very amateurish.

What else...I don't just want to talk about a video game that I didn't like. I'm going to go urinate. It will give me time to think.

Well, that was uninspiring. Passport...I have an appointment with the US embassy in a couple of weeks. Hopefully that goes fine. I mean, I have the name on my social security card, expired driver's licence, National Insurance card, letter from a doctor, bank statements, council tax bills, absolutely everywhere. How much more could they want?

BBC3. New drama. Tatau. 13 minutes in and it's absolutely awful. What are the nerds on Twitter saying? Hmm...this Ken Edwards chap really hates it but generally mixed reviews so far.

John Dillinger. What's up with him? He's my favourite gangster. We're both from Indiana and he died right near where I was born and raised. Robbed banks. I use his aliases online. Seemed a genuine badass but not a dick about it. I can't wait until his Wikipedia article comes out in paperback. Ridiculous. Longest article I've ever seen. And for what? A violent gangster.

Let's contrast this to, say, Carl Sandburg's Wikipedia page. Oh man. 2,286 words for Carl Sandburg. Probably the greatest poet ever to come from the Midwest. Possibly in all of the US. Dillinger has 22,306.

Fortunately, the mathematics is easy. The Dillinger article is ten times longer than the Sandburg article. Dilinger died at 31. Sandurg lived until the ripe age of 89. Is Dillinger 10 times as important as Sandburg? Did he do ten times as much notable stuff?

I mean really, Carl Sandburg is the Mark Twain of poetry. Even somebody who thinks that poetry is a little fruity (as I do) is familiar with his work. Fog is his most well-known work as clearly gay.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

I mean...who cares? That's really focusing on the trivial.

But he also wrote about things that matter. Loads of great poems about Chicago. And anti-war poems. Like this one:

TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

I hope the spacing doesn't get all messed up. I hate that gay poetry spacing that they do.

Anyway, I like John Dillinger and all but he wasn't really a force for good in this world. He doesn't deserve ten times as much Wikipedia space as a great man like Carl Sandburg. Even Mark Twain only has 9415. No way is he half as important as fucking John Dillinger.