Depressing, really. You’d like to think that the people teaching the poem would be able to read it properly. I can think of a lot of ways to use the original poem in a classroom, and I’m not by any means a classroom teacher. I can think of a lot of ways to use the response poem, too (and it’s a good poem). If I had kids in that school system I’d be very unhappy.

He’s got the sweetest face! But what happened to his little ears? He’s got bandages all over them! Did he get hurt?

For boardgames most booklovers will gladly set down their library hauls for (albeit temporarily) you have to look at http://flyingmoose.org/melkbrad/mbmain.htm.

Who doesn’t love Anna Kareninaopoly, where you can “mortgage your principles and build emotional investments”? (”Will you be the first to reject the deceit and illusion of material wealth and exchange your emotional investments for true Enlightenment? Or will you fail and throw yourself under the wheels of the Nizhny Line Railroad in despair?”) I had the great fortune to have a friend with many of these great products growing up (Jane Eyre’s Chutes and Ladders was so much cooler than the regular version, and somehow seemed older, smarter, and more pretentious – things that for some reason seem attractive at the age of eight). Even though you can no longer buy them new, they sometimes show up on ebay.

Darn it. I had a nice long post I put here yesterday–except that I apparently didn’t actually post it. And I’m never going to REMEMBER it all.

Anyway, re: games–All of the games you mention in this post either frighten or confuse me. Most of my friends are huge fans of Settlers of Catan, which is another one of those civilization building type games. I am not. Vehemently not. It’s BORING. I don’t get all the strategy required for playing and if actually forced to participate, I find myself doing things like trading for as many sheep as I can so I can play with them, creating an town comprised of an all-sheep dance troupe or whatever amusing storyline my brain creates. This does not allow me to win and my town is usually overrun.

I prefer games like Cranium, which is fabulous, Trivial Pursuit, Loaded Questions, Apples to Apples, things like that. Games which use either random knowledge, which I have loads of (thank you, lifelong reading habit!), or knowledge of the psychology of the people I’m playing with. Cranium also has the charade section for you, and the yellow word play section at which I have a feeling you would kick butt. In short (ha!), I like games that I have a good shot at winning.

And for a game that’s strangely addictive (and complexity-wise is to those games Peter likes as a microbe is to a blue whale), I give you Pass the Pigs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_the_Pigs

****Is there a term for leaping up toward your human’s face and clashing your jaws together?****

Well, when it’s a 130-pound, 34-inch bitch doing it, you’re dodging feet more than teeth and saying “OFF!!!” and other colorful phrases, so the term would probably be “acting like a mannerless idiot” or, if you were being charitable, “irrational exuberance”.

— I have some good friends who a few months ago had a games night like this. They have TONS of games, and they had various games going in various rooms. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by them all (since they were mostly fairly complicated, which I can manage alright on an individual basis but there were LOTS of them). Well, the friend that I know best (they’re actually a couple, and I know her really well but am still getting to know him) decided that she was going to play… Yahtzee (sp?). I decided that what the heck, I’d come along mostly to see her, and so I went with her. The five or six of us that played had the best, most rocking game of Yahtzee EVER. I mean, we were screaming with delight (and I almost NEVER scream with delight), and jumping up and down, and every single one of us that played got at least one Yahtzee (which also NEVER happens), and we had the best time. So I’ll play complicated games if they come up, but I still hold that there’s nothing like the basics.

Although I’ll admit that part of why card games and such are my favorite is my competitive streak. I don’t mind losing, but I hate the feeling of a game like, say, Risk, where I can spend several hours losing with no way to change things around and nothing to do but wait for the inevitable.