there's an extra layer of extraction in the sermons with our phones out. if i write at home i can't even access the past sermons, which i like to do on occasion when storming for subjects. i keep wanting to do a continuation of the sermon from one year previous, but no. it's like 6 degrees of separation with my own web page.

i had to pry myself off civII to write this. worse, sometimes i have to pry myself off the game to record, & i don't have a set deadline for that. civilization's just an addictive game, 5x more addictive than heroin, scientists estimate.

we're all civ addicts in this house. & along similar lines, recently we began playing risk. risk is quite a fine board game of world domination, more interactive than civilization (you're playing against other people) but far simpler. in risk you just have generic "armies" who battle each other based solely on numbers & dice. there's no real diplomacy inherent in the game, just fightin'.

so sometimes we add our own diplomacy. you can tell we have civ problems because one game we started passing around notes using the exact wording of the game to form an alliance. it was 3 against 1 (she was pretty powerful) but then one of our allies suddenly broke the alliance before our enemy was even vanquished. as an ally, i was forced to retaliate: "europeans activate alliance with africans! africans declare war on asians!" the next turn our former friend was wiped from the board.

civilization II (the one i have, although i've been using "civilization" generically) is far more complex, with dozens of types of units, cease fires, peace treaties, trade routes, science, & money. but as complex as it is, as fun & enthralling a microcosm it can become, it still doesn't come close to the maddening complexity of real politics.

i feel all this is relevant because the scent of war is in the air (with all the planes up there, how could it not be?). nato has been bombing kosovo for a week now. there is no way to mimic such a situation in civII. for one thing, in civII there can only be 7 civilizations in the world at once. there are more countries in nato than that, & that doesn't include the rest of the world.

try refugees living in the woods. no such concept in civ. there might be someone outside one of your cities, but never unarmed refugees hiding in your city. there really aren't borders between countries at all in civ, just land with different peoples interspersed, the few squares around a city considered sacred. every once in a long while some opponent will suddenly split into 2 warring factions, but that's it. there definitely aren't countries fragmenting into bunches of little countries with odd names such as bosnia-herzegovina.

you can't turn your guns against your people in civ. it doesn't work. your weapons just ignore them. you can't really take part in a civil war either. there is religion in civ but it's sanitized; it has nothing to do with how you choose your enemies. so even though you could play as slobodan milosevic of the serbs in civilization if you wanted, you really couldn't do what he does or be in his situation. there is no yugoslav "powder keg" in the game & can't be. there can be no struggle on the west bank. the motivations that cause these wars have no relevance in the game, & i'm thankful they don't. i for one couldn't bear having to worry about how many of my citizens are moslem & how many xtian.

but i did hear something awhile back of a new civ game in the works... i looked for it long ago but it wasn't out at the time. by now who knows? & knowing nothing about it, how can i say what the new version might bring?