Ranting, Decanting, Panting?

In making fair attempts to float, at the least, on my promise, I'm updating; that is, if you can consider a series of (at best) loosely connected, unintellectual thoughts an update. There's a first for everything, I suppose.

Let me begin with an argument about why, in my opinion, many complex board games - like Risk, War of the Ring, Settlers of Catan, etc., are better in all degrees than the average video game. A 'complex board game' is one that prerequisites a fair amount of thought, and whose mechanics do not lay entirely in luck; such games are not War (a card game in which the objective is to gain the entire deck by comparing randomly selected cards), Candy Land (no explanation necessary), or Chutes and Ladders (see latter explanation), to name a few.

I do not mean to be an advocate of the dissolution of video games, and am myself a rather frequent player. I do mean to say, though, that I think many people should give board gaming more credit. It is difficult to replace the unique pleasure of sitting at a table with friends (who have become temporary sworn nemeses), and uncovering a dominating strategy that only deepens their (temporary) lust for your (in-game) punishment. For wargames, what is more gratifying than physically removing enemies' units from the board, having been trumped by your own? What can replace the release of a handful of dice, the anticipation of the roll's result, the weighted clicking of dice-against-table-against-dice?

Beyond the physical advantages board games have, one must also consider the mental. With many video games, the mind is only being used to process images, a menial task that we have been doing since a few weeks after birth. Board games, however, are far more complex: one must not only initiate some form of strategy himself, but must also acclimate to the varying strategy of his opponents, no matter the degree. The depth of a video game goes only as far as any computer may go; and need it be stated that, at its base, a computer is simply many logic gates that either turn on or off.

And here's one for the Green Party: after having been created, board games use no additional environmental resources! (Reader: 'huzzah' now, please.) Again, video games are great, and are great wasters of time. I simply believe that board games are being under credited, and overlooked with the advent of so much new technology.

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My next series of thoughts will be devoted to trying to understand why some phrases are used in English, though nonsensical if taken literally.

'Cool'. I believe it was first used to describe temperature.

"How's the weather today, lad?"
"It's very moderate today, sir. Not so warm, nor cold either."
"Hmm... 'Cool' isn't it?"

Maybe that's how it came about, though I think it more likely derived from the same word from which we get 'cold', employed to a lesser degree. But how did 'cool' come to be synonymous with such wonderful words as 'awesome' or 'wicked', or even (the phrase) 'wicked awesome'? Perhaps an English-speaking population living in a temperature-unstable location (like Indiana...) found that the temperature was best between hot and cold. It was 'awesome' or even 'wicked awesome' at such times. And so this temperature level began to be substituted in spoken sentences in place of words with such positive connotations; then, over time, its meaning officially became multi-faceted. Who knows?

Oh! A 'pair' of pants. I've labored over this one for some time, and still haven't overcome laziness enough to simply find a credible answer. The question that arises with pants, is why they must be purchased in pairs: one can buy a single t-shirt, but cannot buy a single pant(?). However, he can purchase a single pair of pants. I'm pretty sure that a 'pant' used to mean the clothing that covers a leg, or for simpler terms, a leg-sleeve. Because these 'leg-sleeves' used to be made independently, and only attached once both were prepared, it was more conventional to title their bonded state a 'pair' of 'pants'. And, actually, the term 'pant-leg' is still used commonly today, to refer to one leg of a pair of pants. I'm confident that the above explanation is fairly close to the truth.

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Though my opinions on the entertainment value of this post likely cannot be applied to the readers, I entertained considerable pleasure while writing this, and hope (if the readers are not overly disgruntled) to do more similar to this in the future. My attempts at comedy were thus, and creativity in writing marginal at best; but these are the flaws of thoughtless writing. Many thanks!