2001-08-10 - 11:11 p.m.

Planetarion: Down and Dirty

Well, in my Planetarion galaxy it looks like things are going from bad to worse. It's not like anybody has attacked anybody (YET!) but the war of words is heating up.

On one side of this division is Sharon, our Galactic Commander, and her supporters, chief among them are her husband Johnny and their real-life friend Terror.

The other faction seems to be led by me and Lily, along with our colleagues Cocky, Britannia and Adamantium.

There are a group of people who think that the whole thing is disgusting and horrible, and they don't want to hear about it. These people are mainly voting for Sharon, simply out of habit.

This split in the galaxy seems to be getting worse on a daily basis. I know I can easily be accused of partisanship, but I just cannot believe how childish, stupid and foulmouthed Johnny and Terror are. Both of them are supposedly 30, but their posts on the galaxy bulletin board read like they are 13. They really should learn to curb their tongues - every time one of them opens his mouth it forces me to knock another couple of points off my estimate of their IQs.

Part of what is fueling this increasingly hostile feud are the feelings of deep betrayal on the part of many of the members of my galaxy. This has almost nothing to do with the actual game of Planetarion - these people feel personally backstabbed by people they considered their friends.

To add to the weirdness is the fact that I've recently discovered that some of my galaxy-mates have been a little MORE than friendly with each other, and the fallout from these relationships is adding momentum to the disagreements.

My galaxy has turned into some sort of grotesque soap opera, although "space opera" might be a better description.

For all the nastiness, the vote remains: Sharon 15, Uberhamster 10. It takes 13 votes to become Galactic Commander.

Today, the nastiness got ratcheted up another notch. To explain what has happened, I need to provide some more background.

There is a player in our galaxy called Foo. The reason I haven't mentioned him before is that this round he has been almost totally inactive, consistently the smallest planet in our galaxy. Most people don't like him because he's been a drag on our score.

In fact, his presence in our galaxy is something of a mystery. He's was a nuisance in the previous two round, and yet Sharon invited him in again. Go figure.

Foo never appears in the galaxy IRC channel, and he very rarely posts on the galaxy bulletin board. However, recently he has been popping up there more often, and he never fails to say something nasty and obscene about me. I'm not really offended by this - the guy is such a jackass that his insults are more like compliments. If he says something nasty to you, it's almost a sure sign that you're doing something right.

In the last couple weeks or so his ire seems to have shifted from me to Lily, mainly because she has been purposely needling him. She'll make some mildly disparaging remark, and Foo will just go nuts. Hey, it's fun!

Yesterday Lily said something that caused Foo to go bonkers. It caused him to put a long filthy post on the bulletin board about how Lily should keep her "fat, hairy ass" out of his business. He also tossed in something mean about me, too.

Well Sharon, Johnny and Terror thought that this was just about the funniest thing they had ever heard. This cause Sharon to do something that really made a lot of people mad.

In Planetarion, every galaxy can choose a banner. Generally it's a URL of some space-scape or something. There are a lot of galaxy banners that feature half-naked women, etc. I'd include a bunch of URLs so you could see what I'm talking about, but in a month the links will probably be no good.

For the last two rounds our galaxy banner has been pictures of the comic book character Dawn. You can see what she looks like here. I suspect that it's because Sharon thinks she looks like Dawn. Whatever.

However, this morning we got a rude shock. Our galaxy banner was a now photo from www.uglypeople.com featuring a 500 pound woman in a sting bikini, back view. The caption, in huge blue letters, said "BIG HAIRY ARSE!"

I'm sure Terror, Jimmy and Sharon had a big hearty horse laugh at how witty they were. I wasn't really mad, but I was surprised at how mean-spirited, petty and vindictive they've become.

Actually, I am a little annoyed. Not by the obvious attempt to needle Lily and me, but by the fact that I have to LOOK at the damned disgusting thing every time I go to the galaxy screen. Definitely puts me off my feed.

Ugh. I just spent half an hour trying to find the photo so I could link it. I failed to find it, but I definitely saw way too much bad ugliness. Now I think I need to go lie down.

But I really do not know what is going to happen next with my galaxy. What new lows can we sink to?