Seeking Guidance

“Mr. Pearson?”

“Ah yes, Brian, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir.  May I speak with you for a moment?”

“Certainly Brian, take a seat.”

“Thanks.  I’m…having some problems, and I thought I should come to you to talk about them.”

“Well that’s what an Assistant Principal is for, so fire away.”

“Well, I’m having problems with my Theatre I class.”

“I see.  You’re not the first person to get stuck with a class they didn’t necessarily want.  What sort of problems are you having?  Is the curriculum too tough? Or do you just find the subject boring?”

“Oh no, nothing like that.  I love the subject matter, and I actually signed up for Theatre.”

“Well what seems to be the trouble?”

“It’s the students sir.  I’m really having a hard time with the kids that are in Theatre class with me.”

“I see.  What is it that they are doing?”

“Well unlike me, most of them didn’t volunteer to be there.  They don’t really like the subject, and they get bored.”

“And when they are bored, they act out, right?”

“Yeah.  And some of them just want to sleep, which seems really stupid to me, because we go to school to learn, right?”

“Ideally, yes.”

“Others text under their desk, or try to do homework from other classes, which seems really rude and stuff, but even they don’t bother me that much.  I guess I feel sorry for them that they can’t just pay attention and learn new things like I was taught to do.  But others just want to talk all class, and they disrupt the learning process for the rest of us.  I’m trying to engage in the learning process, but I can’t keep up with the lesson with kids talking and laughing all the time.”

“So you are being distracted in your class?”

“Yes!  But that’s not the worst part.  Many of the kids in my class, not all, mind you, but enough to cause a problem, are just so awful.  I mean they’re just so hateful, and cruel, and full of spite.  They act so…so…”

“Mean?”

“Exactly!  They are so mean to each other, and mean to me.”

“Has anyone threatened you?”

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that, I’m not afraid or anything, it’s just that it gets so exhausting  sometimes.  I don’t know if you know what I mean, it’s just that there’s only so much spite, malice and hatred you can absorb before it begins to wear away at you.  It just makes me so tired and frustrated, it’s hard to even come to school most days.”

“So are you saying you don’t want Theatre class anymore?”

“I don’t know!  I really love the subject, and some of the kids in my class are great.”

“Well what do you want to do?”

“Is there any way you could move those kids out of the class?  The ones that don’t want to be there?”

“How many kids would that be, do you think?”

“Uh…like 75% of the class?”

“So you must see that such a course of action is impossible?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay then.  How about we just change your schedule for next year, and make sure that you don’t have Theatre I anymore?”

“But, but…what other class would I teach?”

April 1st, 2013

Today is not April Fool's Day.

On this date every year, I do not engage in frivolous pranks and tomfoolery (or Dickfoolery or Harryfoolery, for that matter,) and instead I focus on something much more serious.

Mostly.

Because for me, April 1st is a day to remember the selfless act of a good friend of mine.  We will simply call him Barry, so as not to expose his true identity, and because that's what I have always called him.

Barry is a former student of mine, who graduated about ten years ago.  I ran into him after he graduated, and he joined our circle of friends (once again, Dungeons & Dragons for the win!)  For several years he was a fixture at our house, joining our table as a valued friend, and was present for some great times, and was around when our first child was gestating (not during the actual birth or implantation, he's not that good of a friend.)  As I type this, my wife is playing the Wii, where is image, immortalized as a Mii remains, cheering her on as she skis downhill.

But this was also the time when I was entering end stage renal failure.  My family's disease, PKD, was stepping up its game, and I was losing the struggle.  I will spare you the details of what it is like to wake up every day feeling you are in a slow motion death scene from the most existentialist Sam Peckinpah film of all time (that's for another post,) but suffice it to say, these were uncertain times for me and my wife.

There is of course no treatment for this disease during the early stages, no drugs you can take to halt its progress or ameliorate the symptoms.  When it gets bad enough, they put you on dialysis, and I choose not to say anything about that particular form of treatment other than to praise all the powers that I never had to go through it personally.

So until then, you just soldier on until you can get a transplant, the only actual 'cure' for PKD.  But to get a kidney, you need a donor.  Most people turn to siblings or immediate family members, but when all your siblings and half your parents (I counted,) have the same disease, it narrows the list.  I had plenty of supportive cousins, uncles and aunts, but at this time we were checking everyone to see if they would be a match for my older sister, who promised to be a tougher match.

In the midst of this all, while we sitting around returning to the Temple of Elemental Evil, the subject of my need for spare blood filtration organs, Barry calmly states "I'll give you one of mine."

And pretty much like that, Barry was on the track to give me his kidney.  Now there's a lot of stuff that happened in between, but I'm going to jump right to the action SPOILER ALERT:  Barry totally donates his kidney and saves my life.

And that is enough to make him a hero in my book.  But there are parts of this story that are not widely known, and those are the details I think people need to know about him.

You see, you can't just show up to a hospital and say "take out my kidney and give it to this guy."  You have to go through lots of different steps, such as blood tests, psychological profiles to make sure you are competent to make this big of a decision, and interviews to be certain that you are not being paid/coerced into donating.  You also have to be prepared to be out of work for a few weeks while you recover from having some rather critical parts removed.

And since I decided to have the operation in Orlando, he had to travel up there for this process, which over a hundred miles away, a good three-hour drive (it's actually two hours for me, but there might be cops reading this, so be cool.)

Barry did all of this with aplomb.  At every turn, as he tells it, the transplant people did all they could to talk him out of it, to make sure he was completely serious about this.  And he had plenty of time to turn back; it was over a year between him making his decision and the actual surgery.

Part of that was actually his fault, which is the most amazing part of this story.  Even though my numbers were bad enough to qualify me to start the transplant, (creatinine around 10, if you are familiar with the numbers,) we had to wait because Barry had just gotten a new job, the selfish prick.

Barry works with computers, and had just gotten a new job, a really good one that he was excited about.  But he couldn't take time off to donate his kidney until he had been working there for like six months, so he could get full benefits, including vacation time.

VACATION TIME.

Let that sink in for a second:  here you have a guy who is working for months to earn vacation time so he could use it (ALL of it,) to take off to Orlando and get sliced open (which is still a dangerous procedure) and have one of his precious bodily organs ripped out to save the life of someone he owed nothing.

And that is what happened.  On April 1st, 2009, they wheeled Barry away on a gurney, and not long after that, they knocked my ass out and wheeled me out after him.  When I awoke, I had a new kidney and a new lease on life.  Barry had some permanent nerve damage in his hip, an ugly scar, and one week to recover before he jumped right back to work.

So it might make me a bit of a buzzkill on April Fool's day, but this date is not about nonsense to me.  It is a holy day in remembrance of St. Barry, the patron of saving unworthy old curmudgeons.

I can't tell you how to celebrate St. Barry's Day, and what one should do to show appropriate thanks to him, because I have no fucking idea.

Seriously?  How do you say thank you for something of that magnitude?  If I were rich, I could create some sweeping gesture, but I'm not.  If I were a songwriter, I could...hold on, this is getting perilously close to an Elton John song.

I'm just a high school teacher who on his free time makes snarky blog posts.

So here you go Barry, this is all I got to give you, other than my eternal thanks.

Plain English

"Just look at them!  It disgusts me."

 "Please Father, let's not start this discussion again."

"But listen to them!  Why the hell can't they just learn the language!?"

"I know, I know, you don't approve of-"

"I don't approve of laziness, that's what I don't approve of."

"But it's just not realistic to expect people to-"

"Now don't give me any of that crap!  That's just and excuse for the people who don't have enough respect for this place.  If they really wanted to be a part of the community, of the whole institution, they would learn the language!  If you can't bother to do that, then maybe this isn't where you are supposed to be."

"Oh come now Father, surely you don't mean we should turn people away just because they don't speak the lang-"

"Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people coming here seeking a better life.  I myself always knew that I wanted to come here, to be a part of this body that has given so much for so many, to be a part of the proud traditions and history.  But these guys just show up and expect us to give them solace and serve their needs, and they won't even show the basic courtesy of learning the language spoken by the founding fathers.  It's disgusting."

"But these are hardworking people, many of them coming to us as adults, it's just not realistic to expect them to take the time to learn a language that they may not even ever need to speak."

"How the hell can you say they never need to speak the damn language?"

"Well the people in their neighborhoods speak the same language they do.  The people in the stores speak it, their family, their friends.  Most of the time, they never need to speak more than a few phrases of-"

"And that makes it okay?  When I came here over forty years ago, I had to learn the language.  I worked day and night to learn the language, and I spoke it every day.  Then mealy-mouthed officials decide we aren't 'serving the populace' and we need to change.  Us.  We are the ones who have to change to make it easy on them.  What the hell happened to individual effort for individual reward?  When did we decide that our traditions and values weren't as important as the feelings of a bunch of newcomers?  Where is the justice in that?"

"I understand how you feel, but this is the new way.  We use the vernacular now.  You just have to accept it Father."

"That may be the case, but I don't have to like it.  Stupid Vatican II.  I have half a mind to go out there and do the whole mass in Latin.  If these people can't learn the language then fuck 'em."

Words Of Wisdom Worthy Of Polonius

Common wisdom will tell you that 'life isn't fair,' a glib aphorism we spout off to quell others' complaints about their problems, about which we care little.



But the fact is, life ISN'T fair, strictly speaking. We are not born equal, we do not have the same advantages, we do not experience the same ups and downs. This is something adults must come to understand and accept if we are to live happy, healthy lives.



Bad people will abuse you and face no punishment. Your own efforts will go unappreciated by those you struggle so valiantly to aid. And every step of the way, your judgement of who deserves what will be utterly disregarded by the universe at large.



But none of this excuses us. If we are to live on this planet, we must play the hand we are dealt and make the very best of what comes. not only will your complaints not fix your problems, they serve only to tie you down further, and alienate those who might otherwise be your allies in the struggle.



No matter what advantages you have, if you cannot accept the fact that some things will be forever denied to you, and that there is no cosmic conspiracy against you, you CANNOT be happy in this life.



Thus, the sooner you learn to accept life, not as fair or unfair, but simply as how it actually is, the sooner you can become a well adjusted adult capable of experiencing life to the fullest.



And that is why I DON'T CARE THAT YOUR BROTHER TOOK IT FROM YOU WHEN YOU WERE PLAYING WITH IT FIRST, GIVE HIM THE FUCKING TOY RIGHT NOW SO THAT HE WILL STOP THAT GOD-FORSAKEN CATERWAULING!!!!!!



And welcome to the adult world sweetie, where 'quiet' trumps fairness seven days a week.

Maquis' Creed

My wife is playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and before you comment, yes, I know how old it is.  But we are on Old People Gamer Time, which means when we see a game that looks good to us, we wait a few years before acquiring it.  Not only do we get a ridiculously better deal buying it used (and we wait for sales,) but we end up getting the 'game of the year' edition with all the DLC and expansions, as well as all the patches that fix the terrible bugs that plagued it at launch.

But that is not what I want to talk about.  My wife loves this whole series, and I enjoy watching her play it (I never actually get to play any games myself when she is around, I just have to sit in the room and help her navigate.)

If you are unfamiliar with the series, (first off hi, welcome to the 21st century, we play games on video screens now,) it is a history based game, where a man from 2012 is put into a machine that allows him to relive the memories of his ancestors in a computer simulation (sort of like Quantum Leap, but virtual.)

His ancestors were part of a secret society of assassins, actually THE Assassins.  They work to oppose the machinations of the Templars (everyone's favorite occult organization in these types of stories,) who are trying to locate ancient artifacts from a progenitor race that blah blah...

The cool thing of it is they get to play around in various time periods, having you jump around on rooftops in Renaissance Italy, eliminating Templars in great helms in Jerusalem during the Crusades, and fighting redcoats in Colonial America.

They do tons of research on these settings, recreating historical cities and sites with painstaking detail, and populating them with citizens in period dress, as well as having you interact with important historical figures like Richard II, Leonardo DaVinci and George Washington.

It is really cool.

The current trilogy has ended (which was actually about a dozen games, with all the different mobile and handheld versions and sidereal iterations, but that is another post,) but they are still planning future games, around different modern day protagonists and exploring a variety of time periods.

The next one, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, deals with pirates in the 17th century (you get to meet Blackbeard.)  And they have made it plain that there are tons of great historical eras they can explore.  I'm especially awaiting the inevitable Wild West version.  But they have also made it clear that they have no plans to ever have one set during WWII, which is completely understandable, since there is such a glut of games in that setting.

But i think that is a mistake, and that they are overlooking an awesome storyline opportunity.

I think they should make a game set in Nazi Occupied Paris in 1940.

There are at least five excellent reasons why this would be a perfect setting for an Assassin's Creed game, and I will now type them at you.

5.  It's a historical period few people know much about.

These games have always enjoyed doing the research and showing people sides of stories that they never knew.  Everyone knows about the second world war after America shows up and initiates the boot/ass interface for which we are famous, but the run-up to the 'real story,' i.e. everything after December 7th, 1941, is often less familiar to American (and other) audiences.

The game could help dispel that 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' image that the French get tagged with unfairly.  The best games (or any other stories, frankly,) challenge what we think we already know.  By showing a rarely seen side of a familiar conflict, you could not only engage, but educate the players, and this idea seems to be in keeping with the game designers' mission goals.

4.  The setting provides lots of great themes for storytelling opportunities

Each of the previous games has dealt with assassins moving about in hostile territory, having to avoid guards by various means.  Occupied Paris would be an excellent outgrowth of that theme, where the assassin joins with the Maquis to oppose the German occupation forces, while working to sway public opinion towards resistance, and against the Vichy government.

Lots of other great story elements are there waiting to be used: smuggling food supplies to the starving Parisians, hiding downed Allied pilots, as well as rescuing those in danger of being rounded up and sent to camps.  And there are plenty of characters to use (did you know that Josephine Baker was a major player in the resistance?)  It is a very rich setting indeed.

3.  It offers many new gameplay features

In every other game, melee combat was the primary form of fighting.  The Renaissance added a somewhat dubious pistol, and I assume that the American Revolution period added muskets.  But even in the later period, melee combat was still a valuable skill for soldiers, with Redcoats wielding bayonets and swords.

But the Germans did not carry many melee weapons.  Some will have bayonets affixed, and all can draw knives, but what they would primarily use is guns.  GOOD guns.  9mm automatic pistols, and Mauser 98k bolt-action rifles, all quite accurate and deadly.  In addition, the assassin would not have much in the way of armor, unlike the previous periods.

That means that this assassin would really have to work hard and rely on his (or her, there were plenty of female Maquis members,) stealth abilities.  That increases the challenge (think Batman: Arkham Asylum.)  If you tried to assault German (or Vichy) soldiers head-on, you would get shot to pieces.

But that skill (and reliance) on guns works both ways.  By making the opponents deadly at ranged combat, they become extremely vulnerable to melee attacks (they don't have any armor either.)  Troops with Mauser rifles would be easy to take out in close, as they struggled to bring their rifles to bear on an agile opponent in their faces, and officers with pistols would be rightly feared.  And then you have troops equipped with submachine guns, like the MP 40, which would be capable of dealing obscene amounts of damage f allowed to get their guns out.  And all of these weapons would be usable by the assassin (although most would choose not to, relying on the trust wrist blades for silence.)

But the more interesting thing could be the social dynamic.  In AC Brotherhood, you have to go around and oppose the Borgia family's influence, and you gain public support as you do so, and even recruit new members to the Assassins.

You could do that in Paris, as you keep the city from going over to the Germans.  But rather than torching Borgia towers and killing troops, you could establish supply lines for food, rescue those being persecuted by the Germans, and stop black marketers and war profiteers.  And probably blow up German trucks, because hey, it's fun.

2.  Nazis!

No matter how many times people try to tell you that Nazis are all played out as enemies (like zombies,) the fact is that Nazis are popular for a reason (also like zombies,) and people still love blowing them away (like zombies.  Hey, NAZI ZOMBIES!  I can't be the first guy to think of that...)

But this would be an opportunity to actually show the German as Germans.  You wouldn't have to have SS troops goose-stepping around the place, just regular troops in various French cities with different levels of awfulness.  I'm not trying to gain sympathies for the Nazis, but it would certainly add some depth to the story if you had to deal with a proud German officer looking for evidence of wrongdoing amongst his men so they could be punished, or a German deserter who wanted to escape Europe with he French lover.

Plus, the previous games have already established that Hitler was part of the Templar cause, and if there is one group of guys who are just begging to be seen as evil Teutonic knights steeped in mysticism and always looking for mad science weapons to rule the world, well look no further.  And THEN you can have your SS goons goose stepping all over the place.

Nazis, man!

1.  Who does not want to do the Leap of Faith off of the Eiffel fucking tower?

Paris is easily one of the most iconic cities in the world for architecture.  The Assassin's Creed games are all about cool architecture.  Paris' skyline just begs for the freerunning and parkour action of the games, with all those balconies and close set roofs.

And then there are the buildings one can scale to get a lookout.  In addition to the aforementioned metal structure, you have the Arc De Triomphe, the Louvre, the Palais Garnier, any of these would be fantastic to explore, not to mention Notre Dame.  Can you imagine a single, massive jumping challenge set amidst the rafter of the grand cathedral?

Then there are the catacombs beneath, as well as the sewers and alleyways.  Paris is just begging to be a setting for a game like this!

So you see, I am right (well, you knew that already, but now you know why.)  So all we have to do is convince Ubisoft.  It shouldn't be too hard.  They're French, after all.

N'est ce pas?

Family Values ($2.99 plus cost of paint.)

I paint gaming miniatures as a hobby, and it is one of my favorite things in the world.  I have begun sharing this hobby with my daughter who turns five in three weeks.  I helped her paint her first mini last year, a barded warhorse that she painted blue and yellow.

Lately she's been asking me to paint one just for her, a mini that she can have and play with as her own, and I told her I'd be delighted to, thinking it would be fun to sit and show her the process of painting.

Since she wants to play with it, metal or plastic minis would be too fragile, so I knew I would have to get one of Reaper's Bones line, which are made of a softer PVC material that holds paint well and is safe and durable.

So we went to our favorite gaming shop ever, which has walls of gaming minis available.  The good news was that they were having a 'buy three, get one free' sale on Reaper's minis.  The bad news was that they were having a 'buy three, get one free' sale on Reaper's minis.  That meant that there were only three Bones blisters left on the pegs.

Luckily, one of those was the exact mini I was hoping for, a unicorn named Silverhorn.  This was perfect (the other two options left were a giant spider and a three pack of zombies, and I don't like the sculpt on either, so unicorn it is.)  So I picked it up and showed it to her, and she was delighted.  Immediately we began to discuss how I should paint it for her (it they'd had two of them, I would have purchased both so that we could each paint one.)

We settled on white, with a silver horn (natch,) and rainbow tail and mane.  DON'T YOU DARE JUDGE ME!

But while we were discussing it, the following exchange occurred:

"I think he will look great once we paint him."

"Daddy?  You keep calling it a 'he,' but I know it's a girl."

"Well, actually sweetie, it's a male unicorn."

"How could you tell ?"

I showed her the mini.  "See that lump between the unicorn's back legs?" (check the link above if you think I'm making this up.  You can't see it all that well in the picture, but in the blister, it's pretty noticeable in a three quarters view.)

"Yeah?"

"That's the unicorn's penis.  Do females have penises?"

"No."

"Well there you go."

"But I want her to be a girl!  Can you make her a girl?"

I laughed, "I guess so, but that would involve using a knife."

"Okay."

"Oh...well... you know, once we paint him up, you could just pretend he's a girl.  No one would really know."

A millisecond of consideration.  "No, I think you need to cut him and make him a girl."

So there you have it.  My daughter is a conservative when it comes to her fantasy values.  She will not tolerate cross dressing in her rainbow unicorns.

Sorry, Silverhorn, majestic Lord of the Unicorns, you've got a date with a #5 X-Acto blade, to make you more in line with the whims of little girls.

Still, that's pretty cold.

Shall We Play A Game?

The high school at which I teach is not in an affluent neighborhood.  On the contrary, we serve an economically depressed (repressed? oppressed? suppressed?) area, and many of our students are well beneath the poverty line by a wide margin.

This has an effect on the overall cultural tone of the school's population.  When I say culture, I'm not talking anthropology, I mean it in a sociological sense.  Every kid brings his or her own home culture with them; together they create a school culture.   If you've ever taught, you know exactly what I mean, but schools all have their own unique feel.  Many may share the same challenges and problems, but each develops its own overall attitude, and that attitude changes over time as the culture changes.

Now to be clear, my school is an awesome school.  Although I'm going to be talking about some unfortunate problems we have, these are really no different than those one finds at any other school, private or public.  I happen to love teaching at my school, and have no plans to retire.  I would feel fine about sending my own kids there when they are old enough.

But not everyone feels the same about it.  Some unfairly label us as a 'ghetto school,' but I think that is ridiculous.  With our majority Hispanic population, we are far closer to a barrio school.

And at this fine institute of public education, I'm sad to say, violence is a major part of our school culture.  Now we live in a violent society in general in America, with violent images and messages in nearly all of our popular culture and media.  Every school in the nation is made up of kids who have been exposed to violent TV, movies, video games, and music (especially the music,) but the real factor is how much of that message the students take to heart.

And at my school, many kids live that message as dogma.

Where I teach, a great many of kids feel that no one gets anywhere in life without fighting.  Not figuratively, like standing up against injustice or sticking to your principles and never giving up, but literally punching and kicking people until you've improved your life.

Kids talk about it all the time.  When there is a fight, everyone runs out to film it with their phones to send it to YouTube, and then go over the action afterwards like sports commentators.  If a fight breaks out at the end of lunch, every teacher has to spend the first fifteen minutes of class just to try to quell the  excitement and discussion.

The most frequent participants are black girls, but there is no demographic completely free from the influence.  The only kind of ability that earns you any respect amongst a large segment of the student body is your ability to handle yourself in a fight.   Grades, intellect, real world skills, none of that is important as one's fighting record.

But it is not about winning.  You can lose all the time, and it doesn't really matter.  The important thing is that you were willing to fight.  No one cares if you have no real skill at fighting and simply flail away blindly until the deans pull you apart and give you your ten days suspension.  But if you walk away from a fight, you are over.  It is the worst sin imaginable, and you should really stop coming to school at that point.

And that is the most insidious and destructive part of this whole thing.  Because when proving you are willing to fight is that important, it is inevitable that kids will become desperate to start fights for any provocation.

Any slight, real or perceived, begins the fight cycle.  One girl doesn't like how another girl looks/smells/talks  and decides she needs to fight her.  I hear them in my class, talking and planning.  "I hate that bitch, I wanna fight her.  My homegirl fought her back in 7th grade and now I wanna fight her.  She so ratchet."  It's not just the ratchet girls who are like this either, I hear this talk from all kinds of girls, all of whom see fighting not only as expected, but required.  Otherwise, 'they think you soft.'

So once the offense has been given, there must be blood.  The girls will fight, either singly or with one girl wisely bringing her friends and jumping the other.

Now the fight is over.  One girl has been declared the winner (or not,) and the other concedes defeat (or not.)  See, whatever transpired, the fight isn't over.  Because now whichever girl did not initiate the fight MUST seek redress in the form of another fight.  It is a moral imperative.  The girl must attack the one who attacked her, to recover her honor.

Can you see where this is heading?  Because now that girl B has attacked girl A (in retaliation for A's initial attack on B,) A cannot afford to look soft by letting that go.  So now A must attack B to recover her reputation.

And this continues in the same manner.  I know many of you are thinking that this cannot possibly be true, because that would mean that the cycle of violence would be pretty much never ending.  But the thing you have to realize is this:

The cycle of violence is never ending.

There is a continual circuit of girls in constant combat with each other like some kind of Ratchet Girl Fighting League.  I would compare it to Fight Club, but the first rule of Ratchet Girl Fight Club would be to talk about Ratchet Girl Fight Club as much as humanly possible.

I am completely serious when I say that many of the feuds end when one girl moves away (our population tends to have a high transience rate.)  And even then, the various friends often still continue these fights, presumably out of a sense of nostalgia.

So the girls insist on fighting each other, constantly losing time in school in 10-day blocks (the minimum penalty for fighting on campus,) and living every day like prisoners in the yard, which sadly seems to be what they are in training for.

It's just so tragically pointless and futile.  I want to make them see that, to show them that it is an uphill road to nowhere.  I've tried talking to them, but I just can't get through to them, and it's so frustrating.  I am not the man to get through to them.

We need Matthew Broderick.

Not today's paunchy, sweater-clad aging Broadway star, nor the terrible high school role model Ferris Bueller version.  We need David Lightman from War Games.

Now if you haven't seen this icon of 1980's cold war cinema, the gist of it is that Broderick's character makes contact with an artificial intelligence program designed by a reclusive computer genius.  The program was originally designed to play games such as chess, and David decides to play against the machine in another available game, Global Thermonuclear War.

But the program is now part of the WOPR, Norad's automated missile defense network, and it begins to   react to the game moves with real actions, threatening to accidentally start World War III.

In the end, the only way to prevent nuclear armageddon is to show the computer that any nuclear conflict is unwinnable by its very nature.  To do this, they have the computer play itself at tic tac toe to show how futile some scenarios are.

And that's what we need.  A circa 1983 Matthew Broderick to play tic tac toe with the Ratchet Girl Fighting League to show them that for some games, the only way to win is not to play.

How about a nice game of chess?