Last night I was playing the game of LIFE (by Milton Bradley) with Pod-Man and Bean-Girl and we had a few disagreements on the rules. As the auditors of the blog are well known for their impartiality, we are appealing to them now for a judgment on these rules:
— When I got to the “Get Married” space, I wanted to go to Vermont and marry by friend Brian. It’s legal there now and there’s nothing in the rules that says “heterosexual marriage,” so I contend that I am within my rights. Pod-Man disagrees, however, and claims that this is just a ploy on my part to avoid having children and the ruinous expenditures that they incur. Both Pod-Man and Bean Girl insisted that I marry a girl, but is it really fair to force me to live a lie just because of a an arcane set of “rules” that are no more than the codification of outmoded bourgeois proprieties?
— When it came time for Pod-Man to get married, he claimed a religious vocation. In fact he claimed that he had a calling from God and wanted to be a monk (thus avoiding both children and the purchase of a house). He said that his first amendment rights supersede the fiat rule of this so-called “Milton Bradley” fellow. Does the first amendment guarantee of free practice of religion allow him to do this?
— Bean Girl claimed that she wanted to marry me, and that we could then ride in the same car together and pool our resources. Pod-Man says this would be "incest" and disallowed it, but isn’t that just one more Bourgeois propriety that keeps people from living as autonomous persons?
— I landed on the space that said “Automobile Accident — pay $5000- for repairs,” and decided against fixing it. I proposed that I then walk for the rest of the game, dividing all of my spins by three to represent my slower pace. Pod-Man called this cheating, even though I’ve never owned a car in all my life, thus proving it can be done!
— Bean Girl got past all the spaces where you have children without landing on one and announced “If I can’t have children then life isn’t worth living! I’m slitting my wrists!” and she quit the game. Pod-Man said that she couldn’t, but I said all she had to do was write a note and inform the banker of her method of suicide because, after all, death is a part of life and we would just be burying our heads in the sand if we didn’t acknowledge this.
— Since Bean Girl wrote her note and specified that she was going to slit her wrists in the bathtub, she's legally dead for purposes of this game and, as next of kin, it’s self evident that I’m entitled to her money and property. Yet Pod-Man (who had earlier said it would be “incest” if I married her) claimed that this was just a cheap grab for money on my part. He just wants to have things both ways, doesn’t he?
— Later, I landed on the space that said “Fire Destroys House — pay purchase price to bank if uninsured.” Now, logically, why should I re-build that house when I’ve already inherited Bean Girl’s house and can simply live there? This really set Pod-Man off on a tirade about “cheating,” and “what sort of dad would manipulate the rules of a children’s game?” and “some Bolshevik you are!” Isn’t he just being petty? I think he was just jealous because I had two houses.
