 |
| The laydeez love a slaphead |
Bertrand Russell thought that Schopenhauer's philosophy was diminished by the latter's propensity to a constant flow of shallow relationships driven by physicality rather than emotion. Personally I can't see anything wrong with living like that provided one doesn't take it to excess like, er, one of my friends. Indeed one of Schopenhauer's insights was to point out that we are biologically conditioned to be attracted to unsuitable mates; a point with which my mate tells me he totally concurs based on his own fairly wide-ranging experience. In any event, Arthur was right about buying books and, by extension, about buying wargaming figures. It's all very well acquiring them, but that's not quite the same as painting them.
 |
| Or a pipe |
Consequently, when I moved all my wargaming stuff into the new annexe it naturally included a huge pile of unpainted figures. Of these a relatively small number were scheduled for painting as part of the War of Spanish Succession project while the others were basically just a pile of unpainted figures. With the fall of the WSS into desuetude it was time for some of those other figures to come to the party. My fallback plan to paint up the figures necessary for the Russian expansion of C&C prompted a trip to the relevant box and retrieval of the appropriate figures; or at least the first part. Admittedly, I did put my hand on a box of Russian Militia and the first unit of such is just about to roll off the production line, but that was it. Nowhere among the vast quantity of nude Napoleonic plastic can one find, for example, Russian heavy cavalry with no cuirasses. And for reasons that, as usual, seemed sensible at the time I made the decision, I never collected any French guard infantry or artillery. Therefore, for the first time in years, and despite the existing pile of little men shouting "paint me, paint me." an order has been placed and some new figures will soon arrive chez moi (as we still say in Yorkshire one week on from the big event). Then, without fail, they will be painted.
 |
| Or a moustache |
As Einstein never said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Your insight into Schopenhauer's philosophy has me convinced. That is, books are to be read and figures are to be painted!
ReplyDeleteTo extend Schopenhauer and yourself, is it enough to paint the figures without employing them as intended in a game?
I have work to do.
I think the most appropriate philosopher to turn to on this subject is none other than Napoleon Bonaparte himself, who said something along the lines of "Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use one makes of them".
ReplyDeleteIndeed!
DeleteIn my university days I always used to find that a trip to the library and return with bag heavy laden would assuage any immediate guilt about impending assignments. About 36 hours before they were due to be handed in said guilt would resurface, at which time the various indices would help to 'appropriate' appropriate content. The pressure worked, and I loved the thrill of pulling something together at the last minute. Sadly, as we all know, painting figures requires less sporadic brilliance and more constant drudgery...
ReplyDelete