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Illuminated Site of the Week
Is that timing, or what? Yesterday I went all angsty about webcomics ending. Today I find out that Aeire, whose Queen of Wands was one of my favorites, has finally launched her new effort: Punch an' Pie. It's a sequel to the earlier strip, starring one of Kestrel's friends.
No, I don't understand the name either. Guess I'll find out.
-- Steve Jackson
PS: No, I am not turning into Eric Burns. Tomorrow's Daily Illuminator will not be about webcomics. Unless, you know, it is.
Warehouse 23 News: Transcendental Tech
Fantasy is all well and good, but how often does your dwarven cleric get to fly his star cruiser around Jupiter, get attacked by space pirates, have the arm he lost in the fight get a vat-grown replacement (or better yet, a kickin' cyberarm), and then enjoy a nice game of Betelgeuseian Mega-Chess with his AI-controlled nanofriend? Not often, we'd wager. And that's why GURPS Ultra-Tech is way cooler than dwarven clerics.
Another of my favorite webcomics has come to the end of its story . . . first Narbonic, and now A Miracle of Science. Well, those of you who don't like to start a serial until the creator has actually finished it . . . go for it. Both of them. Good stories. Done now. Simultaneous cheers and sighs.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Truth, Justice, And The Freudian Way
Have commitment issues because supervillians keep kidnapping your fiancé? Repressed emotions regarding filial abandonment causing super-strength-fueled rages through downtown? All those clones giving you identity issues? Fret not, true believer. Dr. Blink, that mild-mannered conqueror of super-psychosis, is here with his first trade paperback: Dr Blink: Superhero Shrink - Id. Ego. Superego!
A German school project: a huge tabletop factory, built all of Lego and run by several Mindstorms controllers. It actually assembles little Lego cars, a piece at a time, in the colors you choose. The YouTube video is poorly shot, has very low sound, and is sort of tedious as it follows the construction of a single car . . . and worth watching anyway because what it documents is so massively cool.
Some of the viewer commentary is also amusing, if you enjoy seeing just how badly some poor mundanes can miss the point. Though there were fun comments too, including one inviting us to think of all the poor little Lego people that this would put out of work.
And the capper: Among the brilliant middle-school-level (I think) Lego engineers, there was an artist with a sense of humor. Because at the end, the assembled car rolls down a ramp . . . and OFF THE TABLE. From creation to destruction, crash! I loved it.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Something Fishy This Way Comes
Ever feel like a fish out of water? Well, the latest Off the Wall Armies figures are fish out of water! Surely this fortuitous coincidence deserves a celebratory purchase of the above mentioned figures?
The idea of storing data in DNA used to be science fiction. Now it's been demonstrated.
Warehouse 23 News: Terror Just Got A Lot More . . . Eso
The Esoterrorists aren't your standard issue strap-a-bomb-to-their-chest-and-run-into-a-mall terrorists. No sirree, Bob! These are rip-a-hole-in-the-fabric-of-space-time-and-let-loose-ancient-baby-eating-Evil terrorists. It's cool, though. You get to be beat-up-monsters-while-chasing-down-terrorists-and-writing-convincing-cover-stories investigators.
The job opening described here is . . . still open. We have had some applications, but we really do mean "experience required," and we really do mean "can't be done by telecommuting." But we really need this work done, so here's another pointer, in case You, the Perfect Candidate, missed it last time around.
Warehouse 23 News: The Plush With The Power?
Well, he certainly reminds us of someone, anyway. Who do? Plush Sir Didymus do!
February 23, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: Like Father, Like Son
We've already been told God and the Devil are one and the same by The Bible is a Hoax. Now similar charges are being laid against His kids. It's almost like an Internet giveaway - the material at Jesus is Lucifer, He is the Antilogos, the Beast, 666 should be recognizable by predestined readers. Not only are you informed, you may already have won greatness. That's the short version of this web page's name, by the way . . . these folks fit more into their title bar than most ranters put on their whole site. And yeah, if it sweetens the pot any, UFOs and Masons and such make a guest appearance. -- Suggested by liddell
Do you dare delve into the secrets hidden in the mysterious Dirge of the Damned? The secret mysteries and mysterious secrets hidden in this secret, mysterious tome are so, so secret and . . . mysterious that . . . um . . . we really don't know. Ah, but see! Good secret, eh?
We need more Munchkin bookmarks!
The bookmarks are our most popular Munchkin freebie. They're useful in the game, they're portable, and they're kinda collectors items.
We need cool bookmark names and powers for these Munchkin products:
Munchkin Cthulhu
Munchkin Impossible
Super Munchkin 2 -- Narrow S Cape
Munchkin 5 -- De-Ranged
Send your ideas to paul@sjgames.com with [BOOKMARK] in the subject line, and your idea (and shipping address!) in the body. Remember, the more abusive, the better:)
If we chose your suggestion, we'll reward you with a huge pile of the bookmarks, as well as giving you credit in a Daily Illuminator (so everyone knows who to blame!). In the case of a really good name with not-so-good powers (or weak name with great powers), we'll mix and match suggestions, and reward both submitters.
All submissions become the property of Steve Jackson Games. Due to the expected volume of entries, we cannot acknowledge receipt of individual submissions. Void where prohibited by law or the Illuminati.
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: Take It On The Qin
Ancient Chinese backdrop? Check. Massive conflict determining the fate of a nation? Check. Four thousand pounds of butt-kicking action in a five-pound bag? Check. Qin: The Warring States probably has other merits, but it hits the Big Three and that's what's important.
Here is our latest release, now shipping to the shelves of a game store near you:
GURPS Ultra-Tech
Weapons, Vehicles, and Gadgets
GURPS Ultra-Tech is
the sourcebook for science-fiction
technology, from the near future to the farthest reaches of the imagination.
It's a valuable companion to GURPS Space,
GURPS Bio-Tech, and GURPS Infinite Worlds, and an exceptional resource for any
character or campaign that needs technology from tomorrow . . . and beyond.
GURPS Ultra-Tech is full of personal
equipment for heroes
and superheroes from TL9 to TL12, including:
- Weapons - from caseless assault carbines and monomolecular swords to
antimatter warheads and disassembler nano.
- Protection - How do you stop a nanomorph assassin with a
field-jacketed X-ray
laser rifle? Try a dreadnought battlesuit and a personal force screen . . .
.
- Medicine - Superscience can heal, rebuild, and improve on nature.
Death
itself can become a temporary inconvenience. With cybernetics and neural
interfaces, ultra-tech medical equipment and mind uploading, “medical miracles”
become everyday occurrences.
- Transport - Air cars, hovertanks, tilt rotors, grav belts,
supercavitating
minisubs, matter-transport booths – lots of ways to get where the action is,
for the adventurer on the go!
- As technology advances, the line between man and machine may become
increasingly blurred. GURPS Ultra-Tech
provides rules for establishing the capabilities and limitations of artificial
intelligence, as well as templates for robotic or total cyborg bodies, from
handy technical 'bots to shapeshifting
nanomorphs.
And still more! Living biosuits, computer implants, holographic
projectors, psionic amplifiers, neutrino communicators, nanofactories,
hyperspectral goggles, chameleon suits, repair paste, Dyson spheres – there's
something for every
adventure at every tech level.
From the edge of tomorrow to the star-flung future, GURPS Ultra-Tech can equip your characters and your campaign!
240 pages. Hardback. Stock #01-0104, ISBN 978-1-55634-753-5. $34.95.
Mmmm, just like the preserves Mother used to . . . wait, did you say canned adventures? Oh. Uh, then we heartily recommend a duo of Diomin delectables: Danger in the City of Immer and Outpost Qether. Sorry for the mix-up. Nearly lunch time, y'see.
Every time we do a Munchkin spinoff, we create a new rulesheet. It's always based on the original rules, but every game is a bit different. So the old rules are always getting looked at and tweaked. And it seems as though every time we do, we see better ways to phrase things. A word here, a phrase there . . .
And because Munchkin and its spinoffs are so popular, we do a lot of reprinting, so all those rulesheets get rechecked every year or so. Which gives us an opportunity to go back and revise the older rulesheets with the new and improved language.
Which is what I'm doing right now . . . the Munchkin Cthulhu rulesheet just went to press, and I'm going through the errata copies in my bookshelf, updating the rulesheets for the previous six (!!) standalone Munchkin games to keep them in synch with the improvements.
Kind of tedious, but on the whole it's a great problem to have!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Ready, Steady, Go?
Tsuro is a race, and yet you do not want to finish first. How zen is that?
The phones in our Austin office are down. No, we didn't break anything -- it's an area-wide sort of thing. We can't call out, nor can we recieve calls.
Luckily, the website (obviously!) and email are unaffected, so if you need to contact us, it's typing time.
We'll let you know when everything gets back up.
-- Paul Chapman
Three times a magical, school-aged, chosen-of-the-gods, psychic, gender-swapping, super-strong, robot, maid, martial artist from another world living in an alternate history. Sorry. Big Eyes, Small Mouth just hit edition number three, and while that certainly explains the mental image the above "joke" produces, it certainly doesn't excuse it. Our apologies.
So . . . I am in the process of repainting the interior trim on my house. I like the current color and went to some trouble to match it. The match is close enough that it's sometimes hard to tell what's been repainted. So if I can't tell, is it good enough? Well . . . not if you're compulsive.
Yesterday I found out, quite by accident, that the new paint glows a spooky velvety purple under UV light, and the old paint doesn't glow at all. This showed me just how many spots, and occasional large patches, I'd missed. So I repainted in the dark, under UV.
The downside to that proved to be that under UV one can't see if there's too MUCH paint in a spot, turning into a drip. So the thing to do is to do the initial check in the dark, but then repaint with a light on, and hold the UV lamp close enough to the work to show the missed places.
Of course, there's no point to this technique unless you happen to have new paint that looks just like the old except under UV. But it was still neat, and worth sharing.
-- Steve Jackson
February 18, 2007: Texas Takes Up The Torch of Ignorance
An influential member of the Texas House of Representatives circulated a bizarre letter to the rest of the Legislature last week, claiming that it is unconstitutional to use public funds to teach evolution, and citing a crank website as authority.
The memo reads like something straight out of Illuminati. “Indisputable evidence--long hidden but now available to everyone--demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”
Executive summary: This site says that the Earth does not move around the Sun, and that there's a crypto-Jewish conspiracy to teach that it does. This religious conspiracy also teaches evolution. Therefore evolution is a religious belief that may not Constitutionally be taught with public funds.
Really.
When the reaction hit the fan, the legislator (Warren Chisum, of Pampa, chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee) quickly tried to distance himself, pointing out that the memo had originally been written by a Georgia representative and he had just copied it. Chisum did admit that perhaps he should have looked at the Web site before he recommended it.
You'll find links to Chisum's memo, the original Georgia letter that he endorsed and circulated, and a more detailed explanation of their attempted reasoning, in this blog.
As time comes for this to post, it appears that the Georgia legislator is now denying responsibility for the memo, Rep. Chisum is "willing to apologize" if he has offended anyone but has not repudiated the actual content of what he sent out, and the blogosphere is having a field day.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Give 'Em Somethin' To Talk About
Need something to break the ice? Something to take everyone's minds off the dead body in the living room? Defuse an otherwise tense and uncomfortable situation with The Art of Conversation!
GURPS Bio-Tech is now available in PDF via e23. Put the future of humanity on your hard drive today!
Or rather, the future of post-humanity. These obsolete shells of flesh and bone can't be long for the world.
– Thomas Weigel, e23 Manager
e23@sjgames.com
That's right! If you act now, not only can you get Destiny, we'll send you Shadow as a special bonus! So hurry, Midnight fans, order your Destiny and Shadow today!
February 16, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: Tying Up Loose Lines
What's that? We haven't featured Nazca Lines? Well, we have now, smart guy. And just in time, too . . . looks like your reptoid friends are coming in for a landing. -- Andy
It won't help you with who, what, when, how, or why, but when it comes to where . . . oh yeah. The Ptolus Vinyl Map has "where" in spades. It's got "where" flying out in every direction. There's so much "where" here that the sturdy cardboard tube the map is packed in just might not hold. Yes, a colossal plenteousness of "where" is just waiting to be had.
This is Meeting Week around here. Ross Jepson, our Director of Sales, and Gail Barton, our Controller, are in town until Friday, and all sorts of interesting Stuff is being discussed . . . mostly for 2008 and later, since we already have a pretty good handle on 2007.
I also got to show around the current draft of my Seekrit Project. Nope, not telling what it is. I'll probably be demonstrating a prototype at the GAMA Trade Show. Yes, I know you hate it when I drop hints and then clam up. I'm laughing.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Destiny, Honor, And Other Junk
It takes a lot more than just big eyes and a small mouth to survive the frenetic world of Anima: Shadow of Omega. It also helps to have courage, cunning, and a sword the size of a Buick.
. . . and had a good time! Bought several books (because of course I do not have enough books). Bought four Stikfas; not offering any excuse here. They're cool. And met Rice people, including a couple of ex-staff and several current playtesters. And played games. Got to try the Wii! So far, my take on it is:
- It can take several tries to get multiple controllers talking to the console. "Unstable" is the word here.
- The on-screen instructions are not Japlish, but neither are they good instructions or good English. You'll spend some time experimenting, while your characters fall, until cryptic lines can be decoded.
- The smooth movement of the animated characters, in response to your shaking and jiggling of the Wiimote, is definitely fun.
- I played a single set of Wii Tennis on Friday afternoon. Three quick games. At the end of the set, I noticed that my wrist hurt. It still does, on Tuesday. That little box pulled way too much enthusiasm out of me.
Where's Our Pilot?
So we're lined up in the Southwest Airlines plane, ready to go. Except . . . we don't have a pilot. First time I have ever heard an airline rep say "We don't know where our pilot is." But a substitute was found and I am here to tell you the tale . . .
-- Steve Jackson
In case you missed it the first thirty-six times, Dungeon Crawl Classics #37: The Slithering Overlord is here to let you know that, yes, old-school dungeon crawling is still alive and well. Figuratively speaking, anyway. Everything involved with the crawl itself is either quite dead or was looted for its magical properties.
For the past year, since we moved into our new offices, the exterior has been pleasant, professional, and rather mundane. But now, Richard has changed that.
Yes, that's our corporate logo, the eye-in-the-pyramid, in the large economy size. Richard created the pieces with his laser cutter - the same device that makes the ornaments, for Warehouse 23 - just much, much larger.
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: This, Too, Shall Be About Cults
One volume is not nearly enough to cover the strange and varied (and sometimes strangely varied) cults of Glorantha. No! There must be a second volume. A RuneQuest: Cults of Glorantha Volume 2, if you will. Then, and only then, shall there be enough room to satiate their culty egos.
After the merger of the two largest PDF stores last October, the industry watched with interest as almost everyone had an opinion on the impact it would have -- on PDF publishing, roleplaying, and the hobby in general. Now, two foundation-laying companies have left OneBookShelf.
Recently, Ronin Arts and Expeditious Retreat Press both announced their (separate) departures from OneBookShelf. Their products will be available through their own websites, as well as e23 and others.
What does this mean for the PDF industry? Is this a turning point, or just a footnote? However history (and the industry bloggers) remember this event, we wish all parties involved the best of luck.
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: Ready, Set, Sengoku!
It would seem that some tiny wooden blocks have grown weary of being ruled by the land-owning aristocracy. These tiny wooden blocks rose up and and made a big fuss, and now the game board is divided into various warring zones. Shogun: the fun game of murderously violent tiny wooden blocks.
Each year, Ken Hite (GURPS Infinite Worlds, GURPS Cabal) uses one of his "Out of the Box" columns to anoint products from the previous year with his "Outies" Award. This year, we picked up a couple Honorable Mentions. Both GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars and GURPS Bio-Tech were highlighted.
Sadly, Mr. Hite's a writer, not a webmonkey, so his column was missing links to these key products. But we're happy to back-stop him on this one, just in case it was one of the Secret Masters, deleting links at random throughout the web.
That happens a lot more than you might think. [FNORD!]
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: Hi, My Name Is . . .
Mr. Drug-Addled, Laser Machete Wielding Sociopath. Since it's a well-known fact that utopia is as boring as a beige wall in a mime school, Cyberpunk: Gang Book is just the "dys" your "topia" needs to keep things interesting.
February 10, 2007: MacGuffin Alphabet Available On e23!
Just released - MacGuffin Alphabet for GURPS Fourth Edition on e23!
From Stefan Jones, author of GURPS Unnight, MacGuffin Alphabet is a compact catenae of character-catching cat's-paws and causative concepts. Check out the preview for the complete list of alphabetical oddities.
(And to pre-empt the obvious questions: technically GURPS Fourth Edition, although it's systemless enough to work with any science fiction roleplaying game; 14 pages for $4.95; and no, put your shoes back on.)
-- Thomas Weigel
Warehouse 23 News: Warehouse 23 Top Ten
Warehouse 23 has posted an updated Top 10 page for January. Check it out, and see what all the cool kids are buying . . .
February 9, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: Doing A Lively Business
Want a corpse? Unless you know a guy who knows a guy, that's probably not a transaction you can effect. The next best thing is the cinematic equivalent: a fake corpse built by the handy helpers at Corpses for Sale. If you've got the gumption, Di Stefano Productions will even help you build your own special-effects body. Of course . . . if the corpses look so real . . . how can you tell they're just . . . ? Forget it. We don't want to know. -- Suggested by Pablo Jaime Conill Querol
Warehouse 23 News: Why So Glum, Chum?
Life got ya down? No hope in sight? Do you feel an unreasonable, uncontrollable desire to paint every red door you see black? Well turn that frown upside-down, because you can project your worries away on the latest Gloom expansion, Unwelcome Guests! And if you were so busy wallowing that you missed it first time around, Unhappy Homes is back!
 We got the proofs for Munchkin Cthulhu in the office the other day. I even got a picture of Alex and Monica going over them.
For those of you in northern states, yes, Alex is a wimp. It isn't really that cold here in Austin.
The cards do look nice and creepy, though -- well, as creepy as John Kovalic's cute little creatures can look. I guess they're cute and creepy, a fact that just enhances their innate wrongness.
Munchkin Cthulhu will begin shipping in March.
-- Paul Chapman
Warehouse 23 News: Lost In The Desert
A pop-culture reference from a decade ago goes here. It is followed by a lame tie-in to the featured product, Talisman: Sands of Al-Kalim. Low-brow toilet humor, sexual innuendo, or a cheap shot at d20 follows. A thinly veiled attack on the customer's taste (or the product's premise) brings up the rear. Lip service is paid to our Secret Masters at the end. Normally, you're not cleared to see that part. .
We don't plug every flick that comes along . . . our branch of the Illuminati is not closely connected to the one that runs Hollywood . . . but we'll make an exception for one about The
Number 23. And hey, Jim Carrey.
Warehouse 23 News: More Things To Kill And Eat
Man can not subsist on beating up samurai alone. Man needs critters to smash and mangle, too. By extension, Man must therefore need Legend of the Five Rings: Creatures of Rokugan. Woman probably needs it too, but the lab monkeys we asked about all this are proving . . . uncooperative, in the way only monkeys can be.
and unearthed quite a bit of OLD stuff, including some GURPS and Car Wars drafts and proofs that are more than 20 years old. They'll be showing up on our eBay auction over the next couple of months.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: It Just Goes Without Saying
When you call your game Cave Troll, there are certain expectations players have. Namely, your game had better feature a big freakin' troll that lives in a cave. Otherwise, what's the point? As luck would have it, this game delivers on that promise.
as a guest of the convention (thank you, folks!) . . . and I'm taking the Pirate Game with me. I haven't been to an Origins for a few years now, and I hear I've missed some good shows, so I'm really looking forward to July. I will also be bringing at least one brand new game in prototype form. Don't poke the Origins committee to tell you what it is, because I sort of fnord haven't told them the details either fnord.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Fight Crime . . . With Your Mind
Sometimes muscle and machismo just don't get the job done. Sometimes you need to get inside a villain's head and dredge up those bothersome memories, like the shameful Locker Room Incident or the agony that was Junior Prom. Let's see the bad guy be all megalomaniacal when you bring those little gems to the fore. You're sure to find other ways to flex your big fat brains with Hero System: The Ultimate Mentalist, but is there really anything more fun than finding out just when Doctor Destructothon stop wetting the bed?
Two years on the PDF market has given us a lot of valuable data about pricing PDFs, and we've applied that knowledge to our prices. Most prices went down, at least a little bit, and some went way down.
In particular, you may wish to take a second look at our Out Of Print GURPS books. Prices are (in most cases) half or a third the old price, and a number are down to $2.95.
These are a permanent price change, not a sale! But that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy everything today . . .
– Thomas Weigel, e23 Manager
e23@sjgames.com
The bioengineered, nanomachine-filled, artificially-intelligent wheel, that is. Time marches on, rules get revised, and people often get stuck with a load of books that no longer work with the best roleplaying rule set conceived by man. Case in point: Transhuman Space. We went and did something quite inconsiderate, releasing the fourth version of GURPS without updating THS. Transhuman Space: Changing Times rights that grand injustice rather nicely.
February 3, 2007: Rant: Ten Pounds Of Stupid In A Five-Pound Bag
Normally I think of my Texas legislators and city government as the world's dumbest and most venal, and my Austin media as the world's most obedient, crowd-following lap-dogs. Once in a while, I'm reminded that it's the same wherever you go.
Case in point: the squawking and posturing coming out of Boston over the advertising sign "bomb scare."
Bad enough that some poor paranoid found one of the little signs frightening enough to call police. (Or was it even a serious call? Was the caller just having stupid fun? I've read nothing to indicate that anyone has followed that up.)
Bad enough that the city bomb squad was sent out full force to do the bomb squad thing to a little sign. (No blame to the policemen doing their jobs. If their bosses tell them that a Barbie doll might be a bomb, it's their job to go blow Barbie up by remote control, and the "you've gotta be kidding!" comes when it's all over.)
But where it started to get scary was when police were sent all over Boston, tying up traffic, to "defuse" the other signs. Why isn't anyone asking just what happened there? After one sign turned out to be . . . a sign! . . . why couldn't Boston's finest stand down? Does the city's emergency reaction system not have a "False Alarm!" signal? Did some twit go "Well, THIS one isn't a bomb, but maybe the NEXT one is!" After all, they had blinking lights on them. Everybody who watches "24" knows that bombs always have blinking lights.
And how did they locate more than a dozen little signs, in that huge city, so quickly, if a dispatcher wasn't working from a list to start with? And did somebody in authority really make a list of sign locations without knowing that they were . . . just signs? Maybe there's an innocent explanation, but if any of the media has asked Boston authorities that question, I haven't seen an answer. I probably won't. If the local media were to start asking hard questions, they'd have to admit their own role in creating and maintaining the panic.
It gets worse. Having blown a silly error - or, at best, a routine check - into headline news, the Boston authorities, with the instant cooperation of the state attorney general, went on TV to congratulate themselves on the SPEED with which they had blundered . . . blaming the whole thing on the two guys who had been hired to put up the signs, and on Turner Broadcasting, which they were promoting! The mayor of Boston had the shameless gall to invoke 9-11.
It still gets worse. They ARRESTED the guys who put up the signs. They blustered about arresting Turner staff in Atlanta for violating Massachusetts law; apparently the Attorney General of Massachusetts doesn't know that her authority ends at the state line.
I should point out that those signs have been up for quite a while in nine other cities . . . including my own home town of Austin, where the main downtown street was closed a few weeks ago because the authorities got all upset about a few dozen dead birds . . . and nobody turned a hair. But in Boston, some politicians screwed up, and rather than admit it, they're arresting sign-posters and spinning themselves as heroic defenders.
"It had a very sinister appearance," Attorney General Coakley told reporters, according to CNN. "It had a battery behind it, and wires." One wonders how the Attorney General walks past a Radio Shack without going into cardiac arrest.
It would be nice to see the Attorney General and the Mayor apologize to the citizens whose money they wasted, offer a settlement to the people they arrested on knowingly false charges, apologize again for daring to use 9-11 to excuse their own incompetence, and resign. Don't hold your breath.
Now, is there any good news? Yes, a bit.
- When the men who put up the signs were brought before a Boston judge and charged with placing a hoax device, he pointed out that those charges required intent, and there was no proof whatsoever that they had intended to do anything except put up an advertising sign. Good going, Your Honor. Thank you for not letting the politicians panic you.
- When reporters badgered the two men for comment, they refused to take any questions on any subject except 1970s hairstyles. That's treating the charges with the seriousness they deserve. (Yeah, they put up lighted signs without permission. Minor civil offense. This is not my day to get all excited about trash advertising. This is my day to get excited about the idiots who claim to be "protecting" us.)
- As I write this, I see that Turner Broadcasting is apologizing for something that's in no way their fault, and offering to reimburse Boston for the half-million dollars wasted on the scare. That's a very classy response. I would not have been so forgiving. (Yeah, they'll make back their half-million dollars by selling one more advertising spot on Adult Swim, but still, they get style points for turning the other cheek. )
- And I just noticed that it gave Randy Milholland a good Something Positive.
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Places To Go, Things To Get There In
A trip to the Mars Colony sounds great on paper, but what about all that hard vacuum between here and there? You could try holding your breath, but we wouldn't chance it. A better bet would be to simply use one of the ships listed in Babylon 5: Ships of the Galaxy. Travel in comfort in the stylish, state-of-the-art, heavily-armed tin can of your choice.
February 2, 2007: Illuminated Site of the Week: (Argh!)
. . . Never mind. We created a pointer to a site with rude-but-funny content, and by the time it posted, the content had been changed to something considerably ruder and not nearly as funny. These things happen on the web; this one just happened to happen on posting day. To those who subscribe to the Illuminator via e-mail: if you thought that particular IllSotW wasn't up to our usual standards, we agree with you.
Nothing to see here . . . move along . . .
Let's be honest here. In a city this big, that's about all you're gonna accomplish. Sure, you could take in the sights of the World's Largest City. You could try. Just grab a sword and some scrolls of Cure Heavy Blisters and resign yourself to an urban hike of 20th-level proportions.
Editing can be fascinating and educational, or tedious, or infuriating. Or all three in the same manuscript, if not the same page. But sometimes it just gets weird. Those are the best of times.
Case in point: as I review the current draft of GURPS Fantastic Cities I am moved to write, "We will want to illustrate the sousaphonist with his entourage of cutworms."
Perhaps someday you'll see that illustration!
-- Steve Jackson
Warehouse 23 News: Glory, Honor, And Hats With Horns
Ragnarok is upon us, and Midgard is steadily circling the drain. So what's a Viking to do? The same thing he does every night, of course: find someone whose face he doesn't like and then pound said face into a fine powder. As ways to spend your last hours on earth go, we can't argue with that. That is to say, we daren't start an argument with a viking.
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