Hey, want to know what Heaven is like? Check out Is There Toscanini's Ice Cream in Heaven.  It's a re-telling of Steve Strassmann's infamous flowchart! It still needs some brushing up, but it's close enough for religious work.

Also, we've put up 3 new Haiku Movie Reviews.

1/10/99
A couple of new pictures have been added to the PIX section of our site, including pics of Booda! Finally all of you mortals can see what the Enlightened One looks like.

Hell, those Heaven backgrounds take a long time to load, don't they? Now you know how much John has fooled around with graphics.  Not much.  Well, he'll fix it soon. No worries.

Changed the Lunch page a bit... didn't add any recipes, just some subtle propaganda.

1/18/99
Thanks to Todd Sudbrink for the 52nd stone in our Graveyard.  Meanwhile, we had to turn down EZ's latest submission:
 

Eric Zuckerman's Tombstone Game 1997-1999 Um...

You'd think he's almost ready to come up with an epitaph!

John's slowly trying to fix the Toscanini in Heaven pages. It might be easier to check out the original flowchart these days.

1/20/99
Deja vu (sp?) - go to the Mane Attraction site and vote for your favorite Lady of the Year (Ginohn voted for Gina) again. They found out somebody was stuffing the ballot box, so the votes were thrown out and they're starting over. 

1/23/99
Well, John had to go and tweak with one of the trump actions (the Empress) in his Zarcana game.  But it's for the best, really.

1/24/99
No sooner had we added Izolda and Rich to our friendlynx that Rich sent us a tombstone. Izolda and Rich have a beautiful dog named Athena. Thought you'd like to know.

We're a member of the Klink Exchange! Are you?

1/25/99
New Hankism! The mysterious Trenchcoat sent great info on the Shinto religion. Said religion was immediately absorbed into an all glorious Hankism. Read it if you dare. (It's at the end of the list.)

Also, a new Haiku Movie Review (it's at the top of the list).

1/27/99
A personal rant John e-mailed to some friends a month ago -- actually it spawned Hankisms -- has turned into an article, Branches of Religion in our Cetera section.

1/30/99
Another tombstone, with a lovely epitaph, has been added to our graveyard.

Also, John forgot to mention that he read three of his poems (aloud, even) at Fado's Irish Pub in DC last Sunday. People even listened and politely applauded!

We've learned that our buddy Booda has Canine Hip Dysplasia (CHD), a genetic abnormality that is common in some breeds. We're trying to learn as much about it as we can before we decide to treat it with whatever surgery, drugs, therapy, etc. there is out there -- least risky with best success rates. If anybody out there has CHD related advice, please contact us. Thanks.

2/2/99
Two more tombstone players have come to our Graveyard - Erskin and Diane. Welcome! (PSST - "xyzzy" is a real word. So there.)

Found some more errors in the Zarcana rules. Fixed 'em. Updated the credits a little, too.

2/3/99
Yet another tombstone, another word. Yay! Thanks, Bruce.
Our latest HMR is up...for a GREAT MOVIE.
Speaking of which, dig our new hero of the month. 

2/6/99
The Graveyard is up to 60, and here's our latest parody 'stone sent in by WAkaduK (it made us laugh, thanks, but we require ID for names like Bobert): 

Bobert K. Wolfenshleigelhaubertstein 7:00-?, Weekdays Milkmeat

Anywise, thanks to Izolda, Keith, and Ellen for their epitaphs.

Also, we noticed that a recipe wasn't linked to from LUNCH. oops.

2/8/99
Added some pictures today in our album, thanks to Skip and his scanner. (Someday Ginohn has to get one of those...)

John found some old sloppy text notes and put them in the Log (for those of you who peruse our log).

Also, we are experimenting with tweaks to the Wedding pages, but nothing big yet. 

Ginohn is going to Paris! Turns out tickets are cheap and Paris is cold and wet, so Ginohn is taking five days off to gallivant around Paree with our friend Jenny. Oh reservoir!

2/10/99
Before we go, we had just enough time to put up a mediocre review for the IMAX film Everest.

Gina and Lori are ladies of the month at the Mane Attraction, another site that admires women with long hair.  Take a look!

2/19/99
We're back from our really fun not-so-cold (or wet) affair with Paris. We saw various old cathedrals, gargoyles, Americans (they're like fleas, you just can't shake 'em), and flush mechanisms. Every french toilet has an IQ test for flushing. We also had some wunnerful coffee and pleasant pastries. For the vegetarians in the audience, you'll be glad to know that Paris has several really cool restaurants. Parisians are much kinder than current American rumor would have you believe.

While we were gone, this week's backup HMR was displayed at the usual spot on the weekly front page of Wunderland (thanks Andy). We have now updated the HMRchives to reflect it.

Also did some link repairs in the Graveyard and Monster pages. Please let us know if you see any more. Streamlined our index page, too.

2/28/99
We're very busy here, so nothing's getting done.  Booda just got the first of two corrective operations on his hip. So far so good-- he is recovering well, and might get the other side done in a week and a half.  Our hands are full just trying to keep him from pacing around.  He's still enlightened, but he's pretty bored.  We're hoping the pins stay tight till the bones knit back.  If all goes as planned he'll be running through the woods again in another couple of months.

John goes back to his old job at NASA on the first of March.  He misses his coworkers from the last job already.  But the money, commute, and benifits are all better at NASA. The best thing: Ginohn can eat lunch together now!

John's religion biography page was addendum'd to, as part of a sporadic service contract.  Gina's ScarfBarf game now has a warning attached.  Our latest HMR, which is for Buckaroo Banzai, is the only one that uses the actual title of the movie as both Haiku and Review! Weird.

3/3/99
We have a report on Booda's TPO surgery, a new hero, and a new HMR for The Hidden (remember that movie?). 

3/5/99
Gina added another installment to Booda's surgery report.

3/8/99
Another HMR.

Speaking of pulp fiction, John has written a draft of a short story and put it on our site, and he'll give you the secret URL if you just ask for it. It will undoubtedly go through a few more revisions, but John would appreciate your comments.

Speaking of revisions, John made a small, almost unnoticeable change to his poem Quarrel with a Bit Part, and he finally put up the rewrite that he made over a year ago to Morning Song.

3/10/99
Booda's ready for the next half of his operation; so far so good!

John found a real tombstone and added it to our Graveyard. Please, if you happen to be visiting a physical graveyard, and you happen to see a gravestone that meets the requirements of our ongoing game, and you happen to have a pen and paper, write it down and send us the info. We need more stones! Thanks.

3/17/99
Happy St. Patty Cakes! We're in the process of really messing up our pages with experimentation. So please bear with us when things look weird. Renee just joined our tombstoners, and more Booda info has been added. Oh, and of course there's another HMR.

3/31/99
Gina presents her pottery! Lots of pictures of her art pieces. Also there're some pictures of Booda in the post-op report. The HMR this week is for Wing Commander. 

4/4/99
Happy Ishtar!  Easter was the Norse goddess of Spring, who was a later incarnation of Ishtar, who wandered into the desert and lay down.  Verily didst she shoot large multicolored beautiful eggs into the sky, which bombed cities. In honor to Ishtar, John has begun to bicycle to work and Ginohn is running again, and not just to get away from giant ICBEs.

We also fixed up some stuff in Gina's new Pottery page, and finally got a new Hero of the Month. 

4/7/99
Yay! Booda got the all-clear from the vet! More to follow...

We've made lots of minor updates to most of our site lately. Our HMR of the week is for Ed TV, which managed to squeak by with a haiku happy face.

4/17/99
New HMR for an old film: Airplane!

Gina updated the Booda report. John's been sick with some ghastly flu. The worst part was during the beginning, when for five days he couldn't get the theme song from Friends out of his feverish head.

4/19/99
We added another friend to our Links list -- Lynette, who has tons-o-big eye art!  Also we added an info section, with links to crime, radicals, and chaos (all good types, of course).

There's a new tombstone in the Graveyard! Welcome Alexandre! 

(Our Ads page changed a little too.)

4/20/99
Hey, Alexandre has a link from the Graveyard! Games and songs and stories and such...

4/21/99
More Cetera! John has put up some lists of his favorite palindromic sentences, phrases, and such. 

This week's Haiku Movie Review is for The Matrix.

This just in: apparently our nifty drop-down menu doesn't work in circa Netscape 3.0, so until we fix it, please try our site index.  It still works.

4/23/99
Eric Zuckerman is now interred into our Graveyard. He actually submitted his word on Earth Day, but we didn't carve out his tombstone in time (it was sort of a special order). Welcome to our Graveyard, Eric! 

4/26/99
Yet another tombstone! Carl Muckenhoupt has given us his epitaph -- almost. Remember, anyone is welcome to play Tombstone... And John's holding his tongue about people dying to get into our graveyard.

4/28/99
This week, we saw Never Been Kissed, and a review of it can be found in our Haiku Movie Reviews.

5/5/99
Yesterday was Star Wars Day, and John ran Barchan's quote -- "May the 4th be with you!" -- into the ground.

Today is Cinco de Mayo (sp?), where people drink a lot of tequila and celebrate Mexican Independence, so, well, we just gotta say: "May the 5th be in you!" (sorry)

This month's Hero of the same month is in (a bit late), along with this week's HMR for the movie Sirens, which is really quite a good movie despite our lackluster review.

5/10/99
Our site has a FAQ!  Have you ever wondered why John thinks he owns everything on the planet?  Wonder no more. Naturally, we put the FAQ in Cetera, our misc-section.  (Well, OK, really it's not so much FAQ as FUQ, but we didn't wanna seem rude.)

Weather's been great lately. John made another box that he calls a cabinet.  We put trash in it.  Gina and Booda have been going on daily runs. Last Sunday Ginohn came across a large (>3-ft) blacksnake!  Beautiful beast.  This Thursday we go to Iowa, to see Gina's bro' get his PhD!  (Hence the long-lived "congraduations" headline up top.)

5/11/99
John just acted like he organized our site index. And he added some stuff to the palindromes page.

5/13/99
This week's HMR is for Cookie's Fortune, which almost got a green, but not quite. Hello Iowa!

5/20/99
John, being the lucky Haiku Movie Critic that he is, managed to see the latest Star Wars episode (The Phantom Menace), and its review is posted, just hours after digesting the movie. As a movie we gave it a green, but as a Star Wars movie it gets a yellow. Still, it wasn't as bad as Revenge Return of the Jedi. Don't worry, the review doesn't give away the plot. What can one say in 17 syllables anyhow?

5/23/99
Jim Risner stopped through from London town and gave us a peek-a-boo at his (and Oz's) baby, and gave us a tombstone as well. It's in the graveyard. Oh, and it was Booda's Birthday! Hippo birdy two ewes Boody!

5/28/99
The Haiku Movie Review this week is for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which failed only slightly to get a green background. (It came so close.) We have two more tombstones in our graveyard, one for Eeyore and another for Bill Barksdale, who assures us that he is not dead yet.

6/1/99
There's a new installment to the Booda's post-op page. He's doing super.

6/2/99
Two new Tombstone players have been interred into our Graveyard, bringing the total to 70 (including 5 dead). Welcome, Jeanette (aka Reanette) and Jonathan!

Our computer is pounding away in its spare time, searching for extraterrestrial radio broadcasts via a pretty cool geeky system called SETI@Home. Check it out.

We have two HMRs this week; one for Independence Day, and the other for The Court Jester -- both of which are fun, ridiculous movies (much like that Star Wars the Fandom Menace thing).

We also have a new Hero of the Month, and wish him peace.

6/9/99
Our Haiku Movie Review site has been revamped and split into several pages. You won't find much of it in its old spot; now we have a complete list of titles, and reviews from the last 3 years - 1997, 1998, and 1999. The most recent HMR is for The Thirteenth Floor, a movie that (contrary to the hollywood norm) showed the worst scenes in the preview, instead of the best! 

What else has been going on?  Oh, yeah, Booda got the ol' snip-snip, an operation that was settled on after we couldn't find a dog vasectomist.  Still, the operation was hardly anything compared to the two TPOs he's been through.  He came home wagging his tail and immediately went on a circa 2-mile hike, and spent the night partying with our friends.

Ginohn's woods has evil ivy growing all over it, and consequently we're both scratching and breaking out in evil ivy rash. It's bothersome, but not as scary as the deer tick bites.
 

6/18/99
This week's HMR is for the latest Austin Powers movie which we saw twice, going on three.  And just today we added another review for Reefer Madness, an exceptionally boring propaganda piece from the 1930s.

John added a little paragraph at the bottom of his Autotheology page. 

6/20/99
We've got another Tombstone -- welcome to Ken Megill!

6/21/99
Lessee, today we received a fine comment from Dan Haney in our Tosci's in Heaven page, and we installed a new friendlink.

6/22/99
Added a new group to our friendlynx -- it's Team Wunderland for SETI@home, tuning into the universe.  Looks like Dale Newfield has taken over about 20 computers, and is whipping them into a fast row...

6/23/99
Take a look at John's four:eleven! It's a brand spankin' new daily journal with an extremely minimalist bent. You can even subscribe to the four:eleven emailing (details at the bottom of four:eleven's about page).

Also, we were shagged by Austin Powers again and realized that we really are fanatics, so we had to review it again.

Hmm, wonder what that last sentence would look like once we Jar-Jargonized it. Hold on...

Also, wee-sa were shagga by Austin 'the Shagadelic Jedi' Pow-as again an' realiza that wee-sa really fanatics, so wee-sa had to review it again.

6/26/99
Ginohn's officially nuts... We've now seen Austin Powers (II) three times -- in a month!  In fact we haven't been able to see any other movies this month (besides Reefer Madness, which doesn't count because it wasn't in a theater and John fell asleep), so that makes three times in a row.  We also read the fake script at The Editing Room (the same place that turned out the latest Star Wars script that's been making the e-mail rounds).  Needless to say, we've been laughing a lot lately.

6/27/99
New Tombstone! Woo hoo! Welcome to Catherine, who has completed her quest, and found her word. 

Today we added a search engine to our site, it's on the front page.

6/28/99
Today we put up a review for Never Cry Wolf. And Daniel R. Haney left his stone in our Graveyard.

There's a neato reference site out there -- a dictionary of units.  Very worthwhile and full of surprises.

6/29/99
It's out! It's out! The latest Weird Album's out! Nice work, Al...

6/30/99
Ravamped the Tombstone page. Wee!  Did some fiddling with the four:eleven stuff, too. Not much though.

7/1/99
This month's hero is... well, you'll see. Welcome to Koralleen, who just today ascended from our friendlynx into our even friendlier Graveyard. 

7/4/99
Well we're back from Origins and yes we had a nice time.  John actually won a tournament (!) for one of our favorite Cheapass Games called Falling.  He did OK (it's OK to be a finalist) in the the 10th International Icehouse Tournament, and he got trounced in a game of Go at the bar.  We got to see (among the other celebrities we haven't seen in a while) James Earnest again, and we were all thankful when he MC'd the Origins game awards ceremony -- it would have been too boring without comic relief and scorecards. OK, the ceremony was kinda boring anyhow, but nevermind. James was  the dealer when Ginohn was falling, as well.  Ginohn also met and bantered and partied with Alison's heinously (in a good Bill-n-Ted way) boisterous  brother. Ginohn is incredibly tired now, which is too bad because we're going to see fireworks and afterwards we're off to a "burn" at Trog's. That's a bonfire. So sleep will have to wait.

7/5/99
The fireworks last night were alright and the burn was superb, with lots of friends and fire (fire is cool) and drink and some didjeridu, too.  Today it is HOT outside, even in the woods.  We're stayin' in.

7/7/99
Ah yes, those halcyon days of spring, when you didn't feel like you were being broasted alive. Oh well. Today we have a review up for An Ideal Husband. And we fixed a few things, links-n-stuff.

7/10/99
Two new tombstones! Welcome to Dale and Bear.

7/13/99
OK, John just put up a really weird article called Sticks and Stones. So prepare yourself...

Gina's parents visited this weekend; we had a great time showing Grant's grad videos, and Gina took them to her pottery studio. And they bought us lots of food (again).  Thanks Mom and Dad Denn!

7/14/99 
Last week we saw a movie based on a play by Oscar Wilde, this week we saw a movie about Oscar Wilde. Our 17-syllable review for Wilde is up.  And there's a new Tombstoner!  Welcome, dawn.

Oh, here's a nifty site -- The Celebrity Atheist List.  The list itself isn't all that interesting, but the quotes and anecdotes are fun to read.  Check out what Björk had to say.  Or Teller.

7/15/99
Ginohn had a nice time last night at Duncanne's Web Night (where very few pay even the slightest attention to the web). We swayed on a hammock with Barchan most of the night, talking and swatting mosquitos.

Kevin sent us some of the "dark and stormy night" winning entries of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Funny!

7/17/99
Today we're going to Duncanne's again for a cookout. Bunnydogs: microwave some carrots, marinate, and grill. Put in a hotdog bun and add your favorite hotdog-style condiments. Yum!

John split his religious musings apart from his autotheology page. He added a little more to the musings.

7/18/99
John added a readers' comments section for his Sticks and Stones article.  Ginohn's latest Haiku Movie review is for American Pie.

Gina's off playing mini-golf and John's watching a baseball game tonight. And tomorry is birfday roller coasters for Gina!

7/21/99
Argh. Car problems. We hate 'em. Lucky for us we have a backup motyscoot and a borrowed clown-o-death car.

Today we put up some fuzzy pictures of us on roller coasters. Nothing as shocking as Flash Mountain, but hey, it's a family show, right? Here's what Gina said about Bush Garden's new coaster in an email:

HEY i found my new favorite roller coaster. Apollo's Chariot at Busch Gardens was a total freakin blast! i was literally going, "YES YES YES!" at the end of my first ride (in front, of course) like meg ryan in when harry met sally.

The four:eleven email list has been picked up by Fred-3, yay!  And did we mention that the author of Kissing Hank's Ass is mentioning Hankisms? Thanks, Reverend Jim.

7/23/99
John put a parable and a rant into his Re:ligion page.

7/24/99
Today Joe came over and helped us install an electric fence to keep the groundhogs out of our garden (they are quite adept at climbing fences). While we had the fence armed, Booda tested it with his nose and was very shocked and distraught over the consequences. Poor Boo. He probably won't touch that funny wire that goes "tick, tick" anymore -- we hope. It wasn't so much painful as it was jolting, but it still made him YIPE and run away with his tail between his legs.

John got a bit distraught today as well, after he forgot to put on his watch and missed four:eleven. He thinks he was making oatmeal at the time, but the verbal web cam was inoperable, and so today's entry will remain blank.

7/26/99
Yesterday we got to go to Angie's Farm again for picnickin' and swimmin' in the lake. The Looney's, Alison, Joe & Meg, and Ginohn all had a fabulous time. Thanks again Angie!

Haven't done much with our site lately, so we'll just drop some other links: Today because of some email buffoonery John had to look up the Nepalese word for the mountain we call Everest (he forgot it), and found a nice old site about hiking around Sagarmatha. We were also sent this article by Coleman McCarthy which raises thoughtful questions regarding animal cruelty. Adrian Morgan liked John's Science of Poetry enough to link to it, so we thought we'd link to his, too. And lastly but belatedly, check out Dumbentia (you'll need a PDF reader). This guy's funny.

7/27/99
Computer problems today, but John actually solved 'em, yay. He also put up some more musings.

7/28/99
John added a comment in the Sticks and Stones' readers' comments page.

Our movie review for this week is for The Visitors, which (we should warn the illiterate peasants) is mostly French with English subtitles.

8/4/99
Not too much web stuff to report. We've been out in the real world lately; last weekend we went to Pittsburg to see (along with Zarf and his friends Bob, Paul, and Hailey) Weird Al in concert. As usual the concert was splendiferous, and Al was extremely generous to the hangers-on at the end of the show -- he signed a million autographs and posed for many pictures with crazed (some bordering insane) fans.

We hung out at Zarf's house while we were in The Pitt, playing with his toys and playtesting various game ideas. Zarf, along with Paul and Hailey (sp?) showed us "The Strip", where we bought cheap gourmet groceries. A good time was had by all...

We added a couple new links to our friendlynx collection, John put a few sentences into his musings re:ligion page, and we have a new Haiku Movie Review up for The Iron Giant.

The hero of the month for August is... bet you'll never guess.

8/10/99
We have a new Hankism!  Hanks to Kevin Ausman, you'll find Ethical Humanism at the bottom of the Hankismspage.

Also Ginohn slightly changed our emoticon system for the Haiku Movie Reviews. The new system is much easier to implement (for us). Because of the change a few of our past reviews have been re-emoted. In honor of our new, even easier ratings, three new reviews have been added: Fantastic Planet, Mystery Men, and Dick.

Gina added another recipe to our lunch pages -- Creamy Veggie Sauté. It's quite tasty.

John updated some links to our Ouijja Dancing page, and added a little paragraph at the bottom, which might be of some aid to covens looking for new dance steps.

The other day Stacy got us wondering about metal in microwave ovens, so John went hunting and found this nice sight that includes dangerous experiments you can try with microwaves. Good thing ours is borrowed.

Gina and friends went to Hershey Park last Sunday to ride roller coasters and see Weird Al in concert. Sorry, no new rollercoaster pix; the cameras at HP weren't that great.

8/11/99
So, while we're planning to go to Canada, apparently Canada is coming to us. We hope they'll bring some whales with them.

The groundhogs, too, are invading again. They found a way through the electric fence and ate all our squishes and soybeans. John's thinking of hooking up another battery in series to increase the voltage, but it's too late unless the groundhogs decide to eat other stuff in the garden, like tomatoes.

8/16/99
We've been watching the Doggess Athena for the past few days, which the Dog Booda really enjoys because he's madly in love with any dog in general but especially Athena. So they've been having slumber parties and hikes and growlings over food.

John, during one of those hikes, saw a spider poop! It was a big spider and a small poop. Certainly it's something worth mentioning in our log -- after all, who's seen a spider poop?

We finally got some rainfall; not enough, but a relief nonetheless. It's been kinda dry here.

Last Saturday we played in Peter Hammond's Hunt 99, a LARP (low emphasis on the role-playing). Ginohn was on a team of detectives with Jake and Aaron. There were several other teams, and the goal was the same for all the teams -- catch some mad scientist guy who was implanting non-stop teletubbies reruns into victims' brains. We won! Most of the game was played inside, piecing together a metapuzzle of mostly mathematics and code problems. The game lasted longer than anyone expected, so we were late getting home to our puppies. Athena didn't mind, but Booda doled out the usual punishments (find something to tear up).

Then we were off to Greykell's birthday party, extremely late and tired and unprepared. There we saw Blast From the Past, a surprisingly good movie that we hope to review soon.

Today's our 2nd anniversary! Nothing really special planned, we're just spending yet even more time together. Ate veggie sushi rolls and tempura together at a place called Osaka today for lunch, and tonight we're going to one of our favorite food spots -- the Vegetable Garden. Their blackened mushrooms look and taste like greasy pork rinds. YUM! Oh yeah, and we're thinking about how lucky (or persistent) we must've been to find each other in this huge universe. 

8/18/99
Yes, we have a movie review for Blast From the Past. No, we don't have much else for you; we're busy buying dehydrated camping food. We're doing other stuff too, but we're too busy to remember what. Oh yeah, but while we're busy walking with Booda through the woods, we're mapping the trails, using a compass (with mirror sight) and counting paces for distance. It's a chore, but it already feels worth it, and it doesn't really lengthen our walk much. Here's a sneak preview of our map. We will update the map as often as possible -- right now it just contains a very small number of trails. The map grid is in 100 pace units (John's paces). We'll include a description of our mapping methods later on (when we're not so busy).

8/19/99
This just in -- last night John got a haircut! This wouldn't be such a big deal, it's just that John hasn't had a haircut in two years. Gina started out scared and took lots of "jesus" pictures for posterity (we'll explain that some other day), but was ultimately happy with the results. John's braided hair is sitting in a jar on a shelf now. No more motorcycle tangles! Wee!

8/20/99
Well, we're not quite ready for our trip to Canada yet, but we're going anyways. See you here next week!

We have an early movie review up -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

There's a new stone in our Graveyard! (It's been a while, hasn't it?) Welcome, Michelle. Who wants to be number 80?

9/7/99
John's back from his California trip, the first part of which was lots of work at Ames Research Center, and the second part lots of fun everywhere else. Koralleen flew in from the East coast on a fifty dollar (round trip!) ticket on Friday night, and she and John stayed up all night long watching really bad programs on Khaled's big screen TV, much to Khaled's chagrin (Bikini Drive-In will not be reviewed, sorry). Then, when he kicked them out in the morning -- possibly for a minor sesame seed infraction, but that's another story -- they hunted down the Winchester Mystery House (it took a while to find and then there were thrift stores blocking the way) and toured it. A fine place it is, too, especially when your body is literally trying to defenestrate itself for lack of sleep. Plenty of windows and doors leading to horrible drops.

After Winchester and an hour long nap, Koralleen & John visited Eric & Beth in Albany(?), who took them to a another really cool house owned by someone who wasn't there -- thanks Oliver! (he was at Burning Man). John met a few more Icehouse fans and played a couple games, including a very close 6-player game. Very cool people all around. Someday John will see Eric when John's awake, and Eric won't know whom he is.

The next day John took Koralleen to San Francisco, through almost every steep and windiest street in the neighborhood there is -- it's like a slow motion roller coaster ride. Then they took a quick walk up Haight street, through a small part of Golden Gate Park, and had a little tea at the Japanese Tea Garden, which (thank Santa) was not crowded.

Leaving San Francisco is not as easy as getting there, it seems, so by the time they made it to the airport and John found out that his plane was leaving at 2:50, not 2:05, things were not looking good. Check out this cryptic email from Koralleen:

> Koraleen - Is Cooper back home again?

Hard to say.  Last I saw, he was waddling furiously toward a shuttle that, were it to travel at the speed of sound, might get him to his plane in time to return.  From his most recent post, however, I would surmise that it traveled instead at a much higher and dangerous velocity, depositing him in front of a Squeeze-playing machine.  Santa help him.

Meantime, Gina's been back to work and spending much time in the studio and the woods. She and Booda have encountered two snakes (one was a beautiful 4+ foot blacksnake), and at least a hundred different mushroom species. Today Gina used two rolls of film on mushroom pictures. Since the week-long rain that we desperately needed the woods is alive with mosses, streams, ferns, and fungi.

We have two new Haiku Movie Reviews (well, one technically isn't new since it already was seen in the Wunderland News, but what have you): Outside Providence and Foxfire. Also, one of our haikus wasn't long enough syllable-wise, so we extended it a bit. Check out our updated review for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

We also have a new Tombstoner (from Finland maybe?). Welcome, Juuso! Also a belated welcome to Mike Sugarbaker, who alerted us to our short haiku, and who won at the recent six-player Icehouse game, and who has given us his epitaph, apparently for the second time. Please, if you have submitted a tombstone and it has not been added to our graveyard, let us know!

8/29/99
Hey we're back, and we had a splendiferous time!  I mean really!  We highly recommend the same exact trip to everyone.  Take one cushy car, a friend who speaks French (Jenny, in our case), and a book on tape or two, drive up to Quebec city in one day, drive up to the camping  grounds at Cap de Bon Desir on the St. Lawrence river the next day, camp, look at whales with binoculars from your campsite, eat lots of dehydrated food, see the northern lights (wow! awesome!), have a campfire with cheap beer and maybe cigarettes to keep the giant skeeters at bay, go to the GORGEOUS park a kilometer up the road to see the minke whales swimming a few feet away, take an excursion on a little speedboat to get close to the fin (or finback) whales and belugas, speed back through the fog that you can't see 20 feet in, eat more, have more campfires and beer, watch the tide go in and out, walk barefoot in the muck, play Cosmic Wimpout (for money!), drive back to Quebec city after a few days, get a hot hotel room (in summer), walk around this lovely small old city, watch street performers (one man bands and such), shop, embarrass yourself trying to speak French (if you're not Jenny), drink beer in what may be the oldest pub in North America, visit the Musee de la Civilisation, eat too much and do some people watching (beautiful people, those Quebecers). Don't forget to come home again to your puppy and kitty. And slow down when you get back into the states. There're more cops here.

Speaking of kitties, we now have a kitty in our Graveyard! Welcome to Chiya, who apparently knew exactly what her tombstone should say.

9/12/99
Oh, no, not another Hankism! Gnosticism just hit the books. While John was adding Gnosticism, he fixed the Hankism for SubGenius (the last entry was a bit too much like the real thing). 

We have a newly interred tombstone belonging to Gale Langseth. Thanks Gale, and welcome!

We've done some more woods mapping. It's actually beginning to look like a map.

Our latest Haiku Movie Review is for Eyes Wide Shut, to which we awarded a green background (meaning quite simply that we loved it); it certainly helped that the callypigian Nicole Kidman was in the cast.

9/15/99
A new nephew has just emerged out of his perfectly good hiding place into planet Earth. His nickname's Liam, and his proud parents are Tom (John's bro') and Kathy. He weighs 7 pounds something. Meanwhile, Sean (a relatively old nephew) keeps getting bigger and happier.

We just barely made it through Dead Presidents the other night, and managed to spit out a Haiku Movie Review for it. We can't decide whether it's really good or really disgusting. No, never mind, it's disgusting. Oh well. BTW the HMR list is now sort of sorted alphabetically.

Robin Noel just dropped into our Graveyard. Welcome Robin!  Also, Michael and Cynthia's new website just hit the friendlynx.

Our woods map was added to our cetera pile. The mapping is sometimes tiring, but always rewarding when we see the latest results.

A couple palindromes were added to John's list. We won't tell you which ones they are. OK, they're the gray ones.

John added a couple other things to his Re:ligious Musings.

9/18/99 
Floyd the Storm left our woods "looking like the day after Christmas, with wrappings strewn about," as our friend Rich put it. Many old trees and parts of trees have fallen; large branches have become stakes in the ground, and green leaves litter the forest floor as if a strange new season, perhaps a hybrid of Spring and Fall, has come upon us. Guess we'll call it Sprawl. Sprawl is beautiful, in its own way, and our forest is slowly cleaning itself up.

Just put a new path into our woods map. Actually it was uploaded on the 16th.

John added some palindromes from Alison (she has a palindrome page too). John also put another entry in his musings re:ligion page.

9/19/99
Now that we sort of know what we're doing we added a little article on how to map trails. It's appended to our woods map, which has finally been added to GinohnIndex.

John just added some four:eleven faq to his page about four:eleven.

9/21/99
We have two new reviews -- we saw The Sixth Sense (finally) and the original 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair, after which Ginohn's conversation went something like this:

G: That was a wretched movie.
J: Well, you have to put it into context with movies of its time...
G: No I don't. That movie sucked!

9/26/99
Kory Heath came into town to visit, so far with great pleasure (for Ginohn at least). It's been a lot of fun meeting Kory at Wunderland Central; hauling him off to the Renaissance Fair with Jenny, Joe, and Meg; thence to a feast at the Vegetable Garden (with Jenny too); and finally back to our house for late night silliness and incantations of Aquarius. All the while Ginohn was hammering out questions and taking mental notes in an attempt to cram as much info re: Kory before he goes back home tomorrow.

Then today Ginohn and Izolda made a first attempt at heading up a drum clot in the woods (that's like a drum circle). The Wunderland folks showed up, along with Kory, and we wandered over to Izolda's to meet up with other people. It was here that things started going disastrous, because Gina was left behind and assumed everyone was going to our planned spot in the woods. By the time everyone at Izolda's house decided to go look for Gina in the woods (she being the only one who knew how to get to the planned place of drumming), Gina was heading back out to Izolda's. Needless to say our paths never crossed, and it was quite a while before a traumatized Ginohn was reunited. But meanwhile and eventually there was much drumming and didjing and mosquito slapping and everyone who was there decided it'd be nice to do again, like maybe even once a month.

9/28/99
Added another path to our woods map. We call the path Mossy Rug Road because halfway along it there lies an old green rug in a heap, with some moss growing on it. There is also a lot more moss along the trail. "Road" is an alliterative misnomer, it's really just a path.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was playing at our local theater, so of course we watched it and added it to our haiku movie reviews.

Gina's bro sent us a palindrome that he read in a bathroom -- So many dynamos!  John added it to his big list.

John added another musing re:ligion, mostly written by a fellow muser.

10/6/99
Here, have a new hero of the month. But chew slowly, you'll want to enjoy every bite.

We've been busy for the last week having fun. We went to the Takoma Park Street Festival (a quaint yet crowded smorgasbord of music and food, tainted with bad karaoke and beer if you went into the wrong places) on Sunday, and last Saturday we went to see our new nephew, who for a 2 week-old baby is quite alert and cute. One of their cats is jealous but luckily she shows this by demanding to fall asleep in your lap, just like the kid. Last Friday we had another knock down drag out party which lasted till 5 am or so

We've added a very short path to our woods map -- it's the almost unnoticeable orange BARC Entrance in the North. Our chevroned schedules are keeping us from walking Booda together, so consequently the mapping has slowed down. John added a few pointers to landmarks, just for fun; they'll probably be taken away later. One interesting thing -- while we were visiting our nephew we got a chance to try out a nifty little toy. It's a laser range finder, like Star Wars binoculars with buttons. Push a button and a nifty readout appears in the midst of your view, complete with digital distance to the target. So now we know that one of John's paces equals about .84 yards.

Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for Plunkett & Macleane, a movie that John managed to convince Izolda, Gina, and Rich to go to without knowing anything about it. Here's a weird plate-o-shrimp: the high pitched singer in the movie sounded eerily familiar, and it wasn't long before all of us realized that he was the same guy (lead singer of the Tiger Lillies) who sang all through Shockheaded Peter, a sort of play playing at the Kennedy Center that all four of us saw just last Thursday. Strange, that.

This just in -- We have a new Tombstoner. Welcome to the Graveyard, Mr. Loomer!

10/13/99
Halloween is fast approaching, and John has a nice costume idea for you, if you like to terrify people.

Our Haiku Movie Review for the week is for American Beauty, which just missed green by a small margin. Worth seeing though, and somewhat unique.

We added a few more trails to our woods map: part of the West Field Perimeter, the West Canyon path, and the Laurel Entrance extension into BARC territory.  Someday you'll be in our woods and you'll be glad you printed out our map. Maybe. It could happen.

John had a happy birthday on Monday (coincidentally the dread pirate Columbus' Day {observed}). Here is an excerpt from one of his emails:

I went out to a field beyond the woods today and flew the present Gina got for me -- that really cool pneumatically powered aeroplane. It's neat! During the first flight it pulled an Imellmann and headed straight for the treeline. Then, just as it reach the trees it changed its mind and took a sharp right turn, and slowly turned back towards us (me and Rich). Great flight. We had a few more, then Rich was ready to go so I said, "just one more flight; I haven't crashed it into a tree yet." I was just kidding of course but the very next flight was kinda disastrous; the plane wrecked at an altitude of ~50 ft. into a tree. Luckily, and unknown to me, the important part (the fuselage) disengaged itself from the tree and fell softly to the bushes below. Rich found it while I was looking for the plane in the tree, and he was saying, "I think it's in *that* tree," while he was using the fuselage to point up at the tree. I didn't get it until he carefully showed me what he was pointing with. He's such a card. Anyhow, I have an extra wing (comes with the package) and the plane was not lost, so it was a successful flying day.

Even so, we have a couple new tombstoners, Eric and Erik.

Our movie review for the week is for Waking Ned Devine, a cute little comedy.

And we have had some fun. John got to see the first new-generation Icehouse pieces rolling off the line last Friday -- they're beauties!  Then Ginohn spent Friday night with some relatives (Uncle Dennis and his son Alex were visiting) arguing over movies; the buzzphrase of the evening was "overrated cult movie" -- you can use that for any movie you don't like. Saturday night we went with the Looneys to a crowded Irish style pub, to celebrate Icehouse, Cooper style. John's bro' Thom and amigo John were there too. Good music, though a bit loud. Sunday night Ginohn had dinner at Rizolda's place and played spooky ouija games.

John found the wing of his airplane and we had a few more flights, but damage to the wing has caused the plane to dive when it loses power. So we'll try the new wing soon. It's a great plane though, a real high flyer.

10/27/99
More tombstoners! Welcome to Chris, Damien, Tetsuya, and Sean.

Welp, John's brother Frank (AKA Fwanky) dropped in this weekend to see family and all before he heads over to some base in Alabama for whirly-bird training. Ginohn went on a couple dates with Fwanky to some crowded bars, a diner, and a movie. It was fun.

We also have two new Haiku Movie Reviews, one for Bringing Out the Dead (that's the movie we saw with Frank) and the other for Rushmore, which we saw at Eryq and Deborah's house (new friends?) with them and Rizolda.

The Icehouse game packages are being held up lately by a horrible delay at the printer's, but we've been having some fun playing with our prototype sets. John has become once again fascinated with IceTraders, and has been trying out some nasty little strategies with meager successes, but great plot points. We've been teaching IceTowers to other folk, and marveling at our nice little ice gems.

11/3/99
Another wacky week has kept us from the clutches of the Web. Looks like this site is going back to a weekly sort of update thing, except for John's daily four:eleven entries, of course, but they take minutes. 

Our latest heroine of the month has arrived; please sign hello.

Our Graveyard has another stone in it -- welcome to Anthony Thompson. The Graveyard might have more stones in it soon, but first we're trying to find out if one person is having fun at our expense. You may have noticed a few Japanese epitaphs lately, like:

Otaku: a geek who spends an irregular amount of time on an esoteric hobby, especially animation or comics (ie. D&D / Star Trek geek in the west) (derogatory, slang)
Ui: a sound made when expressing disgust (not a word)
Baka: fool, idiot (derogatory), foolishness, idiocy, stupidity 
Hentai: perversion (pervert) [this hasn't been added yet]

We didn't quite have enough time to see a movie this week, so we reviewed an old movie we both saw several times (because it's so good): The Princess Bride.

Our woods map has taken a turn for the worse -- one of the trails that we mapped just didn't match up to its predicted exit point. So some remapping of old trails is in the works.

Friday Ginohn went through some temporary mitosis -- John attended a burn (that's "bonfire" in normy speak) at Trog & Marin's place (where Ginohn married each other), and Gina went to a party put on by Number 12 and Sean in a spooky house. The ghost of the smell of the ancient first run of Icehouse pieces lives there too, but that's another story.

Saturday Ginohn managed to make it to Skip & Yvonne's tie dye party, where they playtested a new card game by Joan Wendland. It's coming along nicely. Then we skiddadled to Towson to attend the 6 hour long annual Superfriends Ball at Recher Theater, hosted by three bands including the incredible All Mighty Senators. Jenny came with us and displayed great patience while John waited after the show for the drummer/lead singer named Landis to come out. John was good friends with Landis circa 15 years ago, so naturally Landis didn't recognize him at all at first. After a few mental prods, Landis remembered, gave John a big hug, was introduced to Gina and gave her a hug too, and started quickly catching up with bios. He's married too now, and has a kid! We're going to make sure we catch another show, the Senators are fun. Tinges of Zappa.

On Sunday, the eve of the dead, we prepared as best we could for Trick or Treaters. Gina put up lots of decorations and John made a stick man and hung it from a tree outside. You know, one of those projects the Blair Witch had. John still hasn't seen the film and Gina confirmed that she has no desire to see more than five minutes of it (which she saw at Sean's spooky party). The stick man's still out there; we should probably take it down before someone decides it violates code. Anyhow. After a piddling of kids came by for candy, John took a heavy dose of antiskeptic (minty fresh), we went to Rizolda's house -- if you haven't guessed yet that means Rich and Izolda -- to take part with them and Eryq and Deborah in a ritual celebration of Samhain (hope that's how you spell it; it's pronounced SAHwane). Highlights included singing in the woods, playing with elementals, drinking gooood cider, ouija dancing, majik stuff (TM), and honoring the dead. John made special mention of Grandparents that have passed on, and his Cousin Jane. Gina honored her long gone animal friends. It was a fulfilling ceremony.

Monday, the day of the dead, unfortunately became just that. After going to the Vegetable Garden with Rizolda for dinner, we came back to town to find out that Seegie, one of their pet cats, had been hit by a car and killed. Rizolda are devastated. Seegie was a beautiful, friendly calico with a fluffy tail. John and Rizolda buried her in the woods near the tiny cairn we had made the night before at Samhain, and then transfered the cairn to the gravesite. While digging the grave, the dark earth had bright points of green posphorous light (from microscopic fungi, maybe), which stuck to hands and made it look as if Seegie were being buried in stars. A bittersweet moment.

Other than that we've been working a lot and watching tapes of Ally McBeal and That 70's Show, and John's been fiddling around a lot with his new Icehouse set (with mutant incarnadine pieces and transparent ones too!). 

11/4/99
Well, turns out the Japanese tombstones (and more) are all on the level; they were sent in from one machine (hence the single return address), by each player. Apologies all around to McKallister and crew. The three latest additions to our graveyard include: loony, Think, and Hentai. Welcome tombstoners! You may have noticed we are putting the words up instead of names. Just keeping you on your toes.

11/11/99
We have two more tombstoners: Insanity and Dispensed!!! This brings up the Graveyard's total to 97 people.

Fun stuff this week included another drumdijdogclot on Sunday, which means a bunch of people and dogs gathered in our woods to play drums and dij, bark, belly dance, and ouija dance. More people showed up than we had last time, and there were no mosquitos. Woohoo! We played in the woods for about 4 hours. On Saturday night we went to Wunderland central to help with Icehouse packaging. The pay is terrible but the hours are flexible and they give you free sodas. Have we mentioned that the Icehouse game pieces are amazing? Well, they are, durn it.

Monday Ginohn went on a date to see Being John Malkovich. Excellent film all 'round. We reviewed it of course. But the film is much better than the haiku, trust us. Speaking of great films, John just received a copy of The Lathe of Heaven, which he hasn't seen since 1980 something, and he's getting ready to have a video party in honor of his second favorite science fiction film. The first is Bladerunner, director's cut. He's psyched.

Oh, we just got a new bigger monitor. It's on loan, like the last one, but since everything belongs to John that doesn't matter. Now all we need is a computer that the monitor will be comfortable with.

John added a comment section to his halloween costume page, complete with nice comments from a guy named Erik. Send in yours (well, OK, you might have to wait until next year), maybe we'll set up a list for top salesperson of the year. Looks like it's Erik this year; congrats man.

Ginohn's bro Frank just started helicopter training; he's reportedly doing well.

Oh, here's a couple nice pictures. CooperDad carved a handsome pumpkin this Halloween. And friend Jim's kid Zoe is growing quickly and cutely. Excuse the long download time, please.

11/17/99
Lots of Weird Al concerts this weekend for Gina, and game design for John. Gina went to Philly to see Al in concert and also to pal around with her friend Laurie. She also caught the show in D.C. Meantime John stayed home and survived several brainstorms, restaurants and shopping trips with friend Kory, who just moved into town.

So very little has been done (yet again) with our site this week. John, confident that Gina will love The Lathe of Heaven as much as he did, rushed ahead with a haiku movie review for it. An old Hankism, the one for Zen Buddhism, has been rehashed. Someday the entire list will attain the Buddha nature.

11/25/99
Happy Thanksindians everybody! Today we give thanks to our country's fore fathers and mothers (all fore of them), and try to contemplate the trinkets of wisdom left over from their demolished cultures. Thanks, Indians! 

We saw Dogma this week, reviewed it and gave it a yellow. Some of our friends really loved it though, so there ya have it. Gina got to watch The Lathe of Heaven (which John preemptedly reviewed last week), and she didn't really like it that much. But since we sometimes heavily weight the averages for rankings of movies that either one of us insists are great (e.g. Head and Forrest Gump), LOH will stay green. 

This week we have two new tombstoners -- their epitaphs read FUN and Create. Welcome to the Graveyard! Anybody want to be number 100? In a somewhat related story, Damien Roc told us about the Americanized definition of Otaku:

While Otaku is a derogatory term in Japan, it has taken on a much more benign meaning in the US (and, presumably, in other English speaking countries.) Essentially, it just means "Anime Fan".

The difference is similar to how "Anime" has a slightly different meaning. In Japan, it just means animation, and includes everything Japanese - like Princess Mononoke and Crayon Shin-Chan - American - like Disney and WB - and whatever else. Over here, "Anime" is no more than "Japanese animation."

Last Saturday we went to our friend Rob Bryan's wedding -- it was probably the ritziest wedding we've yet attended -- good food, friends, and dancing (Greykell led a bunny hop). Ginohn wishes the couple a happy and fulfilling life together.

John and Kory are about ready to start beta testing their new game. It's called Zagami, and like IceTraders and IceTowers, it is a "pure" Icehouse game, meaning that only the playing pieces are required, no board or special accouterments. They hope it works out so they can post the rules on the web for all the Icehouse fans. Along with the updated and long overdue rules for IceTraders and Zarcana, of course. Someday. :Þ

Ginohn has been taking care of the doggess Athena (Booda's girlfriend) this week, along with her acolyte kitties Thor, Loki, and Lynx, while Rizolda is out of town. As if that isn't enough, Gina has taken on another dog sitting job for her friend Cam. Whew!

We'll end with this nice letter from a Zarcana fan:

Just wanted to drop you a quick line about how much we're all enjoying Zarcana down here at the "end of the Universe." ;) I was able to teach my oldest son (11) and daughter (9) how to play- we've all become fanatical players- Zarcana truly is an addictive game. I read the posted correspondence between Kory and you vis a vis Zarcana- I feel obligated to point out that I think Zarcana *is* the ultimate game! ;) Whether you view it from a purely recreational standpoint, metaphorical model or extended divination it's *the best*. Many thanks for making it available. 

Tom
-- 
NCISRU Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

12/1/99
Welcome to December, we hope November was good to you. Our newest hero of the month is the guy who wrote this book. He was also a suspect in the JFK conspiracy, but we won't get into that.

We now have 101 tombstoners in our Graveyard of Tombstone players! Welcome to our newest dearly departing players, whose epitaphs read pervert and Finally!!!

Our movie this week was another oldy but goody, Shirley Valentine, which you can probably find in the comedy section of your typical video store. But watch out, it has come to our attention - the hard way - that some copies have certain British phrases overdubbed to protect sensitive 'merkin ears. Like the word "vegemite" (maybe that's what it was) suddenly became "veggie burger". Annoying at times, but the movie is worth seeing either way.

Thanksindians at John's Mom's was a pleasant experience, as usual. All the nice dishes and wine were out, there were loads of food, and John and his brother Thom got into some rousing ridiculous debates over gun control (or lack thereof) and the sanctity (or lack thereof) of our flag, dead famous politicians, etc.

We attended the third Drumdijdogjam in the woods last Sunday; the weather and spirits were good to us, everybody sounded better than before. It'll be sad when the 'Jam has to finally hibernate for the winter. As it is, we have another one scheduled for this coming Sunday, just in case it's warm outside.

John and Kory finally got to test their latest Heathcoop Icehouse game, called Zagami, on real players even! There're still some bugs to be worked out, but all in all the playtest was successful. A freshly tweaked version is already in the works and ready for another playtest.

12/9/99
We've been fighting off some nasty bug that's been hanging around, here's hoping it's finished with us this week.

Our Haiku Movie Review for this week is for South Park -- it was fun. Speaking of haiku, Joseph Daverin sent us a nice HMR for a movie we haven't seen yet:

SPHERE
if the secret code
is one-to-one then there are
big problems with it

This past weekend Greenbelt Pottery Guild had a pottery sale at Greenbelt's Festival of Lights Craft Show, and Gina went there for a few hours Saturday and Sunday to help out. She did some throwing demos and the show was a big success, for Greenbelt Pottery and for her! She's expecting a nice check soon. And she's been going to the studio every day since, even if just for a little while, to finish up what she started there and several other projects that have been needing attention.  Remember, Greenbelt Pottery Guild (GPG) has a sale every Sunday from 1:30 to 4:30 in the Greenbelt Community Center.

John attended another successful Drumdijdogjam last Sunday (Gina was at the craft show), and this time he even played the drums for a while (instead of the didjeridu). Once again the weather was great, though not as many people showed up. The next 'Jam is scheduled for Sunday, January 8th. We're thinking as long as we only have one 'Jam a month from now on that the gods might be kind to us and give us good weather. So far so good...

Zagami is still in tweaking stage, and ready again for yet another playtest at the Looney Labs. Kory and John haven't given up yet, in fact they've started working on a few more game ideas while Zagami is playing out the kinks.

For those of you who know Barchan, you might be interested in reading this note:

everybody,
   surprise.
what i had thought was a torn rotator cuff for the past 7 months was really an unmended broken humerus. it is stitched together now, and should heal.
take care,
barchan

Ken Magill's back in town, well, nearby anyway, and stopped by with a friend to surprise us last Friday. His hair is very long now.

12/15/99
This has been the week of Temple for Ginohn and Kory. Last Thursday we played Temple at Wunderland until very late (something in the morning), then Friday we went to Rizolda's and played it there for another many hours. Saturday there turned out to be three parties in our neighborhood, and we actually made it to all three. At the last party we taught more people how to play, and played until 3:00 AM or so. The game is quite addictive and hard to stop playing once it's started. Kory thinks it's because of the hierarchical nature of our primate brains and stuff.

Other than that we've just been working, walking the Booda, working, &c (that's the old style abbreviation of etcetera).

Ooh, looky! Icehouse was just mentioned in gamers.com! Somebody out there likes us... We even got a review and rating. Too bad John's game pages aren't up-to-date; we're definitely going to get some hits.

Our Haiku Movie Review this week will be for Toy Story 2, which we are scheduled to see tonight.

[Later] OK, we just saw it. Fun movie but contrary to many of our friends we didn't think it was as good as the first one.

Related note: our friend Jim is doing some (real) reviews on some monkey boy'z website. He's a good reviewer. So there.

12/22/99
Well, we're off to Florida to see Gina's folks, so four:eleven won't be updated until we get back. If you would like to get a mailing of each day's four:eleven entry, don't forget that John has a robot working for him. His name is Fred. He'll be glad to add you to the ever-growing list-o-subscribers.

Zagami is on standby for another playtest. Tweaks to the rules are becoming fewer and smaller; Kory and John are thinking the rules will be ready and made available for Icers in a couple weeks.

Ginohn and Kory tested out Martian Temple (John's Icehouse version of Temple -- somebody had to do it) for the first time at Looney Labs. It too needs a few tweaks, but is almost ready for beta testing. Get ready to become Exalted Empress, Prime Minister, or Supreme Dumpster Diver of Mars!

We celebrated Winter Solstice a little early this year, by ritually decorating and burning a yule log at Eryq and Deborah's place with Izolda acting as "Facilitatrix". The log was beautiful, and burned with lots of different colors -- the teal and purple flames were the prettiest. Then Deberyq treated us to a huge feast of really tasty finger food. 

We have two reviews again this week, one for the dreamy City of Lost Children, and another for Sleepy Hollow (the frowny for Sleepy Hollow is not a mistake, we expect better stuff from Tim Burton).

Three new Tombstones this week -- oops, Chilled, and UNO!!! -- have graced our Graveyard. Welcome to your new plots!

We received an open letter from Eric Zuckerman this week, with a special roller coaster art request. We won't be visiting D'world while in Florida, but we are hoping to get a ride in on the giant swing of death at the Grand Prix in Hollywood. Suicidal fun. Our favorite.

After two years of living in a 1000 year old redwood named Luna, Julia Butterfly (our favorite tree hugger) has finally come down to terra firma! Hopefully the logging company will keep its word and not cut down Luna. We applaud Julia and her extraordinary tactics, as well as her support team. Ginohn knows what it is like to fall in love with a forest.

12/30/99
Last night we returned from southern Florida where we had spent the week eating, playing Scrabble, eating some more, scrabbling some more, watching cable TV, and, um, not too much else. We had a good time; it was nice to see the rest of the Denn family and the DennRents' new house in Vero Beach -- it's right by a big pond (too cold for swimming this time), in a nice neighborhood with cranes, herons, egrets, ibises, and rumored alligators. We also went to the intercoastal and saw manatees, dolphins, and pelicans.

Our Haiku Movie Review this week is for Galaxy Quest which narrowly broke the margin from yellow to green. We also saw Man on the Moon, but we're late on the review. Maybe next week...

While we were down south we put another swing-o-death under our belts, this one was the world's highest at 300 feet with a 135 foot drop! Also we blended our minds on a really fast (70 mph) ferris thingy ride (more like a ferris wheel chair on a salt and pepper shaker type ride) called The Blender, which claims 4g's and goes 180 feet high. Gina also tried one of those trampolines where you're suspended from a couple of bungee cords so you can jump pretty high and do flips, it was fun for her and boring for Grant and John to watch.

In an outstanding coup which defied even tickling, Gina Heisenburgered John's four:eleven yesterday. John would like to note that he has never even set foot in Hooters.