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What About the Rest of the Fleet?
There were other colorful submarines: red, blue, green...
My favorite was the purple submarine. Captain Jackson took his
crewmates, Tina and Veronica, on an epic quest to rescue Princess
Aquarius from the clutches of the aliens from Planet X-33. What
a story! (Not that you learn any of it from playing the card
game Aquarius...)
I'm trying to think of a name for a book store
for Koralleen. I put my hands behind my head and lean back to
look up at the ceiling, while my office partner Gil talks about
fixing and selling houses. I'm mulling over a Kurt Vonnegut quote,
something about putting on armor and attacking a sundae, and
thinking maybe Hot Fudge Books? Nah. Gil says, "My house?
Oh, my, Gawd."
juggernaut (jug'-er-not) n.
1: a massive inexorable force that crushes whatever is in
its path 2: (chiefly Brit.) a large heavy truck
3: (an older definition from the OED) (figurative) an institution,
practice, or notion to which persons blindly devote themselves,
or are ruthlessly sacrificed. 4: (the
first OED definition, presumably at the root of all these meanings)
in Hindu mythology, a title of Krishna, the eighth avatar of
Vishnu; specifically, the idol of this deity, annually dragged
in procession on an enormous car, under the wheels of which many
devotees would throw themselves to be crushed.
- Office Space :)
- The plot's a bit bland
but matching the characters
to real life is fun.
Frontline: Drug Wars
 This 4-hour
PBS documentary makes it plainer than ever that our modern rerun
of Prohibition is every bit as destructive and horrible as the
original... but it stops short of suggesting actual solutions,
beyond the need for a radical change. Even so, the drug war cannot
withstand journalism like this. (I wish Jim Lehrer
had seen it while thinking up questions for the second presidential
debate, which once again was completely drug-policy-discussion
free...)
 
Voices USA
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You Are Squa Tront |
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 We're
getting pretty excited about the impending arrival of Chrononauts.
The latest word from the factory is that the cards are all cut
and packed into the boxes; however, they did run into some trouble
with the final outer cello-wrap layer. It seems ours is the thickest
tuckbox of this type that Carta Mundi has ever manufactured,
and it choked their machinery. But Eric says they've worked out
a solution, and still expect to ship as planned, sometime next
week.
Since we've started accepting pre-orders for the game, they've
been rolling in, from stores and distributors as well as individuals,
so everything's poised to make us extremely busy filling orders
during the next couple of weeks. Consequently, we're trying to
clear the decks now, cleaning the house and catching up on a
few things before the next wave of overwork hits. (Plus of course
Alison has been playing the Farming Game...)
With Chrononauts done and on the verge of arriving, we're
starting to really dig into the marketing phase, and accordingly,
here you see our first full page ad for the game. It's scheduled
for the December issue of Knights of the Dinner Table (which,
for those not in the know, is a hilarious gaming magazine/comic
book, with a huge pass-along audience; it's one of the best-read
publications in our industry).
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 Over
the weekend we held another Factory Saturday, which predictably
devolved into another late-night session of game-playing. We
were joined by the usual regulars
(Ginohn-Kory-Dale) plus Rabbits
from the Asheville and Blacksburg Warrens (Erskin and Marcella
were here for the weekend, delivering a giant fish, and Jazzfish
and Emily were in town for the RenFest) plus Margit and her daughter
Alex. We built Black
Ice and Button
Broccoli [Collector's Note: The new printing of Tirade has
noticeably brighter colors] and after a productive afternoon
(thanks everyone!), Kory and toK and Jake and Peter showed up
and we all played games until nearly 5AM. (By the way, my favorite
of the new games I've played lately is Reiner Knizia's Lost Cities.) |
 Go
Green: Vote for Ralph! |
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My copy of Time
War arrived, and the rules are daunting; it's a classic chit-based
war game of the sort that always makes my eyes glaze over. But
I'm not disappointed, even considering the level of water-damage
the supposedly mint (but admittedly never-opened) game had suffered.
The board is great and mission cards are very entertaining. (They're
notched, like IBM punchcards!) And here's an interesting Plate of
Shrimp: It was designed by Stephen Peek, author of Game
Plan! (I must send him a copy of Chrononauts...) |
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It drives me crazy when politicians talk about
ending Racial Profiling without mentioning the War on Drugs.
Racial Profiling is a symptom -- the real disease is Prohibition.
What do you think the cops are searching for when they stop young
black men driving sportscars? That's right, drugs! The best way
to end Racial Profiling is to abolish our insane Drug War, which
is itself racially biased. |
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"There are times when the gap between reality
and rhetoric, between what we know to be true and what our leaders
say, becomes so outrageous as to feel positively surreal. And
the war on drugs -- specifically, the campaign against marijuana
use which makes up a major portion of that war -- has now gone
beyond the tolerable Magritte phase and into full-blown, hideous,
melted-watches Dali." -- Gary Kamiya, "Reefer
Madness", salon.com 10/12/00 |
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