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Thursday, November 1st, 2007

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nashville wedding | unitinu stats o' amerema and another joco show | a futon eradicates mites


Haiku Reviews

Lawrence of Arabia  :)

Filmed in amazing
Man-O-Vision, where women
have no spoken parts.

Plus: Blades of Glory


Lydia the Tattooed Lady


Tirade's Choice

Fascinating Worlds of Jacek Yerka


"I love Fluxx and EcoFluxx, but Zombie Fluxx is by far my favorite. As stated above, it has the same smooth play and fun, but adds a tremendous amount of zombie laughs. Everyone should own a copy." -- Don Lindsey's comment on Justin Moore's review of Zombie Fluxx



Earthquake, lingering illness and a few links

  • Sorry, nothing new here this time... I'm still processing my ZombieFest footage and still writing the Zombie Fluxx FAQ


Zombie Fest, Oscar, and Lydia

Well, we're back from ZombieFest and I have many stories to tell.

Zombie Fest was I believe the first all-Zombie-themed convention ever, and was held at what could be argued to be the most sacred site in all of Zombie lore, namely Monroeville Mall, which was the location for the filming of the uber-classic Dawn of the Dead. The Zombie Fest activities included a Zombie March through the Dawn of the Dead Mall, and this was the biggest Zombie March ever anywhere, breaking their own record with a new total of 1124 shambling Zombies! (They even had the Guinness Book people on-site to verify their World Record!)

Anyway, we couldn't resist getting a booth at ZombieFest, given that we just released our own Zombie-themed product, and we had a great time introducing Zombie Fluxx to the biggest fans of the Zombie universe. Here you see our complete full-time team (Kristin, Alison, myself, and Robin) posing with the cool new Zombie Fluxx banner we got made for this event. (Thanks for your help with that, Dave!) We also got some awesome help from a bunch of our Pittsburgh area fans, who devoted a lot of time to hanging around our booth teaching Zombies to play Zombie Fluxx. Thanks for all your help to Silaria and Swiftfox, Don, Dan, Laura, and especially Eeyore! You-all rock!

I have a bunch of video footage of the Zombie March and our booth at ZombieFest but I haven't had time to finish editing it yet. In the meantime, check out Joshua Buck's Flickr album for lots of photos of the Zombies at ZombieFest.

Everything went fine at the show, but getting there was another matter. Just before the convention we decided it was finally time to buy ourselves a new van. We've been getting along without one for over 3 years now, since the crash of Bertha, and after a bunch of shopping around online, we found something we really liked. (Thanks for the expert advice, Clark!) It was built in 1998 and the features, mileage, condition, and pricetag all looked really good. We got it from a dealer who provided a limited warranty, and we got it checked out by our own mechanic who blessed it pending the minor repairs it needed to pass MD inspection. So we bought it, and named it Oscar (since he's a big green monster) and before taking it on a big trip we got those little repairs taken care of. Everything looked great! And it was great, at first...

Unfortunately, just south of Breezewood, the van broke down. The engine just shut down on us. Oscar grumpily refused to go another inch. (Turns out he had a broken Throttle Position Sensor and a clogged Catalytic Converter. He's running again now.)

The good news is, thanks to Triple-A, the internet, good cellphone coverage, and Kristin's awesome schmoozing skills, we managed to get Oscar hauled off (in a truck with room for all 4 of us passengers!) to an area mechanic (who stayed past closing on a Friday night to help us) with a rentable mini-van available, and we were amazingly enough back on our way to Pittsburgh in just 2 hours. Wow! We arrived with plenty of time to set up!

Anyway, despite this bumpy start, I'm really excited to have a van again. (Thanks for letting us borrow your van all those times, Greg and Jean!)

What with ZombieFest and all we didn't have much time to prepare for Halloween this year, and as such we only had a very small session of Pumpkin Carving. Here you see the full set we did this time, the coolest of which is the pumpkin splitting into two pumpkins which Alison made with an hourglass-shaped hubbard squash. I'd also like to point out that the pumpkin in the upper left hand corner was inspired by the picture of the little girl zombie from Zombie Fluxx.

Speaking of which, I've decided to name this character Lydia. It's been fun knowing that our cover zombie's name is Larry (you can tell by his "Hello my name is" tag) and since the little dead girl has emerged as everyone's favorite of the zombies Derek drew for us, I'm thinking it will be useful for us to know her name too. It'll probably never be used anywhere, but if anyone ever asks, you can say her name is Lydia, in honor of the cute little girl in a zombie costume seen posing here with our banner at ZombieFest. (In a related story, Robin has had "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" stuck in her head ever since, hence her choice for the video this week.)Andy

Thanks for reading, and have a great fortnight!


Thought Residue

For 3 years now we've been talking about moving to another city. We've contemplated many options for where to go, and we've changed our minds many times. We've strongly considered Canada, and upstate New York, and various places in West Virginia... but at this point, our two strongest candidates are Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We're still too busy running the company to focus much on the tasks involved in relocating, so it will be at least another year yet before we go, and that's plenty of time for us to change our minds again... but at this point, I'm thinking it's gonna be Pittsburgh.
I was fascinated to hear the results of a recent study regarding chocolate addiction. As summarized in The Week, "When researchers examined 11 men who craved chocolate daily and 11 men who rarely ate chocolate, they found major differences in what kinds of bacteria lived in their guts. Bacteria that thrive on chocolate can be found in great abundance in chocoholics, but aren't very common in people who are indifferent to chocolate. Researchers aren't sure, though, whether cocoa-loving bacteria cause the chocolate cravings, or whether they simply flourish in a high-chocolate diet." I like to think it's the former, meaning that when I'm feeding this addiction I'm caving in to the demands of the fungi who live within me...
"I do, however, want to take mild issue with his suggestion that these games are neither heavy enough nor long enough to be suitable as 'main courses' for an evening of gaming. The implication seems to be that no healthy gamer can subsist on a diet of nothing but Super Fillers. Well, I am just such a gamer. I don't just love Super Fillers-they're the only games I eat." -- Kory Heath, "The Vegetarian Gamer"


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