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 Earlier
this week, I had the decidedly surreal experience of going out
to bring in the free local paper that's tossed on our sidewalk
each week, and looking down to see my own face staring back at
me from the front page -- in full color no less. I knew an
article about us was forthcoming, but I hadn't expected it
to be front page news... I guess there wasn't much else going
on this week.
Needless to say, we were very happy with the article, and
not just because of its prominent placement. It's quite well
written and contains very few errors. (The main inaccuracy I
noted was that it was Aquarius,
not Fluxx, that
I created at Kristin's request - a statement ironically prefaced
with the rejoinder "in fact".) The reporter did a good
job, calling up both Pete Fenlon of Ice and Steve Weinreich of
Mensa for quotes. I especially like this one from the latter:
"You haven't seen this game before. It's as simple as that."
The article appeared last Thursday; since then, we've gotten
numerous emails, phone calls, and even cards in the mail from
friends, neighbors, and assorted voices from the past, either
congratulating us on the award,
or the article, or both, or otherwise just being happy to finally
learn more about what goes on in that purple house up the street.
Icehouse news: Jake
has volunteered to run the Tenth Icehouse Tournament at Origins
this July 4th weekend, and Dan Efran has announced a design contest
for the prize medallions for that tournament. See his "Design
The Medallions Competition" web site for the rules and
such like. Meanwhile, Eric Zuckerman is organizing the first
ever West Coast Icehouse Tournament, to be held at BayCon, in
San Jose, on May 30th, 1999, at 2:00pm. See his Tourneyette
page for more info.
Closing the Feedback Loop: Last week I mentioned that
we're floor-centric; in response, Rash
clued me in to a Japanese word used to describe folks like us:
jibetarians.
Also, Daddy-O expressed fascination with the digital rain seen
on monitors in "The Matrix"; turns out a digital
rain screen saver is available. I'm disappointed with it
though, as it's a fairly crude simulation of what appeared in
the movie. Rather than appearing as a set of vertically descending
cursors that deposit characters as they flow down the screen,
it's more like a bunch of long strips of green characters, with
a white one at the end, that slide down (rather jerkily) from
somewhere up above the window. But it's still cool, and it was
easier than building one myself...
Local Reader's News Corner: This Saturday, Alison
is helping run an event called Discovery
Day, at the place she works, the American Horticultural Society
at River Farm, just south of Alexandria. If you've got kids and
you live in the area, you should put this on your schedule for
the weekend. Alison is rounding up old socks for grass-head guys,
and is making seed wreaths, a two level scavenger hunt, and a
human sundial, so it should all be great fun. It's this Saturday,
April 17th from 9-3.
Also, is anyone looking for a housekeeper? Rosa has been cleaning
our house every two weeks for almost 9 years now, so we can attest
to her thoroughness and reliability. But she's recently moved
into a much nicer and larger apartment and now needs additional
clients to pay the accordingly larger rent. If you've never experienced
the joy of having someone clean your house for you, you ought
to consider it; if your home is DC metro accessible, send us
email and we'll send you Rosa's phone number.
All my dreams are coming true!
Last January I mentioned that we'd gotten the cable network
TV Land, but that what I really wanted was Public TV Land, a
channel for classic re-runs like the Electric Company, Zoom,
and the first few seasons of Sesame Street. Well, this week TV
Land started airing commercials for Noggin,
a new network from Nickelodeon and the Children's Television
Workshop, that seems to be just what I was looking for! As a
promotion for the launch of Noggin, TV Land will be airing a
2-hour Electric Company "best of" type special, on
April 26th. I'll finally get to see the Silent E cartoon again!
(Of course, the next step will be waiting for our cable company
to add Noggin... but we don't even have the Game Show channel
yet, so who knows how long that'll take.) And speaking of TV
Land, they're now showing the animated Star Trek series on Saturday
mornings, as part of "Super-Retro-Vision Saturdays."
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Comments?
Titanic
The
most amazing thing about the fact that a bill was introduced
this week in the Illinois state House of Representatives that
would make it a crime to transmit information about marijuana
over the internet, is that it passed, 114 to zero.
I can
remember first hearing about the escape and gradual approach
of the Killer Bees, back when I was in grade school. It was scary,
but only distantly so... they wouldn't arrive for a really, really
long time. Now I'm 35, and Los Angeles is officially colonized.
"The
world's getting awfully big in the window" -
Apollo 13 (this has for me become a general expression meaning
"we're running out of time")
