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Christmas in the Ant Colony
"The mysterious cottage is quite close," reported
the lead scout, "and it's made entirely out of food."
The Queen ordered around-the-clock raiding parties, and when
the giants leveled the house twelve days later, no one cared...
by then, the larders were overflowing with the sweet, gingery
food. The Queen proclaimed it a holiday.
New this week:
Christmas
2005
'A winding stair leads to the
crypt, where ghastly, mummified remains are placed in a ghostly
row, grinning resentment at the curious.'
- Frank H. Probert, National Geographic July 1916
suspiration (suss'-pir-ay'-shun) n. a long deep breath;
sigh [see also suspire
(suss-pire') v. to draw a long deep breath; sigh]
- Sleepy Hollow :-(
I don't care if he
has to talk out of his neck;
give Walken some lines!
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Edward Scissorhands
 I'm a guy who's not afraid to cry during a movie.
In fact, I've cried at many a film, and I consider it a sign
of good storytelling when a movie makes me weep. And for some
reason, this odd Tim Burton film from 1990 moved me to tears
like few others have. I know it sounds implausible, that a surreal
Christmas tale about an artificial man with scissors instead
of hands could provide a such a moving experience, but for me
at least, it did. I get choked up just thinking about the ending,
when the origin of snow is revealed.
 
Lines
of Action
DNA-o-gram
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Bruno The Bandit
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On the Eve of Christmas Eve |
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Whew! These have been some of the busiest weeks in a very
busy year for us here at Looney Labs. Sales have been great at
our online game stores, and we've been filling orders practically
every day. But the rush is pretty much over at this point, now
that pre-holiday delivery is no longer possible, and this means
we can finally turn our full attention to our own holiday preparations.
By the way, how late is the mall open?
 Of course,
our trick for
avoiding the crowds at the mall is to publish a cool new product
at Christmastime and just give everyone a free copy, and that's
exactly what we're doing this year. The Xmas product for '99
is the beta version of a new game we're publishing, called Q-Turn.
It's designed by Yours Truly, features artwork created by Alison,
and was produced as always by the amazing Kristin. We'll be giving
copies of Q-Turn out to family and close friends as we see them
during the holidays, and we (just today) mailed out bunches of
them to our business associates, distant friends, and the mad lab rabbits.
But whether or not you get a free copy of Q-Turn from us this
holiday season, you have our best wishes for a happy winter holiday
of whatever form you celebrate.
 Our tree decorations
this year (every year we use a different theme when trimming
our Christmas tree) were made using this boxful of colorful plastic
sticks we got from KLON back in September.
The sticks are actually "inoculation loops", used in
medical labs for taking tiny measured samples out of petri dishes
and stuff like that. Normally KLON uses clear plastic when molding
these thingies, but when we were specifying colors for the Icehouse
pieces and needed to see samples, Randy had a bunch of these
funny little sticks run in our target colors. "What do we
do with these now?" I asked, after we'd approved the colors.
"Save 'em until Christmas, and we'll use 'em to make ornaments!"
said Kristin.
Which is exactly what we did. And you'd be amazed at the number
of ways you can make neat looking ornaments out of colored inoculation
loops, particularly when you assign a roomful of creative people
to the job. Check out that star Alison made for the top!
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Anyway,
that's about all I've got to say this week; I don't have time
for more, I have to go wrap presents.
Merry Christmas, and have a great National
Play Week!
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It's official: we're going to Balticon! The con
committee is eager to add the Pop-Tart
Cafe to their line-up, and we've negotiated a pair of adjoining
rooms on the party floor, out of which we can operate our floating
gaming parlor. It's Easter weekend in Baltimore, and it's one
of the biggest cons in our region. |
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There've been some great discussions on the Fluxx
mailing list
this week - people have been discussing their favorite custom
card ideas. Lots of neat ideas have been kicked around, but the
ones sticking in my brain tonight are Ryan McGuire Unifying Goal
series (Coffee Break, The Desert, The Bakery, and Nuclear War,
designed to tie together the under-utilized keepers) and Dan
Isaac's 3 Keeper set: Paper, Scissors, and a Rock (the exact
implementation of which has been the subject of much debate). |
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"You can't buy the necessities of life with
cookies." - Bill Boggs, "Edward Scissorhands" |
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