Thursday, February 10th, 2005

by the Writer's Guild of Wunderland

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We got a package in the mail this week from a fan named Marcy. (Hi Marcy! Thanks for the cool stuff!) The package contained a variety of cool stuff, some from the past, some from the present, and some, including this button, from the future. My favorite thing is the button... it really feels to me like an artifact plucked from an alternate reality in which John Lennon lives and is campaigning for a ban on guns.

We've actually seen Marcy once before, long ago, but we didn't really meet. Her husband is a medical marijuana patient known as Glaucoma Jim, who we heard speak at Cannabis Cup #10 in 1997. I found his story so inspirational that I mentioned him in my big report, Stoners in the Haze. Well, it's another 8 years later, Jim still has his eyesight, and he and his wife have become fans of our games!

Another thing I really enjoyed in Marcy's package was from the past, stories from their trips to Amsterdam, memories which included playing Fluxx and IceTowers in the coffeeshops. Marcy is understandably particularly excited about our recently announced plans for Amsterdam Coffeeshop Playing Cards, described on last week's huge new edition of my "What's on the Stove?" planning report. She asked on one of our mailing lists how soon we might be planning on releasing this product.

This of course begs the whole question of the timetable for everything we've got brewing on the stove. ("When do you plan to actually move?" is, for example, a common question.) So, having last week written at length about all the things I'm working on, this week I've been thinking about priorities and schedules and I came up with this little chart:

Everything always takes longer than it seems like it should, and this is an ambitious schedule, so it's doubtful we'll really get all this done in the time I'm predicting here. Moving alone, it seems at times, could take as long as everything else on this chart. And this of course is just the stuff I'm focusing on... other massive Looney Labs projects, like the completion of SuperFRED and the growth of our sales department, aren't even described here.

Furthermore, funding is also another problem we face, as usual. Even if we were finished with all the artwork for all these new products, we'd still need a load of cash to pay for getting them all printed. Unfortunately, the more our company grows, the more money we need for expansion...

So, once again, Kristin and Meg are looking for more investment capital. Kristin has just sent out her report to our investors, so if you know anyone who might be interested in loaning us heaps of money, please let us know. Thanks!

	"Conceding that it's possible to jack up rationalizations and interpretations that spin these last obvious lies into inadvertent misstatements or something a little less criminal, go back to the top and look again at the inarguable distortion of the basic math of Social Security, which ain't much more complex than grade-school arithmetic. Bush absolutely, positively lied.  Repeatedly. Lying to Congress is an impeachable offense. It is also, very sadly, now a standard part of how this country is run." -- Bob Harris, "Bush Lies To Congress, 2005: A Sample of Obvious Lies"
	"There is not one bit of justice, logic, scientific fact or moral clarity involved in the mechanism of the drug war. To destroy the drug war monster, requires nothing more than the truth and the courage to speak." -- Dean Becker, "Crackajuana Kills!"
	"It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." -- Abraham Lincoln, who was probably gay, according to researcher C.A. Tripp, who makes the case in a new book called The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln

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