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- The Tentaur
aestival (also: estival)
(est'-ih-val) adj. of or relating to the summer. [from
Latin aestas "summer."]
Tom Jones %}
Is it a movie,
novel, or play? Either way,
it's a masterpiece.
 
Katrina
Timeline
   
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Still Very Busy |
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 As
I mentioned last week, Family
Fluxx is at the printer. (So is EcoFluxx,
and Fluxx
3.1, and even Japanese
Fluxx!) To make sure everyone's excited about it, I'm putting
up this Family
Fluxx product shot I just took. (Obviously, I had to use
prototype cards for this, since the real ones aren't here yet...
but they look OK to the camera.)
Other than that, I don't have much to report on this week.
We're still very busy. I still haven't revised the rules to Giant
Circular Fluxx. (It's tricky since I've never seen a play-test
in person.) I'm still working on the changes I feel are necessary
to get Chrononauts
back into print. I'm still packing for the Big
Move, which is still a long time from actually happening.
(I still haven't gotten beyond Box 253, because I'm still pasting
stuff from the walls into my big scrapbook.)
We still haven't gotten our Canadian Immigration paperwork sent
in (although it is mostly filled out). I'm still
looking for Homeworlds opponents who'd like to meet up for
a game at our local coffee house. I'm still waiting on pins and
needles to see if Canada agrees to turn Marc Emery over to the
DEA (the extradition hearings start tomorrow). I still haven't
done my weekly status report, let alone my yearly status report.
I'm still aghast at what happened to New Orleans, and I'm angrier
than ever at Bush and his people. I can only hope that this latest
fiasco leads to his impeachment.
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 Thanks
for reading, have a great week, and Don't Forget to Play! |
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"When President Bush stays on vacation and attends social
functions for two days in the face of disaster before finally
understanding that people are starving, crying out and dying,
it is time for him to go. When FEMA officials cannot figure out
that there are thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention
center - where people died and were starving - and fussed ineffectively
about the same problems in the Superdome, they should be fired,
not praised, as the president praised FEMA Director Michael Brown
in New Orleans last week. When Mr. Bush states publicly that
'nobody could anticipate a breach of the levee' while New Orleans
journalists, Scientific American, National Geographic, academic
researchers and Louisiana politicians had been doing precisely
that for decades, right up through last year and even as Hurricane
Katrina passed over, he should be laughed out of town as an impostor." -- Gordon Adams, "After
Katrina Fiasco, Time For Bush To Go" |
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"In the last ten years he [Marc Emery] has paid over
$600,000 in taxes to the provincial and federal governments declaring
on his income tax form "marijuana seed vendor". Health
Canada has even sent him customers to buy seeds to grow medication
and does not get bothered by the police. The community accepts
him and he has the backing of NDP leader Jack Layton as well
as many other politicians. Marc has made millions of dollars
and yet he only owns the shirt on his back. The $3 million a
year he is reported to make goes right back into his belief in
freedom for the people. So why would our Canadian government
consider extraditing a Canadian citizen that is not considered
a criminal to a country where he could face a life prison or
even the death sentence? Let's make our politicians and law enforcement
understand we the people will not tolerate it. We want to be
free and we don't want more prisons. The US drug war has proven
itself to be a horrendous failure, as the budget increases each
year so does the drug problem. The US has more prisoners per
capita than any other country in the world, seven times more
per capita than Canada. This is in large part due to the drug
war, a staggering number of the prisoners are there for marijuana
offences. Prohibition has created a huge high priced black market
for a weed that could otherwise be grown anywhere by anyone for
free. Ever since that ill-fated day in 1971, when Richard Nixon
declared a war on drugs, the US has built and filled jails at
a criminally insane pace. Most marijuana smokers are law-abiding
family orientated people and putting them in jail for smoking
a harmless herb is wrong. " -- Paul
Greer, "Freedom
Fries, Drug Czar Lies" |
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When I was a kid, and you missed (or couldn't see) a movie
new in the theater, you had to wait "until they show it
on TV." That was the worst, since of course that might never
happen. Then came the video era, when we were waiting only "until
I can rent the video." Now I realize I'm doing the same
thing with premium-cable shows. For example, I'm really interested
in this new series "Weeds" but I don't get Showtime,
so I'm waiting until next year, when the whole first season will
undoubtedly be available on DVD. |
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 "You've
got to hand it to Looney Labs. They know how to design simple,
fun, sociable games that serious gamers, dilettantes and kids
alike can enjoy. My husband and I first discovered Looney Labs
years ago, when we picked up a copy of Fluxx. The next year,
we discovered Chrononauts, the time travel game, soon to be followed
by Chrononauts: the Early American edition. Our five-year-old
son enjoys all of these games, even though they're not quite
age-appropriate, in that they require significant reading. So
when a friend recently recommended Looney Lab's Aquarius card
game as fun for kids and adults alike and requiring only minimal
reading, we knew we had to pick up a deck. Our son, you see,
has become a game fiend in recent months and finding games that
are suitable for him, but tolerable or -- dare we hope? -- even
genuinely fun for us has become a matter of self-preservation.
Aquarius, I am happy to report, fits the bill perfectly. Something
of a cross between classic dominos and Fluxx, with a dash of
70s nostalgia thrown in for atmosphere, Aquarius is trivially
easy to learn and surprisingly engaging for a game in which luck,
more often than not, trumps strategy. Two to five players can
play and even the youngest players, if capable of counting to
seven and memorizing the meanings of a handful of symbols, need
not feel disadvantaged. The brightly-colored, psychedelic 60-card
deck features various permutations of five basic 'element' illustrations...
They are pretty darn cool illustrations, and invariably
draw admiring attention. This game is fun and it knows how
to flaunt it." -- 5 star review of Aquarius at Epinions.com |
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