A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Other things I forgot in my description of last weekend:

Saturday attended that art salon in Union Square, which featured paintings and prints by cthulhia (including her celebrated Surly Pink Bunny Tarot), poetry by Mary and recorder music performed by Carolyn. The funny thing was that I knew all of them were up to something but I didn't quite realize until the weekend itself that they were conspiring on the same event (and had been for months). It was altogether delightful, made moreso by the surprise of my boneheaded last-minute realization.

Here's Mary's Flickr set of it.

Friday entertained lyricon and her dood as they passed through town en route to a friends' wedding in Vermont. We had yummy lunch at one of my favorite nearby restaurants, Porter Square's Passage to India, and had fun catching up and chatting through our respective grogginess, mine from cold medicine and theirs from Hawaii-to-Boston jet lag.

L's been a pen pal - there's really no better term for it - since we met online in 2000, over (what else) Looney Labs fan website administrivia. This was the first time we had actually ever met! Pretty good.

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Had a very good Gameshelf shoot last night. I cross my fingers coz I haven't actually gone over the footage yet, but it went much more smoothly than April's shoot, and the crew already thinks it's the best work we've done. Some of the improvement was reacting to my list of criticisms from last time, but a lot also came from the fact that I scripted almost everything. We were able to film several takes of each bit and still wrap early.

The only completely unscripted bit was our do-over of the Joe-n-Jmac dialogue about the games, but I kept these to 5 minutes or less of raw footage each, mostly of Joe waxing on about the bits he liked. This was good because I'm worried that the episode is otherwise me talking and talking and talking so it's good to give Joe some time, and also in reviewing the March episode more recently I've decided that the weakest part of the show is the unscripted host dialogues. I still want them in there, but they shouldn't be longer than a minute or two, each. After that they're just dead boring, compared to the rest of the show.

I'm giving myself a deadline of, oh, October 15 to get this thing afloat. And in a beautiful world I'd like to have another whole ep done before the year's out, but let's talk about that when it's time.

* Met with doctor_atomic at the Diesel to playtest a game that dougo hopes to enter in the next Icehouse design contest. (We liked it.) There ran into tahnan, who added some additional observations about the game, and also cnoocy, who I said ruh-ruh to about some thingamabobs.

(Speaking of Icehouse: The big feature story in the new issue of Games is all about Looney Labs, the Big Experiment and the Mad Lab Rabbits. Woo, congrats y'all. (I have not read the article and assume it's actually positive.))

* Then we saw Batman Begins at the Somerville (with two more of the doctor's friends, who we bumped into at the door). An enjoyable and tightly constructed little action/adventure movie. Even though he's only a second-string villain in the canon, the Scarecrow as the Big Obvious Supervillain meshed in very nicely with the whole plot. I found the film's latter half to not be over-explosiony (with the exception of one somewhat eye-rolling scene near the end) despite criticism I had heard before. Really, it's just a well-built piece of work.

Then to the Burren for my daily trough. Nomf, nomf. I have a secret: I'm not sure I like Guinness. Once you get past the head, it's kind of... watery? You know? It tastes thin, or anyway thinner than it looks. I dunno. Still, Guinness is what I order when I go to a place like that that is trying so hard to be Irishy. I just feel obligated.

* Hearing back from the big network salvo I launched earlier this week, at an average rate of one new person's response per day. This is acceptable and I hope it keeps up.

* Naughty me, sort of: used eMule for the first time ever, in order to locate and download a copy of A Clash of Kings. Now I can pick up where I left off when my own paperback of it was ripped off by someone at South Station three weeks ago. ("But jmac, you could have borrowed my copy." Yeah, well.) Was surprised how easy it was. And as one with a history of a more-than-casual relationship with the print media, I mean the more complicated sort of "surprise", here.

Still: off to read myself to sleep over this printout.

Working on the Book right now is like pulling teeth, again. Bleah. It will pick up later, but for now it's really boring and I feel very easily distracted. I need another long cafe hangout session to re-energize. I consider going right now (Diesel is open for another two hours) but I think instead I will collect information for the rest of tonight, and tomorrow morning start to process it over coffee.

Getting up at a reasonable hour is hard, though. This morning at 9:30 or so Carla woke me up by coming into my room to turn off my alarm clock, which had, she said, been buzzing for a long, long time. Then I fell alseep again and had dreams about her coming back in and berating me about various minor household issues. (Yes, I asked her about this to confirm that it was, in fact, a dream.)

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Kristin is again asking for help in setting up a genuine Pop Tart Cafe at the next Arisia, but the major difference between this and the previous (obviously scrapped) attempt is that she's now doing so a year in advance! This makes it seem pretty likely that the boston-warren will score some local Looney action, after two years (at that time) of being together. Cool.

January, 2003. I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?

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We're also a little over the halfway point to the 2002 Origins. Denis has taken charge of this one, and four of us are going, the way things are looking now. Heck, I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?

Not only did terrorists make me lose my job, but they're also making me paranoid about my halloween costume, conceived in August, being regarded in poor taste. Black humor is as popular[1] as ever, but black humor about nuclear weapons might not be, with some especially jittery people... and the current atmosphere (I am not going to name my band "Credible Threat", now, if I ever was) is turning many otherwise rational friends into borderline panicmonkeys.

I filtered the idea past cthulhia, and she seems to think it's terribly funny, though maybe I misunderstood her and it's actually just terrible. Was she laughing ha-ha-funny, or laughing ha-ha-defense-mechanism? Well, we'll see what the crowd thinks, won't we.

Anyway, that part of the costume is just a button, which I can remove should people react in a squirrelous fashion. I'll still be wearing the deely boppers I bought today at Jack's Joke Shop, and everyone loves deely boppers, in peace or war. Boy, did I luck out... there was only one pair left with spheres at the ends of the springs, instead of stars or hearts, which just wouldn't work on a superevolved cockroach.

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I am in the middle of the move to Chez Charlas, at least as far as packing and cleaning up goes. My parents have chosen to insinuate themselves upon the scene, driving down from Maine and camping out in a Medford hotel for a couple of days, and those who know about me and my parents (including readers of Weblog A) would also know why this makes me go mumble, mumble. However, there's not much for them to meddle in, this instance, since I've already covered all the major details of this operation; it's merely theirs to insist on pushing me aside while they take over the task of my Highland Avenue evacuation.

And, to be honest, I welcome their help. While I do think I could have pulled off every aspect of this move on my own (well, with generous help from local friends, too), my parents are undeniably experts at all forms of managing stuff, and if they want to be adamant about helping me, I won't bar the door against them -- that would really be the immature thing to do, in this case. So tonight I went to the Star Market holding a list of tinctures and notions for total apartment scouring that mom instructed me to obtain before they returned early tomorrow morning. La.

Meanwhile, trouble has arisen in the form of a slippery landlord, who is running for office and very difficult to track down; Charles, bless him, is trying very hard to make the house me-ready by the first, a task made more difficult by my waiting until only a few days ago before I confirmed with him my desire to take the offered room (I spent much of November holding out for a room near Davis Square, and failed), but I can't start trucking boxes in until I sign some papers, and that can't happen unless the landlord's present. Charles fears that the next window of opportunity might be Halloween night. I gave him permission to summon me from the party if necessary. We'll see, we'll see.

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[1] By "popular", I also mean "forced and lame", in many circumstances. Jim to me on the phone, after he confirms that he's sending me a package I requested: "We're also sending you some anthrax. Yuk yuk yuk." Okay.