| 12/14/2001 — I started the Chatter section on July 27, 2000 when I noticed that the rest of my site was sometimes getting cluttered with lots of text. I'm a talkative guy, after all! So now I talk about my life here, instead of all over the place. Originally this was one huge section, but in December of 2001 it simply became too large to remain as one page, and I broke it into dated sections, as you can see. —>PM |
March 28, 2003—
She'll never read this, I guess, but I wanted to say it anyway.
So much time has passed, and I've been so incredibly busy. I've tried to start this dozens of times, only to be interrupted and diverted. There are a number of topics deposited here that I simply can't discuss now, not if I want to get this online. I hope to catch up later.
Here's a bit of news that you won't hear from the American media: it's possible to oppose the war and Bush without opposing the military men and women he is forcing into combat in flagrant violation of international law. In fact, a true patriot couldn't do anything else. This nation is progressing rapidly along the trail blazed by Germany in the 1930s, I fear.
And here's a bit of interesting news. As you may know, there have been large anti-war protests here in the US, as well as all over the world. There have been far smaller pro-war/Bush rallies in the US, which the media usually focuses on instead. It's astonishing to see that even the largest and supposedly most "liberal" newspapers equate hundreds of thousands of peace demonstrators with a few hundred deluded warmongers.
But here's the fascinating part: the pro-war rallies are being secretly sponsored and organized by media companies which support the Bush junta, particularly the Clear Channel corporation. Here's a link to the highly enlightening New York Times piece about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/opinion/25KRUG.html (registration is required, but it's free).
The Republicans seem addicted to faking public support for their criminal policies, as with the fake letters to the editor that were discovered not long ago. Which makes me wonder if the polls claiming that the majority of the American people support Bush are really accurate.
I can no longer recommend the RPG Gateway, host of the Die-Roller's Top 50. I don't really feel like going into it right now, but the owner of the site has been away for a very long time (she apparently had a baby recently), and too many of the editors who are running the place in her absence are total assholes. They delete totally legitimate threads for discussing problems with the site and in general act like petty little thugs. I've been down that road before (with Factsheet 5, for example), and I can see where this is going; so I've pulled my voting links and am urging readers to look elsewhere for RPG info.
Incidentally, this site should have been in the top 10 ranking continuously for the past three months, but because (apparently) someone tried to cheat on behalf of the site (and a couple of other RQ sites), Pete's RQ has been unlisted for all that time. Supposedly there was going to be a voting reset at the beginning of March which would re-admit the site, but that hasn't happened. I don't get that much traffic from the Gateway anyway, and for the past three months obviously none from the Die-Roller's Top 50, so screw it.
The Die-Roller's Top 50 is obviously very crocked, since the sites it lists are almost always ranked far below "banned" sites which have been eliminated for some unknown reason.
Okay, enough of that.
Teri has been going to school to
become a nail technician, so three nights a week—Monday,
Wednesdays, and Thursdays—I take care of the baby while
she's in class. Except he's not really a baby any more. He's 17
months old, but he's often taken for a two- or even a three-year-old
by strangers. He's talking (dozens of words), and lately has been
climbing—up chairs, onto tables, sewing machines, etc. It's
almost frightening. Fortunately he's much less clumsy than I am.
He also loves books, and is starting to learn to be gentler with
the cats. Lately he learned the word "tail", but
fortunately he's been stroking their tails rather than yanking
them—mostly.
He's more wonderful than I ever imagined a baby could be.
So many stories to tell, but there's no time.
After years and years without a chance to roleplay, I've found three people in the general area who are up for a game! But we've had a hell of a time getting together. Two major snowstorms and illnesses, as well as seemingly unending schedule problems, keep blocking our meetings. But I finally got to meet two of the three last Thursday. We started converting some of the pregenerated characters from "To Kill A Monster" into full-fledged RQ characters, and were planning to actually play the scenario this Thursday—but once again illness intervened. Maybe next week, I'm hoping. It would be great to game again, and I'd probably have a lot more material to post here as a result.
Speaking of new material!
I wrote 23 zines for The Wild Hunt APA, but the files for most of those were lost. Recently, though, I was going through some of the boxes in the basement (we've been transferring my old books from storage to the house), and I found the complete collection of my Wild Hunt zines! I don't know if I'll be scanning them or retyping some of them, but they're definitely going to be going up on the site—with the usual comments, of course.
Well, that's it—a short installment this time. I'll wrote more soon!
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[email protected] Copyright 2003 by Peter Maranci. Revised: April 30, 2003. version 1.1
