| 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 |
July 23, 2003—
This is going to be the shortest installment of Chatter in a long time, because there's some news that I have to get out NOW—namely, that there's going to be a
I went to the first RQ Con. The stories I could tell! Fortunately there's a writeup of it all in an old Rack & Rune that will eventually get posted.
But I miss the con, and it seems likely that there won't ever be another one. There's no money in it, after all. There are still Glorantha cons, sure, but I have no use at all for modern Glorantha. So it goes.
But while corresponding with various RQ people I came up with the idea for a virtual RQ Con—a chance for fans to get together, even if only in a chatroom, and exchange ideas about the system. So what the heck—there's no point in waiting. The first RuneQuest Con Online will be held this weekend, July 26-27 2003. It will be in two sessions, because there are RQ players all over the world; that way it should be possible for almost everyone to make at least one of them. And since it's a worldwide event, it's scheduled on Greenwich Mean Time. The first session is at midnight GMT on Saturday, July 26, and the second is at GMT noon on the next day, Sunday the 27th.
If you need to figure out what your time zone is relative to GMT, here's a handy link.
The con itself will be in my chatroom, which is java-based and doesn't require you to sign up—in fact, anonymous logins are fine. It lacks a die roller, unfortunately, but finding a forum with a die roller and perhaps setting up some worldwide RQ games might be one topic of discussion.
I hope to see you there!
I recently downloaded the beta version of the Google toolbar, mostly because I heard it had a good popup killer (it does). But it also has a Blog icon, and out of curiosity I set one up for myself. I don't know if I'll do many entries, but if you want to see what I've done so far, take a look. Warning, I'm not taking it terribly seriously. So I've allowed myself to get a little extreme.
Bigger, cuter, smarter, etc. I'll never be able to document it all. One funny thing, though: a couple of days ago he woke up in the morning calling for me. I went to get him, and he asked for "uppy". He used to just say "up", but now for some reason he's adding a "-y" to lots of words.
But before I picked him up, he had
another request—he wanted me to pick up his pillow before I
picked him up ("pillow!"). And then his Bear. Gandalf,
his other bear, came next. Now the blanket. And the sheet.
Finally Sebastian himself, and my arms were full to bursting. I
don't know why he wanted to bring the whole crib with him, since
he usually doesn't like to be there.
He can now open the dishwasher and the back porch screen door, although I don't think he quite realizes that he could actually open it and get out.
Something odd: I was part of a casual conversation a few days ago when somehow the subject of the war in Iraq came up. I don't think I was the one who brought it up, since it wasn't the sort of situation that was appropriate for political debate—and believe it or not, I don't tend to rant about politics in person. Except with my family, or with a close friend, because we're all on the same wavelength on the subject. In any case, I found myself being told that what I was saying (and I really don't remember what it was, exactly, except that it was about the war and certainly wasn't controversial—after all, Teri and her mother were both right there) "would have been called 'treason' in the old days". Suddenly I was furious.
"Let them!" I said.
"We have to support the troops," came the warning.
"I would support them by bringing them home," I answered.
My jaw then literally dropped as I was righteously told that we should go in and kill all the Iraqis because Saddam and the Iraqis were responsible for 9/11.
"No they weren't!" I couldn't help saying.
"Yes, of course they were," I was told with absolute certainty.
"Look, you won't find an intelligence agency anywhere in the world that will agree to that," I said, "Hussein and Al-Quaeda were enemies. Hussein was a secularist, and Al-Quaeda is fundamentalist. It's like saying that Jerry Falwell and Barry Goldwater were allies, but a thousand times worse!"
"No, we know that Iraq was responsible." Again, absolute certainty.
At this point Teri and her mother intervened and changed the subject, fortunately, but how do you cope with that level of ignorance? Ten minutes of reading any decent magazine or browsing online would prove to any but the stupidest person that there is no connection between Iraq and Al-Quaeda. Yet supposedly the majority of Americans believe that the two are somehow the same. Just how stupid ARE these people? Can't they read, or think? George W. Bush and his cronies seem to be counting on their ignorance, and I fear that they're right—that the majority of the American people are now too firmly ignorant to be able to protect their own democracy, and will never—can never—wake up to how savagely they're being abused and misled. It's more horrifying than I can say.
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[email protected] Copyright 2003 by Peter Maranci. Revised: August 12, 2003. version 1.1
