via The Electric Smack Shack, two great articles on Christma: Bah, Humbug – The horrors of December in a one-party state, by Christopher Hitchens Eluding Happiness: A Buddhist Problem with Christmas, by Jesse Row And finally, some amusing Stalinist pseudoscience: I can’t say I’m surprised but it still makes one shake one’s head.
Month: December 2005
Dungeons and Dragons: Loving Mockeries
Via Dan Among Den, here are some fun mockeries of D&D using the same script but very different graphics: Summoner Geeks 8BitDandD More insane and funny stuff (gamer-related and otherwise, mostly otherwise) in the Midnight Classics collection at iFilm.
Merry Merry Merry
My Dad — newly returned from his jaunt to Africa — will be doing up a curry, I am guessing, tonight. My Mum will be around the house, probably playing with my nephew Nathaniel as Marie and Troy (Nathniel’s parents, my sister and brother-in-law) will sit on the couch and chat about what’s new these days. Annie — sorry, Isabella — will be relaxing, I hope, since she’s pregnant, and Martin will be happy to have her back from Africa. Or is he still in Nigeria? I have no idea, she didn’t mention in her email. Anyway, all I know …
Whatever: Being Poor
John Scalzi’s now-classic post, Whatever: Being Poor, is new to me. The comments about it over at Making Light are worthwhile, too. And there’s old Stefan Jones, from the old old first days of my Internet life, right there in the comments section! Wow. He was the guy who got me into Bruce Sterling’s short stories, and Olaf Stapledon! Stefan’s one of the coolest SF geeks out there.
A Nice Thing I Forgot To Report
Since I very often refuse to pull punches when the annoying things come up, I feel at least obligated to mention nice things when they do happen. One happened just yesterday. My very happy iAudio M3 purchase of October 2004 turned into this November’s annoyed jittering mess a few weeks ago, so Lime did me a favour and looked up the local service center. To my shock, there actually is a local service center. We went there on Monday afternoon. To my even bigger shock, the repair staff asked me whether I’d dropped the unit or not, without first telling …