The Gaming Outpost

I must first say thank you to the benefactor who provided Valdron with a laptop on which I hope to be able to carry computer files to conventions, as we start making our core books available in digital format at half the price–or at least, that’s the plan.  Some of the details are still fuzzy.

Second, let me call your attention to the latest Examiner temporal anomalies article, (Some of) the best time travel movies you might have missed, a brief synopsis of four lesser-known films that are worth seeing.  I’ll launch the next analysis, on 11 Minutes Ago on Monday, and I’m encouraging you to watch it before then because it is well worth watching and it will be difficult for me not to hit you with spoilers in trying to explain what happens.

In other writing news, I am waiting to hear from one of the editors at The Examiner concerning my article on the Birther issue.  If they don’t want it, I’ll post it here, probably next week sometime.

We also have another contribution from Eric Ashley.  Practise Bits:  Forbidden gives a suggestion for how to defeat an army of regenerative immortals.  Of course, if they were earthworms, that would be a different problem.  But I’d have burned the pieces.

–M. J. Young

I am periodically musing today that thrice a year we treat ourselves to a huge stash of candy–at Halloween in October, Christmas in December, and Easter in March or April.  The jelly beans and chocolates that have been entertaining me most of the day keep it mind.  Perhaps it is good that adults do not get to enjoy the October holiday, and that there is a long gap over a summer between the others for us to work off the caloric intake; and I am grateful that I am not showing any of the danger signs of diabetes.

Another Examiner temporal anomalies series reaches its conclusion, as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III part 11:  vanishing considers, and rejects, the possibility that travelers from the past might not have to wait for the future to arrive before departing.  That might have worked for Warlock, but it won’t work here.

I finished a version of my examination of the birther argument, but have not yet published it; I dropped a note to the editorial staff at The Examiner over the weekend to give them right of first refusal on it, and am waiting to hear whether they are interested in perusing it before I release it elsewhere.  I did not expect to hear from them today, and I was not surprised.

There are also a few new pieces from Eric Ashley, of which I managed to read Practise Bits:  Free on the holiday, and offered a couple of solutions to its riddle.  Practise Bits:  Patrol is his second of that name, but also about time travel.  Finally, Practise Bits:  Database mixes technology and magic in an interesting blend of a romance.

This has taken entirely too long, given that there’s more work ahead, but let me move ahead and see what I can accomplish.

–M. J. Young

In the penultimate article in the present Examiner temporal anomalies series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles part 10:  disaster, we deal with the issues of whether the last trip being the first trip and the earlier trips being the later trips makes a big difference, and whether if it all ends in temporal disaster that’s a problem for the story.  It would not be the first time I concluded that a movie that was a temporal disaster was still well worth watching.

Eric Ashley has been prolific over the past few days, giving us four new contributions to the fiction section.  Practise Bits:  Clubbing raises the peculiar problems that arise when a dimensional traveler winds up hospitalized, although Eric and I are debating whether what happened to him is at all possible.  Practise Bits:  Terraforming is really about Varigmashforming, that is, about the efforts of an alien to turn a lifeless rock into a habitable planet for his people.  In Practise Bits:  Best, he explores culture clash and the universals of greed and fear.  Today he added Practise Bits:  Regency, about a disruption at a Christmas party.

We have holidays ahead, so allow me to send Easter and Good Friday greetings to those celebrating these this weekend, and le Shana Tovah to those celebrating Pesach.  Holidays, of course, always mean extra work and tight on the money for me, but I think I’ve got things in hand, although one son expressed disappointment that I was planning ham and not lamb.  I could try to get lamb tomorrow, but it’s expensive and I’ve already got the ham, so probably I won’t.  It’s also more work to make.

–M. J. Young

My Examiner temporal anomalies series has reached the point at which the heroes of the story make their trip to the past, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III part 7:  Turtles, and then it leaves them there for a few centuries.  We’ll get them out on Thursday.  I’m now committed on the next, with an episode listing of articles covering 11 Minutes Ago posted to my indexing page, although there are still a few editorial tweaks to perform.

Meanwhile, the prolific Eric Ashley continues to outpace me with several new articles since Thursday.  Practise Bits:  Virgin Two dramatically continues the story begun in the previously mentioned Practise Bits:  Virgin.  Practise Bits:  Imperial extols the virtues of empire against the power of a freedom fighter.  For a bit of political maneuvering in an effort to secure a victory over a formidable enemy, he gives us Practise Bits:  Fair.  Finally, Practise Bits:  Commlink gives us a ninja romance in a vampire world.

I’m wondering whether I have time for what remains before me, but I’ll manage, I expect.

–M. J. Young