___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

There aren't very many Shakespearean actors who have performed and directed at Stratford and won a Tony, an Obie, and a handful of Drama Desk Awards. Now there is one fewer.

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/theat ... .html?_r=0]Brian Bedford, Stage Actor Who Brought the Classics to Life, Dies at 80

(Oh, and he also voiced Disney's 'Robin Hood'.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/alan-rickma ... -1.3403317]Alan Rickman dead at 69
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Once upon a time, a couple years back, there was an "If this was the title of a book, what would it be about?" thread, in which someone, maybe me, propsed the following trio:

Djinni's Wish
Djinni's Debt
Djinni's Vow

I wrote up summaries for the first two as Cyperpunk style adventure summaries that seemed well recieved (Bob or maybe Rob mentioned the possibility of actually playing a game arc based on them, though no more came of it to my knowledge) but didn't have anything for the third. Well, coming across the text file again just now, I finally finished that off, though how good the result is I'll leave up to you to judge. The first two are reproduced as well, since I'm too lazy to search through the board to perform dread necromantic rituals on or even just link to the original thread.

Enjoy.

As an aside to Ian & co., sorry, but I'm still only online very infrequently, as my lack of presence here shows, and not up for much more than a bit of light reading when I am.

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The Djinni series are a set of non-system-specific Cyberpunk/Shadowrun/d20 Modern/etc. adventures - Wish starts with the party in severe need of cash, to the point they take a job where the task is to 'make my girl's birthday perfect,' paid in advance for once. Naturally, Djinni Glitter Goldstein is a massive troublemaker and gets them in massive trouble, culminating in a skyboard and A/V chase through the high towers that sucks in about every metrocop in the corpzone before it's over. The only bright spot is that you were paid on arrival, and her corp exec daddy sweeping everything under the rug means you get off scott free. Plus Djinni had a blast, her best birthday ever and you're the coolest ops team ever, which would be good in a 'developing contacts' way except...

In Djinni's Debt, she contacts you again, and this time it's a more normal cyberpunk job - break in at this research center, steal that data and prototype, payout at the end from a cut of the sale, take me with you because I have to work for the credits. Wait, what was that last one? It seems that Corpbrat McDaddysmoney is actually being held responsible for some of the hush money from last time, and this amazing plan is how she intends to get her allowance out of hock before the Singularity. Pity the corpsec goons think you're kidnapping her and crash the meeting with weapons hot. By the time it's all over, the party uncovers and hopefully foils an assassination plot against her dad by an ambitious rival, and Djinni has discovered the the life of actual edgerunners is quite a bit more painful anf frightening than the holovids make it out to be.

Djinni's Vow opens with the party walking into a ambush - the rival from ep 2 is holding a grudge, it seems. Surprisingly, Djinni arrives with some heavy firepower to0 break them out, but then has to go on the run with the party again until they can uncover and deliver proof of the rival's dirty dealings against his own corp's interests to deal with him for good. The titular vow was actually from the end of the last episode - "Fuck exciting adventures, I'm never getting mixed up in this kind of thing again!" - and is commented on a few times in how she really wishes she could have kept it. Djinni is edging toward being competent enough to pull her own weight on the team at this point, rather than a mostly-useless escort mission NPC, which is why it's the last episode of the trilogy, and why she'll happily take her share of the payout from stripping the main enemy's assets before turning him over to corpsec and retire to somewhere sunny at the end rather than become a GMPC, unless one fo the players wants to take her over after having their character die or retire instead. Alternately, the series can be a good way to introduce a new player to the group, especially one who's unfamiliar with the game since Djinni needs to be brought up to speed anyway.
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

And okay, folks, here's the first draftish kind of thing of the SLA article, followed by notes for an article on Rep. Susan Happery.  As with the Land Theft Act, the date she submits the SLA is the same date the real HR451 was submitted in 2009. 
Note that this more a vague structure with notes than a real draft.  Also, Happery kind of got away from me, I will probably scale her back a bit (unless everyone likes the idea of her being a full-bore gonzo all-but-flat-earther evangelical Christian).
Anyway, please feel free to offer suggestions, expansions, changes, deletions, etc.

Can't really go more into the reasons why in a (semi) public forum, but could one of you check this link:http://thepaperlady.tumblr.com/post/137 ... /importantand tell me if you get a blog post or a taken down page?  And possibly let me know via Yuku's messaging system?  this will serve 2 purposes, as it will give me vital diagnostics information about the link and my yuku message service settings.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

What breed was the kitty?
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Trying to remember what it was Bob said about accapella music and Doug's talent.  I do recall a faq somewhere where Bob stated that at least as far as Doug's metatalent, it needed to 'hear' music and lyrics.
Let us not overlook the musical qualities of the human voicebox, though.  Think of any number of human 'boombox'es, or folk like Micheal Winslow (of Police Academy fame)
Accordingly, my subconcious screams Doug's metatalent should jump at the chance to do something with this:
... I'm just not sure what.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

On the verge of entering the tower’s common room, Beast Boy paused: something wasn’t right. His eyes surveyed the room and its inhabitants. Nearly everything and everybody looked and acted as they had countless times before : Starfire was in the kitchen fueling her alien dietary requirements with mustard and mold ; Cyborg battled Robin in the algorithmic arena of Carpocalypse Racers, and Raven was reading one of her dusty, musty, fusty old tomes of Things Best Not Known By the Minds of Teens. Only she wasn’t really reading: she was watching. The book was a hunter’s blind, and Garfield was the quarry. He found the implications unsettling.
Raven was the single most focused person, besides Robin, that he knew. When she read, she did so with a single mindedness that would have made a black hole feel inadequate and scattered. Now, however, as Beast Boy stood on the threshold of the chamber, his eyes beheld a different type of Raven, a distracted Raven.
Raven’s eyes had skittered over him from over the top of the tome and then back in an alarmingly unsubtle attempt to be subtle. Raven was never subtle nor sneaky. There should have been some wry greeting or lingering look, but not today. Today, she hid behind her book. Once was bad enough, but she kept sneaking implacable looks when her terribly inaccurate social senses informed her that it was safe to peek.
‘Okay, the hell princess’ isn’t any spookier than usual, Gar. Hello! Hell Princess!’ He thought, stepping into the room with all of the cool and collected that he could muster.
Robin and Cyborg weren’t so absorbed in their game to not notice the odd emotional wireless signal. Cyborg nudged Robin, whispered, “What’s up with Gar?”
Robin took his eyes off of the digital battlefield to consider his team mate. His opponent smirked as he took advantage; vaulted the enemy car into the oblivion of off track space. Robin directed his second best Batman glare at the cyborg before giving his attention to Beast Boy.
He was acting odd : Gar walked into the room with the exaggerated composure of a bad, nervous actor. Something was making him uncomfortable in a place where he should be nothing but relaxed. Robin widened his search; identified the cause: Raven.
He leant over to Cyborg: “Raven’s spying him; it’s freaking him out.”
Bent over his controller, Cyborg muttered, “It’s about time.”
Robin gave him a sidelong glance as his automotive avatar sideswiped his opponent’s T-Car into a time consuming end-over-end fireball crash.
“That he freaked?”
“Dude! Gar’s a nonstop freak-out.”
Robin nodded sagaciously as his red and black suspiciously Batmobile-ish car howled across the finish line to fireworks, victory music and gratuitously-pneumatic-bouncy space-bikini fans.He did a little touchdown dance; spiked the controller on the sectional couch: shouted,
“Score!”
No one but Cyborg paid any attention to Robin’s display: it was standard T-Tower proceedings; what followed was a different matter.
Cyborg, not being able to help himself, quipped: “That’s what Raven’s trying to do!” Immediately, he wished he had not blurted, his hands flying up as if to cram the already escaped words back into his big mouth.
Raven bolted upright, the book and several other items in the room copying her shocked reaction with the assist of a sharp burst of uncontrolled ebon energies: the book, pages splayed, took startled flight; the television uncertain which way to escape split down the middle and tried for two directions at once; all of Robin’s belted smoke bombs gave up their swirling ghosts in an abrupt fog bank; Cyborg’s detachable drone hand fired out of the smoke to crash through the den’s picture window; smoke shrouded Gar made a noise that could only be described as a surprised squawk that abruptly reduced to an equally surprised squeak; and somewhere deep within the kitchen, Starfire yelped to staccato green flashes of light and the metallic sounds of expiring pots and pans.
Raven, regaining emotional control, spoke her three word signature intonation and gestured a twirling hand gesture: the smoke wheeled into a roiling point that vanished with an audible ‘pop!’ to reveal the stunned den debris.
Everything and everyone was a mess. Robin, his utility belt singed, was sprawled across the top of the couch. Cyborg, sitting on the couch, stared at his stump dumbly before shouting, “Give me back my hand!” and stumbling to the shattered window to peer with extended optics for his astray appendage. A food covered Starfire flew, literally, out of the kitchen only to stop, jaw dropped, at the scene of devastation before her.
“Are we under attack?”
Raven turned to her and meant to say something witty in her gothic fashion, but she caught sight of what had befallen Garfield ; she scooped him up and fled.
Starfire, looking very worried, grabbed her significant other by both shoulders.
“What is going on?”
Robin looked up into the eyes of his alien princess girlfriend—Yes, Robin you’re in Outlanders—and smiled crookedly: “Raven’s finally into Gar.” He raised his head, took in the mess that was once a den; declared: “Really into him!”
Having once really being into Raven, Star knew exactly, immediately and intimately what had transpired.
She moved her hands to cradle his face as she brought her mouth down to his for a happy kiss.
“Their dating is going to be even more gloriously messy than a G’lorg Snarr on the Apex of Hoop’La!”
Robin, having some idea of the true nutty hullabaloo of Tamarainian culture, could only imagine that that meant messy teen love times ten thousand. He wiped the strawberry jam from his lips planted, albeit accidentally, by his boo’s buss as he thought out loud, because he was still a bit befuddled : “Have we G’lorged?”
Star laughed, delightedly ; whispered in his ear.
He did his best Keanu: “Whoa!”
***************Garfield regained consciousness within a room that he had only been within one other time: a scary, illuminating, and oddly endearing encounter with the hidden facets of Raven. Three things registered upon his consciousness in rapid succession: he was small, he was something with a forked tongue that he didn’t recognize, and he was in Raven’s lap! She was looking down at him with an expression that was half avid, half bemused. He squeaked, the tongue lancing out past piranha teeth, and he felt what seemed to the be the unfurling of leathery wings: what in the heck was he, anyways?
She held up the book that she had been ‘reading’ in the den: the cover had an intertwined pair of ridiculously pointy winged lizards.
“You’re a winged horny dragon.” She coloured immediately as she had meant to say, “Thorny! I meant thorny dragon. Moloch Horridus!” She finished, somewhat lamely and far too scientifically for the extra wide eyed spiky lizard on her lap. What she found embarrassing he found endearing and comforting. The enigmatic and sarcastic Raven could be as fantastically awkward as Garfield. With this realization came the key bit of awareness that had eluded him for so long. Their gawkiness was mutually endearing.
To prove it, he managed to lisp a high pitched, “Wow, you’re as much a spaz as I am!”
She rapped him gently upon the head.
“Ow!” He was currently very spiky.

He will be missed, especially as he released an album just 3 days ago.
That's right, if you'd seen his "Lazarus" music video... he filmed that on his deathbed.

''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll