Have you ever listened to someone else talking to a voice recognition telephone system? Even the best of us sound a mix of irritated by their very existence and bored at listening to the monotonous way lists of options are presented, and the more curmudgeonly types cuss and mumble and sound ready to launch the Butlerian Jihad a few thousand years early. Can you imagine what it would be like, if dealing with that was all you ever knew about humans and your explicit reason to exist. I'd be raging against the
--
"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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv80DLlUwNQ-- Pogo, Alohamora
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

(Note: Still working on next SNW episode. If anyone every makes grief to you about LoGG, Rob, let me know. -_-
*cross between carnival barker's voice and auctioneer's voice* "Step right up, folks! We got the former Automobile Capital of the World up for grabs tonight!"
Anywho, just for kicks, let's assume that the Butterfly Effect managed to put off the bankruptcy declaration of Detroit for about seven years. With Fenspace now firmly established, WHO do any of us think would purchase WHAT in Motor City, both city owned or similarly in dire straits, assuming that if any landgrabbing was performed it was legal so long as site was filled back in?

No really, it is.

So what would Doug do now? Personally, I think it would make an interesting Gate song sending Doug on towards the next world needing saving.

I'd like to announce the new series of fanfic stories I've written, Interpol Manzai.
The short description: Azumanga Daioh meets Dirty Pair.  Tomo Takino finally realizes her dream of working for Interpol, and manages to drag her childhood friend Yomi into the international police too.
Naturally, I only have the first story up so far, but it's complete, has a concordance, and is available on my website:

Quote:Interpol issues a warrant for the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder, and there's only one woman who can do the job: the ICPO's self-proclaimed top detective, Tomo Takino.  But what happens when Inspector Takino gets a new partner?

You'll need a list of what talents to have and which not to have. Glancing through Power-Up 3 I see Born Warleader, Circuit Sense, Natural Athlete, Natural Scientist andTough Guy. Of course, many of these could be replaced with suitable Wildcard skills, if you allow them (I would). And I suggest that there should be a wide avenue for inventing new Talents that suit a person's powers - a cat-Talent (Brawling, Climbing, Jumping, Panhandling, Stealth, etc.) for a person bitten by a radioactive cat, etc.

Anyone have any ideas for new and exciting talents?

SJ's back again. This time doing the Manga.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?696 ... Thread-12)]HERE

The con-space one deck below the living space looked like the Dearth Star’s church hall. ConClave wasn’t the largest convention : indeed, it was one of the smallest, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in gusto. Wandblume’s Shego fans, burgeoning Shegoth aficionados--this was the official Shegoth introduction to Fen society--, and a meticulous muddle of Mads made it a chipper chamber.  Somehow everyone present  had very little difficulty locating the secret lair, but then what super-villain really wanted that secret to be particularly secretive? Looking up from her centrally placed booth, Wandblume considered the crowded con-floor ; made a mental note to suitably reward Van Loan for attending to the preservation of her fanbase.
One booth over bearing the banner ‘Deep Clear’, Van Loan delicately poked an esoteric device at chest-high  empty air. “You know what’s challenging?”
Wandblume was too busy signing glossy and not all-together modest  full-sized posters of her alluring anatomy shoved towards her by an ogle of black and green appareled Otaku to be able to really attend to Van Loan’s conversational cue. Also , to preserve her cool, villainous reputation with her attendant squee-club she played it aloof with her darling geek of a man-child : her reply was the maximally curt interrogative ‘Mmmm?’
He continued as if he actually had her ear as opposed to what he did possess of her attention, the tiniest fringe of the peripheral sight of her lovely left eye.
“Repairing Deep Clear is very challenging!” The tool, a black and chrome thing of keen tines, sinister pistol grips, and delphic diodes, growled softly in time to the heartbeat-flicker of a scarlet LED. “That’s...” He depressed a stud on the grip ; the tool extended a barbed probe, as if it wasn't already scary looking enough.  
‘Mmmm!”  She executed her flamboyant signature, what Van Loan called the Double-D W, and followed it up with cursive scrawled boilerplate expression number thirty-four (To my #1 minion!). The fan, parted from his lucre, departed ; was replaced by another from the throng. She, a redhead--the cascade of red-gold locks looked fantastic against the well executed green & black leather that encased a yummy female hull--had actually ponied up the ridiculous amount of cash needed to purchase a one-off specialty photo-op with Shego  incarnate.
“Twenty, be a smart bomb and snap us!” She threw an arm around the redhead’s lower primary gimbal mounting ; drew her in for a pose somewhere in between amiable & authoritarian. That brought a hushed, reverential silence as, posters momentarily forgotten, the throng stood spellbound. Fortunately for Van Loan, he was far too immersed in his transparent task to suffer the stroke inducing sight of his partner’s revenue-stream shenanigans.
The photographer sauntered in on his tripod harness assemblage. A camera was tentacle grasped in the position traditionally taken by the heat-ray apparatus.
“Got it.” Twenty depressed his stud on his pistol gripped device ; the redhead, flushed in face if no longer in pocketbook, brushed her mouth by Wandblume’s ear, murmured something ; strode away on legs as long as the lunar day to possess her prize poster already projecting from the printer.  
“...got it!” Van Loan torqued his tool three quarters of a picometer clockwise ; an 8-bit victory theme sounded midair to prove the validity of this seemingly addled action.
‘Finally stole some thunder!’ Van Loan thought as eyes turned to take in the highly unusual almost sight of a successfully repaired invisible super-computer. However, three hundred million years of reptile brain-stem stimulation beat out four hundred years of enlightened prefrontal cortex empiricism. The after image of vaguely naughty girl/girl photography & slightly screened secondary sexual titillations totally and soundly shellacked science.
“Good try, lover.” Shego favoured Drakken with a sincere smirk. “Maybe you should try bearing some blue...” She returned to adroitly dashing off poster scrawls. “I know! How about a Mads take on the beefcake firefighter calendar?” That got more than a few gently joking comments and snorts from the fan-mass. Van Loan's response was almost a classic full-blown Dr. D Declaration except that it was abruptly intercepted by The Look : his right eyebrow Spocked, his left cheek--face!-- twitched, and his eyes momentarily trained on a focal point way-out. ‘Uh oh, his Eureka tell.’  Wandblume dryly wondered just what in the sixty-two--five? seven?--Jovian moons it had to do with buff, nearly nude fire-fighting beefcake. Was he really....
“Brilliant, Shego!  I shall call it...” He raised his sinister index in his Muse taxi-hailing manner. “...Mads : Technology & Advancement!”
The swarm scoffed but Wandblume knew better. Her mind paraphrased Macbeth :  ‘something wacky this way comes!’ She went back to her John Hancocking but with a certain halfheartedness  as the truer portion of her could hardly wait to succor the only man who really mattered : certainly not the cash-bearing clowns for whom she entertained a mere professional curtesy.  
***
Following business hours, after all but the redhead and Mads had been either air-locked off the palm-station or packed away in the capsule-hotel one deck below the ConClave hall, they had moved from the belowdecks con-space to the main-deck condo-space ; were enjoying Van Loan’s very own brand of coffee made of his very own brand of coffee bean, Dr. D’s Blue Asteroid.
The redhead, Carmine Palisander, had paid the premium, and being a likable, lovely and luminous lady she was invited to stay longer than the legions. The Mads were guild and a considerable part of ConClave’s programming.
Van Loan had  been spieling : “So you see, it’s both fun Geekery and amusing parody.” He gestured towards Shizuka Hayama with his mug ; inertia slopped three millimeters of brew onto the faux black onyx floor. “Out of your dermis,” A robotic mouse wended its way skillfully across the floor, sucked up the spill ; scooted into a party orbit with only the faintest ozone hum. “you’d be both an Objet d’Geek as well as a technological dressing-down of more traditional renderings of the under-clad Feminine.” The mug executed another dramatic vector shift ; the mouse again intercepting  the scant spillage.  
“I’d get to ditch this,” Hayayama’s hands eloquently delineated her feminine frame, “and go Au Natural Android?” There was a light in her eyes that wasn’t likely programmed.
“Keep the glasses.” suggested Wandblume, who up to this point in the conversation was waging a largely subtle & mostly successful holding action against the cooly determined Carmine.  “It’ll screw with those particular fetishists.” She went back to waging the ongoing Cold-Sultry-War with a guerrilla tactics style of bustling and drink refreshing. Van Loan, too focused upon future days to really notice the present,  wondered, 'Why's she 50s wifing?" Then the conversation deviated into really heady and distracting territory.
“What about the jumpsuit?” Carmine eyed Hayamaya’s superlatively simulated secondary sexual  sign that she was turned on : it wasn’t difficult to notice given the next-to-nothing-neoprene of the bodysuit. “Why wear it if you’re not happy with your frame?”
“Because I possess less of the illusion of self-determination than you do.”
‘Oh, oh, Van Loan thought, ‘I better head off this ‘All Intelligence is Artificial’ argument before it pirates my show!’
Before he could act his more larcenous half  intervened for almost exactly the same reason. She put a hand on both ladies ; the one on Carmine being in a tad of a riskier locale than the one resting companionably upon Li's shoulder.
“We all flirt, sometimes even with disaster.”
Kohran tried not to look too relieved that Wandblume had rescued her from her own synthetic kisser : ‘Did I really say that out loud?!’ Her verbal recovery was suitably jocose : “Fashion disaster, in my case!”
“Am I one to judge?” Wandblume winked at Shizuka, and struck one of her cheesier half unzipped poster poises.
“I am.” Carmine murmured, a sultry sparkle in her eyes that were decidedly not trained upon Li.
They shared a good group chortle ; Van Loan recovered the initiative.
He was too focussed on what he was going to say to the group to notice that Wandblume’s actions and words had considerably more meaning than defending her squeeze’s podium.
“Most of the calendar entries wouldn’t be quite so...overt : I require a collection of your...” The cup traced a drippy arc  including all of the Mads as well as Carmine Palisander, a mechanical engineer capable of following the tangential wanderings and odd trajectories of the Mad minds in the living room.   “...inventions minus their casings : naked as the day they were built with  every servo, diode & resistor visible! The innermost machine-intent revealed, exposed! For Science!” The spill-y spiel finished, Van Loan punctuated his pitch with the firm tabling of what coffee remained within the confines of his mug.
Kohran simulated a thoughtful inspiration with the comic irony that certain specific mammalian attributes were brought to the fore ; flung her barely covered arms galactic north northwest, and decried,  “You have your Mz. May!”
“Wunderbar!” Van Loan’s mock German was both a recognition and a fond poke at his sig-other. “Our first month, and almost certainly our cover shot! Now all we need is your naked achievements to complete this  most Geeksome project!”
***
Later, in the chamber of ablutions, Van Loan squeezing toothpaste onto his brush, queried Wandblume, engaged in ceramic fluid venting, regarding her earlier episode of peculiar un-Shego-ish behaviour.
“What was with all that fidgeting and roaming earlier, hon?”
“Oh, nothing much : Carmine wants a three-way.”
Van Loan’s application of dental purée seriously exceeded his immediate needs.
“With us?!”
“Well, more with me, but she knows that I come with you, so she’s willing to pay the piper.”
Van Loan’s face went from astonished to resolute, as did his body language, in a speed un-clock-able by science : “Well I’m not! I will not risk what I have with you for the urges of anybody!”
Seated upon the china throne, Wandblume tried to be Shego-esque about it all : she really did, but it didn’t work.  She indecorously launched herself at Her Man.
“Ewww!” His performance wouldn’t have convinced the audience at a professional wrestling event as he cradled his emotional girl.
“How about a shared cold shower, just for good measure?”
She nodded, vigorously.
 

Sulphur Passage by Bob Bossin is about the Clayoquot Protests, specifically the human blockade of Sulphur Pass.

Quote:Come you bold men of Clayoquot,Come you bold women.There is a fire burning on the mountain,The sting of smoke blown in the wind.Hear the blast of the whistle,Hear the snarl of the chain,Hear the cracking in the heartwood,Hear it again and again and again.
Chorus:No Pasaran, Megin RiverNo Pasaran, Clayoquot RiverNo Pasaran, Sulphur Passage!
There is a valley torn asunder,There is a mountain stripped to bone,Grove of spruce, stand of cedar,The ancient garden sacked and burned!Hear the blast of the whistle,Hear the snarl of the chain,Hear the cracking in the heartwood,Hear it again and again and again.
Chorus
Come you bold men of Clayoquot,Come you bold women;There is a cry deep within the forest,Hear the whisper in the wind.Hear the breath of the cedars,The sighing in the salal,The beating deep within the forest,The grouse, the thrush, the great horned owl.
We'll stand with these cedars,Stand with these balsam groves,Stand with the heron, the cougar, the otter,Like the tree by the water, we shall not move.
Chorus
Repeat first verse
Final chorus:No pasaran, Megin RiverNo pasaran, Clayoquot RiverNo pasaran, Flores IslandNo pasaran, Vargas IslandNo pasaran, Ursus RiverNo pasaran, Nesquiat RiverNo pasaran, Sulphur Passage!

The space station looked for the worlds as if an über-megalomaniac had
given up almost immediately on a plan to build a ridiculously enormous
android fortress in the most ridiculous way possible. The giant, boxy
palm that lingered oddly in space sprouted a full set of splayed Fu
Manchu digits. Garish multicolored light from an equally bizarre
assortment of beacons littered across local space bathed the
purposefully plasticized station skin in the luridly loving light of
Spaghetti-Space.
Wandblume took in the zany exhibit with an
expression that was a cocktail of amusement, chagrin and fondness as her
fast-courier cum cargo-pod transport completed a Freudian mating ritual
with the station’s docking assemblage.
“Of all the Geeks in
Fen...!” There was surely more to the epithet, but her delivery gave the
distinct sense that it had become a ritualized précis of the virescent
vixen’s thoughts, a slight soliloquy into her beguilingly bonkers
brain.  She shook her head, a slightly loopy grin reminiscent of her
beau’s near perpetual-puss-posture curling the corners of her mouth.
Dies
Irae, togged out in her Shegoth black & greens, crossed the
insectile passage of the cargo umbilicus with a desultory sashay nearly
rivaling Morticia Anjelica Huston Adams’ skill.
“Come again, boss?”
Wandblume laughed : “Just my way of saying ‘My Man makes me crazy!’,  Pen.”
“Madcap!”
Wandblume had no idea where Penny’s English accent was from, but she
did know that it wasn’t from anywhere near Comprende-ville.
‘Die
kacke!’ Wandblume’s face was impassive as the profanity rocketed harsh
consonants through her mind. ‘I’ll have to find someone to make her
understand ‘crazy!’ !’
“Collect the squad, Pen : time to meet the Lord of the manor.”
***
The
interior of the station, with the sole & notable exception of the
throne dais--it was full-throated Stark-Space-Tyrant aesthetic--, was
the stylish, cold, and uncomfortable black leather, backlit glass &
brushed steel open-concept style that Wandblume called Terminator Chic. 
Especially that frakking steel-framed sectional couch : it had been
lovingly designed, she was certain, by a sadistic cabal of furniture
makers determined to destroy spines. She gave this seated Charybdis a
wide berth.
He, Van Loan, was on the dais--what a
surprise!--playing Zarth Arn with all of the glee of Raúl Rafael Juliá’s
Bison. A gauntleted hand resting on the spikiest steel throne ever
designed--a throne of swords would be far more comfortable!-- he gazed
through his injudiciously enormous cathedral window at his
varicolored expanse of space. He addressed his company with a
well-rehearsed cape-swirling pivot and an apropos villainous chortle.
It
wasn’t difficult for Wandblume to return the laughter with an extra
raucous dose of hilarity. Van Loan looked really silly in all of that
shiny red and black leather : Disco Bondage Dracula was about to,
‘[make] a man with blond hair and a tan....”
His laughter picked
up a minute silly infection of his partner’s before regaining its
gonzo-imperiousness as he strode down the raised platform towards the
arms akimbo Shego.
“Ah, your mission was successful, Lack...”
With
a speed that belied her usual indolence, Wandblume yanked the cloak ;
Van Loan sprawled indecorously onto his leather-clad backside.
“...Hey!” he managed, almost finishing the intended word.
She
considered her splayed beau with a look best summarized as
‘affectionately piqued’. The Shegoth squad, arrayed adroitly behind
their  kingpin, sniggered and rolled their heavily made up eyes at the
dynamic melodramatics of the VanBlume relationship.
“What was that? You want to sleep on that couch?” She lazily swept an emerald fingernail in the direction of Charybdis.
A
snippet of grin broke though Van Loan’s comically indignant expression ;
quickly eroded the rest of it away with the much more Dr. D mien of a
loopy banana grin.
“Missed you my beautiful, mercurial Goddess!”
Shego moued. “The cold, spine killing caress of Charybdis!” It really was that uncomfortable.
He
ticked off items on his blueberry fingers : “Beautiful...” his sinister
pinky waggled ; “...Labile...” the neighbouring ring finger wiggled ;
“goddess...” the middle digit squirmed. “Two to go!" He inhaled
dramatically, and shot his index finger skywards. “Enticing, and...” Up
when the thumb in the age-old gesture of aplomb . “...hot as Hell!”
“You said sexy twice.”
“There are notable qualitative differences between my right hand and my right hand!”
It
took a few seconds for Wandblume’s brain to decode her boyfriend’s
double-squared entendre : “You really can make anything sound
empirical!”
“Super power!” Now come here and let me display my other powers!”  
“Ewwww,
go get a satellite!” Pitchy bolted, a lingering contrail of girlish
squeal fading behind her fleeing, diminutive lacy figure.
***
“The
throne is dead : long live the new thrones!” Van Loan brandished the
ceremonial over-sized spanner over his head as the Shegoth solemnly
sashayed the old throne towards the airlock. Two egg chairs, firmly
bolted to the deck, now occupied the stagy soapbox space. Van Loan
flourished the gleaming instrument scepter-like in the direction of
wandblume : “Do you approve of your perch, my Empress?”
“Indeed! “ She spun the chair in a lazy full rotation.
***
Outside,
in the gaudy desolation of trans-Neptunian cosmos, a castoff chair of
totalitarian and trenchant attitude strayed steadily through space.