By chance this afternoon, while taking screen shots for those toons of mine which didn't yet have pages on the Virtueverse wiki, I was lucky enough to have Princess Evangelia positioned just right to see this:

(For the full-sized image, go here.)
ETA:  After several days, I finally realized that I didn't use the title I actually intended to.  Fixed.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The thirteenth book in the Wheel of Time series came out this past Tuesday. I'll be picking up my copy this evening. This will be a good weekend.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Recently I got this message in my email claiming to be from Google:

Quote:Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we've reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz ([url=http://buzz.google.com),]http://buzz.google.com),[/url] a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.
Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.
The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users' concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.
Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This mandatory announcement was sent to all Gmail users in the United States as part of a legal settlement and was authorized by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Google Inc. | 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway | Mountain View, CA 94043

Okay, so my Anime Addenture thread has somehow mutated into my participating in NaNoWriMo, taking my "Riding On Fire" thread and turning it into a fanfiction novel. I have most of the storyline beats laid out in my head, and my ducks are more or less in a row. I only have a couple of annoying questions to settle...
First of all, for people who might have had more experience with Fred Herriot and the Senior Year universe than I do, and to save me skimming through the fanfic pages: is there any proper description of the spaceships of the other races, aside from the canon ones like the Oni, Fukunokami and Ellsians? Or more specifically, has Fred ever said what a Yeshirite, Noukuiite or even a Zephyrite space fighter craft would look like? I have a good idea of a Sagussan Gladiator in my head, at it would probably resemble the Solenoid fighters in Gall Force, but little else.
Second of all, is there any fiction out there that deals with outer space dogfighting? Or modern dog fighting in general? It doesn't have to be realistic, as this is a universe based around Urusei Yatsura, but I'd like a point of reference besides the Rogue Squadron novels to try and write dogfighting scenes with.
Finally, I'm looking for suggestions on names for the various races' space craft. I've figured on using Japanese styled names for the Urusians and the Fukunokami, but I'm kinda stuck on the others. This is difficult, as the Yeshirites and the Noukiites are going to play major roles in my story...

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you will stand up and cheer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UACK93xF-FE
George, you rock.

Take a look who showed up at our door this year.
TODDLER THIBOR!

Utterly and completely NOT what I was expecting.
My response after reading this has been a stunned "whoa".

FINALLY! Someone actually GETS what the Tea Parties are about!
Janet Daley's Column in the UK Telegraph

Quote:In New York last week I was struck by the startling shift of mood since my
last visit, during Barack Obama's first year in office. This phenomenon took
varying forms, of course, depending on the political orientation of my
interlocutor, but the underlying theme of despair and disgust was almost
universal. Liberal Democrats (who hugely outnumber most other factions in
that city) were despondent and disappointed with the collapse of Obama's
popularity. A few of them (remarkably few, actually) were ready to blame
this on a "Right-wing conspiracy" of vaguely racist motivation.
But most of them were frankly critical of the strategic mistakes they
believed the White House had made, and the baffling inability of their
President to connect with the people in an engaging way. His shocking lack
of emotional expression during last month's commemoration of 9/11 – a point
of particular significance to New Yorkers – was remarked upon by a number of
people I met.

Quote:My Republican friends, perhaps surprisingly, were not gloating. They were too
furious. But contrary to the superficial British assumption (heavily
promoted by the BBC), they were not devoting their excoriation exclusively
to the Obama Administration – or even to its clique of Congressional
henchmen, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. That they were opposed to the
Big State, European social democratic model of government which Obama had
imported to Washington went almost without saying. But they were at least as
angry with the leadership of their own party for having conceded far too
much of the argument.

And this anger – again, contrary to the general understanding in Britain – is
not new: it goes all the way back to the Bush presidency. It was widely
known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more,
Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood
was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over
government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with
the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central
government.

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the
establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And
this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the
plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are
not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of
the official Opposition as well.

Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which
has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were
plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were
just a new incarnation of the gun-totin', gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom
they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge
political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the
Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic
political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and
fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the
grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican
party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government:
the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which
governs least.

Quote:As some astute commentators have observed, the ascendancy of the Tea Parties
has meant that fiscal conservatism can replace social conservatism as the raison
d'être of the Republican cause. So rather than being a threat to
Republicanism, the election of Tea Party candidates might be its salvation.
It represents a rank-and-file rejection of what many Americans see as a
conspiracy of the governing elite against ordinary working people. All of
which makes clearer the appeal of even the naivety and inexperience of some
of the Tea Party contenders who have challenged incumbent Republican
candidates. If what you are rebelling against is a generation of smug,
out-of-touch professional politicians, then a little dose of amateurishness
or innocence might strike you as positively refreshing. (In a poll last
week, more than 50 per cent of voters said that they would be more willing
this year than usual to vote for someone with little political experience.)

But they apparently did not. Well not entirely.
One is a tie-in to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie from 2005. As far as I can tell, there's no more direct link on the site that hosts it. The exhibition tie-in page for the HHGTTG movie still exists too, but again, you wouldn't find it from just opening the main site. Apparently the page and the game are still sitting on their servers, just not linked to. (I had that happen with a website of mine around 1999-2002. Officially the ISP that hosted it got bought out and free hosting was theoretically no longer going to be provided. In reality, I got 2 and a half more years of free hosting for that site. Apparently it was sitting on some forgotten server that had never been deactivated. I could even update my website via FTP. I guess they finally physically shut down the server around 2002.)
But the game itself still exists and is playable (though you can no longer record a high score - or any score actually. But that's really not the point, is it? ^_^).  The fun part is that each "sub-game" is only 5 seconds long and on a timer. So if you've never played the game before, you've got 5 seconds to figure out what's even going on before reacting to it! Sometimes it's a multiple choice question. Sometimes it's navigating through and asteroid field with a spaceship (or navigating through fish, or hamburgers, or something else weird). Sometimes it's driving Marvin around trying to avoid falling slabs of cheese. Or aiming a tomato just right at the head of the Vogon who is about to spout poetry...  All of it done in the same style of animation as that done for the book excerpts from the movie.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game
Another is a tie in for Spam-a-Lot, the musical of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This one is, more or less, a traditional "catapult" style flash game. It's the sound effects and animation that make it fun.
Spam-a-Lot Game

Since I seem to be incapable of writing anything fictional, but my ranting vibe is still strong, I've been doing some other literary/journalistic activities over at ColonyOfGamers.com

The first is a series of reviews/play journals called http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums ... goryid=170]JPublic Will Play It. I don't really hit my stride until the July/August entries, but I think they're somewhat fun.

The second is my participation in the http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums ... y.php?f=27]Immortal Machines podcast, which is devoted to PC gaming. I'm in episodes 39 and 41 so far.

I encourage you to check them out, and also to sign up to ColonyofGamers. We need more members.