Month: June 2003

An update a week, whether you need it or not….

Yeah, I know. Not a lot of updates recently. Mea Culpa.

So, this past weekend was pretty much the “Gareth gets to do nothing but slack off and enjoy it” holiday that I’ve been needing for a while. Friday was my 34th birthday, and yesterday was Father’s Day. I got to be the quintessential Man of Leisure ™ for the whole weekend. Not a lick of work done.

Some of the birthday/father’s day loot acquired this weekend:

Star Trek: Phase II : The Untold Story Behind the Star Trek Television Series that Almost Was —very cool book about the abortive series that became the first Star Trek movie, including complete scripts for two episodes, the writer’s bible and thirteen story treatments, as well as production designs, etc.

Radiohead: Hail To The Thief —the new album by one of my favorite bands. Not as experimental as Kid A or Amnesiac, but a great album nonetheless.

Steely Dan: Everything Must Go –brand new album by perhaps my favorite band of all time. I had to wait almost 20 years between their last two albums (although there were solo projects by Donald Fagen to hold me over–but even those were 10 years apart), but they only waited 3 years between the Grammy-award-winning Two Against Nature and this release. Woo-hoo!

Harry Potter Wizard Chess —cute little Harry-Potterized plastic chess set, with the pieces molded to look like the stone pieces in the film. It’d be nice to see an electronic version where the pieces move themselves (which seems like a no-brainer licensed product to me), but this works. We muggles can move the pieces ourselves, after all.

GMS

The Storm is brewing….hopefully….

It looks as though attention is finally being paid to the fact that it appears Bush & Co. lied to Congress, the American People, the UN and the World about Iraq’s WMDs, in order to cook up reasons for a war. Still not a lot of coverage by major media (certainly nothing approaching the feeding frenzy that characterized their coverage of the Clinton impeachment and the surrounding issues), but it is notable that now even conservatives are beginning to ask serious questions.

John Dean, former White House lawyer for Richard Nixon, writes a blistering essay about a coming scandal he sees as worse than Watergate. Give it a look–it’s very interesting. A quote:

“In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush’s doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked.”

One can hope.

GMS

Very Busy

I haven’t been able to post to this thing as much as I’d like to recently, but that’s just fine, because I’ve been busy with a lot of game-industry writing. This past week, I’ve turned in three setting proposals to the publisher of a generic RPG (nameless until any deal is complete), at the publisher’s request…hell, I like one of ’em so much, that if the publisher decides to pass, I think I’m going to work it up myself as a full, stand-alone RPG. I also had to provide a detailed synopsis for a connected series of 3 adventures for a licensed RPG (the synopsis is required because it has to be approved by the license-holder).

The whole legal debacle continues–my lawyer has started negotiations with the prosecutor, and we’ve provided documentation that bolsters my claim that the whole issue hinged on the notification of my insurance lapse being sent to my old address. According to the lawyer, things are looking good—but I am wary of getting too hopeful.

Only 50-odd days until I can move out of this godforsaken hole.

GMS