[Herr D]

Hey! Where’s the next chapter?

[Herr D]

Let’s not forget minor weather problems. With no one else having airships, no one charted the jet stream, right? Face them with using too much fuel to go directly, and if they go around, face them with fog so they get lost. Then what happens with birds. 5 pigeons really can bring down some modern jet planes. So what happens if a small flock roosts on one side?

Interferences: suppose they get too close to a wizard’s home on an icy cliff. The spells / artifacts that keep his place warm rockets the ship up 500 feet, then when they get past, they plummet 510 feet, completely missing the cliff. Motion sickness is avoidable with a roll, right?

[Herr D]

50 heroes? what a mess . . . I hope one of them has the super power of unification and another has the power of instant telepathy.

[Herr D]

It was a toss up between Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman and Isis for a long time. Now it may be becoming Black Widow. A woman in a sexy costume who can do amazing things is great, but a woman dressed sexy, amazingly capable, and doesn’t have a needy ego? Never gloats or wastes time on contempt? All business and stops arguing at the right time? YUMYUMYUM.
and for guilty pleasures, Mystique . . . but it couldn’t last. Too psyched out to be her own woman.

[Herr D]

I can’t imagine the world without both. I remember when they were classed as fantasy and social science fiction. The world needs both faith in mysticism and utopic ideals to continue fighting intellectual apathy and ethical degradation.

[Herr D]

mmm–my wife reflexively said she never wanted to see the new one (and we watch too much tv anyway,) so I’m not as informed as I should be. I’m also somewhat jaded, but it looks to me like a choice between an overacted ethics play on cloning issues with some lookers starring in it and an ‘eighties space western. If I WANTED both, I would see if I’m right abt the new one, watch the old one when I’m tired and need to veg and mute the new one for some scenery.

Feel free to tell me what I’m wrong about.

[Herr D]

I forgot to mention why werewolf stories DON’T scare me normally. Monsters in general are identifiable, have known weaknesses. If you were to see one, you’re either hallucinating or you need to behave exactly certain ways to survive. Life is so much harder. Any awful person, place, or thing you encounter is a LOT less cut and dried, a LOT less predictable, and, let’s face it, a LOT less identifiable. Wednesday Addams dressed up like a homicidal maniac because they look like everybody else. The stranger you’re rude to might be your next job interviewer. The stranger you’re kind to might be your next stalker. Cars break down unexpectedly. Sinkholes sometimes form in seemingly stable ground, swallowing buses. Floors cave in. Sometimes cops are crooked and gangbangers are kind. A boring week where you do very little more than eat, sleep, be bored at work, do chores and maybe are too tired to pursue hobbies or friends is sometimes the luckiest week of all. The only thing easier to thrive in is to be in situ: “hey, don’t bother shooting it a SECOND time; you’ll make it madder. Just stay over here on THIS side of the river and help me melt down this silver. . . ” And those who don’t listen? Well–you can’t worry about them for very long.

[Herr D]

You might ask Jeff if he’ll hold a contest for pix for some of the entries. There is of course already a compendium available for citation in hm archives. If you believe one story, surviving dinosaurs are subspecies of dragons, and that means a large part of that section is covered under “companions” . . .

[Herr D]

um–try this one.
first wave and most populous (because of rabbits): Twist of primals would be furry sweaty things that, uh, involuntarily implant their young in victims with or without mating acts (audience consideration) from spring.
Twist of dragonkind for summer: lots of ways to go here–smoking out an entire village might be bad enough. Area effect of ‘no combustion’ would be really hard for medieval villages to thrive . . . no cooking, forging, warming, smoking meats.
Twist of Beastkith for fall: again, lots of ways to go, all hunted animals around start working as a team against hunters? Stampedes?
Twist of Shadowgaunts: cavedwellers who glow so bright they blind people. Or strobe for stun effect. Reward for capture? your very own low-tech DISCOTECH!

[Herr D]

The Show Must Go Off–part two

\FORMATMAINT \MARKBEGIN \LOCPREP
MCL-BeltMiner#C485640624
For anyone to truly understand my motives, they’d have to know the truth about The Great Extortion. Back in ’38, when Yoshi got famous? The popblogs and ‘casts all claimed he’d charmed top scientists into DOING the study that accidentally revealed the link from corn syrup overconsumption in parents to their kids’ autism. Sham. Yoshi didn’t have the idea. He didn’t prompt the labcoated losers to do the study, and he didn’t prompt the bureaucrats to give grants. He didn’t even get all those former programmers jobs.
I was doing data mining, hero-worshipping Yoshi along with everyone when I DID have an idea of my own. When does a study convince people? I was still young in ’40 when there was a resurgence in the Flat Earthers [snort] so it was on my mind. And what more trackable than purchases? I did a term’s software project on market research data mining and then hacked in to get purchase profiles of three scientists on the study, three programmers and TRIED for Yoshi’s. Then a simple subroutine to look up which sweeteners in guesstimates of ‘doses’ and a longer program to compare those six to a population of 100 random citizens. I expected the programmers to slow eating corn syrup in ’37, you know, when the study contracts were made? As part of their endorsing the project. I expected the scientists to start later, [bah humbug, no REAL evidence till WE say so. . .] and was I wrong. The programmers slowed when I thought. The scientists had slowed back in [uh?!] ’21. It took me nearly a year to backtrace by location and eliminate other customers from where Yoshi shopped. He’d known since ’23. I extorted my hero. I was, after all, doing pretty much what he had done.
Somehow he’d hacked the original study and extorted his way out of being sentenced for computer crimes. Then he got amnesty and had the bureaucrats and scientists involved buy their way out by duping the study nearly EIGHTEEN years later and going public. 9.3 MILLION autistic kids were born in those eighteen years, if you count the colonies, stations, and orbiting farms. All over one dirty secret. He teletutored me in programming, data-mining, hacking, anything I wanted before ‘awarding’ his fortune to his ‘brightest and favorite pupil’ in his will. He went to his grave still a hero, using his good name to praise turning the scramble for resources into a collective of prison workers. The Belt Mine Prison System was well underway in ’46 when he died. So you see it’s fitting that when I did get sent up, I got sent here. My hero’s meal tickets got the place started after all. “Ice, Iron, and Iodine” people were saying. Water, metal, and trace minerals from the asteroid belt to grow sugar cane, soy, fruit, blue agave, and the tweaks. Little did I know my part in making my future home. The history books can stay wrong. Why be a famous target when I could be a rich healthy happy nobody?
\END TEXTBURST \ROBOTARM:ADDON:LOC314

[Herr D]

I have to say rebranch. Something goes wrong, I activate the ‘undo-redo-differently-till-I-get-it-right’ power.

[Herr D]

airship might be best made in following pieces:
1. Choose wood carefully. Some wood just doesn’t burn well, and if climate allows, a design allowing for replacing panels/beams one at a time (modular design / repair may have been done in 1300’s) Just keep harvesting green saplings and weaving.
2. Hot air in multiple interconnected dried ‘animal bladders’ similar idea to leather wineskins would prevent fatal crash: you could tie off leaks and reroute flow. Skill–tanning, sewing, carpentry.
3. fuel–for rapid hot burn and light weight and low cost, pouches of mill debris. Wheat kernel casings, corn husk dust, etc. is stuff they might pay you to take away if you sweep it out for them. It is so flammable that in tonnage pressure in summer some silos have spontaneous combustion instances. It’s VERY reliable tinder, dense powder as heavy as fine dust.
Alternate 3. There is a well-known spell in the index for a heatless permanent torch that can’t start a fire. If you’re the GM, rewrite the spell so 15 ‘lanterns’ uncovered all at once cause a wave of heat, but 1d4 lantern wears out daily. Fuel would then be 1d4 sp/day
4. Propellors? If 1/4 party pedal at once . . . that’s an overlapping shift setup. Pony on a conveyor belt? 1 minihorsepower.
5. Concealment: paint it to look like a flock of birds that tastes nasty to the locals. Augment with illusion.
Any of these pieces could cause major problems with or without catastrophe.

[Herr D]

Twice now, I have assembled my mancave and had it overrun by household changes. It consists of a stereo, computer, and a desk/bench of my own design composited of two desks and an entertainment center. Desk, cp, stereo and filing cabinet are one piece with a clamping arm attached, suitable for holding a clipboard, assembly manual, embroidery hoop or notebook–that’s 7′ long. The bench part has a 6′ x 3′ work surface with most of an entertainment center 5′ h x 5′ w mounted above it. The shelves are stuffed with tools, materials, and trays which hold individual projects in various stages. One rolling chair completes the whole thing. I’ve had less than 2 months total use of it, but I’ve worked on it in metal, wood, wax, stone–and I painted, drew, sewed as well. And on the computer, I wrote and used a form of AutoCad. I designed it for ease and speed of multitasking and switching media.

[Herr D]

Hammerknight? are we sticking to birthdays or could we do alliteration?
Like: what was Stan Lee’s motive for alliterative names?

[Herr D]

I made 50%. I’m surprised; I expected 25%.

[Author]

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