In my ongoing obsession with Victorian-esque fantasy (which is to say, fiction written in a fantasy Victorian era which never could have happened because it's not dirty or nasty enough), I read Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

I'll start with a spoiler: The story has almost nothing to do with the moon.

It's not a big spoiler, but it's one any fan of sci-fi but unaware of the true nature of the story should be told. The story is about the attempt to get to the moon, the journey of it. The title is literal, but not with the meaning I expected.

I haven't read any Jules Verne before and I was mixed with horror and awe at it. It was a mix between social treatise and physics text on rocketry, orbital velocity and metallurgy. The detail about the design and building of the "rocket" has a level of detail that made me believe they could actually pull this off, and the social commentary about how Verne has the Americans react (who else would seriously think about shooting at the moon than Americans?) was less biting than Swift but cutting all the same.

It was a difficult read because it's not a modern story. It doesn't have an over-arching plot save that of the building of a device, each chapter is in a way its own story that builds a little on the chapter before it. It ends rather abruptly and it took me a while to warm to it, to understand that it could not have ended any other way.

On Twitter. Short types. Uname obvious. Join and be whole.

It really started two days ago, but it was once a tradition, that the first time I saw it, I would call someone up and tell them, in a loud and annoying voice:

Sssssnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooowwwww!

I was usually gleeful, but sometimes lamenting. Like now, when it's not so much snow as it is crystalline rain.

Up. Whimsey, Sky Pirates, or James & the Giant Peach?

A general question for anyone with gloss computer screens: Have you been able to learn how to ignore the reflections?

Titanium Powerbook G4, dead at age 7.

(Not quite dead, but the monitor hinge is shot, meaning it's gone but for the case-modding.)

I was watching a trailer for an iPhone game, then it hit me. iPhone, DS, XBox Live, PopCap Games' popularity, these are all perfect instances for people to take old games and re-create them with new ideas without the millions in funding or concern that it's all things to all people.

We're finding new ways to just play games again.

In a similar note, I find Spore to be one of the more boring games I've tried. It's cute but it's five separate games that doesn't get complex enough to engage until the Space stage, which I've played three times longer than the rest of the game combined. It's not a little game, a little tool and a little toy in the sense that both The Sims and Sim City are.

Did anyone watch Obama's party-acceptance speech last night?

Was it me or did he just moon the entire Republican party?

I watched the last six episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I was a little disappointed. I wanted to be left with my eyes falling out of my head and my jaw hanging open, a fireworks finale to what I think as the best animated series America has ever produced.

Ever.

This didn't quite happen, but I'm not letting that sour my opinion of the series.

( Spoilery reasons follow. )

If you're hooked on the first two episodes (and are okay with the idea of instant karma), you should watch this entire series. It's 31 1/2 hours, each of the three season has a different flavor, with varying amounts of characterization, but it never seems to forget about what it's done, and it lets everyone change.

So here we are, back at making posters. This one is a pure-vector deal for the comedy Ladies at the Alamo. Unlike the last one, we have lots of color, and it prints out pretty well too.

I'm not fond of having to put that much information on the poster, but considering the context of community theatre, the poster is also serving as a flier and general advertising.

The most insane thing I saw at Origins: A box of unopened Magic cards, alpha or beta starters, was being offered at buy-it-now auction for $10,000.

It sold.

480 (or so) cardboard cards with color art. At almost $21 per card, that's more expensive than the Star Trek original series per minute on DVD. Albeit not by much.

Things to note:

Three red-cell thunderstorms over three days, one with accompanying tornado, and we're scheduled for three more days of similar. I'm house-sitting for my mother, so I had to wait until the storms went away, drive up, and check on cats. It was like a water log ride. And at 3 am, not one I want to repeat.

Origins is good this year. More people willing to talk to us about picking up our card games, even games that we didn't expect. Right now I'd like to thank Bucephalus Games (Living Labyrinth is a great kid's game) and Jolly Roger Games for frank, useful advice and seeming interested, and sometimes even excited, about our ideas.

Which means we might be onto something.

Sometimes I go through phases where it's hard to think of anything for more than ten seconds at a time. I've finally found out why. There are thoughts so heavy that I have trouble putting them out of my mind.

The traditional "don't think of pink elephants" test in a useful context. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

So while waiting for my partner in crime to get better after various number of personal and family medical emergencies, so we can further try to sell MonsterBits and one I haven't talked about called Tic-Tac-No (it's Go, for gamers), I've been inspired for another game called Uptown.

I know that something is going right if I talk to someone for half an hour and come up with a system that can be mocked up in about half an hour (and another twenty minutes to draw on the cards). I don't like relying on The Muse, but when she's there it feels perfect, and so far The Muse has been 3 for 3.

If you like Mille Bornes with a dash of Gin, you'll probably like Uptown.

I know I've forgotten something, but I'm not sure what. The date? A photograph? My signature? A phone call? To sleep? To post more often?

Well whatever it was, everyone have a grand Memorial Day. I can't help but think of the service men and women who've gone before without getting a little angry at the people we've hired as leaders who don't seem to care about what it all meant.

One of our local theaters is doing a production of The Lion In Winter with a light chess-related overtone. The requirements for the poster were "purple, black, silver, jagged, sharp, uncomfortable, different, troupe focused, not heavily reliant on chess". As you can see, I ignored the chess request, but the sketch version was passed, and so this is how the final came out.

For men, the etiquette is to leave the seat up while in public, down when in private.

(I can't remember if I posted this thought before. If I did, call it a "flashback". It's still good advice!)

Round Two! After having departed, my allergies have become bad enough that today I went to the doctor. (Not ol' Dr. Fezziwig. He retired, good man.) How bad? My inhaler, which I've named Bob, no longer helped me breathe. Bob was pretty old. Bob expired 1/05. Whups. I was afraid I had bronchitis. The new doctor, Zack Braff, said that it didn't really matter if it was bronchitis, as the treatment at the moment is pretty much the same.

The New Anti-Allergon Fight Force Foursome! Albuterol! Advair! Prednisone! Chi-Chi the Monkey!

I know this isn't thrilling information, but as part of my "Post It Anyway" agenda, there you go.

Friday: Paint, industrial mold killer, paint, figure out those masks really do serve a purpose.

Saturday: Respiratory system tries to panic. Spring flowering plants are pretty, but do not help. Kept in check with albuterol and, Sudafed, and Tavis-D 12-hour.

Sunday: Vastly oversleep, cannot measure coherent thoughts (it's "measure twice, cut once," right?), and my tongue tastes funny. But I'm not sick.

There's more that happened this weekend, but I'm still flying on Sunday.

I was rickrolled by my local coffee shop the other night. Admittedly they were just trying to encourage people to leave and didn't even know the term, but this means the meme has jumped into the common psyche and can go away now.