News You Can Bruise for 2001 August 12

During my afternoon nap I dreamed a sitcom in which the family whose sitcom it was kept changing ethnicities (and therefore actors). As far as premises for sitcoms go, this is actually above average, but my dream can't take credit for it because it's a special case of an idea I've had for a while. It got me thinking about an adversarial card game centered around an episode of a sitcom, in which some players are working to disrupt the sitcom by causing problems for the characters, and other players are working to resolve those problems before the end of the half-hour. As usual, however, I don't know how to design adversarial card games (all I know is that there would be a "Very Special Episode" card), and mere ideas for them are a dime a dozen. My idea is worth $0.008333...

The picnic was great, though I can't help but think it would have been better if we'd made it a potluck in some quiet place rather than sharing an inferior catered event with hundreds of other people (note, however, that it was still great). Sumana came with and got her face painted with "Free Dmitry". We played badminton with Jason Brittain and his wife. Pictures are on the other computer and I am lazy, so you probably won't see them until tomorrow. Wait, you know what I just realized? The flyer claimed there would be corn on the cob at the picnic, but there was no corn and no cob. I knew I was missing something!

I have some other ideas, mostly for non-interactive fiction, the authorship of which is a skill I have yet to master. I waffle and rewrite endlessly and am never satisfied with the result. The security guard encounter in Jake Berendes West Covina makes me wince. I need practice.

I think Seth should do some sort of beer commercial: "After a hard day of freeing Dmitry, I like to relax with a nice, frosty brew." Sumana says Seth would never do such a commercial. It could be changed to be some sort of nonalcoholic beverage, but that's just not working-class enough.

I wrote about four kilobytes of text for a story called "Blue". It's almost a Lem story, but it's based on a mental image of mine that dates from high school, my pre-Lem days.

Wow, ADOM 1.0 is out! It was out days ago! And I'm too tired to play it!

Today's final note: Mike Popovic has once again found gainful employment, and has set up a NewsBruiser site for his baby daughter which I hope to be able to link to soon.

Actually I've already linked to Mike's Zoe site.