September 15, 2006
Boardgames, 1900, In My Pants
Interesting things I've recently done? Let's see...
Last weekend we went up to Palmeston North, and I went to see the final performance of the Mikado with one of my brothers. It was nice to have seen the first and last shows, and compare how they'd changed -- you could really tell that some of the leads had settled into their performances, and I got to see Giffy's line! :)
This was also the Weekend of Many Boardgames, where C had her first experience of Settlers of Catan, and we played three or four games of Munchkin. I also bought a bunch of Cheapass Games products, including "Save Doctor Lucky", "Save Doctor Lucky on Moonbase Copernicus", and "Doctor Lucky Ambivalence Pack" (to compliment my copy of "Kill Doctor Lucky"), as well as "Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition", "One False Step For Mankind" and "One False Step Home". Oh, and "Cube Farm".
Of course, I never seem to actually play many boardgames. :)
Finished watching the first season of Gilmore Girls, and pronounce myself intrigued. We'll watch the second season just as soon as we work out where C has put it. In the meantime, we've been watching this and that, including the pilot episode of Eureka, which was pretty fun. In many ways, I can see that working with TV shows would give more instant gratification; but on the other hand, I'm much more likely to see my name in the credits of a movie. ;)
Oh, speaking of which -- I assume people have seen that we're working on Dambusters, and that PJ has just got the movie rights to the Temeraire series, which is apparently "The Napoleonic Wars, with dragons". Could be good fun; no news about whether he'd direct it, though.
Speaking of directing -- those of you who've been in the hot-seat might be interested in this entry in Ken Levine's blog, when he talks about directing for the first time, after being a writer on the show for a while. (Of course, the show he was directing was M*A*S*H, so a slightly different situation.) Anyway, it might comfort you to know how much harder it could have been.
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I don't know how they plan to make money, but I figured that this might be of interest to some of my readers -- Gigasize is a file uploading/sharing site which has some free options that may useful to some of you. I don't think I'd base a business on it, but I could imagine sticking stuff there instead of bloating my inbox. :)
Unfortunately, I've had a series of browser crashes recently, so all the vital, important news (such as the driver in China who decided to let her dog have a go with steering) has been lost to the mists of time. I have retained something moderately topical, however -- a Guardian article about href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/chile/story/0,,1038615,00.html">The Pinochet File, a book about the military coup in Chile on September 11th, 1973. I find it weird to thing that it happened only a few weeks before I was born... anyway, one of the things the book apparently focusses on is how the US government financed, supported, advised and abetted General Pinochet, both before and during the coup, and afterwards.
I guess that's one big argument against "9/11" being a CIA conspiracy; it's not like they'd seek to pervert the democratic process and subvert a country through fear on the anniversary of doing the same thing down south. On the other hand, I suppose you could argue that if there were such people, they might want to leave hints like this, in the same way some master forger might leave some sort of hint. But while I find it easy to construct these sort of political conspiracies, I find it hard to believe in them. Corporate and financial skulduggery, on the other
hand, is much easier to swallow.
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A discussion I've had with C (and later with others) recently was -- if you were going to be sent back to 1900, and could take three things, what would you take?
(My somewhat facetious first answer was "Wellington", so let's limit it to things you can carry.)
One problem is that you don't want to rely on anything too delicate; a laptop and solar-power generator (with a bunch of books on DVDs) may seem like a good idea, but it's pretty vulnerable to even mild trauma, and the nearest tech support is seventy or eighty years away.
One thing that C & I agreed is that you'd want money, and quite a bit of it. After all, money is one of those things that helps separate the mad from the merely eccentric. (I guess that it'd technically be counterfeiting, even if you bought real cash from that era to bring back with you, since there'd end up being two copies of the notes; but I doubt you'd be able to take back enough to affect the economy, and you should be able to make something indistinguishable from the real thing with modern techniques.) You'd also want a bunch of synthetic gemstones, since they'd be pretty cheap here, but just as valuable as the real thing back then.
It's been interesting what other people have reacted with. For example, one guy's first, immediate response was, "An AK47. Not to hard for them to make, only just outside their level of tech, cheap, reliable, and a definite edge." My main thought was a bunch of deep-analysis history books, so that they could try to avoid the problems of the past.
The question then becomes, I guess, who do you tell about the stuff you know? Because if someone who doesn't have access to you believes that you're giving their rivals a huge advantage, well, I can imagine that they might not have many scruples about taking you out.
Oh, and I can just imagine sitting in my mansion sipping cognac, and suddenly slapping my head and saying, "Oh yeah! Big bird flu in 1918! Uh... better write some letters to some heads of government, telling them to try to prevent a pandemic."
I guess that this stuff (though usually without the foreknowledge) is kinda explored in Stross' "The Merchant Prince" series, and many of the golden-age writers like H. Beam Piper. I think I picked 1900 as being far back enough to be able to have a big impact, but with indoor plumbing, and close enough that I can remember more of the history.
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And to end on a slightly surreal note: bacon taped to a cat, The Egg Series and other photographic work by Leonard Nimoy, El Reg reporting on a mysterious scale replica of a section of the Chinese/India border, stretching 900x700m and representing an area 450x350km. I mean, what possible use is there for something like that.
Oh, and the current craze at work: movie titles with the words "in my pants" appended. Like:
The Sting In My Pants
Tremors In My Pants
Dangerous Liaisons In My Pants
A Fistful of Dollars In My Pants
Ninja Demon Massacre In My Pants
Free Willy In My Pants
The Frighteners In My Pants
Four Weddings And A Funeral In My Pants
Finding Nemo In My Pants
Dark Water In My Pants
etc etc etc.
Yep. Highbrow, for sure. :)