pulled from My Mysterium

since My Mysterium is misbehaving...

This was a triumph!
I'm making a note here:
"HUGE SUCCESS!!"

It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.

Yeah, that. I haven't got the mental fortitude at the moment to express just how much GLORY AND WIN (as the kiddies say) this Mysterium was made of. But, I wanted to get a few thank-yous out before I turned anymore jelloy.

LaReh is my new Favorite Burger King Delivery Man. thank you so much for looking after me.

Many many thanks to KonDor for his kind words and support during my Saturday afternoon emotional reboot.

Simon Bitiddle is the Eleri Peanut Gallery. Witty, clever, an UTTER smartass (There is proof!) And one of the most selfless, generous, caring people I have ever had the honor of meeting. Thank you so much, hon.

Wolfie, for watching over us and giving us beautiful weather for the weekend.

EricL, as always, a snugglebunny and dear, dear friend.

Al's little bro, for his beautiful singing... even if he did try to put my teeth out in the pool.

Seekrit message for Odo: Silly Grin, heeheehee!

River, you rock my socks in more ways than I can count.

Memiki for being a beautiful person, full of wonderful hugs, and a warm heart. And cookies!

For the long-suffering Oscy, much love.

For 'nat. Dude. (Do0od!) You rock. We rock. Yup, we're not married!

For my beloved ozho, my Blade...for staying home with the Mousie, even though we both deeply, deeply wanted you there.

The Melting Pot in Burlington may NEVER BE THE SAME!!! We love them.

Ari, for being the mail box. Him and Keshwyn for shelter and taxiing.

For EVERYONE, thank you for enduring me, for looking after me, for being amazing, wonderful, fun people who came all the way to Boston, just to hang out with 50+ other Myst geeks. This is Uru.

I miss you all. See you next year in SPOKANE!!!

O.M.G.

US Department of Health and Human Services moves to declare some forms of birth control as 'abortions'.

So, in order to support that Abortion is Bad... they're talking about taking away the ability of women to KEEP FROM GETTING PREGNANT in the first place.

Just...just... AUGH!. There's NO science to support this, no viable evidence for this position, just religious extremism. Good grief, this could have been written by the POPE, rather than a branch of the US Government!

Whatever your views on abortion itself are, the ability of women to control their capacity for pregnancy is a hallmark of society. It gave women the ability to do something else besides spend their lives barefoot and pregnant. To quote a friend:

It's widely accepted that the single most powerful driving force in the liberation of women from thousands of years of being confined to home-and-hearth was the advent of reliable forms of birth control. For the first time in human history, women were able to make their own reasoned choices about when or whether to have children, and that gave them the freedom to do, well, everything else.We've seen the pattern repeat itself all over the world: If you want to empower women, first give them control over their own reproductive choices, then give them access to education - then stand back and watch them bloom.

Ohnoes! An Unpopular Suggestion!

Yours Truly said:

balance balance balance balance. At some point, Cyan will have to either supervise themselves, or vest into a group (and dear Maker, may it be an anonymous group of people, known only to Cyan, otherwise the power paranoia will fly) the need to keep crappy Ages and Edits from their IP. Now, what constitutes crap will be up to them, but it'll have to happen.

the reply was:

Oh goodness no. Not another secret group. Wont the crappy accused have the right to know who their crappy accuser is?

No. Cause there's already two big huge problems in this community; the perception of people having Power Over Others, and Us vs Them. Even in a situation where QA would be appropriate, like a publicly accessable Age, those two problems would come screaming to the fore were there to be a named group of people playing Wonka's Trained Squirels, sorting out the bad nuts.

"Who gave them that authority, what gives them the right, how dare they stifle creativity", and so on; followed by "Well of *course* Harry rejected that Age! Snape built it, and you know Harry just can't be objective there..."

The whole community would descend into the mess. So, if it ever gets to the point that Cyan has to control the 'quality' of what's coming in, and if they needed to 'outsource' that work. Don't let us know who's doing it.

Build some damn good strictures, so people know what's being looked at, even allowing for objectivity, establish an iron clad appeals procedure, but don't paint the targets on people's backs.

Myst in 9+ hours

Parrallel Cautious Optimism

In a large bit of squeeing this morning, I found the news that The ElfQuest Movie is being picked up by Warner. This news makes me howl with glee, havening been an EQ fan for 2 decades now. I met the Elves before I met the D'ni. They have seniority. And I used to pour as much heart into the World of Two Moons as I do Myst now.

The Pinis have been working on the Elfquest Movie for what 10? 12? Many? years now. There's been treatments done, talks of TV, even a Saturday morning cartoon. It's been picked up, and then lost in mergers, and then dusted off a dozen times.

Man, where have we heard that before?

This announcement about EQ, aside from making me happydance around the room, also made me fire off an email to our beloved Mysteriacs, Adrian and Patrick. There is always room for hope. If it takes a decade for some studio to finally see the Myst Movie as worth making, then we'll wait that long.

John McCain- PTSD?

From Sailor Jim:

Okay …. republican presidential candidate John McCain was a POW for five and a half years, enduring - as he’s described it - “brutal torture” that was so horrific that he “broke” and attempted to kill himself. He even has put this in political ads.

Sooooooo, no post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulted due to this? Vietnam, shot down, tortured for over five years, attempted suicide, and none of it affected him beyond that? He’s never stated that he ever suffered from (or is still suffering from) PTSD and, as near as I can tell, not one print or broadcast reporter has called him on it. They’ve gone rabidly after politicians for depression, alcohol, drugs, infidelity, illegal immigrant house staff, and stuff they did or said in their high school years, but McCain possibly having a fairly severe emotional disorder is being given a pass?

Somebody get Tom Brocaw down here for me to bitch slap, okay?

There's MORE AT THE LINK. It brings up some interesting questions, just about how that generation views mental health in general, let alone the mental health of VietNam veterans.

Should presidential candidates be required to prove mental health, in addition to physical health? At what point would something raise red flags? Would we have caught Reagan's Alzheimer's early then? McCain seems to have been mentally stable through out his political career, but we're also talking about a man who would be the oldest person elected president. Things break as you get older, and mental stability can be a first casualty.

When we learn McCain's running mate, the question of 'do we want #2 running the country' becomes more acute, and not just an abstract, when #1 would be 72 at the time of inauguration.

Why?

Why do we fight so hard for Uru?

It can't be just the modeling & sandboxing, there's tons of places to do that.

And it can't be just the social aspect, there's millions of sources for social interaction.

So, with all the other outlets, what is it that makes us grab on to Uru and hold on with the tenacity of homesteaders?

If you had to think of the one core thing, that makes you want to be a part of Uru, and not any of the other MMOs or Virtual Worlds, what is it? What's the seed of the Uru community?


(Discalimer & request: I am using this conversation as seed material for my presentation at the Austin Game Designer's Conference. Please indicate if I have your permission to quote you.)

Another bit of Wisdom of the Blade

I really think the community needs to embrace The Great Tree of Possibilities 2.0 (like Web 2.0 but different). We need to look at Uru as everything that happens in the community - age creation, fan-fiction, Cyan content, Mysterium, the forums, the websites, etc. Hopefully the official use of the Guilds (Cyan seems to have finally learned that lesson!) will make part of it about the fans as much as the fiction.

It's time for each of us to be the Grower. And I'm happy to browse other people's gardens

Yeahthat. Uru is, always has been, more than a game. It is a 'game' that brings the parts together, but Uru is the gathering of people together.