Just as a kind of exercise, the SkyMall catalogue is something we've used to keep our minds off the realities of flight for years. The strip we did awhile back about a machine which would repel either dogs or witches (but never both) was born of this odd, airborne magazine, and when we got off the plane from Hotlanta (which I have heard Ludacris refer to as "The ATL") we just tossed it in the laptop bag.

I've beaten Indigo Prophecy now, I have a couple endings under my belt, and on the whole the game is something I can recommend without discomfort.

I know people who have obtained an overseas version because they can't do without the interactive sex scenes that were flensed from our localized offering. I'm okay without it. I don't have faith that I could make such a scene endure for longer than a couple minutes, anyway. I don't need to haul that kind of anxiety into the digital realm.

Short of two very specific "stealth" scenes which feature "gameplay" that is far, far outside the charter described by the rest of the experience, and indeed may be far outside the developer's ability to execute it, there's a lot of what one might call juice in this game. Unfortunately, the storytelling near the end is terribly abrupt, which is only brought into greater relief against the sure-footed delivery of the earlier chapters. The writing could have been tighter in places, and tense scenes are sometimes made frustrating when the camera angle shifts but the controls don't follow.

Note that I still emerged from the experience satisfied: I say these things in the hope that, should their efforts be rewarded by Indigo Prophecy, we can see something else from them that pushes their cinteractive media experiments forward. They can use that word on the box if they want. Or I can make up another one. It's easy for me, I'm a writer.

Day of Defeat: Source comes out today at, well, three in the afternoon. For some reason. Is that an auspicious time? Are they commemorating something?

Foolscap was something that may be outside my power to describe. I don't know that I could capture the wonder, shame, and rage of that period. Was it only a weekend? The mind expands it, somehow.

(CW)TB out.

can you dig the satisfaction

Before the convention itself got underway, Foolscap guest of honor Harlan Ellison was savaged by a parrot.

The story morphed somewhat throughout the event. The most marked departure from the canonical version was that Harlan Ellison had actually been raped by the parrot.

I don't hold to that account.

He didn't appear any worse for wear, although I am told that the bird's vocabulary is now studded with profanities, dark oaths, and shrieks of mortal pain.

(CW)TB

I think that Harlan guy is really pissed at us.

-Gabe out

He's pissed at YOU. If he's pissed at me, it's simply because I know you. It was clear to me from the start that he wouldn't appreciate having to "share" guest of honor status, so to my mind an altercation was inevitable.

He's a ridiculous man, a little goblin who pokes his head out of dark holes and scowls at all the Earth. There is no room in my life for that kind of person.

(CW)TB

I know you're dying to.

(CW)TB

So Tycho and I are up in front of the audience with Harlen, and Hank (the con organizer) presents us with some jester hats (“Fool’s caps”). Tycho and I put ours on because we are polite, but Harlen - who is apparently too cool for school - refuses to wear his. I turn to him and say, “Don’t you want your hat?” and he tells me to fuck off. This caught me off guard, I mean I have no clue who this fucking coot is. Then he points to a pad of paper he has and asks if I’m aware that his paper is also called foolscap. Now, I’ve never heard that term before, I pretty much just call it paper so I shake my head “no.” This really isn’t a fair question. I mean, it would be like me asking him about Photoshop or if he can remember what he had for lunch. The guy was essentially setting me up to look stupid in front of all these people. So then he asks me if I even attended college and I say “No, I did not.” Then, he says “did you at least finish high school?”

I said that I had, but you couldn’t really hear me because the audience is laughing at me along with Harlen. So once they stop, I turn to him and I say, “While I’ve got you here I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Star Wars stuff you wrote.”

I didn’t know him very well but I felt like mistaking him for someone who writes Star Wars books was the sort of insult that would cut right to his brittle old bones. The audience seemed to agree because I could hear a lot of ooooooooh’s and oh no’s over the laughing. Some people in the front even suggested a fist fight was now in order. I look over at Harlen and he’s staring at me like he wants to choke me. He then says “so that’s how it’s going to be.” Now keep in mind that he’s the one that started hostilities when he told me to fuck off. I’m just the one that finished it. The guy tells some pretty funny stories about how witty he is and how he’s always saying clever things at exactly the right moment. When confronted with someone who was unwilling to take any crap from him he had no clever retort. The great writer just glared at me and then walked off stage. I don’t doubt that given enough time he could craft a perfectly worded and extremely vicious response but up there on stage in front of all his fans the man didn’t have shit.

I don’t blame Harlen for not knowing who I am. I honestly don’t expect him to. I don’t expect anyone that old to know who I am. I did expect him to be polite and at least respect the fact that I was a fellow guest of honor. That was apparently too much to ask for from the great Harlen Elison.

-Gabe Out

Someone just sent me a hilarious Ellison story. I’ll just post it here for you all to enjoy. Just so we’re all on the same page, Mr. Ellison is about 4 feet tall. I suppose he’s always been short but he might have been tall at some point and now he’s shrinking. The same thing is happening to my Grandma.

Of course I wasn't there, but the first thing I think of when I think of insulting Harlan Ellison is to call him a little fuck. There's an old story out there (stop me if you've already heard it) about him propositioning a tall blonde woman at a party with the line, "What would you say to a little fuck?" Her answer, of course, was, "Hello little fuck."

Still gets him riled I hear.

Thanks Tom, that’s good stuff.

-Gabe out

We're talking about a person that a couple total assholes find rude.

(CW)TB