I am freaking out...

...because Settembrini just clued me into the fact that Dave Hargrave, the evil genius behind Arduin, was involved in the making of a sci-fi game!

Star Rovers was a boxed set from Archive Miniatures.  It looks like no materials after Module 1 ever came out, which is a damned shame because the spaceship rules were planned for Module 2.  How the hell could this same mistake happen twice?  When I bought Star Frontiers back in the day I felt robbed because all the ship rules were in the second box.  But at least that got published.

Anyway, I'm just starting into the delightful Mr. Lizard's epic six part review, but anything involving Dave Hargrave and outer space has got to be messed up in all the right ways.

EDIT TO ADD:  HOLY CRAP!  I just realized I've seen that Darth Lizard before!

found on the internets, author unknown

Back in December '08 the Mish, Settembrini, and I were messing around with similar charts, working off a chart that appeared on the now sadly defunct home of Polish old school gamebloggery, Demons & Dragons.  I think the above chart is easier to read, but Mishler's opus is still freakin' awesome.

sympathy for the minotaur

NSFW WARNING: Today's Gameblog installment includes a tastefully-rendered classical depiction of a minotaur's weiner.

For a long time now I've been meaning to read Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. After all Star Wars was deeply influenced by it [citation needed] and Uncle Gary makes a big deal about it in either Role-Playing Mastery or Master of the Game, I forget which.  Campbell is one of the philosophers featured in the excellent non-fiction comic Action Philosophers Giant-Sized Thing Volume 1, which I recently re-read.  The section on Hero is so awesome that I photocopied part of it and glued into my copy of Encounter Critical for easy reference.  And then last week I stumbled across 'A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces', which started life as a internal memo at Disney that directly influenced the making of the animated feature film The Lion King.  The Practical Guide contains the line "Christ, Hitler, Mohammed, and Buddha all understood the principles in the book and applied them to influence millions."  Clearly I need to read this book.

So I just started on Hero but I want to talk briefly about one of the first illos in the book.  Dig it:

This depiction of Theseus slaying the minotaur dates to about 470 B.C.  When I first saw this picture I was deeply moved by the expression on the minotaur's face, which seems to combine both bovine innocence and all-too-human fear of mortality.  This creature isn't a bullock-headed smashing machine; it's a wretch, a hideous abomination born of another's sin and confined to a hell of human design.  Why does it consume the flesh of it's victims?  Perhaps only because that's the sole food with which it is provided.  It barely looks any bigger than the bare-faced youth who easily overcomes it with a little gumption and a largish knife.  Based on this illo, D&D has the minotaur all wrong.  It doesn't stomp around using brute strength to destroy foes with sadistic glee, this minotaur stealthily stalks it's victims in the labyrinth, murdering them out of sheer survival desperation.

Anyway, that's what I take away from this ancient scene. 

As a side note, what is that thing in the upper right corner?

The only thing I can come up with is that the minotaur was wearing a jaunty little bonnet, which has just flown off his head in the tussle of battle.

And now for no particular reason...

...a list of books currently on my Amazon wishlist used copies priced at a single penny plus shipping and handling:

1. Krishnamurti Reader vol I - Krishnamurti was my favorite reluctant messiah until I found out that Raj Patel is/isn't the maitreya.
2. A Continuing Education - A book about what books to read by Samuel Pickering, an English professor who was one of the inspirations for Robin Williams' roll in Dead Poets Society.
3. The Art of Faking It: Sounding Smart Without Really Knowing Anything - Perfect title for exploiting the intellectual insecurity of the middlebrow set.  Clearly I am a sucker for having this on my list.
4. Review of Contemporary Fiction (Summer 98) - contains an article on Milorad Pavic, author of one of my favorite novels, The Dictionary of the Khazars.
5. Defence Diaries of W. Morgan Petty - A collection of crank letters written under a pseudonym.
6. Yotsuba&! vol III - I own volume I and have read volume II.  Though I have read other manga, volume I is the only one I have ever spent cash money on.
7. Alphabet of Manliness - By the author of the Best Page in the Universe.
8. Schotts' Food & Drink Miscellany - I have Schott's original volume of miscellany.  Despite living in this wild internet age of instant information I am still amused by small oddball reference works such as Mr. Schott produces.  But then I maintain a luddite-like attachment to the codex as the 'proper' medium for a book.
9. 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know - Another weird reference book, but with a more conspiratorial bent.  Put out by the folks behind disinfo.com if I recall correctly.
10. How to Be a Villain: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!!! - I'm not sure if there's anything in this one that I don't already know, but I love the title. 
11. Don't Try This at Home: How to Win a Sumo Match, Catch a Great White Shark, Start an Independent Nation and Other Extraordinary Feats - Remember when the Worst-Case Survival Handbook spawned a brief fad of books like it?
12. The Action Hero's Handbook: How to Catch a Great White Shark, Perform the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Track a Fugitive, and Dozens of Other TV and Movie Skills - I sure do!
13. The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook - Though I never got the original.

Shipping & handling on most of these tomes is listed as $3.99, so at the moment I could get any one of them for only four dollars American.  Anybody care to share an opinion as to which one I should order later today?

simple math

this post + this post =

Princess Freedom!

"I don't like going inside banks...

That last line just cracks me up.  From Corinne Mucha's contribution to I Saw You..., a comics anthology based upon the Missed Connections section of craigslist.

I'm glad I got invited to the party, but...

...I keep thinking that bear is flipping me the bird.  Is that paranoia?  An overly belligerent attitude towards forest creatures?