March 04, 2002
Well, my birthday was cool. We spent about $50 on chinese take-out, my sibs and I, and then we ate our way all the way down to the cardboard. Sesame beef, sweet-and-sour pork, lemon chicken, shrimp-fried-rice, some of those greasy noodles, and a really spicy tofu thing... I can't speak to the authenticity of the food (never been to China. Sorry), so some of you may be scowling and thinking it's just that americanized crap. Frankly, I'm fine with that. Culinary ethnicity and authenticity can take a long walk in a dark park, where they deserve to be mugged by the pizza guy, or perhaps a hot-dog vendor. Give me TASTY. Call it whatever makes you feel good, just make it TASTE GOOD. Use MSG if you'd like. If I'm gonna pay to eat out, I want my mouth to be shouting at my stomach to make more space, because darn it, there's still some sesame beef left in this box, and I don't think I can stop myself. Get those chopsticks out of my face. They're slowing me down. Hand me that ladle, will ya?After dinner we waddled carefully downstairs and played the N64 "New Tetris," in which the scoring depends on creating perfect squares and THEN erasing lines. I got my butt kicked so hard I had to play a couple of rounds of shoot'em cars (Rush 2049 in Battle Mode) to feel good about myself. Apparently my sister and her husband have been eating, sleeping, and breathing this New Tetris since Christmas, and us old-school Tetris types just can't keep up.
Fine. Let me strap a missile-launcher to the top of my car, and I'll clean house. You want those lines erased? Gotcha covered. BLAM.
Speaking of BLAM, I think we're due to get some during this week of Schlock Mercenary. Several of you have written to tell me you like this story. Not one of you has said "Hurry up and wrap this thing up! I'm bored!" Not that it would matter. I'm above pandering to the lowest common denominator. Still, the month of April will find our heroes doing something besides fighting Uniocs and hunting for eyes. I put the finishing touches on this "QFSS" adventure over the weekend, and it DOES have a definite ending.
This is a good thing, because I've been designing characters and starships and aliens and stuff for the upcoming storyline, and I'm itching to get there. I even bought GRAPH PAPER so I could get some of this stuff properly proportioned. At some point I'll be posting these sketches over where KeenSpot PREMIUM members can see them.
In unrelated news, someone emailed me to ask where the entrys go when they die. Answer: they've all been accessible using the little buttons down there. And now (as of Friday) if you'd like to surf through the OL Archive, there is a link (just to the right of the buttons) that will put all the dates of entrys on one page. Handy, no? It would be handier if the subject lines were there, too, but I haven't figured out how to do that with the Keen automation. You'll just have to be happy with what you've got.