July 14 1999 RussCon Report

Amazing appearances by not one, not two, but three long-lost RussCon attendees! Ken reappeared after a couple months of no-shows (and hosting the occasional traitorous renegade Wednesday night AOR games), Jeffles is back from his cross-country perambulations to Minnesota, North Carolina, and God knows where else (briefly), and Randy is on vacation from the Middle East (where he's been teaching math for the past year). Cool beans!

Jeffles brought Carli/Carly (she was spelled both ways in the book).

Tim brought photos of the Willie Nelson concert with him, me, and Alfred, plus pix of him on a tornado chase!

Marty has heard that Doug recently moved to Maryland, which would explain why he hasn't been here lately...

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No RussCon Wednesday August 4!

I will be gone to the annual Go Congress (in San Francisco this year) for a week of Go, my ultimate vacation... Marty is organizing alternate gaming for that week; stay tuned.

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Game Results:

Settlers 4 JP 3 Marty 1 RussW -1 Fred -3
Acquire 4 Clayton 3 KevinH 1 WendyWhe -1 Ken -3
Tayu 2 Randy 0 Bob 0
Medici 4 Steve 3 Carli 1 Jeffles -1 Tim -3
HoneyBears 3 Carli 2 Steve 0 Jeffles -2
Wettstreit 4 Bob 3 Fred 1 JP -1 Ken -3
It'sMine 4 JP 3 Jeffles -1 Steve -1 Carli -1
Guillotine 3 Jeffles 2 Carli 0 Steve -2
ZirkusFlohcati 4 JP 3 Carli 1 Jeffles -1 Steve -3
UnionPacific 6 Marty 5 Tim 3 Clayton 1 RussW -1 WendyWhe -3 Randy -5
Rheinlaender 5 JP 4 Bob 2 Carli -1 Jeffles -1 Steve -4
DurchDieWueste 3 Randy 2 Marty 0 RussW -2
Tayu 3 RussW 2 Steve 0 JP -2
Rainbows 4 Carli 3 Jeffles 1 Randy -2 Marty -2
Tayu 3 JP 2 Steve 0 RussW -2
Can'tStop 4 Jeffles 3 Carli 1 Randy -2 Marty -2

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Evening's Soundtrack:

Hole, B Girl
Marillion, B'sides Themselves
Metallica, Garage Inc.
Shonen Knife, The Birds and the B-Sides
U2, The B-Sides

I don't need to be explaining the common theme, right?

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Rank ratings:
 0.6250 Bob (3 games played)
 0.6000 JP (7)
 0.5000 Clayton (2)
 0.3333 KevinH (1)
 0.2609 Carli (8)
 0.1250 Marty (5)
 0.0000 Jeffles (8)
 0.0000 Tim (2)
-0.2857 RussW (5)
-0.3333 Fred (2)
-0.3333 Steve (8)
-0.5000 Randy (5)
-0.5000 WendyWhe (2)
-1.0000 Ken (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.6500 JP (7)
 0.2500 Bob (3)
 0.2500 Clayton (2)
 0.0625 Marty (5)
-0.0435 Carli (8)
-0.0435 Jeffles (8)
-0.0714 Randy (5)
-0.1429 RussW (5)
-0.1905 Steve (8)
-0.2500 Tim (2)
-0.2500 WendyWhe (2)
-0.3333 KevinH (1)
-0.3333 Fred (2)
-0.3333 Ken (2)

Bob & JP are Co-Devils! Clayton is Vice-Devil! Carli, Jeffles, and Steve share the Dedicated Award. Ken wins the Generous Angel Award.

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Fun Web Sites:

Wendy pointed me to this amazing site:

http://www.capalert.com

It's basically a Christian fundamentalist movie reviewer, who doesn't like ANYTHING. Many many righteously indignant movie reviews, all quite unintentionally funny reading. He actually counts and reports the number of occurences of specific offensive things, especially utterances of the "foulest of foul words". Naturally he hates movies like Southpark and Austin Powers, but he also disapproves of movies which most people would consider good and nobly-intentioned, e.g. American History X. Check out this excerpt from the review of Midsummer Night's Dream:

"matters of unacceptable behavior and programming include...the use of drugs (a fantasy love potion) to control. Though the later [sic] point is clearly fantasy, such gain provided by use of the drug may encourage experimentation with real drugs for the same end -- i.e., the date rape drug?"

I swear I thought it was an elaborate joke at first, but I believe the guy is for real. Check it out!

Another friend Fred A. (not Fred of RussCon) writes:

If the thought of naked Klingons turns you on, read this article from Wired news to get the URL.

http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/20651.html

Caveat: I could read the Wired article, but was unable to access the linked-to Klingon site...

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"Oh yeah, you once slaughtered defenseless animals in Kenya."
"No, that was Botswana."

Russ