Monty Python star Jones has cancer

Good luck and godspeed in your healing. The man has given more than enough laughter to deserve a speedy recovery.

Monty Python star Jones has cancer

Monty Python star Terry Jones has bowel cancer, although doctors believe they have caught it at an early stage, a newspaper has reported.

Jones, who directed the cult comedy troupe's three films, 'Life of Brian', 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and 'The Meaning of Life', is in a private London hospital after being diagnosed, the Daily Mirror said Saturday.

His agent Jodi Shield told the newspaper: 'He is having a routine exploratory operation in the next few days.

'His surgeon is fairly confident -- they think they've got it early enough.

'He's in great spirits. We're having to make him stop working.'

Stuart Immonen

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Originally uploaded by stuartimmonen.

It appears that comic artist Stuart Immonen (artist on Warren Ellis' Nextwave among others) has been doing a webcomic that also appears on flicker (as well as his website).

The comic can be found on his site here: http://www.immonen.ca/comics/?p=17

Secrets of Isis

I'll give you 52 reasons to click on the video above.

Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help

It may sound like a cliche but reading Robert Anton Wilson changed my life. It wasn't just Illuminatus that did it though. Really, for all that it is, it is still "just" a novel. No, what really changed things for me was reading his book Cosmic Trigger. It is an incredible account of a man's journey of self-discovery and, of course, magic. Changing your life, or changing your world, isn't something that happens lightly.

I really don't know what I can do (as just one person) but I plan to help as much as I can, and I hope that each and every person who reads this post will take it upon themself to do the same thing. At this point I don't know how much help can be given other than to make things as comfortable and painless as possible at this point. Really, is there any less that we can try to do?

I hope not.

Robert Anton Wilson needs our help

I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say Robert Anton Wilson is one of my heroes. His writing has had a profound influence on the way I view life, more so than any other writer. If I had not read his books, there would definitely be no Boing Boing.

My friend Douglas Rushkoff feels the same way about him, and I'm reposting his blog entry because Robert Anton Wilson needs our help now.

UPDATE: Note from Robert's friend, Denis Berry: Sadly, we have to report that wizard-author-intelligence increase agent is in trouble with his life, home and his finances. Robert is dying at his home from post polio syndrome. He has enough money for next months rent and after that, will be unable to pay. He cannot walk, has a hard time talking and swallowing, is extremely frail and needs full time care that is being provided by several friends-fans-volunteers and family. We appeal to you to help financially for the next few months to let him die at his home in peace.

200610021323 Douglas Rushkoff: I hope people I've inspired with my work would band together to help me out in my later years if I needed it. Which is at least part of the reason why I'm sending what I can to support cosmic thinking patriarch Robert Anton Wilson, whose infirmity and depleted finances have put him in the precarious position of not being able to meet next month's rent.

In case the name doesn't immediately ring a bell, Bob is the guy who wrote Cosmic Trigger -- still the best narrative on how to enter and navigate the psycho-spiritual realm, and co-wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy, an epic work that pushes beyond conspiracy theory into conspiracy practice. Robert Anton Wilson will one day be remembered alongside such literary philosophers as Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.

But right now, Bob is a human being in a rather painful fleshsuit, who needs our help. I refuse for the history books to say he died alone and destitute, for I want future generations to know we appreciated Robert Anton Wilson while he was alive.

Let me add, on a personal note, that Bob is the only one of my heroes who I was not disappointed to actually meet in person. He was of tremendous support to me along my road, and I'm honored to have the opportunity to be of some support on his.

Note from Robert's friend, Denis Berry: Robert's writing has enlightened-educated many and if you can please commit to help pay a portion of his expenses until his passing which sadly won't be that long. Monthly contributions of $50.00 or more will be greatly appreciated. All monies will go directly to Robert and can be sent to his PayPal address olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check to RAW c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, Ca 95063.

More information can be found here.

And here is The Reverand Ivan Stang's appeal:

Pope Bob (Robert Anton Wilson) loaned us SubGeniuses a LOT!

Most of what he loaned us were ideas. We took those ideas and ran with them. We did all KINDS of things using his ideas. We started every manner of experiment, inspired by his experiments. Many of those experiments PAID OFF.

I have said many times to interviewers that were it not for Robert Anton Wilson (and the late great Robert Shea, who co-wrote Illuminatus), there would be no Church of the SubGenius.

Although Pope Bob was tough enough to beat childhood polio in his youth, now that he is old, it has returned to harass him. He busted his ass his whole life, writing, lecturing, and selling books -- and if you think those jobs are EASY, try it yourself. He shared part of his mighty brain with the world, supported his family, and even survived the loss of a child and his wife without GIVING UP. But nothing lasts forever, and now it's down to the wire.

Olbermann's special commentary on Clinton vs Fox

Ok, so it's one of my ocassional rants about politics. They're probably going to happen more frequently as we enter into a new political season (I know, we entered it a while ago). I just don't have one side to my interests though. If you are pro-Bush or the Republicans, you might prefer to just skip this one.

Object off Alaska coast may be WWII sub

Imagine the post-modern dungeon crawl, or probably more properly the modern dungeon crawl. Deep under water is a submarine, lost since the days of WWII. Somewhere within that submarine is a secret, a secret so dark and dangerous that it could not be destroyed but only contained. Now, you've been approached and asked to mount an expedition to recover an object from the newly found submarine.

What do you do?

Object off Alaska coast may be WWII sub

Underwater sonar images of a black shape against a background of grainy monochrome are safely stored on two computer hard drives at Bruce Abele's home in Newton, Mass.

Blurred by odd shadows and striations, the silhouettes are the biggest clues in more than 60 years to the fate of his father's World War II submarine, the USS Grunion, which sank nearly 5,000 miles west of Massachusetts, near the obscure islands at the tip of Alaska's Aleutian chain.

[via Jon Nichols]

Child killer literally a marked man

Probably not dorky but I thought that this might be something that could get some form or another of use out of people. Sometimes the punishment gives a more fitting punishment.

Child killer literally a marked man

Convicted child killer Anthony Stockelman's face and head were unmarked at his trial last year. But now he's turned up at Wabash Correctional Facility with a tattoo on the forehead reading 'Katie's revenge.'

Katie is Katie Collman of Crothersville, the little girl he confessed to raping and killing last year. The Department of Corrections is not saying who applied the tattoo, which is against prison regulations, or why. They say they are still investigating.

Katie's dad, John Neace, has his own theory. Wednesday he said, 'If I had to guess I'd say it's a statement from the inmates.'

Katie's father says he heard about the tattoo from friends and has no idea if Katie's distant cousin, who is also serving time at Wabash, played any role.

Potty Mouths on Star Trek

Probably not work safe but its only a few seconds.

John M. Ford, 1957-2006

I remember John M. Ford from when I was a poster on SJG's Pyramid forum. He had the most hilarious .sigs that I have ever seen, each tailor exactly to the content of the post that he had made. Admitedly I only knew him online as a fellow poster and through his work as a game designer but it is still a loss. Without his sense of humor, the world is a little grimmer today.

John M. Ford, 1957-2006

Mike Ford is gone. The cause of his death is not yet known. Elise Matthesen found his body around two o’clock this morning. She said it looked like it was fast and easy, whatever it was.

He’d been in poor health for decades. This still comes as a terrible shock.

I keep thinking that Mike would know the right thing to say about all this. There’s a hole in the universe.

Just in case you don't know who he was, here is a link to the Wikipedia article about him.

A small circle of friends

Once again, Bill Stoddard brings out the concept of the gaming circle. A great idea, and one of the goals that I had in the back of my mind with the formation of the Cleveland Gamers group. It is still the principal around which I would like to have a larger scale group organized but it just seems less and less possible as time goes along.

I'm not really sure what it is that the concept keeps butting up against, but (for some reason) I can't seem to get it to work. The idea of a large circle of gamers drawing upon each other for games, campaigns, ideas and general support seems to be a natural one but it just doesn't get far up off of the ground.

In the back of my head things like the Geek Social Fallacies pop up, and it makes me wonder exactly how true those fallacies really are. Maintaining any sort of social dynamic among a group of people who probably aren't the most social of individuals is never an easy task. I am not saying that is a problem with the Cleveland Gamers (the people who aren't the most social of creatures that is) but subtle issues of social dynamic do lurk beneath the surface whenever you gather more than three people together into any one location.

A small circle of friends

As a result of online discussions of roleplaying games, I've had it borne in on me that my approach, which I always took to be the obvious and straightforward way of doing things, has a number of peculiarities when compared with how a lot of people game. This is about one of them.

It appears that a fairly common social pattern among gamers is the 'gaming group.' This is a set of people small enough so that they can all play together in a session of an rpg, who meet—most often weekly, but sometimes biweekly, monthly, or irregularly—for the purpose of doing so. The meetings continue indefinitely, either as one long campaign, or through a succession of new campaigns. If a new campaign is started, it's because a member of the group offers to run it and is accepted; and depending on the group culture, either the nature of the new campaign is presented in advance and must receive group approval, or the GM throws the players into it and may face dissatisfaction, resistance, or open sabotage if it's not what the players want—and the player may feel entitled to engage in such sabotage. Players hardly ever face expulsion from the group, even if they do actively sabotage a campaign or make it not fun for other players; keeping the group together is a higher priority. New players can be introduced, but it takes some effort for them to fit in; most player groups don't actively seek new members.

I describe this in such detail precisely because it's not at all the way I do things, and when I first heard about it it struck me as eccentric, if not outright weird.

Over the last three groups that I have put together there have been a total of five people that I had never previously gamed with, or even know previous to our gaming. That is out of seven gamers that have been in those last three groups (one person has been in all three). I think that's a great thing. It brings fresh perspectives to the table and it helps to keep ideas fresh and flowing. You can't really get stale in your ideas and approaches when you're working new people into the dynamic like that.

One thing, having that high number of new players is actually intentional. I run a pretty active recruiting before I start a campaign and I really love to see new faces at the table. It makes things more fun for me because, despite myself, I am a fairly social individual. I do, on some levels, like meeting people and I consider my gaming to be a social activity first and foremost.

The trick seems to be in figuring out how to convince others that this is a viable method. If you know how to do that, please let me know.

There will be more on this topic in the future, I am sure, as it is something that is on my mind a lot.