Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix;
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

Radio stations are now afraid to air Allan Ginsburg's "Howl" because the filthy villains in Washington have crippled free speech on our national airwaves.

Fuck them.

The story's here:
"Fifty Years After Poem Ruled Not Obscene, Radio Fears to Air It"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/02/MN0PSIM67.DTL

(I can't say I like the poem, but I hate the censorship and the atmosphere of ignorance and fear which Bush and his thought-controlling cronies have created.)

Elf Books, Games

Well, there's still no elf books out, but Mongoose's Elfs: A Guide to the Aldryami is supposed to appear this month. Hard to say if it really will or not, because Mongoose's schedule has been constantly slipping all year, since they went to their in-house printing press.

However, they published my first bit of Second Age elf writing today in Signs & Portents #49, their free online magazine which you can get here:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1544&qsSeries=13

This is actually the second bit of elf writing that's appeared since I've finished the books, the first of which appeared in Tradetalk #15:
http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=7374

Which isn't free, but is available from Warehouse 23:
http://www.warehouse23.com/item.html?id=TCSTT015

These were both original bits of writing that I did to complement, respectively, the RQ4 and HQ books.

With the Mongoose book on the horizon, I now dearly wish that the Moon Design book would show any sign of movement. Ah well, I knew it was dangerous writing that for someone who had previously put out books pretty slowly ... Maybe it'll show up in 2008.

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So I've still got some minor projects floating around, for Knucklebones magazine (always) and for Ars Magica, but as of this weekend, I'm going to start devoting time again to working on my history book.

No contract yet, alas, but I'd like to get it done nonetheless. I'm just going to do it at my own pace until I'm confident in a publisher, unlike that break-neck pace early this year, which ultimately proved to be for naught.

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Over in Saturday gaming, we're getting well into the Savage Tide adventure path that I choose.

The AP log of it is here:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=346384

Ironically, though I have no plan to upgrade from D&D3.5 anytime soon, Wizard's recent D&D4 announcement has put me off purchasing any of the rulebooks I was planning to. I've got a few Dungeon Tile sets and I'll probably get the Rules Compendium, but WotC's decision to totally revamp their game has left me little interested in financially supporting them.

Better or not, I don't care; the decisions to kill Dungeon and Dragon magazine and to so totally revamp the game as to make old stuff incompatible have left me feeling uncharitable toward them.