Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of Sharples, lies a small, unregarded, yellow room. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety million miles, is an utterly insignificant little blue-green table, whose ape-decended lifeforms who are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. (I certainly do! -q) This is not their story. It is the story of a book. A book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to SWILNews #16. Oh wait. Actually, it is their story. But in order to understand it, you'll need this fish in your ear: @@@@ ><> @@@@ SWILBusiness (Fsssssh! -abq) Assassins is like Kill Doctor Lucky, the LARP. The rabble were non-pathetic, unlike Arthur Dent. (Oh, come on, how many of the rabble would have had the guts to lie in front of a bulldozer? -a) Submit to BEM! Breaking with tradition (In SWIL, we have -- (Had. -b) -- had this thing called "tradition". -q), we allowed Rachel Kaufman and Liv Herriot to prove their sentience at this point in the meeting, rather than at the end, due to the fact that Liv had this terrible pain in all the diodes down her left side. @@@@ <>< @@@@ Sentience Proof #1 Sentience requires being aware of mortality and attempting self-determination. They submitted to us the following copy of their roommate agreement form: Rachel Kaufman and Liv Herriot, as duly appointed roommates do hereby agree to the following: In order to assure the proper ascendance and fate of each other's souls we hereby enter into a pact of mutual murderous intent. We shall battle each other in such a way that the deaths that result are bloody and violent enough to constitute death in battle, thereby satisfying the requirements for entry into Valhalla. (It's not so much an afterlife, more a sort of apres-vie. -a) To ensure that the souls properly ascend to Asgard, the survivor of the bloody encounter is obliged to give the other a proper Viking funeral, wherein the dead warrior will be placed on a boat which will be pu in the Crumb and set on fire. By the will of Odin, Thor and Frey, mote it be Rachel Kaufman Liv Herriot Warriors are primarily the ones who go to Valhalla. There was question of their sentience because "A lot of warriors are really fricking stupid." It was also brought up that they might just want to go "'cause of the men, right?" "Maybeeee...." We thought perhaps for a while that they were sentient because Rachel refuses to become Wagnerian. Then we considered that they were considering the life of... drat... the... *well-being* of another to be more important than their own li... well-being. Then we thought it was nice that they were nice happy roommates. Then we started considering the drawings of "Liv kills Rachel: death by shoe" (The Shoe Event Horizon! -q) and "Rachel kills Liv: death by imac" and a proper Viking funeral that they had submitted. They drawings were Monet-like in being flat, and also had other art-like features. DanB explained this all to us in great detail (Humans have this tendency to state and restate the very very obvious -a), so we voted them sentient "because of what DanB said." @@@@ ><> @@@@ We took their limbs. We're working on building a 3-armed being. We'd like it to be omnidextrous. Robert is wearing two pairs of glasses. Yeah, count the heads. Submit to BEM! (Yes, it's too early to talk about the Massacre. -b) (It's never to early to talk about the Massacre! -q) The Massacre will happen in the spring. (Heh heh heh. Blood! -a) SWILoween is November 4 in the WRC. Ben Raoul is in charge of food. This means you should give him money ($3 or more) or a promise to bring food yourself. @@@@ <>< @@@@ The Pterodactyl Hunt It was cool -- the losery hunters mostly left after a while. The Yankees won. (You know, written that way, it really looks like the Yankees won the Pterodactyl Hunt. -b) (See, it's relevant. -a) Lots of stuff happened to Hollis, because he was the Black Knight. Two fights in particular were noteworthy. (Is that like Fringeworthy? -q) In one, Hollis and his opponent exchanged Warcraft II sound effects. (Yes, my lord. -b) (Grizhnak! -b) Hollis also got to pas-de-basque. Another time, a hunter gave up hunting and just wanted to practice with Hollis for about 20 minutes. And if people were unruly, he just killed them really quickly. "And the Hydra grows another head...." Dactyl Robert's heart was still glowing. He looked badass as a Dactyl. "That's what badass is -- good!" He doesn't think it's still glowing now, though. He made an awesome running venom sack change and killed about 6 hunters that way. JC was one of his Guards and led 40 (well, 7) hunters directly into an ambush. The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal has been rejected as a monster for next year. What a mind-bogglingly stupid creature. (Although... damn! Now that I mention it, that could be really cool! You could buy a towel to wrap around your head so you couldn't see it! -b) (Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes! -a) Some little kid participated. Lots of Asian people watched Hollis piping at the end of the Hunt. And... I've found it! I've found the question, the ultimate question, of life, the universe, and everything, to which the answer is 42! It's... How many hunters participated in the Pterodactyl Hunt this year? (I'm going to get lynched for this, aren't I? -a) Prime had a good fight with Robert Delgado. Rachel Sapiro is Kyla's favorite hunter of all time. Kyra was the coolest fishmonger ever; she got lots of hunters to sing fish songs with her. She sold lots of duct tape fish, and lots of Swedish fish, but not many Goldfish or Babel fish. Some people gave the Oracle fish. (Fsssssh! -abq) "O great Oracle -- how does one get gold?" "By fighting monsters." "Hey, I want my tribute back!" And one person wanted to know if the Oracle was cute before he'd fight Hollis. The Orc King's Great Sword was good. It allowed him to fight 2 on 1 without dying horribly much. This was a problem because for the first hour, all the hunters were attacking lone monsters in groups of six and primarily killing them by hitting them on the back. Some hunters thought there were too many monsters; others thought there was too great a proportion of immortal-ish monsters. "Yes, I finally got my silver sword!" -- and Robert shot him. There should be playtesting of equipment in the spring. @@@@ ><> @@@@ Sentience Proof #2 Raoul "Ben" Bagley tried to prove his sentience by sloth because he still owes homework from high school. On August 22, he received a letter from Swarthmore saying they were sure this wouldn't affect his academic performance here. We thought this was kind of lame, so we heckled him into a corner. Well, sort of. Raoul has three toes, like a sloth. He also has six toes, like a sloth with two feet. Somehow, we determined from this that he was a mutant. He claimed that mutants in comic books are sentient. Then we moved on to his place as political exile from the Orcish Revolutionary Collective. As a monarchist, he wants power. (This was kind of a rag-tag proof. -q) So we voted him interesting because he was a mutant displaced talking Orc king. Then he started drawing a comic book starring himself. We finally voted him sentient on the grounds of self-determination by making himself a mutant in a comic book. Sam did a nice rendition of "RAOUL!! The Limited Series #1". Faster than a speeding fungus! Lazier than a locomotive! Able to eat large leaves in a single meal! (And 3 toes inside each boot.) @@@@ <>< @@@@ NonSWILBusiness We sang Happy Birthday to Kyra. Then Kyla complained that no one sings Happy Birthday to her, so we sang Happy Birthday to Kyla. Note that this only involved changing a single letter. (Of course, if you change all the letters, you get "What do you get when you multiply (I'm getting a sinking feeling about this -f) six by nine?" -q) (But that has too many letters in it. -b) (Not more than the whole song. -q) Gaming happened. A roundsing happened. The rugby field was plowed under to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Lars van Trier has a new movie/musical called "Dancing in the Dark". Blackadder will happen after break! (His pot is blacker than his kettle. -a) (Perhaps six slightly black kettles can look like one really black pot! -q) (Yes, that seems more likely. -b) If you have specific requests from Star Trek: The Next Generation that you want to see, contact Kyla. The End of the World will happen after break, if anyone wants to do anything about it, all the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years. So you've had plenty of time to launch any formal complaints, and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now. Let DanB know if you want to marry him. @@@@ ><> @@@@ The Attendance List of the Total Perspective Vortex -- 10/7/2000 ~~~~~~~~~ My birthday! -------------------------------------------+ Yay! | | John "Bright and Perfect" Finkbiner | Hollis "He who often triumphs" Easter, 2LT B.K.A. | Salt and pepper shakers | The as-yet unnamed boffer dagger | Robert "Wallabee of power and styrofoam" McFarland | Rebecca 'bounce, bounce, bounce" Jones | KT "put your request in the Klein bottle" Randle | JC "Luke Skywalker, and several other people who I wish would | go away" Ravage | Rachel "pterodactyl-slayer" Sapiro | Ross "PteRoDActyl-ABstAiNeR" MessiNG | Matt "Duct tape makes newspaper rigid" Fowles | Ben "Hunting is FUN!!" Bagley | benjamin 'existential import' r, george | & Callicles the Moose (What, no quotes? -a) | & Margaret the Camera | {\tt & Daphne "spelled with only one 'P'" the typewriter} | (I didn't see a typewriter at meeting. Did you see a | typewriter at meeting? -a) (Dear, you weren't at | meeting. And you're not even here now. -q) | Rachel "murderous imac" Kaufman | Liv "murderous shoe" Herriot | Rebecca "the occasional mute" Paul | Jen "Perpetually running away from crazy people" Picagli | ~Elliot "Pyramid-builder" Reed | Kyra "Budding, blooming, and making the Earth wonderful" Jucovy --+ Katrina "headcold of doom which attacks every time I move my head, ugh" Mergen Ben "total lack of perspective" Newman Amy' "yeah" Marinello Arcadia "'Ro.sen.crantz and 'Guil.den.stern are dactyls (and dead)" Falcone (Sorry, I have no idea how to put the stress symbols in ASCII. -q) Kyla "flying pigs, two swords, and a head cold" Tornheim Dan "Shut up, you're a grip! Go... uh, grip something!" Blim ~Sam "Been using a tilde longer than Elliot has" Crane (All instances of Elliot have been using a tilde longer than you have! -q) @@@@ <>< @@@@ And since Abi-Wan was far away in the ever-so-slightly more fashionable end of the table, and had to communicate with her copresidents via non-standard-SWILNews-writing means, all three died horribly from a disease contracted from a dirty telephone. Abi-Wan Kenobi, Ben Kenobi, and Queen Amydala @@@@ ><> @@@@ Copies of SWILNews #16 can be obtained by writing Megadodo Publications, Megadodo Corporation, Ursa Minor, including 3 pounds 95 for the text, plus 24,529,198 pounds 7 p, postage and shipping.