Swilnews11-12 "Uncle Louie, how come it always rains when I want it to be nice?" "Because the weatherman hates fun, Billy." "Hello, everyone. Spring is in the air, and it's mostly wet. I don't mean to make a comparison between the weather this spring and the weather on all the Venuses in those sci-fi novels in the '50's, but think about building a house boat and having a lot of pets, you know what I'm saying?" /// Cut, Cut. The weather comes at the end of the news, not the beginning. First the news. Hello, everyone. It's May and it's raining. Having rain on the brain is plainly insane. Maybe that's what happened to Frank Herbert. "I'm so sick of weathermen calling for rain, I think I'll invent a world where there are no weathermen ... No, even better! A world where there is no rain!! A desert planet!!! But wait, I like it when earthworms come out in the rain. I like worms. Maybe I could think of something ..." You see how it is. It's also nearing finals time, and the world is just a little bit weirder than usual. Oh, there is no Swilnewsish news, by the way. That's how we (Laura and I, and me and Chris, that is) can go on about the weather even a double issue news. Well, I suppose there is some, maybe a drizzle of news (train the brain to think of rain/ and quickly you'll go down the drain). And it goes something like this... Week 11 -- Rick's friend Ed visited. There was an expedition to the fantastic bookstore which is somewhere. It was good. Jimmosk knows more about it. From the new Locus, we discovered that Judith Tarr has a new book out, A Wind in Cairo, that Roger Zelazny's next Amber book is due out in November, and that Piers Anthony has recently sold 7 more books to publishing houses. Congratulations, Piers!! The 21th tournament of animation started showing at the Roxy April 28th, beginning a two-week run. It should be across the Pennsylvania-Ohio border by then. Free tickets can (or could have been) found in the free City Paper. There is a comic sale the first week-end in May (that starts bright and early Sat. May 6). Franmax has issues of Aboriginal SF. T-shirst should be arriving in two weeks. (That's two weeks from two weeks ago, so it now should be "arriving REAL SOON"). Shirts will be $8.26 each. Week 12 -- Susan Ruff's brother Joe visited. There was Walpurgisnacht story-reading. It was fun, and there was more food than you can possibly imagine. Bem will be out soon. It will be about 20 pages. Swil will be subscribing to Visions, the inter-collegiate, semi-annual SF magazine. If you want to submit to it, the dead-line is May 9. See Jed for more info. Week 13 -- A preview. SCHLOCK FILMS!! We're having them! They're here, and they will be shown Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night. Since there's been ABSOLUTELY NO ADVERTISING, we'll make signs at the meeting on Saturday. More details then. Film at 11. So we lied. "We exaggerated." (Idle question -- When one says there is much less of something than there actually is, one is reverse-exaggerating. Is there a word for this?) There was a little news. But starting with the weather wasn't all bad. Since we've already done weather, if we skip global geo-politics and sports, we can go straight to attendance! Goodbye pen, pen o' my heart, that so well hath written, [who ARE these people?-ed.] Joel, Deb "I'm addicted to Tetris -- ugh!" Holtzman, Lisa "Hey kids,let's put on a play!" Batt, Hannah "Gee, can it have funky costumes, Lisa?" Rosner, Wayne "I am also addicted to Tetris, and I don't wear funny costumes" Finegar, Alex "Weirich", Mikala Woodward, Jim Moskowitz, Franmax, "The", Saralinda, Smoke, NO CLEVERNESS ALLOWED ON THIS LIST! (AND IT'S A GOOD THING...), Loremaster ("Be wary of wousing a wizard's wath!") Jed, Bruce "Sharp pointy teeth again?!?" Hahne, [a mirror image of] redynS htraG, another misspelling of Mosskowitz, Luke "Leave this space blank" Hankins, Nao(mi) the freshling, unfortunately not Cary Grant, Peter "I'd be paranoid if I were a goldfish", Ark Gnirad the Eye-Biter, and the Johns Hopkins Strike Force. Well that about wraps it up for another exciting fortnight of Swildom. Take care, and don't take any wooden nickels. But if you do take some, watch out for pocket-termites. 4