Hey, Kaolin, how are you? :) Tried to reach you recently, no luck.
Would you like a Christmas card?

Mack

As long as you answer (say) one in three of my communications, and I don't bug you too often, I figure we'll still be active friends. :) [Based on my non-scientific intuitive basis that I like knowing what my friends are up to.}

Book: Enjoy! (Welcome to the world, post-Rising. . .)

Friend: Someday biochemical depression will be entirely solved by science, and we'll be left with purely existential issues. Until then, it's better living through chemistry for fun and profit.

Christmas card: I'll make it non-religious. Put it on your mantel, feed it to your cat, show it to Amy!

Am: Blissfully enjoying my post-barbecue burger from the local grill. I either like or don't mind the holidays, because I just tune out the commercialism and enjoy the good stuff. (Subject to my definition of what is "good" . . .)

I like social in small doses. :) I still don' t really enjoy big parties, for instance, but I enjoy good conversation. It's almost an art form.

I'm back to work after a break running errands. Picked up some boxes at Wal-Mart -- I'm shipping off a lot of old World of Darkness books. Why? Because someone is buying them (I got $140 plus the shipping costs prepaid), and I can now justify buying *new* gaming books. . . Most expensive reading material I own, besides my law books.

And so the wheel turns. :)

There's a great new game you would probably enjoy reading, purely because it's about transhumanism. I'm probably going to buy it.

**********
Eclipse Phase is a pen & paper roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror.

An "eclipse phase" is the period between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is.

Players take part in a cross-faction secret network dubbed Firewall that is dedicated to counteracting "existential risks" — threats to the existence of transhumanity, whether they be biowar plagues, self-replicating nanoswarms, nuclear proliferation, terrorists with WMDs, net-breaking computer attacks, rogue AIs, alien encounters, or anything else that could drive an already decimated transhumanity to extinction.

Your mind is software. Program it.

Your body is a shell. Change it.

Death is a disease. Cure it.

Extinction is approaching. Fight it

*******

: ) :)