Reading: Statesman (Bio of a Space Tyrant #5) by Piers Anthony
Music: Todd Rundgren's Back to the Bars
TV/Movie: Clerks
Link o' the Day: Gamefaqs.com

And I have no real excuse for falling so behind in these journal entries.

None whatsoever.

Sure, I've been getting some halfway decent work done lately writing-wise. And I've been getting some good freelance work done, and inching forward in getting Sleight of Hand No. 2 finished, but still... how long does it take me to make an entry?

All right, there have been a couple of nights where I was just too dang tired to think by the time jounral-writing came around. Still, I'm going to try and keep this more regular. If I miss a night, it will be just _one_ night at a time, meaning that there won't be _days_ going by without an entry. Not necessarily for you folks, although I like the occasional feedback, but for my own sense of discipline.

It's what we writers do, folks. Develop discipline.

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No new movies seen this week. Pretty Maggie and I _did_ return to Dave & Busters for another round of playing games and collecting tickets. Some of those games are awfully addictive. We also made a pass by a couple of stores and I ended up dropping $2 on a copy of Starlancer. Now I used to be a _big_ computer game nut. Console games are okay, but I tend to favor computer-platform games. At one time I played them fanatically. I'd spend all night dogfighting with space pirates and the like in Space Rogue on my old MacPlus, or fighting (or being) pirates in Sid Meieir's Pirates! game on my old 8086. Fighting interstellar invaders, making peace treaties, and trading in Hyperspeed on my first 286, battling more ships in Wing Commander for my first 386, then back to the Mac platform for Indiana Jones and Sierra On-line games, then to the Pentium-classes for Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. Ah.. them were the days! I won't even get into all the time spent with online MUDs and such.

Of course with all the writing I'm doing these days, I don't have the same sort of time to indulge, but once in a while I get an ache and I'll take out Unreal Tournament for a bit of Deathmatch or Capture the Flag. On the Playstation I may run through Final Fantasy 8 or 9, or Legend of Dragoon, or some other RPG for a while, then set it down to pick up again a few weeks later.

That's probably what's going to happen to Starlancer. I doubt I'll even finish it. It's not bad for a space-flight combat simulator, but this is only to whet my appetite for Freelancer which still costs $50. When that comes down to $30, I expect I'm going to get sucked in again.

I'm hoping that I can keep it under control and thereby use the gaming experience to sharpen them old creativity muscles.

And maybe pigs will fly. hehe.. ah well. Every now and then a man just has to sit back, consider such things as his dayjob and chores like taking out the trash, then strap a Predator armed with proton cannons and an auto-firing/targeting upgrade to go blow things up for the good of the Alliance. (Oh, and make liberal use of my afterburners when they turn tail and run.)

After about half an hour or so of that, I'm ready to write again.

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Oh heck, while I'm talking games and such, today's link goes to one of the most comprehensive sites for gamefaqs, reviews, and so forth. I give you Gamefaqs.com. The number of games they list is phenomenal, for all the major platforms, and a few of the minor ones as well. Highly recommend for anyone who isn't sure best optimize their weapons in Final Fantasy or find the missing key which unlocks the finale to Space Rogue.

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Not one of my deepest journal entries, but hey. We'll see what this week brings.

Cheers!