WISH 54 is about one of my favorite character generation issues, background hooks (original). Do you like to have bits and pieces from your characters’ backgrounds appear in the game? Do you write hooks into your character background for the GM to use in the campaign for your character? Do you like it when the GM gives you a background hook into an adventure or scenario with a previously unknown hook, such as creating an old friend of your character’s who is somehow involved? What are some examples of cases where hooks have worked or not worked for you? ...

Northern Iraq has been fairly peaceful, despite pre-war worries about Turkey’s reaction to Kurdish freedom. There’s been the occasional skirmish in Turkey (original) and the Kurds clearly still intend to control the northern oil cities, but on the whole matters have gone all right. Unfortunately, the situation doesn’t seem entirely stable. The US just detained 11 Turkish soldiers, who were reportedly trying to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk. It’s a touchy enough situation for Cheney to handle it personally. ...

This is funny. The Texas House is currently in the middle of a special session, trying to get that pesky redistricting done. Unfortunately, the Republicans can’t agree on how they want to draw the new lines. Great stuff. Good times.

I dropped the Recent Leisure sidebar. Lovely in theory, but I’m two weeks behind updating it. Suffice it to say that I’ve come around to enjoying The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was tons of fun and not very intelligent, and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry is incredibly mawkish in the light of day. His more recent work holds up nicely, though.

I try not to run out my weak Photoshop skills too often, but now and again I can’t resist. I’ve sent this into gbaMOD so I can buy it as a real skin, but rumor has it they’re running kind of slow so we’ll see.

Right there, in the big tan building at the center-left of the picture. If you were driving northwest along the road that cuts from the east side to the north side, you’d take a left after the semicircular driveway; then drive down one block. See, it’s the tan building on the left side of the street. Can’t miss it. (I’m pretty sure these wouldn’t actually work as directions if you didn’t know where I lived already. I hope, anyhow.)

Welcome to the 1st International Love Hotel Moblogging Conference. ( Snooze finds the coolest links.) You sort of missed it, because it was yesterday. A bunch of people independently sought out love hotels, took pictures, and blogged the whole thing. It reminds me of the Lessig Starbucks weekend (original), but with a single centralized blog. I wanted to do a central blog for the NBA draft, but I thought of the idea too late. I still want to do my nomoblog, too.

The BBC (and others) report that three of the six Guantanamo prisoners who are to face a military tribunal are citizens of US allies. Specifically, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi are British and David Hicks is Australian. Apparently, while we don’t try our own citizens in front of a military tribunal, we’re OK with trying Aussies and Brits in a closed court. There’s really no excuse for this. In particular, Australia has suffered Al Qaeda attacks — but Australian courts aren’t good enough to try Mr. Hicks? How insulting. ...

Vancouver won the 2010 Winter Olympics (original). While the main competitor was thought to be Salzburg, in Austria, that bid was eliminated on the first ballot. The final vote was between Vancouver and Pyongyang, and the Canadians won by a mere 3 votes. Fortunately for Canada, all but two of the Salzburg voters switched to Vancouver on the second ballot. Apparently, all the Europeans voted for Vancouver, because if the Olympics is in North America in 2010 it’s unlikely to be in North America again in 2012. That pushes New York further out of the running. London’s going to have to be the coalition of the willing representative, with Paris flying the standard of the opposition. (Madrid and Moscow are less likely candidates.)

I tossed this off in a friend’s comment section, but now I want to save it. Excelsior. It’s Las Vegas. 1960. The Rat Pack is headlining the Sands. And the Angel Pack is patrolling the skies… Jack Diamond: he’s a hard man, the hardest, skin like diamond and quips like knives. You couldn’t scratch him with a .45. (Note: parallel evolution (original).) Angie “Angel” Spencer: team leader, irreverent British heiress, with immense white overarching wings. She flies, and she knows when you’ve been naughty. ...