Robot Jazz

  If you are like me, you are probably somewhat desperate for some fresh yuletide entertainment. Sure, The Hallmark Channel offers a seemingly bottomless bowl of copy-and-paste pottage that is their yearly Christmas lineup, but who can stomach that for long? How many times can we watch lazy iterations of the fem-fantasy of the girl boss who travels to the country to find the man of her dreams (who invariably arrives as a rustic but is later revealed to be a former doctor, lawyer, or reclusive entrepreneur)? In the world of Hallmark , love is only for professionals. Well, if you are tired of watching St. Valentine's Day romances thinly disguised as Christmas fare, here is an alternative: Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers. Seeing that some of the all-time Christmas classics are cartoons ( Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas , and How the Grinch Stole Christmas , to name but a few!), it shouldn't bother anyone that Tokyo Godfathers  is itself a Christmas cartoon, if of...

  [The following is another short fiction inspired by a session with one of my favorite 'Cold War gone hot' wargames, this time WARNO.  I'm sorry: I just have too much fun with these games not to memorialize the session! As ever, don't expect any of these World War III chronicles to tie together in any sort of sensible way. I am not writing a novel. I just look at the battle's events and try to come up with a backstory.] East German Border Incident  GDR claims West Germany launched a cross-border night raid West Germany denies the accusation Many casualties reported [EuroNewz] Today, the government of the German Democratic Republic accused its neighbor, the Federal Republic of Germany, of engaging in cross-border hostilities. The incident allegedly occurred overnight in the sparsely-populated Zhornhorst region. "We are outraged by the unprovoked hostilities of the criminals in Bonn," said Jens Wirtz, spokesman for East Berlin's Ministry for Foreign Aff...