It looks as though I'll be able to come to the Black Road. The dates work!

Who else might be tempted?

(Depending on who's coming and who's running, I'll probably run one or two games - but I know several people have said that they want to come and run ... )

It looks like I'll be coming to America twice next year - once with Greg and once for a Con.

So, if one were coming to visit the West Coast (and, more specifically San Francisco) when would be the best time of year?

From the view of weather and convenience ...

Two excellent articles in Vanity Fair:

Survivor: The White House Edition
As with Vietnam, so with Iraq: in the last act of a failed war the backstage action is about saving reputations, not lives. The flurry of exits, finger-pointing, and self-justification exploited by Bob Woodward leaves just three men to blame: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Which is where Henry Kissinger, the master survivor, comes in.

and:

Now They Tell Us: Neo Culpa
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

But the absolutely limit from the second article, the blood boiling, steam snorting inducing one is this:

Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute freedom scholar:
"Ask yourself who the most powerful people in the White House are. They are women who are in love with the president: Laura [Bush], Condi, Harriet Miers, and Karen Hughes."

I'm worried about the level of anti-Americanism that's seeping into popular culture here in the UK.

We were watching a slick thriller series tonight - very popular over here. And it took a very crude anti-American line - equating all Americans with the American government (it also took an strongly anti-UK government line - it is a cynical show). But I feel we're seeing more of that lazy shorthand - Americans all seen in terms of a very limited sterotype.

Of course, events aren't exactly helping combat this as the American government pass more and more draconian laws, as every week we read about some appalling new schoolyard shooting.

But it worries me. Generally speaking, people here can distinguish between the American government - which they dislike (after all , they dislike where Tony Blair has led our government too), and Americans in general - who they like. But the line, it seems to me, is becoming blurred.

A shorter entry this time ...

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Slept and refreshed.

791 emails in my inbox ...