From: homo ludicrous Subject: EXERCISE: Pumping Games! Building Blocks! Comments: To: flat basketballs (being a mixed swizzle from the blender full of hastily scanned email and other fugitive bits escaping from our REENGINEERING meetings--excuse me, was that spelled reorganization or restructuring or... not?) on the creative side of the court, we have pink blobs floating and primping...they have escaped the rigid cages and are ready to ROAR! on the logical, analytical side of the court, we have those categories, those wonderful cages, lines, charts, and all the other restraints...ready for a little S&M practice? well, at least annually retentive or otherwise holding back the flow... and in the middle-- jacks? cards? dice? (note: this is plural, even though almost any die you pick up has more sides than that...) and other paraphenalia? YES! one of the places where rules and romping, where referees and players, where logic and creativity combine and conspire in a fruit of the loom uniform... is in games. when you are playing, it's a good idea to have some rules. but...it's just a game. while you may get intense, excited, jump up and down in your seat and throw your drink at the referee involved--it isn't anything serious. so you can have fun, you can take chances, you can even lose--and feel good about it! (Make one up! what the heck, it's only a game, right? then post it to the list and see who plays... par diablo example...) so, let's see... 1. write three sentences (a short paragraph). steal one from someone if you need to. 2. get your dictionary down and flip pages. pick the first noun from the bottom on the right-hand page. pick the first verb from the top on the left-hand page. repeat twice (so you have three nouns, three verbs--toss with some other parts of speech if you like, but make sure you have those six!) 3. take the first sentence. remove a verb and replace with the first random verb. remove the last noun in the sentence and replace with the first random noun. 4. do this for all three sentences. 5. read your randomized "seed" aloud. think about what might have led up to this. think what might happen as a result. think about the feelings of the characters trapped in this situation... and WRITE! der grinding block tink