Digital Heroes

Madly grinding through DC Universe Online now.  It’s a lot faster once you know how to do the missions and know which skills and powers to pick ahead of time thanks to beta experience.

There Is Only One Thing That Could Possibly Bring Me Back Here

I can’t play with my Jedi.

Bleah.

I’m kind of astounded that I haven’t made a post here since last year, but it would seem that once I got access to Star Wars Galaxies and started “To Live The Greatest Saga Ever Told: Yours ™” it got its grubby little claws into me deeper than a Crack Monkey named Louis with Adamantium claws.

Yes. I have been playing SWG that long.

Yes. I got a Jedi character and get to play with a lightsaber. It took months to do it.

No. The girlfriend didn’t dump me. Amazingly, she even played it for a while.

But to recap everything that’s happened since nearly a year ago when the SWG madness began in quick succession. Oh, heck, let’s do a Q & A session…

Do you still have a job?

Incredibly, the answer is yes, I do. Although it’s not with the video game magazine that I was formerly with. Things got pretty ugly there, and so there’s no reason to drag names out and sling mud, suffice to say the short form is, they weren’t paying (An occurrence that seems to happen to me a lot despite the fact that for some reason people seem to think I’m a necessity…) and in desperation (And with the help of an enraged girlfriend) I held the magazine for ransom and wouldn’t hand it over until I got paid, then promptly quit once I got my rent money and they got their issue.

For the past little while I have been writing reviews now for competitor of that magazine. Anyone curious to see what kind of stuff I’ve been cranking out can find it here. There’s usually something put out by me here every week or so.

The other thing I’ve been doing is working on an animated series. I can’t say anymore than that really if I want to keep my job, but it’s ideal since it lets me stay out home, stay out of offices, avoid a tie and harrass my cats. It’s still in the initial stages with me doing the script and concept work, but presumably if it actually ever goes to air, then I can talk at length and ad nauseum about what is a decidedly odd ball project. When are you going to ask me about Star Wars Galaxies?

Fantastic. How are you and the girlfriend?

We are fine. Things are still, much to my stunned disbelief, peachy keen between us and everything is smooth sailing. She has recently started going back to school (fine arts) and is picking up a cynicism for modern art interpretation that does me proud. It’s gratifying to know that I’m not the only one that believes a blank canvas with a tag explaining its meaning roughly the size of Mt. Rushmore is not necessarily genius artwork. When are you going to ask me about Star Wars Galaxies?

Hey, are you two married yet?

No, we’re not, but that’s a foregone conclusion at this point anyway. Quit putting ideas into her head. When are you going to ask me about Star Wars Galaxies?

How are the cats?

Zero and Uno are fine. Uno has grown fat with domestic bliss and Zero is just as paranoid about total strangers as ever. We recently rescued yet another hapless kitten! This one was a little black thing with a meow that sounded like a dying infant vulture. When asked what to name it, I replied “Uh… Ragamuffin?” which promptly got shortened to “Muffin” on the grounds that it was cuter and would make said kitten easier to adopt. After three days of having two miserable cats, some gal who worked with the Singapore Zoo adopted said kitten and the cats are once more back to their usual neurotic selves. We have also unofficially adopted a stray cat that is an orange tabby and so was, in a stroke of creative genius, named “Orange.” This one now hangs out near our building, meows once, quietly, when it sees us and runs up to us then promptly remains silent until its fed, we get bored and ditch it on the street till the next day. When are you going to ask me about Star Wars Galaxies?

Hey, didn’t you have a couple of novels pending publication?

Well, there’s some bad news…

Sadly, after a little over two years, the publishers who were considering it finally said NO. The books–according to my agent–are now in the hands of another publisher who hopefully doesn’t read at the rate of five sentences a day and will come a decision faster. Still waiting on that, and probably won’t get more confirmation for a couple of months yet. When are you going to ask me about Star Wars Galaxies?

So what else are-grk*…

Ah, I’m so glad you asked. Star Wars Galaxies… A chance to go back long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

For months I have been slowly navigating my way through that game, making friends, seeing some pretty spectacular things, participating in everything from big game hunts for Rancors to fighting against the dreaded Empire… all the time really just trying to figure out how to become a Jedi Knight and then going about doing it. After months, the wholly uninspired mystery was revealed; master a whole bunch of different professions within the game and once the ones on your “secret list” have all been completed, you get a new Force Sensitive Character that is all ready to swing a saber. I promptly went at it for several months and earlier this year finally attained my goal; a character that is strong with the force, pure of heart, full of justice, and able to kill anyone that looks at me funny with some carefully applied force lightning or a saber slash to the brain pan.

Since that time, things have been slowing down somewhat in the game since my Ultimate Goal was achieved, but the real reason I am posting now instead of playing is that due to some bizarre changes made to the game and its internet infrastructure recently, I can no longer play it. That is to say, when a change to the game is made, a patch must be downloaded and integrated with your existing game before play can resume. I don’t know whether it’s Sony Online Entertainment, my Internet Service Provider, or maybe even the building I live in, but for some reason, I can no longer download these patches, and thus, can no longer play.

If you are thinking that this is a like a Crack Addict who suddenly finds out his dealer has been arrested, you are not even remotely close to understanding my grief, but that’s a good start.

In a pathetic bid to ease the pain, I even resorted to trying to play another game, Lineage II, but after realizing that game is impossible to play unless you have an armada of bodyguards to protect you from all the player killers in the game, I quickly gave up on it after a couple of days of trying to play, only to get ganked the second I set foot outside of my starting area by other players with such witty retorts as “Die, fu*king noob! I pwnz j00!”

Not quite as dramatic as “Give into your hate and join the dark side!” but I guess we can’t all be literate. Unless you’re a glutton for punishment, or don’t mind being the pawn in someone’s deluded attempt to have a virtual dominance to make up for their lack in real life, I strongly advise against playing this game. It’s obviously for people who enjoy making others suffer, and I am squarely NOT in this category.

Oh well, the pining away for Tatooine continues…

PS: If any kind readers out there are technically inclined and familiar with the intricacies of Internet connections, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share some techno-wisdom with me, as Sony Online Entertainment has described my problem as “experiencing packet loss” and failed to further elaborate. Damn you, faceless multinational corporations that step on the little guy! Damn you to heeeeell!

Please let me play Jedi, oh please… I’m asking nicely. Good SOE. N
ice SOE. Let us have our precious back, we wants it, oh yeeees, we wants it…

Interruption From Offline Lameness

To continue the lameness ONLINE!

Hm… So the last time I wrote anything for the blog, it was on July 29, from the office. Now here it is, quite a few days later into August and I suppose people are wondering if there’s some nice, big juicy anecdote to share with oddness, neuroses and hilarity aplenty.

There isn’t.

I am making a few interesting discoveries about myself since I got promoted to being Editor-In-Chief at Playworks. These discoveries are an immense source of relief to me since it means that I’ve actually put my money where my mouth is and don’t spit venom from a position of envy because I lack the power of others. The first and most important discovery I have made of late is:

1) I have no taste for power.

Being in charge, having underlings or subordinates, being able to toss out orders and watch others execute them may be a dream come true for some, but personally I just find it annoying. Having to worry about someone will make the deadline or not, having to send out the umpteenth e-mail to some software company to make sure they’re sending in their press materials as promised, having to tell people this article won’t go in, or that article was too big and I’m taking the axe to it is NOT my idea of fun. Worrying when you tell someone to do something and you wonder whether they WILL do it at all is not fun. Being asked to make decisions about the quality or content of work done by someone other than myself is just plain irritating. Why anyone would want to have people subordinate to them is beyond me because it just means you have worries outside of your own personal sphere that you now must contend with.

2) I like to write, not edit.

I would rather be in the driver’s seat when it comes to writing. Being an editor feels too much like being a backseat driver, where you have to respect the guy at the wheel, ’cause he or she IS at the wheel after all, and yet at the same time, you still want to scream, “Left! No LEFT! LEFT!!! ARGH?!? WHERE’D YOU LEARN TO DRIVE!?!?”

I’m a good sport about having my stuff edited. I know my work ALWAYS benefits from having something edited. I just HATE editing myself, because once I start, I have this compulsion that I have to fight to simply tear the whole thing in front of me right down to basics and rewrite it my own way and then have THAT edited by someone else.

Editors are wonderful things that are necessary to the craft of improving writing, and I am quickly discovering that while I CAN edit, I would–perhaps selfishly–rather have MY writing improved than have to worry about improving someone else’s. Especially when some of the work comes and it has no basic understanding of grammar to begin with, which makes me wonder, “Why do you even want to be a writer in the first place when you obviously don’t even care about the fundamentals?” Which brings me back to my point of having my work improved, as opposed to rewriting someone else’s just to get it to a standard I’m happy with. Usually that rewriting means the content is now 80% mine and 20% whatever I thought was salvageable.

3) I am a totally disorganized schmuck.

Wow, big surprise on that last one. Before, it was a matter of having the editor tell me what they wanted, and I would just set my nose to the grindstone and start cranking stuff out. Now, I find myself in the much less interesting position of sitting before an Excel spreadsheet, pushing articles around to see what kind of page count we’ll have for the month, and whether an ad or another article should follow this or that piece and frankly it BORES THE HELL OUTTA’ ME.

I do not like organizing pages and articles. I like organizing thoughts and presenting opinions and articles, but I have no interest in further organizing those opinions and articles into a sequential order that makes up the entirety of the magazine. This to me doesn’t really feel like writing, it feels like administration and I am NOT an administrator, will NEVER make a good one, and will in all likelihood fuck this up big time at some point.

At this point in time, my plan is to wait for the inevitable “rival” that will show up, thinking that they have what it takes to make editor and bitterly resenting the fact that I have the position and they do not. The absolute SECOND that I smell so much as a whiff of that ambition, I’m going to be hollering GIVE IT TO HIM! PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASEE!!!!!! And practically be BEGGING for a demotion back to writer, because I AM a writer and not an editor. Let someone who wants this power have it. Me, I’d rather just crank out the pieces rather than push them around on an excel sheet to see how to squeeze ads in between.

In Other News:

Star Wars Galaxies continues to take up the vast majority of gaming time. It’s not like I haven’t been writing. Actually, I have, just making numerous contributions to a Star Wars forum as one of the unofficial Jedi Investigators because we’re all quivering in our space boots at the thought of one day becoming the few, the proud, the Jedi.

For those of you that don’t know (IE, those of you that have lives) one of the tricks to Star Wars Galaxies is that the option to become a Jedi Knight is NOT available from the get go. Instead, there’s some super secret mysterious process to go about becoming a Jedi that the game developers refuse to divulge. It has to do with the actions of your character. Whenever your character fulfills the secret criteria required, BAM! You “unlock” what is referred to as the Force Sensitive Character Slot. This means you must now abandon the character you’ve been playing with, and create a whole brand new one that has the ability to slowly train and become a Jedi.

I want Jedi.

So do thousands of other people. But so far no one’s done it.

So I’m just one of many sad, obsessive geeks who conspires with others across the net, putting out one theory after another on how to unlock FS, tracks the progress and investigations of others, and is basically devoting a rather unhealthy amount of energy to what more or less amounts to a virtual quest. But then since I’ve always wanted to be a Jedi, this, to me, seems like a pretty cool thing to do.

So How’s Everything Else?

Not too bad, actually, thanks for asking.

Aside from the discovery that I am not power hungry (An IMMENSE source of relief to me, I was always worried I talked about hating being in charge ’cause I was never in charge and thus envious. Nope, after being in charge, I can DEFINITIVELY say I LOATHE it) the job itself is still pretty okay. I get to do some writing, just not as much as I’d like. I’m still playing Star Wars Galaxies and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The relationship still seems to be on steady ground as the girlfriend and I realize that we can live with each other without killing each other, although the one year mark is just a few months away now. At that point I’ll find out whether I have any sort of commitment phobic latent reflexes that were just waiting to kick in, but somehow I doubt it.

There is the little matter of the fact that I now have to keep regular hours, whereas she continues to live on Martian Standard Time of a 28 hour day, so sometimes she’s awake during the day, and other times she’s asleep, as her 20 hour day marches inevitably through the week, pushing her bed time around like an obssesive janitor with a broom and only one scrap of paper to clean in the whole school. But, we’re getting used to it.

How are things on the publishing front?

Beats me. I should write to my agent and ask him. I’ve been so plugged into Star Wars Galaxies that I completely forgot about it.

Which means, yes, that I haven’t written a single new word for the third book. But since I’ve got
two books under my belt anyway, I refuse to feel guilty about that. Two in the hole? I can afford to slack.

What movies have you seen?

Since Finding Nemo? NONE.

The combination of lack of money with Star Wars Galaxies has effectively put an end to that, so I haven’t seen The Hulk, Charlie’s Angel’s 2, Terminator 3, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or any of the other latter half summer popcorn flicks. That should be bothering me a lot more, but since watching any of those movies would deprive me of SWG time, it hasn’t. This same explanation also gets a big ditto for DVDs.

When the hell are you coming HOME?!?

Talk to my agent.

What is your idea of a perfect life?

Gee, I’m glad you asked.

First, I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in Vancouver. With the girlfriend. Do not ask about marital status, you’ll be giving her too many ideas that will be addressed eventually, but in the meantime, I don’t need any brochures for how to calculate your salary to buy a nice, shiny rock dropped in my lap “innocently” because she just “happened” to have it handed to her (after scouring all the best jewelry stores for the better part of the afternoon).

LET IT LIE.

I’d be in Vancouver, and I’d be a novelist, and I would have The Cave, my legendary escape from reality, sound proofed with the Uber Gaming Rig PC (IE, constantly upgraded with the fastest processor, graphics card, RAM, and other necessities to ensure SWG is always lookin’ fast and pretty) all the game consoles, a truly MONSTER plasma television with 6.1 THX certified sound and a DVD archive to rival the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences itself. I would probably also have a couple of 80′s arcade game cabinets in there, just for nostalgia’s sake, and some bean bag chairs set up. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and various anime posters would adorn the walls, and so would a shelf full of genre fiction and comic books.

Aside from trying to live in The Cave (At our current apartment I have already set up what is called The Cave, although, to be fair, it’s really The Cave .02) I will crank out my novels, occasionally venture out to make a total ass of myself on book tours (Oh yeah, this all works under the assumption that not only do my books get out, but people really like them), or accompany the girlfriend on one of her Cons since I’m convinced she’s going to make a splash of her own in comics and thus will have to deal with her own set of fans who are, to be perfectly honest, probably a much scarier bunch than any I’d have to deal with.

I think in this life we’ll probably have favorite restaurants that we’ll be pretty well known at, wander around little shops in town or on the islands, and generally just be the weirdo couple that seems to only have one foot in this reality. The other is basically in our own heads.

Not everyone’s idea of happines, but it’s mine, and I’m hoping its achievable sometime within the next little while.

Okay, that was a fairly sizeable post. Everyone happy with it?

Good.

I have to get back to the Jedi Forum…

EGAD…

In a stunning turn of events, I now find myself in the odd position of being an Editor-In-Chief at Playworks magazine. This will necessitate me switching over from cigarettes to cigars, exclaiming “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” at every opportunity, asking “Where the heck did that Kent get to now?!?” making fun of Jimmy, and advising Lois that there’s only one “r” in “Rapist.”

Excepting the fact that I have no clue how to actually edit a magazine since I’ve always regarded editors as the enemy (Which means, I suppose, that I must now bitch about writers) the only real concern I have about this sudden switching of gears is how much it will impact on my Star Wars Galaxies time. While the nature of the job guarantees that I will be playing many videogames, the fact that there’s only ONE that I want to play at the moment will doubtless be a cause of concern for the superiors, but then they can’t keep a watch on me 24 hours a day and have to leave the office for meetings anyway, at which point, it’s out with the Zelda and BACK TO BESTINE, BABY! THE NEXT ROUND OF JAWA ALE IS ON ME!

Oh well, at least I CAN play since there are now two computers in the office with my account installed on them, and a third on the way, the Uber Gaming Rig which will now be desecrated in the name of George’s Merchandising Beast…

Star Wars Galaxies: The Rush Is Amazing But The Come Down’s A BITCH…

Hey, look. I resurface!

I guess an explanation is in order for the massive absence. Local friends already know and were completely unsurprised by my getting sucked into the black, black hole that is Sony Online Entertainment’s latest crack-like offering.

In short order:

Playworks moved. During the move, they had some high powered computers that would be sitting around doing nothing while new office arrangements were made. Someone in charged foolishly offered to let me “babysit” one of the computers in the interim while a friend (God BLESS you Eugene) offered to splurge on a copy of Star Wars Galaxies since he was ordering it for himself anyway and knew that my financial situation at the moment was less than liquid.

I booted up the game.

Twenty three days later:

The computer is returned and I am going through a case of withdrawal quite possibly more severe than going cold turkey on crack-cocaine. Having spent days wandering across the plains of Tatooine, the green, sprawling fields of Naboo, the forests and crystal swamps of Corellia, seedy cantinas, bright plazas before the grand palace, little huts far away from anyone and resplendent tailoring shops with some mighty happenin’ threads I suddenly find myself kicked back into the real world where no one is a Wookie and the only Calamari I ever see is served to me on a plate at pretenious restaurants.

So I geeked out. I slept, I played. Ate, played. Smoked, played. Neglected the girlfriend to hitherto unknown levels (Note to Girlfriend: I’M SORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY! THANK YOU FOR NOT DUMPING ME…) and basically lived the dream I’ve had since I was five years old of being able to walk out of a dank building full of scum and villainy and into the harsh, dry desert light of a world lit by two suns. I saw sunrise by a wall of waterfalls that plunged straight into a frothing abyss and I walked through lonely valleys with the threat of attack by hostile animals and strangers at every turn. There were beautiful Twi’Leks, gruff by friendly Wookies, silent but lethal Zabraks, Rebels shooting Imperials at every corner and more witty banter than you can shake a stick at.

Frankly I am bummed.

This should come as no real surprise. I’m not devastated by any means. I knew the day would come, and I was ready for it. But after getting to live the dream for a little while, no matter how geeky it was, you miss it when it’s time to wake up again. So I haven’t been up to anything interesting except maybe taking out a virtual life for a spin for a little while and finding out I had a taste for it.

Sigh…

I miss Star Wars…

Oh The Irony…

In a fitting twist, just when when I am glad to finally have a life, it becomes much more appealing to NOT have one again.

By this I mean that my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for gaming is frothing at the mouth to find an IV, a catheter tube and some nice diapers, and plug into Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, the new Massively-Multiplayer Online Roleplaying game by Verant Interactive, Sony Online Entertainment, and, of course, LucasArts.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of MMORPGs, a little Geek Gamer 101:

An MMORPG is big fusion of different ideas/gaming genres. Imagine taking a chat room and making it a virtual environment. Instead of going into windows and seeing different text getting typed up, you see people who are waving, smiling, winking, walking around. Now imagine that on top of just chatting, you can also shoot people who piss you off, high five people who say something clever, or sit back and watch someone get down and boogie. Now also imagine that you can go on groups, hitting different bars, going out on hunting trips, or tackling some Big Bad together so you can get that sense of accomplishment that can only come from dozens of tiny things with weapons ganging up on one big thing with no weapons and killing it with numerical superiority and blasters. THEN going to a bar to talk about it. It’s essentially a virtual life where many of the elemental activities your perform in real life, ie, shopping, socializing, conflict, are realized in dramatic scale with heroic friends and villains. It’s being the star of a novel or movie in an ongoing environment.

That’s an MMORPG.

So imagine my geekish pleasure centers going into full throttle overload of endorphin rapture when I heard that the Star Wars universe was getting the MMORPG treatment.

I was five years old when the first movie came out. I don’t remember much of that experience except for Luke Skywalker swinging across that huge chasm with Princess Leia. I pretty much remember all of The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. I had MANY toys. It’s always been a fantasy to become a Jedi.

Now this game comes out, and suddenly all those dreams of going into a cantina (Or, to quote Jay in Dogma, “That FUCKED up bar!”) then cruising over to Tosche Station for some power convertors can actually come true, WITH the promise of a long, hard road to become a Jedi that many will aspire to and few will achieve…

My God, it’s like a childhood dream come true.

It feels like there’s a nerdy part of me that’s been waiting its whole life to play this game, and unfortunately, it can’t just yet. There are quite a few stumbling blocks getting in the way.

1) The Girlfriend would commence an unanaesthetized vasectomy should I devote the days, weeks, months and yes, years of gaming I’d be willing to dedicate to the game, and while I’m not entirely closed off to the idea of a vasectomy, I would appreciate the convenience of being unconscious during the procedure.

2) The PC: Check out these oh so sexy specs:

450 MHz

128 MB RAM

Video Card with specs not even worth mentioning by today’s standards.

Since this is the latest greatest game, these performance specifications are vomit-worthy if I tried installing the game.

3) The Game: Costs money I do not have.

4) The monthly subscription rate to play the game online: Costs money AND a credit card I do not have.

As you can see, the odds are stacked against me. There are, however, some possible remedies for SOME of the problems:

1) Set an alarm on the game and keep a book of stock loving phrases with rose handy that is dispensed once every 45 minutes, with a nice dinner once every three 3 days, but it has to be before the Bantha hunt just outside Mos Eisely.

2) The computer components may be solved in time assuming the generosity of others (Thanks Eugene…) who are willing to give me their–quite serviceable–left overs when they upgrade their PCs to handle Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 comes through.

3) Further generosity from others (Thanks AGAIN, Eugene…) from others who are willing to take an IOU until such time as mindnumbing amounts of money from being a famous novelist start flowing will allow for game acquisition.

4) Credit Card: Argh. Still working on this.

5) My solution being implemented right here!

ANNOUNCING THE GEEK FOSTER PARENT PLAN!

SFX: (Force theme song otherwise known as twin suns “sunset” music from Star Wars Episode 4)

George Lucas: Hello, I’m George Lucas. I’m here today to talk about some very special people with very special needs. They’re called geeks and they need your help.

Fade: Image of me standing outside in winter, at a window to a house, face pressed against glass. Cut to shot of interior, with happy gamers by fireplace, playing SWG.

VO: While you and I enjoy a good life with fulfilling goals and accomplishments, others… aren’t so lucky.

Close Up: I rub my nose, sniffle and press closer to window. Cut to screen shot showing people joyriding on landspeeder.

VO: There are many deprived geeks out there, unable to afford my new game, Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. And it’s not always easy for them to live with that pain.

Medium Shot: Me playing with old Star Wars figures in an alley in a cardboard box.

Me: Hey Leia! Let’s go to Tatooine!

Me: That’s not Tatooine, that’s a garbage can!

Me: (Sweeping figures aside and putting face in hands) ARGH! IT’S TRUE!

Cut to George standing outside alley looking in as I cry. He turns to camera.

George: I want to help them. But I need your help to do that. For just one thousand American dollars per pledge, you can be a foster parent to a deprived geek and make a world of difference in the life of someone who has nothing.

Cut to Fed Ex delivery van pulling up to alley, Fed Ex guy steps out as shaft of light and angelic chorus begin. Cut to close up of shaft of light centering on a box that says “NEW PC WITH SWG!”

Close Up of me: THANK YOU! OH, THANK YOU!

Fex Ex Guy: May the Force be with you, loser.

Me: AND ALSO WITH YOU!

Cut to scene of me somehow setting up PC in an alley with no visible electrical outlet or broadband cabling. Hey, it’s TV, fer God’s sake…

VO: As a foster parent, not only do you enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you have helped someone in need, you’ll get monthly reports from LucasFilm as well as photos of your foster geek to see how you’ve made a difference their life. Or distinct lack thereof.

Cut to nice suburban home. Couple inside sits in front of their Keith Haring painting and looks at official LucasFilm letter. Cut to close up of letter with photo included of me in zombified state, playing SWG with drool carelessly dripping from lip.

Wife: He looks so healthy!

Husband: Yeah, he’s doing great, isn’t he?

Wife: Oh! What’s this?

[Pulls out letter]

VO: And sometimes, just sometimes, you might get a little something extra. Straight from the heart.

Cut to close up. Me in alley, sitting at box, with tongue sticking out in concentration as I ham fistedly write out a letter with toilet paper and a piece of charcoal.

Subtitle with VO: Dear parunts, thaanks heeps fer the gayme. I lik it a loot.

Cut to George: Yes, it’s a problem, a deprived geek. But it’s a problem that together, we can do something about. So please, call this toll free number on your screen and start a generous and rewarding venture in being a foster parent to a geek. I’m George Lucas. Thank you for watching.

Music: CUE STAR WARS THEME.

So, if anyone’s interested…