I e-mailed the game folks asking for an update on the 250 games. The latest info (this shit seems to change by the hour) is that the pawns are being finished and should be on a boat sailing August 24, with an ETA of September 25. That’s 10 days later than last time I asked, but what are you gonna do? The stuff will be ready when they are ready. Actually I saw on the news that China shut down a bunch of polluting factories around Beijing for the Olympics, to help make the air cleaner. I wonder if one of those factories is making my games or pieces… if so, it’s possible that someone who won a gold medal did so with a tiny particle of soot from my plastic Midget Jesus. How cool would that be?

I borrowed dad’s truck and mailed off two final boxes of pawns. My friend in Atlanta wrote that he’d gotten the first two boxes of pawns I sent, and asked, “I hope you’ve thought about the return trip for some or all of this treasure?” I replied, “Yes, it has occurred to me that I may end up just shipping the boxes back here, but I don’t really have a choice. The 250 games are already on their way there (due in the 21st or so, last I heard), and I dunno if I’ll sell 5, 10, or 250 games, but in any event, I can’t sell the games without the pawns. I might as well have enough pawns to match the games. I’m hoping that the numbers will be on my side: if there are 30,000 people at Dragon*Con, and if just one person out of every hundred buys a game, I’ll sell out. Or, hell, I dunno, I could end up a few thousand dollars in the hole. But with a name like Balls Out, I gotta take a risk!” Saw that Russia stopped bombing Georgia, hope Lasha’s okay.