For Precipitation and Notification

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Fin

Editor's Note: It seemed fitting to write an epitaph for the News of the Roundtable. I procrastinated for a while, but, now, here it is.

There was a fake newspaper of gloriously classy proportions, and its contributors abandoned it. The rest is details. (Or is it all details? But no matter, for that is merely a detail, too.)

But before we begin with them, we should offer Our thanks to the loyal and brave ShatzMaster3000, also known as JKFA. When others abandoned the News of the Roundtable, even when I did, Mr. Shatz was still there. It is no coincidence that, besides for this, the final articles for the News were made by this stalwart contributor.

I was a late-comer to the News; I spent most of my fourth-period-friday-lunches doing decidedly unclassy things in the reading room (mostly reading old Science Fiction novels and making Year of the P----- signs). I was recruited as a fashion columnist - obviously, I am far more fashionable than anyone else I know. My skill at providing classy fashion choices is only surpassed by, well, everything.

(Fashion tip of the day: Spiderwebs are rarely fashionable accessories. Try wearing hats instead.)

As the varied Fiends and Associates (I, for one, always felt more an Associate of Fiends than a true greenblooded fiend.) stopped being high schoolers and began being international (or at least interstate) expatriates, the News was obviously and adversely affected. But when the Master of Shatz and I, with assistance from 'WickedJumbo,' a redhead* who is studying at a barrel-making institution, and a particularly wise oracular potato, the News of the Roundtable: Online Edition was established. Accessible through the Al Gore's new glorious International Webbing, NotR: Online promised to increase clasiness a hundredfold. Despite a small pool of literary contributions and a complete and unfortunate lack of monetary contributions** NotR: Online managed to keep pumping out articles for a total of six months and 48 articles.

So. Our thanks to our contributors. To those of you who could contribute but didn't, I pronounce you thrice-accursed, mostly because, when I am cursing something, I don't get a chance to make it thrice-accursed (I average about 1.2-times-accursed) and I really wanted to. (To those of you who couldn't contribute because of what you were doing at your respective and indubitably honorable Institutions of Learning abroad, you don't even need to be excused - and in many ways, I envy you.)

We stand here at a crossroads. We can, if anyone actually bothers to read this, bring NotR: Online back to its former glory. (Send to contributions, as always, to askthetube@gmail.com .) Or we can abandon this work. The choice, dear readers, is yours.

Either way, this is the end of an era. A small and utterly unimportant era, but an era nonetheless.
---
*: Not that he helped much.

**: And we don't need money to run NotR: Online. But we sure would like it.

---
Notes:
  1. I had some statistics above, but accidentally deleted them. Fear not: hey are of no consequence.
  2. I will tag this post, in addition to normal, appropriate tags, with 'Eldritch' and 'Gilgamesh,' mostly for the fun of it.
  3. I still claim to be working on the Arash: Flying Bicycle game. At least in theory.
FIN