Please don't forget to read the bulletin board. Enter +read from anywhere.

As many folks discovered Staurday night, SpinDizzy was out of action for the evening and part of Sunday. Findra, local Bunny and Server Wiz, gave the following explanation for the inability of folks to 'wake up' in SpinDizzy Saturday night;

We had quite a storm here yesterday. There were very strong winds and a good deal of flooding all around the area. I thought we'd got away with it, but at about 1:10pm yesterday afternoon, just as I was starting to cook lunch, the power went out.

Spindizzy stayed up due to the UPS's, but after 5 minutes without power, I shut everything down since it didn't look like it was going to be coming back up in the short term. It turns out I was right. The power was out until 8:05 this morning. And it was bloomin' freezing here! I did note that we have a max. connection record of 48 people before the shutdown, and we'd been up over 140 days. Oh well.

Yay on being back! =:) (And being warm again)

As is usual when the SpinDizzy field experiences problems, folks gathered on Raccoon Muck. Argon made sure that the address of the Nikon's muck was prominently displayed on the SpinDizzy website during the outage, and a number of folks found their way there as Guests to get what information was available.

Findra gets extra points and fuzzles for doing the best she could under most unusual circumstances, and being concerned about us and SpinDizzy. Be sure and give her a snug when you log on!

Slug, local Snail, amazed onlookers in the Rose Garden this week by field testing a device he had designed and built which he called a 'Humanizer'. As expected, the small device, designed to be operated by Slug transformed him into a full sized Human.

Although transformations are not all that unusual on SpinDizzy, Slug's did not come without cost. His 'clothing', as Snail remained a shell, and he found himself nekkid after his change was completed. Most folks took little if any notice of this, most SpinDizzy residents being nekkid naturally, but Adara, local Cat and Judge seemed to find Slug's transformation most interesting, and asked Alicia, local Kitsune to immediately perform a marriage ceremony.

Alicia complied, and with a little prompting, Slug found himself saying 'I do'. At that point, Adara dragged Slug into the bushes and loud slurpy kissing sounds were heard.

As of press time, Adara told @Action News that she and Slug had broken up.

"It was a vegas marriage," She was heard to say.

Gilead commented, "Oh. I thought you found out all gastropodia are hermaphrodites."

Rown asked, "Elvis was there?"

When asked about 'the children', Gilead chirped, "Elvis ate them."

BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) - A businessman who was attacked by a crocodile in Malawi escaped by biting the reptile on its nose, police said Thursday.

Mac Bosco Chawinga, 43, went for a swim in a lake in the northern Nkhata Bay district of this southern African nation when the crocodile grabbed him, said Bob Mtekama, a senior police officer in the area.

"Both his arms were inside the full-size crocodile's jaws and the beast was dragging him into deeper waters when he decided to fight back," Mtekama said.

Chawinga sank his teeth in the crocodile's nose, one of the few soft places on its body, and the reptile let go of him.

He was badly injured, but managed to swim to shore, where he was found by some fishermen, who took him to hospital, Mtekama said. He was reported to be in stable condition.

Crocodile attacks are a common occurrence in Malawi.

Everyone should have a home to go to at the end of a long session chatting in the Rose Garden. Newcomer's Island gets boring after a while, and there's no privacy.

So. First, decide what your home is going to be like. If all you need is a room or two, there are many apartment houses around, some ready to move into. If your tastes are more expansive, or your species has other requirements (beavers and otters might like to have a stream handy, equines a field), you want to do your own building.

You don't have to anchor your home to start building -- in fact, you might want to build it, decorate a bit, have a few friends over, before you open it to general scrutiny. Spindizzy is a fairly small place -- unless you lock your door, someone you don't know will eventually chance across your home and check it out.

You need to ask yourself some questions:

• 1. Is my main entrance a yard or does it go directly to a building?
• 2. What am I going to name the entry room?

• A. What am I going to name the exit that gets me to the entry room?
• B. What am I going to name the exit that gets me back to the rest of Spindizzy?

Every room you create ("dig") has a parent, called its 'environment room'. The rules for how a room behaves are different depending on whether it is a outdoors environment room, an indoors environment room, or any of several other choices. You can change the environment room later, but it is easiest to just add the information to the first room as you dig it. Allthe others you dig from that first room will be the same environment, unless you reset them.

The command @dig has a venerable history, from the time when online environments were mostly descendants of Dungeons and Dragons. Many of the more combat-oriented MU*s are still called MUDs, for Multi User Dungeon.

Time to grab a shovel. What's your answer to question #1? And #2?
Type @dig <room name>=<parent room #> <enter> (#61 if you want a Outdoors Environment Room for a parent or #62 if you are building an Indoors). The muck will think about the command for a minute, then give you a response like this:
sample created with room number 1771
Trying to set parent...
Parent set to Indoors Environment Room(#62RA).

• Keep track of this "room number" -- it is number you need to link the room to the rest of the universe.

If you don't have a place to anchor the room, teleport to it now by typing tel <#room number#> <enter>. To make this brand new room your home, type @link me=here <enter> . You can use the program "editroom" to tidy the place up a bit if you like.

If you are ready to anchor, you need another number -- the number of the room you are anchoring to. Stand in that room and get out the answer to question A. (Continued on Getting your utilities hooked up)

Experts announced yesterday at a press conference that the Acceptable Use Policy for Being Alive (AUPBA) is finally complete, after millennia of philosophical debate.

“I am sure the new acceptable use policy will catch on quickly,” said Dr. James Happy, founder of the Feel Well society and leading researcher behind the development of the AUPBA. “We have successfully compressed the best values, morals, and ethics from every world religion and culture into two simple rules that any idiot could easily follow.”

Some experts, however, are skeptical. They believe that Dr. James Happy underestimates just how stupid and mean people can be. Some point out how our society encourages cruelty, while others condemn Dr. Happy’s naiveté.

Dr. Badwill asks, “Just who does Dr. Happy think he is anyway? He seems to completely ignore the wide variety of factors that hinder our relationships with eachother, not the least of which are bad government policy, unequal distribution of wealth… and the pillaging of the Earth’s natural resources.”

The academic world will continue to analyze these findings throughout the semester, until students get to leave English 101 and forget everything they learned about writing, studies say.

“I think the dirty little secret is,” said one professor of a college level English course, “that we encourage bullying [in grade school].”

A student in the class commented, “Right. It’s just a part of growing up. You know, survival of the fittest. The strong survive, the weak don’t. That’s just the way the world works.”

When approached regarding the many criticisms our society had regarding the AUPBA, Dr. James Happy was on the verge of tears.

“Look, people, it is really quite simple, Be excellent to each other. Party on, dudes!”

Argon told folks, "I'm doing a survey to be published in @Action News. The question this week is, 'What does being 'Furry', mean?'"

• SakuraSakura says, "I dunno. I'm not furry."
• Cye says, "I'll let you know whne I figure that out Argon."
• Flutterz warbles, "S'gotsa fur, a'course."
• Gilead chirps, "It means having a dense undercoat of multiple hairs per follicle, covered with longer guard hairs. :-) Or being in any way affiliated with furry fandom. Or being in any way affiliated with artwork that involves animals."
• Hare says, "Truthfully, I feel Being furry is the ability to step out of the ordinary... acceptance is another theme"
• Suri snickers. "Well appropriately enough, I was just reading about the election of 1860 and related events..."
• Rown says, "Back hair?"
• Adara -- "To me, a furry is just an animal. Even if they don't have fur. It's just a term, after all"
• Rick says, "Any creature or animal that is covered in fur, that includes Centaurs too."
• Rown says, "Mine is "42"."
• Slug chatters, "My survey answer for this week is Dinotopia. Not for any reason in particular."
• Gina_Doberman says, "Ummm... It means being warmer than those human things!"
• Cobalt says, "Don't ask me. I just live here. ;)"
• Slug chatters, "It means you need to shave."
• Mavra says, "Being 'furry' means affiliating yourself with a state of being which assumes animalistic characteristics, be they physical and/or mental. But it doesn't mean being a centaur, for we're biased against from all sides. Nyah. :-P"
• Austin says, "In the ideal, it's the exploration of one's identity by picking selected fragments of human and nonhuman traits and trying to find a satisfying mixture. In practice, it's largely a way lonely people form a bond by picking up a few faintly animal-evoking traits and sharing common jokes."
• Butterfluff -- Being furry means being willing to look at humans from a non-human perspective, usually from the viewpoint and with the mannerisms of an animal.
• Furi says, "Furry: Covered with or dressed in fur."
• Findra -- Being Furry? It means having lots of fur all over you! =:)

Dear Editor,

I know that this might be hard to believe, but there is this monstrous turtle, the largest creature that I have ever seen, blocking the door to my office and making a terrible amount of noise. I can’t get out! To make matters worse, I am stuck in here with a bunch of idiots and their pets. Don’t get me wrong, they are nice people and animal lovers like I am, but they are about as quick-witted as a slug. How are we going to get out of here?

The Friendly Neighborhood Vet

Dear Editor,

I have finally found a vet to treat my health problems. I have heard good things about this place, but there is a problem. He will not come out! Do you think maybe he cannot hear me?

Hefon

Dear Hefron and The Vet

I think the problems you both have can be solved by the magic of modern technology.

Vet. Turn off that annoying music you have in your waiting room and pick up the microphone and ask that Hefron move away from the door.

Hefron. Move away from the door to the Doctor's office.

Problem solved.

Argon,
Editor, @Action News

Submitting a story or artwork for @Action News is easy! Just send it to newspaper@spindizzy.org or qmail or page Argon about it.
@Action News is published weekly on or after 12:01 AM Eastern Time on Sunday. Most any type of story or article will be accepted. Generally, we'd prefer things that aren't out and out lies or flames about other folks, and have a basis in the reality of SpinDizzy. Things that occur in public areas are fair game. The things reported don't have to have actually happened, (any more than anything that happens here does) but make sure you don't overstep the social boundaries and rules of interaction that we have. These are pretty broad guidelines, but we expect good sense to apply.

Thanks! Argon, Editor @Action News