I want to write about Mohammed II and the adventures of my Mother and I at Futureshop buying the Sony LCD monitors, but I seem to be getting a lot of mail about R2D2 and I smoking a blunt in the backyard rolled out of $100 bills...  Understand this, I'm caught in a paradigm here; either I'm smoking a blunt in my backyard (illegal) rolled from Canadian currency which I'm burning (illegal), or I have to say that the bills are a "prop", which would make me a counterfeiter (illegal) so I'll say this...  There were no legal tenders injured in the last LAN Minutes update, further, the "prop" bills used had "Not Legal Tender" written across them, so their not counterfeit, or at least you can't tell since R2 and I smoked it. -- RCMP, stop emailing me.

Star Wars has finally hit DVD!  Yes, George Lucas dangled the DVD premier in our faces, and the nerds jumped up and down in their stormtrooper costumes attempted to touch it...  Lucas refused for all these years to let a digital copy of the covenant motion picture out in fears that his creation would spread around the Internet like so much burnt toast; well he had good reason to, since I'm sure you can download it already -- I was in Best Buy this morning to pick-up a little scanner and was greeted by Darth Vader and a number of his white clad cronies who tried (...at blaster point...) to force a copy on me.  Don't get me wrong, when it comes to Star Wars, I'm about as big a geek as it gets -- I can remember clearly the complete and total brain hemorrhage I had when the first one minute premier came out on television; tie-fighters chasing x-wings in swirling stared backgrounds with lasers zinging everywhere!   Wow!!  My Mother thought I just found a dead body in the basement the way I came screaming into the kitchen...   I actually saw Star Wars twenty-eight times in the theatre.  Now I'm sure I'll break down and nail my own copy, but let me just look on the shelf to my left and take inventory -- Hmm, what do we have here: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi...  This followed by the Star Wars Trilogy Box Set (...I was told in the commercial that I must have this, I had no idea other stuff was still going to come...)  Then we have the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition Box Set, then the Star Wars Special Digitally Remastered Box Set, over here we have the You're Not A Star Wars Fan Unless You Have This Digitally Remasterd Super Special Mega Box Set with added scenes, then we have the...  Well, you get the point.  R2D2 and I celebrated Lucas' good fortune by rolling a blunt in the backyard with hundred dollar bills; I know Lucas is smoking one right now.  I really am going to love when the sales figures start to come out on this one, I don't even want to hazard a guess.  Either way, it's time to rejoice; anyone want to watch Star Wars this weekend, Infinity's already grabbed a copy (...of course...)

A small editors note here: yesterday's update had a small editorial error which as of now has been fixed.  The update on the adjustment to the SuperFTP read: "We're attempting to find a happy balance between Pubic and Members with respect to bandwidth." -- Let it be said now that Abattoir.Net, it's staff, it's Members (...even the expired ones...) have no interest at all in your pubes; stop emailing me.

Well it's about time...  Summer is drawing to a close, that means several things -- back to school, and time to open BTM Season again!  We've been hit with emails asking the question as to when BTM45's date will be published, we appreciate the enthusiasm so it's time to drop the gavel...  BTM45 "Compendium" Edition will be October 30th.  We are accepting reservations now, Abattoir.Net Supporting Members have first crack; this is the 45th BTM and as such there's swag!  We'll be starting a thread for tournament voting on Abattoir.BBs soon, but until then, if you have nothing to do on Halloween's eve, sign-up now!  (...we know how much everyone enjoys the Halloween BTMs...)  Members will understand soon why this is the "Compendium" edition.  *grin*

Speaking of Supporting Members...  We owe several of you an apology; it seems our tracking of expiring memberships lacked administrative effort -- several Members accounts have expired and without notice, basically "shutdown".  If you're a Member and you're account has surpassed its one year mark, you may be unable to access your Abattoir.Net WebMAIL -- please contact us and we'll reactivate your account if you're renewing, let us know if youƒ.$Énot intend to renew so we can make sure your personal FTP folder and mail are taken care of...  Please accept our apologies in advance for the non-prompted slaughter of your access, even we can't believe it's been a year already!

A quick note relating to the Mail Server, we're doing upgrades tonight at midnight; the mail server will be down for less then one hour while we add a 3D logo interface, three fetzer valves and a holographic imager...  After which, there's a chance the Mail Server will be a little laggy while the unit burps -- this will end by morning (Tue).  We thank-you in advance for your understanding.  In related news, be advised the SuperFTP Server has had a few revisions of late -- due to large user volume (...for the pipe we have...) public account access has been reduced a tad, public users may encounter the dreaded "Server User Limit at Max -- Please try again in a few moments" message from time to time, if this happens to you, remain calm!  The SuperFTP does not hate you, it just hates when you all rape it at once...  We're attempting to find a happy balance between Public and Members with respect to bandwidth.

For Sale: Two large parachutes in their original packaging, never deployed, perfect condition -- best offer; contact Don Sweetnam of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Genesis Space Probe project.  Back in August 2001, NASA sent a small (...refrigerator size...) $264 million (US) probe toward the Sun to capture samples from the origin of 99% of the material in this solar system -- our Sun.  Genesis flew shy of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth; the spacecraft deployed collection grids for 850 days made of ultra-pure wafers of gold, sapphire, silicon and diamond which entrapped particles carried into space by waves of solar wind, the samples collected were to be returned for analysis.  This cargo could hold clues as to the origin of our solar system once analyzed...  Or we could just slam it into the Utah desert in excess of 310km/h.  As it stands, NASA has not determined the condition of the payload and if it survived the impact after the dual chute arrangement failed to fire -- I was waiting to hear that instantly after the Genesis Probe slammed into the desert, it was followed by a spiraling halo of fiery light which began to encompass the entire surface of the Earth in mere moments leaving in its wake, sudden lake formations, mountains and lush, live rainforests even in the most dead regions of our planets surface...  Or is it time for BTM45?