"Doing nothing is very hard to do ... you never know when you're finished." - Leslie Nielsen, US (Canadian-born) comic movie actor (1926 - ).

This month has become a special tribute to a post made by Mutual Endeavors member Irina Braeden.  See the General Discussion board on our forums and read the amusingly accurate Procrastinator's Creed.  I just kept putting off the newsleter, and putting it off, and putting it off.... Until I realized that I'm already in the third week of July!  I haven't exactly been very motivated to do any work this month.  Hopefully nobody has really noticed that the newsletter is technically late, and furthermore hopefully nobody really gives a damn that it is either.

A large reason for most of my procrastinating this month has to do with yet again the limited number of updates I received from our reader base.  In fact, I only received three submissions.  Nor have I been quite as active in RP Land as I usually am.  All this moving into a new house and readjusting my lifestyle business has had me all aflutter.  Then there's this other problem.... But I'll get to that.

Top Story!

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead, US anthropologist & popularizer of anthropology (1901 - 1978).

Summer vacation is here!  For most people it has been here for at least a month already, so it's a moot point, but brought up with a purpose.  Our usual Top Story! feature article writer is unavailable.  Good old The Signal has gone away to take care of business this summer, and we probably won't hear from her again until the fall.  Neither she nor I can make any promises concerning when precisely she'll have time again to write captivating articles for us to read, but we do know she won't be gone forever.

No worries, though!  We are not without an article for your reading pleasure this month.  Since our usual Character Spotlight feature article writer had herself an unexpected month's vacation, she had more time to write about other things.  So for July we here at Mutual Endeavors, the Ink Wire Associates, present to you an article that could very possibly become another series.  First we brought you the book report series, and now we present A Guide to Good Role-Playing!

Storyline Spotlight

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." - George Lois.

We are still looking for articles to put into this section of the newsletter.  If anyone may be interested in writing a feature article, covering any grandiose storylines that may be happening in RP land, please let our editorial staff know by writing to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   Any news is good news.  There has to be something happening out there somewhere, and we need players like you to tell us what's up!

This Just In

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." - William Dement,  in Newsweek, 1959.

Domain Name Renewal :  Fear not, loyal members of Mutual Endeavors!  Another year has passed us by, can you believe it?  As of June 14, 2008, our domain name was renewed for another year's subscription.  Mutual Endeavors dot org will be around for at least another twelve months.  This goes hand in hand with our next bit of news.

Warcrack Ate the Editor :  Some of you by now may be fully aware of the fact that the editor in chief got her hands on a copy of the infamous World of Warcraft.  This is both good news and bad news.  The good news is that the Nefarious SM has gone MIA for the most part and lost herself to MMORPG goodness, which means she isn't around as much to bitch and moan.  The bad news is that she's also not around as often enough to see what's going on in RP land, because she hasn't been playing much anymore.

Website Anniversary :  As mentioned above, our site has been active for one full year!  Isn't that amazing?  Here we are.  Mutual Endeavors has grown over the years from small group to a slowly growing website community, and I couldn't be any happier for it.  As well as our domain name, our hosting service with Bell Webs Services has been renewed for another full year!  It's thanks to fellow friends and role-players like you that encouraged me to keep us going strong.

Character Spotlight

"This isn't good or bad. It's just the way of things. Nothing stays the same." - Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 03, 2004. Anonymous author of RealLivePreacher.com.

As stated in the Final Thoughts of last month's issue, there will be no Character Spotlight feature article this month for your reading pleasure.  In the last week of May, I put out a call for nominations and received none whatsoever.  Even throughout June, I received practically no nominations, but that doesn't particularly matter, because I had some different thoughts since we first designed this section of the newsletter.

In the Staff Bulletins section of our Mutual Endeavors forums, I started a thread titled CS Voting = Fail that explains my thoughts for this new program in further detail. Briefly, I suppose I can say that I was beginning to feel that the Character Spotlight polls started feeling like a popularity contest.  Our goal was never truly to pick the most popular characters to write about, nor the most popular players to interview.  Every characters is unique and interesting, and we here at Mutual Endeavors want to see to it that every character gets an opportunity to shine.

Therefore, we have begun a new program that we hope will work better in the future.  Currently, I have close to 60 character names filed away in a little box, written on scraps of paper, folded up and lumped blindly together.  At the start of every month, I will pull one name from that box.  Whatever name is randomly selected in this fashion will be passed along to our Character Spotlight feature article specialist writer.  (Steff has done such an amazing job so far.)  That character's player will be contacted and interviewed as before, but now without all the pomp and circumstance of making any one person feel more important than another.  We only try to be fair.

So as you can see, there is no Character Spotlight feature article this month, just as I forewarned everyone about.  There will, however, be a character to feature and spotlight next month, so stayed tuned for August!

In Other News...

"Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English critic & poet (1772 - 1834).

The following is what happens when a.) the editor in chief takes a month off from role-playing and b.) practically nobody sends her any submissions for the newsletter.

Renley Killian  (A Common Cur):  The blind pscion has made it a point to show up more often at the Rambling Rose Tavern these days. In particular, he's decided to make Tuesdays his usual show up and attempt to socialize days.

Seamus Wylie  (Seamus Wylie):  Rumor has it that the Rambling Rose Tavern was closed for business in the last week of June going into the first week of July.  Word is that the Wylies went home to visit Seamus's family.  They are expected to be back this month and business is expected to continue as usual.

Stormraven k'Leshya  (StormravenSpirit):  Who knew the Kaled'a'in could cook?  As we hear it, miss Stormraven can cook up a mean eel pie!  Well, it's not exactly mean, but it sure is delicious!  A shame that not all of her customers can appreciate a good pie, but if you're in the mood for something different, stop in the Rambling Rose on Tuesdays to taste her inspired culinary experimentations.

Valentine Shyre  (XValentineShyreX):  She actually decided that enough was enough.  This time, she took a mini vacation.  Where?  No one knows.  They just know she hasn't really been around lately.  The vacation helped but she's suffering an emotion that she's generally good at ignoring.  She's lonely.  Forcing herself to go out more often isn't really helping.  Then again, maybe she's just visiting the wrong people.  All in all, a boring month for the girl despite the vacation.

Classifieds

"There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time." - Rebecca West, Irish critic, journalist, & novelist (1892 - 1983).

The Hot Baked Ink Raffle :  Have you ever wanted a professional portrait drawn of you or your characters? Maybe you've been considering commissioning an artist to draw for you and just don't know where to look!  Well, we here at Mutual Endeavors have an answer for you that's for a good cause.  DeviantART artist RynnaDragonheart is looking for buyers like you to commission her to draw your characters for a fee so that she can move her professional artist career forward.  How would you like to help her out?  Check out her advertisement by following the link here.

Announcements

"I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle." - Robert Benchley, US actor, author, & humorist (1889 - 1945).

Please remember that all birthdays are listed with the date of said birthday falling within this month in parentheses, not the age the character or person will be turning.  For that information you'll just have to do some research and asking around of your own.  Special thanks to the Encyclopedia Rhydinica for keeping a comprehensive list of character biographies that include birthdays, as well as toour Census Keeper AG for consistently sending us information we may have missed.

Character Birthdays  :  Andrea Knight (31), Ashley Sutton (4), August Benson (5), Jinx (16), Maggie O'Rourke (??), Morgan Knight (31), and Tristan Braeden (13).

Wedding Anniversary :  Galen and Arianna Ravenwood (27); Seamus and Rose Wylie (14).

Player Birthdays :  Matakhat Cain (7) and Rose Wylie (26).

Of course, nearly everybody knows that the 4th of July was America's Independence Day.  There were fireworks and barbecues gallore here in the States.  Of that we can all be absolutely certain.  We Americans sure like to party hard for holidays such as that.

Final Thoughts

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." - Josh Billings, US Humorist (1818 - 1885).

This month's newsletter turned out to be short and sweet thanks to the Editor in Chief's incessant laziness.  July seems to be a month of doing nothing constructive whatsoever.  Having put off Ubique's for so long, I figured I might as well just get it over and done with.  Stop researching.  Stop looking for content, and just get the darned thing published.

My apologies to those of you expecting something stupendous in this month's edition, but lack of motivation just made it not so.  However, I will be working extra hard in the following weeks to get the August issue complete and published on time.  Please send all your updates for that issue to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by July 30, 2008.  That's your deadline.  Until next time, I'll be...

Keeping you informed,

-- The Nefarious SM

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Ubique's Monthly
Mutual Endeavors