We're baaaack.

First, a couple of quick administrative notes. If the new layout has confused you and you made it here without finding the book review (Magie Duvivier) or the card trick ("Richard's Stack"), then return to the Little Egypt University Course Catalog and click on "French 101" and on "Math 460." Also be sure to check out our new and separate "Favorite Links" section, available at the bottom of this page. There are some exciting new sites available as well as some updated URLs.

The current layout of the magazine, by the way, is designed to be viewed on Netscape 3.0 or higher, or on the equivalent release from Microsoft's Evil Empire. I thought about creating text-only variants for those of you with lesser browsers, but why humor the out-of-touch, the clueless, and the doomed? (Note the new darker attitude?) The web is changing at a furious pace, and you really need the latest browsers, not only for this 'zine but for all the other cool sites out there, magic and otherwise.

It was a summer of chaos here at LEG Central, with most of the staff scurrying like Penn and Teller cockroaches from our steel and glass high-rise office complex the day the IRS, the Better Business Bureau, and the SPCA showed up with all their papers and padlocks. Miss Farnsworth herself, our voluptuous administrative assistant, morale officer, and sergeant-at-arms, has embarked on a round-the-world tanning expedition. The University of Illinois, which had handled all our computer and networking needs, has severed all ties and denies any former affiliation. Johnson the Accountant broke an ankle when he leaped from his second-story office window, and is now suing me. Old Mrs. Van de Graaff, who headed our Art Department for all of Volume 1, was run over by a bus and is no longer of this earth. It wasn't that big a loss: she had been blind for years. The Coen brothers -- the guys who handled our wardrobe needs, not the movie directors -- left to take jobs as telemarketers, and they are now soliciting ad space for Richard Robinson.

Salvaging what we could, we've moved into an abandoned warehouse in one of the seedier sections of the metropolis, where we toil only at night. There is an occasional shower of sparks, followed by total darkness, then remote cursing, a flashlight beam waving around like we're in an episode of The X-Files, and finally the ominous deep electrical hum as the auxiliary generator strains to achieve a dim candle-lit glow. Our new sysop is a furtive character named Golem, who is of indeterminant age and claims to be a graduate student. There is an old refrigerator in his office that is chained shut, and we suspect he spends more time downloading pornographic mpegs than of working on the magazine. The secretarial duties, such as they are (freshening the coffee and firing off creative epistles to creditors), are handled by Columbine, a teenager who was left on our office doorstep. She's a vacant, darkly mysterious girl with a navel ring and a new boyfriend who drives a Cadillac the size of the Batmobile. Sort of Winona Ryder as Lydia Maitland, from Beetlejuice, and she keeps a large Bowie knife handy to ward off Golem's occasional surprise advances. Needless to say, our weekly staff meetings are strained.

For those who prefer a more realistic account of why this issue is so late, let us just say there were factors. First, an unexpected performance situation arose that demanded both repertoire development and rehearsal. Despite the criminally low fees we charge for such outings, they still bring in more loot than this magazine, and so the show took precedence. Next there was a funeral, robbery, arson, and secret service agents defiling local young women to contend with. Only in Little Egypt! Finally, this issue itself was a crash case of Boy Meets Photoshop. Where is Chris Kenner when you need him?

That this issue exists at all grew out of a desire to share "Richard's Stack" with you along with my high regard for Magie Duvivier. I'm extremely pleased that Rich Uhrich took the time to work out the math for this card stack -- it's something I always thought solvable but had never come up with anything I liked. "Laymen," by the way, can often solve your magical problems in a way that magicians can't, as magicians tend to think along set paths. Some of you may have noticed that another friend and Caltech engineer, Jimmy Held, had contributed an important touch to "The Patriotic Card in Orange" in the July issue. Thanks, guys.

The future of The Little Egypt Gazette remains highly shaky, at least as a monthly deadline/publish-or-die kind of thing. The time put in on this issue was not popular around here, and the divorce papers are being waved in my face even as I type. Thoughts of what I might be doing with my time other than spend-my-whole-life-in-front-of-a-terminal are also becoming increasingly seductive.