Editorial

Well, we were absolutely determined not to have any Diana jokes in this issue, but unfortunately we'd been drinking rather a lot, and there was a certain lack of restraint, and when we realised we were being pursued by a pack of Ploktarazzi, the Mercedes of bad taste ploughed straight into... [that's quite enough of that -- The Grieving British Public] It would be quite wrong of us to suggest that the nation spent several weeks caught in the grip of mass hysteria, wilfully encouraged by the media. As his personal tribute to the Princess of Wales, Soggy the Moose has decided to forgo the pleasures of psychic colonic irrigation.

Meanwhile, Plokta has taken another step towards true super-fluosity. By the time you read this, all our back issues should be available as a web site (www.moose.demon.co.uk/plokta), complete with extra webby bits, comments and animated graphics. Ever get the feeling that you were really living SF? We've discovered that we can run editing sessions over the Internet, and put our web pages together using a C: drive in Chester, D: drive in London and an E: drive in Reading. The editorial discussion all took place on ElderMOO, located on the west coast of the USA. Apologies to anyone we bored rigid.

The quality of art in Plokta soars with our first piece of D. West interior illustration

Getting Plokta onto the web wasn't as hard as we'd expected, and would have been easier still if Steve hadn't lost the entire text of issue four somewhere in the bowels of his 30 gigabyte hard disk. We sent a party of virtual explorers down into the computer to try to retrieve it, armed with Dr Plokta's Anti-Virus Toolkit. Unfortunately, on level seven the Dungeonkeeper got them.

We're not keeping up our normal standards of cuisine; in fact, this weekend we're eating Reconvene's leftovers. Steve & Giulia catered a normal Plokta sort of amount, and they left half of it, including three tubs of Häagen-Dazs. And Marianne's now had her first tastes of crocodile and ostrich.

Speaking of Marianne, we're fairly sure she can detect electricity, like a homing pigeon. Well, not exactly like a homing pigeon, unless they've taken to crawling around the floor on their wings. But she is now only interested in chewing all the live cables. Whenever we fish out dead or superfluous power supplies, curly flex or modem leads, she shows no signs of interest whatsoever. But run 240v through them, and they're her favourite toys.