Weird

These Finns Are (Delightfully) Crazy

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Via Tero I learn about the tradition of Zombie Walks. As the web site for the latest one explains:

Zombie Walk Oulu is an event where people dress up as zombies and walk a predetermined route through the city playing their roles. There is no special meaning behind it but enjoyment and fun.

The event is open for every age, gender and state of decomposition.

I think the World Horror in Brighton next year should organize one of these. Where’s James Bacon when you need him?

Look What We’ve Done to Canada!

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

Hold a Worldcon in a country and even their universities go crazy.

According to the BBC, researchers at two Ottowa universities have been pondering how best to defend ourselves against a zombie invasion.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity’s only hope is to “hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often”.

They added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Undoubtedly. So why are we not hurriedly repealing gun control laws, eh?

A spokesman for the British government was unruffled:

“My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it’s dead forever. So perhaps they are being a little over-pessimistic when they conclude that zombies might take over a city in three or four days,” he said.

But over at The Spectator Alex Massie worries that the Canadians may have fatally under-estimated zombie abilities.

Anyone would think it was a slow news week.

Video from That Panel

~ Cheryl ~ 36 Comments

Because you all seem to have a morbid fascination with panels that go wrong, here’s the impromptu filk from the Cultural Memory panel.

Update: Here’s David Anthony Durham’s version of events. Highlight:

As the guitar comes out Patrick bolts for the door, muttering curses. The woman… sings a song about… oh, I don’t know. Who could listen? At this point I’m just watching the exodus of audience members, wishing I was one of them.

Then the audience got in on the act and things went downhill from there.

When Panels Go Bad

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

I’ll be busy traveling for much of today, but I wanted to do a quick post about the bizarre panel that was the talk of much of the parties last night. Apparently it resulted in Patrick Neilsen Hayden walking off the panel, Geoff Ryman banging his head on the table, and mass exits by the audience. I wasn’t there, but Kathryn Cramer has a few photos with which she attempts to capture the surreal atmosphere.

Of course the vast majority of the panels at the convention went fairly well. Somehow the occasional oddity only adds to the entertainment, except perhaps for the panelists at the time.

We’re All Going To Die x 144

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

Curiously timed to coincide with Worldcon, Slate magazine is running a week-long feature entitled “How Is America Going To End?” This exercise in futurology plans get all sorts of clever (and perhaps a few not-so-clever) people to predict the form that America’s demise will take.

In addition you can play along yourself, via the Choose Your Own Apocalypse game. This provides 144 imaginative sources of terminal decline, ranging from the mildly plausible to the downright whacko. Slate‘s writers have done a pretty good job. Here are some examples of the sorts of apocalyptic disasters they predict:

  • The Rapture happens;
  • The Mayans were right about 2012;
  • Alien invasion;
  • Asteroid strike;
  • Gray goo;
  • Robot overlords; and
  • Invasion from Canada

But I am sure we can do better. There is, for example, no explicit mention of tentacled beings from beyond the stars; of the Humboldt Squid inventing machine guns; of re-animated dinosaurs; of sex change drugs in the water; or of Americans becoming addicted to yaoi. Besides, we all know that there cannot be only 144 causes of apocalypse. There have to be 666.

Your mission (Jim, should you choose to accept it), is to come up with lots of crazy new ideas. Let’s see how creative we can be.

(Hat tip to Kelley Eskridge who pointed me at the Slate article.)

Pagans Rule Darkest Somerset

~ Cheryl

The Guardian has sent an intrepid reporter into the heart of Darkest Somerset to watch candidates trying out for the job of Witch Of Wookey Hole (a job vacancy I first reported here). The headline figures from the process are as follows:

  • Number of applicants: 2319
  • Number of letters of complaint from outraged Christians: 23

I make that a win for the pagans by two orders of magnitude (though I acknowledge that some of the letters may be on behalf of large groups).

Anyway, the lucky applicant will be decided today. Here’s hoping that the process resulted in lots of business for local vendors of witch gear.

An Expedition

~ Cheryl

I have been away from my computer for much of the day. An author friend of mine has a Significant Birthday coming up and I got invited to a party, along with a number of other folk I have known for several decades.

Getting their involved trekking into the deep heart of Darkest Somerset, across treacherous Sedgemoor, through wyvern-invested swamps, and around the fabled cider lakes. The party took place at an ancient temple whose exact location is known only to a few expert native guides. I spent a pleasant afternoon sipping champagne with authors, journalists, media people, aging rock stars and the like. It being Darkest Somerset, it rained rather a lot. At one point we thought we might have to call for helicopters to get us home, but thankfully the trackways stayed open, so here I am back at my desk.

In answer to a question on Twitter, no, I did not see any actual vampires. However, I did get to converse with Britain’s foremost expert on vampires, which is close enough.

Job Opportunity

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the disadvantages of living in Darkest Somerset is that there isn’t much work here that calls for someone with my particular skill set. However, thanks to a tweet from Nalo Hopkinson I have discovered something interesting. Some people in Cheddar are looking to recruit a witch. It does involve living in a cave, but that’s not so unusual around here, and I do appear to be well qualified. I’m old, very ugly, fond of cats, and well versed in magical theory. Unfortunately what they actually want is an actress who is fond of children. I have an unfortunate tendency to want to put badly-behaved kids in a cauldron and make Stew from them. I don’t suppose that would go down well.

You can tell it is an acting job by the fact they talk about auditions and expect people to arrive early to be first in the queue. If all goes well the winner will arrive late, flying in on an umbrella and landing at the front of the queue.

An Open Letter

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Dear Mr. Rudd,

I understand that your country has been suffering a severe drought in recent years. Nevertheless, during my short visit here it has rained almost every day, most recently very heavily. This is no accident.

The ability to cause rain to fall on Australians is a super power that I developed primarily to save the English cricket team from beatings at the hands of your national squad. This power was originally developed for use in the UK, where rain is considerably easier to come by, but I was surprised and delighted to discover that it works in Australia as well.

I hereby offer to put my powers at your disposal. My needs are very simple. All I ask is residency status in your country, a small apartment in Melbourne in which to live, and the right not to be described as a “whingeing Pom” by everyone that I meet here. In return I shall cause rain as and when you require it.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Yours sincerely,

Cheryl Morgan

QuizFail

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Every so often I see one of these internet quiz meme things that might be vaguely amusing and go take a look. As you can imagine, a quiz called “What Big Cat Are You?” caught my attention. Here is question 2 in the quiz:

On your walk you see a stray dog. What do you do?

There were 6 possible answers, mostly involving being nice to the e/n/e/m/y canine. Not one of them was “eat him”.

I mean really, can you imagine a tiger encountering a dog in the woods and deciding to pet him, or feed him?

QuizFail.

A Silly Game

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Over at The Guardian‘s book blog David Barnett is talking about the effect of misplaced consonants on classic literature. This leads him to discuss such famous texts as Onan the Barbarian, Madame Ovary, Huckleberry Inn, and Three Men in a Boa.

It was good to see him use a classic fantasy text as one of his first examples, but I’m wondering if we can expand on this. There is, for example, Frank Herbert’s classic tale of debt collection, Due. Or Joan Vinge’s tale of resurgent royalty, The Now Queen. Daniel Keyes’ Lowers for Algernon is presumably about cattle ranching.

If you happen to be in need of something to occupy your time, feel free to add your own suggestions.

Starting a List

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

As you might expect, given the date, odd stories are turning up all over the Internet today. Here are some of my favorites:

I will doubtless be adding to this through the day.
If you spot any good ones, feel free to add them in comments.

By the way, they don’t only happen on web sites. Kudos to Graham Sleight who tweeted that Twitter would be restricting posts to 70 characters from now on in an effort to cut costs.

Andrew Wheeler and Grant Kruger both have good lists of posts.

P-Con – The Other Story

~ Cheryl ~ 33 Comments

As I said yesterday, I had to get permission to post this. It involved going through a fair few bureaucratic hoops, but I think it is important that people be aware of the sort of thing that can happen at conventions. Thankfully incidents like this are by no means common, but it is good to be aware of the possibility so that you don’t get caught out and can respond appropriately. The long term objective has to be to provide a safe and enjoyable convention experience for all.
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