Weird

Aliens in Denver?

~ Cheryl

Thank goodness we are not in Denver now. Science fiction conventions tend to attract all sorts of odd people, and there are some fairly crazy folks in town at the moment. Yes, the Libertarian Party convention has just started. And one of the guest speakers is “Richard Hoagland—an author who argues that NASA is covering up evidence of dead civilizations found with their probes”. It is good to know that the guardians of Freedom are out there protecting our right to know about alien civilizations, and at least one Libertarian candidate is raising Hoagland’s concerns in his campaigns, though sadly such issues don’t appear to be going down well at the polls:

Latham read my expression: I was wincing. “You’ll meet him,” Latham said. “He’s not a kook. He talks about this as a secrecy issue, in a relatable way.”

“No matter how he talks about it,” I said, “can’t the two parties use it to marginalize him? I mean, how is it playing.”

“It’s playing pretty well!” Latham thought about it. “The polls aren’t great, though. We just got the first one in from the district and we’ve got… zero percent. I was hoping to start off better than that.”

More here, for those of you who find such things amusing. (Thanks Alex!)

Boo! Hiss!

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

The Eurovision Song Contest is now so huge that they have to have semi-finals to determine who will be allowed into the main event. Semi-final #1 has just taken place (thanks Feorag!) and the sad news is that Dustin the Turkey has failed to make it through to the final. All I can say is that the voters, whoever they might be, have no taste, especially for turkey. Maybe they needed more cranberry sauce.

Ah well, at least I can cheer for the Finns.

Look Upon Me And Howl

~ Cheryl

I don’t often do these blogopshere quiz things, but right now I’m too tired to do anything intelligent and this one looked fun, so here you go.

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery – when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Ye Olde Vindalooe

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Here’s something weird from my RSS feeds. It is an article about a forthcoming BBC4 program on Britain’s oldest cookbook. And the title of the book is The Forme of Cury.

Who knew that they had Indian restaurants in the 14th Century? I can just imagine a gang of knights going out for a curry after a tournament. Not before though, you wouldn’t want to have to get out of your armor in a hurry.

(Yeah, I know I’m getting silly, it is 2:00am here.)

The Great American Beer Mystery

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Budweiser is advertising that their beer is good because if you pour their beer down the middle of the glass it gets a nice head on it. Coors is advertising that their beer is good because it comes in a special, wide-mouthed can that reduces the turbulence when you pour it.

What exactly are these people selling?

No, Not Those Costumes

~ Cheryl

Over at GalleyCat Emily Gould quotes famous New York literary editor Pat Strachan on the demise of publisher parties:

outside the office, we would costume up and maybe go to Studio 54. And you didn’t talk about work outside the office. You may have talked about books, but you didn’t talk about the office. It was a different time. This was the ’70s and ’80s.

I’m afraid the phrase “costume up” brought to mind visions of normally staid editors getting into Klingon costumes for a night of geekiness, but I suspect that’s not quite what was meant.

Thankfully the SF community still knows how to party. We might not go to discos, but a lot of us still seem to turn out well for award ceremonies and the like.

Overheard

~ Cheryl

Here’s something I meant to mention from last night’s BASFA meeting. The following exchange was overheard:

Q. “Why is there a Dalek on your Ratatouille shirt?”

A. “No you idiot, that’s a pepper pot.”

Alright on the (BASFA) Night

~ Cheryl

As some of you will know, the Bay Area Science Fiction Association does not just approve minutes of previous meetings, it has to approve them as something. So minutes might be approved as “amusing”, or “full of typos”, or “too long for Barbara to read”, or whatever other silly idea catches the members’ imagination. Well this evening we approved the minutes of last week’s meeting as “alright”. Several hamsters suffered as a result.

OK, I admit it, it was my fault. The members, bless them, mostly seemed to think that it was a funny idea. However, it was pointed out to me that it wasn’t really fair to make jokes at the expense of poor Mr. Scalzi when he could not respond. And seeing as how John was kind enough to offer me space in his blog, I have reciprocated by buying him a membership in BASFA. Now he can get his own back on me.

Before anyone else points it out, membership of BASFA is only $5 for life and beyond, so yes, I am cheap. But it is the thought that counts, right?

Also our glorious President, Trey Haddad, has reminded me that it is a club rule that persons may not be pressed into membership. John therefore has the right to decline to join. I shall be contacting him by email to confirm with him one way or the other, and also to determine the date of his birthday so that we can sell him into slavery auction him as our perverse custom dictates.

Some of you may be thinking that it is a rather long way from Ohio to the Bay Area, and that therefore John might not be able to attend any meetings. However, you never know when he might be around. Doubtless he is always welcome at BayCon. And failing all else we can come to him. Another of our perverse traditions is that we always hold a public meeting at Worldcon, and somehow I think John will be in Denver this year. If he (or anyone else) fancies attending I should remind you of the terms of the Numismatic Responsibility Act (detailed here, scroll down). Hopefully hilarity will ensue.

Video Mining

~ Cheryl

Just in case you don’t think that Mungo Jerry are quite cool enough to make a point, here are the utterly unimpeachable (and seriously alright) The Who.

It is a very old video in which Roger Daltrey demonstrates that he once subscribed to the John Entwistle theory of stage presence. This, of course, was before Roger signed up for the Charles Atlas body building course (and you know I think he looks a lot better now, but then I never did go for mods).

The Last Word

~ Cheryl

Who would have thought that a single word could bring teh Intrawebs to their knees in this way? Yes, everyone is talking about it, even the Great Old Ones.

I suspect that someone else in the vast mass of postings has already (or should that be “all ready”?) thought of this, but just in case here are Mungo Jerry with three little words for John Scalzi.

(Note to US readers – Steve Wright was a DJ on Radio 1 when I was a lot younger than I am now. These days he’s old too and so he’s on Radio 2, so so they say on Wikipedia, you wouldn’t catch me listening to Radio 2.)

Save Writers, Say “Alright”

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Last month a promising new fantasy writer, Felix Gilman, was almost killed by a shameful attack by a dangerous assassin later identified as “a hamster”. Since that time, writers around America have lived in fear that the villain might strike again. No one was safe. But they need cower no longer. John Scalzi has come to the rescue. He has discovered that hamsters are vulnerable to the use of the magic word “alright”. So, ladies and gentlemen of fandom, if you want your favorite authors to be safe from attack, all you have to do is say “alright” as often as you can.

Thank you. I knew we could rely upon you.

Dill Pickle Rides Again

~ Cheryl

When I was writing the AI baby post for April Fool’s Day it occurred to me that “The Great Dill Pickle Conspiracy” wasn’t available in this incarnation of the blog, and there might be people here who had not seen it. Consequently I have fished it out of the archives and re-posted it. Amazingly it still seems to work, and all of the web links are still active. You can find it here. Enjoy.

But Seriously, Folks…

~ Cheryl

With Silly Joke Day winding down, it is probably safe to do a blog post without people having to scour it for clues. Here is a pile of more or less truthful linkage.

Andrew Wheeler has a list of possibly SF-related April Fool jokes.

Here’s one he hasn’t yet listed from Nature.

Christian Sauve discovers that Florida is sublime.

Russian Fundies give up waiting for the end of the world.

And finally, for those of you who are distraught to discover that the VanderMeers’ SquidPunk anthology was just a joke, here are some punky octopuses indulging in tentacle porn.

An Impromptu Party

~ Cheryl

Today (it being past midnight) is Gary Wolfe’s birthday, so we’ve been having a little party. A bunch of us had dinner together in the hotel restaurant and amusing conversation flowed. Charles was curmudgeonly – something he’s very good at. Ellen Klages was hilarious – something she is very good at. Clute has become obsessed with the hotel’s habit of distorting the aspect ratio on their TVs so as to make the pictures fill up the whole wide screen surface, thereby making people look shorter and fatter than they really are. There was a running gag about the World Fantasy Award trophy as a result of which I discovered I was one of the few people at the table who did not have a big, ugly head.

The hotel kindly brought Gary a candle with his desert, and we discovered that the Big, Bad Wolfe is indeed not very good at huffing and puffing.

But Gary did come up with one of the best one-liners of the entire conference. Here it is:

“Realism is nothing but the domestication of fantasy.”

God, QED

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This week’s Economist has a long article about a European science project designed to investigate the mechanisms and worth of religion. The project aims to look at how religious thought might manifest in the brain, and whether religious behavior has any evolutionary benefit. There does appear to be a reasonable amount of evidence that belief in God makes people behave in a more socially responsible manner. The article also notes:

Dr Wilson himself has studied the relationship between social insecurity and religious fervour, and discovered that, regardless of the religion in question, it is the least secure societies that tend to be most fundamentalist.

Which suggests that the best way of combating fundamentalism might be to make the people who are prone to fundie views better off.

Sadly the scientists are no further forward in solving the age-old dilemma of determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.