Category Archives: Mischief

Bunnies

Over the past month or two I’ve been littering the Shore Leave site with bunny sketches. The site has pages and pages of information about the convention (one of the program book editors commented that the web site was practically a second program book), but it’s awfully dry reading so I wanted to add a few humorous elements to break things up.
So far, nobody’s said much about them, but only one has been there for more than a few days. The people I’ve told about my plans have reacted favorably though, so I doubt anyone is going to be offended. (This means I’ll probably end up being responsible for the site again next year, so perhaps I should try harder.)
So how many bunnies can you find?

Recycling

The Washington Post’s comic section (what Mom calls the "Educational section") contains an item called "Hints from Heloise." The feature generally consists of people writing in with ideas for how to perform common household tasks without spending a whole lot of money or clever ways to reuse things that would normally go in the trash. Why should they have all the fun?
A few theater chains in this area promote upcoming movies by giving away posters at Science Fiction conventions. There’s really only so many of those things you can put up on your bedroom walls, so after the convention weekend the leftovers end up in the trash.
In a moment of inspiration back in February, I realized that movie posters would make rather "unique" wrapping paper. A friend commented that he’d had a similar idea at one point and demonstrated how the smaller posters could be used to make some rather colorful envelopes.
This sort of recycling isn’t really all that new. Last year I passed out Jaycee board reports printed on the back of Serenity posters (Can’t stop the signal y’know!) and I’ve also been known to send postcards made from Pop-Tart boxes. 🙂

The joke's on me!

I kind of played a practical joke on myself a couple days ago.
For the past couple days, I’ve been hearing a soft beeping noise coming from somewhere in my bedroom. Not like the smoke alarm, this one’s much softer and much less frequent.
One of my nephews is preparing to graduate from High School and getting ready to live out on his own, so I bought him an alarm clock. The clock has a special feature in the form of a built-in battery backup in case the power goes out. (It’s about time someone did that! I’ve wanted that feature for several years.)
I heard the beeping again this morning and finally tracked it down. It’s coming from the wrapped package containing the alarm clock. (I never opened the box, it must have been doing this at the store too!)
Can you imagine the chaos if a wrapped package at the post office started beeping?

Revenge is for the birds.

About 12 years ago, one of the Karens pushed all the wrong buttons and got me annoyed in her general direction.
I’ll skip the details as there were (somewhat) innocent third parties involved, but suffice that it wasn’t the sort of thing you end a friendship over (We still exchange Christmas cards to this day). But some sort of response was clearly called for.
Several days later, Karen received an unexpected package in the mail. She recognized the return address as mine, but didn’t think about the implications. My planned revenge went even better than expected when she opened the package while sitting on her bed. (Silly girl, she should have known better.)
That evening, Karen had to explain to her husband how it was that their bed came to be full of birdseed.

Twisted TV

Digging through an old web site I’m planning to decomission "Real Soon Now," I found a story synopsis that Dave and I came up with some time ago.
It was the mid-90s, The popularity of The X-Files was on the upswing and Angela Lansbury was still solving a new muder every week on Murder, She Wrote. A collision was perhaps inevitable.
I’d been thinking for a while that it was very strange how there was a murder every week in Cabot Cove, and it always happened in such a way that Jessica Fletcher was nearby. Sometimes it was a friend of a friend, once in a while it was someone she knew personally. Even when she went out on book tours, she’d wind up getting involved in the investigation.
I’m no statistician, but it always seemed unlikely that one person would encounter that many murders that frequently. A homicide detective in New York or LA might, but "Mystery Writer" just doesn’t seem the sort of job description where people would be dropping dead around you on a regular basis. Clearly something else was going on.
The idea that something else was going on in Cabot Cove had been bouncing around the inside of my head for a while, so one evening I let the idea out and sent Dave a short email detailing how an FBI agent had been sent to investigate.
Neither Dave nor I watched Murder, She Wrote with any regularity, but he liked my twist on the show well enough that he decided to send it out to the usenet rec.humor.tv newsgroup. (This was, of course, back before the spammers took over usenet.) Evidently there are a few other twisted minds out there, because an anonymous usenet reader wrote back to Dave saying how funny it would be if the FBI agent in question was Fox Mulder.
Dave sent that back to me and the wheels got to turning. Adding Mulder and Scully was simple enough, but even though I’d only seen the first season of The X-Files, it was clear that Mulder and Scully’s appearance couldn’t be anything straight forward. There had to be a twist of some sort.
The story never grew beyond a brief summary with only a few sentences of dialouge, but that’s really all it needed to be. Of course, if one of the studios wants to do something with this, I’m all ears. 🙂
Read Murder, She Caused.

Martians invade Grovers Mill

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles aired a radio play adapted from the H. G. Wells book, “War of the Worlds.” Circumstances collided with presentation style and a nationwide panic ensued as people became convinced that a full-scale Martian invasion was in progress. On Sunday I got a small taste of how Orson Welles must have felt afterward.
This past Saturday was April Fools day and for the second year running, I felt that the Shore Leave site should be a part of the annual antics. The original plan fell through due to technical difficulties just one hour into the day, so I decided to come up with a “Plan B” and save the original for next year.
Last year’s prank went pretty well, except that at least one person didn’t get the joke. As near as I can figure, she overlooked the text explaining the origins of “MeteorCon,” so I decided that this year I’d use something more closely resembling a press release.
After mulling it over for an hour or so, I finally hit on the idea of tapping into the popularity of the new Battlestar Galactica series. Going completely over the top (How else would you play an April Fools joke?), I thought it would be a grand idea to actually hold the convention on the Galactica. Not on the sets, but on the actual spacecraft. And so I started writing…
As much I wanted to make it sound nearly believable, I also wanted to make it clear that this a joke. I added an “April 1” dateline. I explained how the Sci-Fi channel had decided it was cheaper to build an actual space ship rather than do all the computer generated imagery. And throughout the text, I referred to the Galactica as an actual spaceship and even talked about how the convention would be set up onboard.
The emails I saw on Saturday afternoon were all favorable. People not only got the joke, they thought it was funny! When I walked into the STAT meeting on Sunday, the first several people I saw congratulated me on a great prank. This was a great success! Then I ran into the convention co-chairs…
Kett and Marilyn hadn’t known about the change of plans. While I was celebrating a successful prank on Saturday, they were fielding emails and phone calls from people who were congratulating them on their coup, or worrying over where to find enough space in the Hunt Valley Inn for “several city blocks worth” of sets. Evidently a half-dozen (or more!) people were convinced that the convention had either acquired the sets, or would be taking place aboard an actual space ship! (As Kett put it, “These are Science Fiction fans, they like to believe that anything’s possible.”)
If I had it to do over, I’d have sent Kett and Marilyn an email to let them know about the change of plans. (Seeing as how I was working on this from 1 to 3 AM, phone calls were definitely out of the question.) Other than that, I probably wouldn’t change anything.
To those who were taken in, all I can say is, “Gotcha!”
That and, “Run for your life! The Martians are marching on Grovers Mill!”

April Foolery

April Fools day has been one of my favorite holidays for several years, so when I took over the Shore Leave web site a few years ago, it was only a matter of time until my sense of humor surfaced on the site.
Last year, the convention’s hotel was hit by a meteor and a new convention was born. (Amazingly, the guests bore a strikingly resemblance to members of the convention committee; none of whom knew about it.)
This year was subtler, nothing more than an announcement that the convention had made an acquisition.
I wonder if anyone noticed? 🙂

Do NOT read this entry!

Aaaack! You’re reading it! You really should go read one of my other posts instead. Don’t read any further into this one.
Still with me, eh? Well I warned you, so it’s your own darn fault.
As everyone who attended last month’s Farpoint discovered, the new owners of Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn have been doing some rennovations over the past six months. I was up there two months earlier and on the spur of the moment, took a few photos with my camera phone. They’re not the highest quality, but you can view them if you like.
Before viewing the photos though, be warned. The old hunting theme is gone, replaced with something they consider more “corporate.” Almost everyone who attended the convention had about the same reaction – whoever chose the colors must be insane. It’s worth noting that several wedding receptions have reportedly decided to book other facilities after viewing the new decor.
So bearing all that in mind, if you feel that you really must view the photos, at least put on sunglasses first, or better yet, turn off your monitor.
You’ve been warned.
View the Hunt Valley Inn’s new look.
– Blair

Somewhere in the Western Desert

NASA’s Stardust probe is due to return on January 15 of next year, carrying samples of interstellar dust particles. Riding on a set of two parachutes, the probe is due to land somewhere in Utah a little after 3:00am.
Details of the probe’s sample return mission are available on NASA’s Stardust web site, but this got me thinking about what might happen on that day, somewhere in the Western Desert….
——————————————-
January 15, 2006
Dear Diary,
A most peculiar thing happened last night. I was having trouble sleeping so around 2:30 I decided to go out for a quick run in hopes of tiring myself out. It was working and a little after 3:00 I was definitely starting to feel groggy so I headed back to the nest.
Wouldn’t you know it?! Turns out that mean old coyote was out for a jaunt too and, as always, he was hungry. Well I took off at top speed, but like I said, I was definitely feeling tired and I just couldn’t keep up the pace. I could almost feel the coyote’s breath on my back and that’s when it happened.
First there was a popping boom sound – sort of like my usual sonic booms – but like I said, I was pretty tired at that point and starting to slow down. And then, just when I thought I was a goner and the coyote was finally gonna get me for sure, he got conked on the head by this strange metal box that just fell out of nowhere.
I wonder where it came from?
Meep! Meep!
R.R.