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Or to quote the commenter who made me laugh:

"What, isopod got your tongue?"

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

A Northwest Airlines flight flies past its destination by 150 miles. There was no radio contact with the plane by air traffic control for an hour, including handoff to a different control center, and when it finally came, the pilot's replies were "vague" and "distracted".

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/10/23....by/index.html

- The plane accidentally stumbled into the path of a test of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers. The Illuminati will not be happy about a crack appearing in their security.

- Telepathic aliens periodically take over people to study our world; this time they happened to pick the pilot.

- One of the first cases of Quantum Leaping, just for a short interval and to your own body, as the quantum substructure of reality starts to unravel. This event will only become more common and severe with time.

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pilot recieving executive relief from the stewardess?

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OK, this is not exactly weird in itself, but with the GURPS WWII forum gone this seems a good place to put it in order to reach any interested parties:
Apparently, the much-maligned Halifax (of Reich-2 fame) was an avid collector of ghost stories. As in having the world's largest archive on the subject at Hickleton Hall and having people sent out to gather information and reports on hauntings and other occult phenomena. In 1941.

I repeat.
1. Reasonably major British politician (and nobleman).
2. Employing people to investigate reports of supernatural activity.
and
3. This is during World War 2.

(Found in a Swedish weekly magazine from 1941. Specifically Vårt Hem 1941 #18.)

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"A 10-ton fishing boat has been sunk by gigantic jellyfish off the coast of Japan."

"Waters around Japan have been inundated with the creatures. In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage caused by the creatures."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/648...jellyfish.html

Can there be any doubt that there's a giant boss jellyfish at the bottom of the sea instigating this uprising?

Oh, no, there goes Tokyo. Go, go, Godzilla!

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Captain! Spam sighted off the port bow!

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http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39...9305387,00.htm

The Higgs is now employing mortal agents to carry out its agenda. And a disappearance from a secure cell is no bafflement to anyone from ISWAT.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

There's buildings all over that look perfectly normal from ground level--but look down from above, and they are perfetly proportioned swastikas! They are all over the place--even the US Navy has some.

Just google Swastika building in image search...

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Responing to the bolded portion ...

That could really suck if those darned humans constructed a dam across the river to produce hydro-electric power ... and those poor salmon cannot jump the dam. Maybe some "kind" nature-loving eco-terrorist will have to find a way to blow the dam before the spawning season starts ...

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Here's an interesting little fact...Pre 1945 steel is very valuable for some purposes, since it was forged before thre was man-made radioactivity in the atmoshphere. The difference is enough to be significant for some scientific instruments. Apparently, some metal from the Hoscheseeflotte, salvaged between the World Wars, went to the moon with Appollo instruments. Supplies are limited.

Could a mad scientist or industrialist raid some mothballed warships to get high grade pre-1945 steel?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Thunderstorm

The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Dartmoor, Kingdom of England, took place on Sunday, 21 October 1638, when the church of St Pancras was apparently struck by ball lightning during a severe thunderstorm. An afternoon service was taking place at the time, and the building was packed with approximately 300 worshippers. Four of them were killed, around 60 injured, and the building severely damaged.

Locals say that the devil "...made a pact with a local card player and gambler called Jan Reynolds. The deal was that if the devil ever found him asleep in church, he could have his soul..."

"Written accounts by eyewitnesses... tell of a strange darkness, powerful thunder, and "a great ball of fire" ripping through a window and tearing part of the roof open. It is said to have rebounded through the church, killing some members of the congregation and burning many others. "

The description of the event is horrific, the legend is wonderfully picturesque, and this is a great inspiration for everything from a bit of local history or background event color to the final set-piece battle against a supernatural enemy, complete with 300 innocents to protect.

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Believing that you're very good or very evil evidently boosts your physical Capabilities.

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/06...l-Capabilities

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http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...0#tab-Overview

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http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/...ng-fish-stocks

Lede: With tentacles. And people attacked and eaten.

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Including a special forces diver. Black Ops: Atlantis.

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Graverobbers blackmail Peruvian mayor into withdrawing from an election by employing his father's skull:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11404304

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Peak Chocolate:

Analysts at the prestigious British Academy of Chocolate express concern that decreasing cocoa production coupled with increasing demand will lead to an explosion in prices. Some even fear that cocoa is unsustainable, perhaps disappearing due to pressure from conversion to biofuels such as the oil palm, simple soil exhaustion, and the growers finding the hard work simply isn't worth the pay given rising wealth.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...d-2127874.html

Can it be long until Mel Gibson is fighting off punk biker gangs battling over the last few bars in the world? And only one of them still has a Golden Ticket to the Wonka factory.

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Interesting, as I recently read that the world's vanilla supply was also under threat, as it's only grown in a couple of locations, based on a very narrow gene pool, and there's a virus spreading that severely affects it.

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This is not really OT, but IMO this is the best thread in which to post this:
http://www.musee-bizarre.ch/e_page.html

There are sets of diorama, with weird steampunky science themes.

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Nice. Transhuman Space meets Steampunk.

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The Underbelly Project: art made and displayed in the dark, put up on the bare concrete walls of an unfinished subway station out of sight of the street. The place is abandoned, dirty, dangerous. The installation isn't meant to be seen: it's illegal; the artists didn't get permission first. The police can't find the artists, but they've arrested a number of intrepid explorers of the urban labyrinth that must be traversed to experience the place.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has respectfully decided not to destroy the works. However, there has been some graffiti tagging over some of the art, so that's evidence of monster population in this dungeon too.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

According to an old Pravda article, there's a hole in time at the South Pole, and Russian scientists have been conducting time-altering experiments.

http://web.archive.org/web/200710200...xperiment.html

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A village of Iranian cave dwellers. Similar to the Turkish cave dwellers of Capadocia. Nice set of pictures.

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For a change in architecture, how about a village in a tower? These are not player character friendly...

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Low-Tech arcologies?

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Like. Stick in a fish farm and some trellised fruit trees, as well as what we call window boxes, and IIRC in the US are called truck gardens, and yep.

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Too cool! Totally nabbing as fantasy setting element!

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Actually, "truck" just means "vegetables" in this context. Nothing to do with vehicles, but a more obscure word that means "trade". Truck gardens are where you raise vegetables to be sold at a market. By a sort of back association, "truck" can also mean the vegetables themselves.

To my ear, there's some connotation of this being relatively small scale compared to commercial operations, or a sideline to the farm's main business. But not quite as small as a window box.

I call window boxes "window boxes" :)

Hm. Low-Tech doesn't have much to say about buildings. I'm contemplating architectural issues in scaling these up to city size, while remaining low tech. Pyramids? You'd probably need to build it across an entire river for the water supply.

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Sounds similar to what I thought it meant. What we would call an allotment garden. Thanks for the etymological root. I love that stuff.

Exactly what I was envisaging. Saw a Canadian documentary about a former lecturer in Havana that survives by trading rabbits and guinea pigs for other food. That is exactly the scale I see working here. Dietary supplimentation, whilst the main source of food and income is outside. Basically what you need to resist a short to medium term siege. Which implies a communal grain store....

:P

The other issue could be the engineering challenge of building a massive structure in a sodden alluvial plain, or in a waterway with a sedimentary base. All I know about civil engineering is what I learnt playing Civilisation the board game.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Egyptian government officials suggest the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, is behind the recent shark attacks in Egypt, using GPS-controlled sharks to strike only in Egyptian waters.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...ossad_to_blame

(There have been no reports so far of head-mounted lasers.)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Just watched an amazing doco on the South Pacific by the BBC and the Discovery Channel. Had some amazing video of insectivorous caterpillars. They look like twigs, but they have spins on the rear of their abdomens which they use to grab their prey. Scale them up a size or too and they could be 'interesting'.

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Heck, that's nothing. As usual, Australia's got that beat all hollow with its bird-eating spiders. Who needs to scale THAT up?

Note to the squeamish: the link has photos.

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My college friends and I used to occasionally go on road trips from eastern Long Island to Chinatown in downtown Manhattan.

I'm thinking of compiling the various weirdnesses that happened on these trips. Late-night urban oddness.

Last week I asked one of the key members of the group about any interesting stuff I might have missed. A doozy:

Rob was rummaging around a Canal Street restaurant supply store when he had a very strong urge to take a leak. He managed to convey his need to one of the employees. Another guy was tasked with taking Rob to the loo.

It was down a flight of stairs . . . and another. And then . . . a rock-walled tunnel that lead to a dimly lit CAVE under the streets of Manhattan. Through it ran a small stream, into which Rob was directed to pee.

He suspect that this was the buried remains of the titular canal.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

It is apparently not unusual for praying mantises to capture and devour hummingbirds
http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/bw...php?sc=migrate

Luke

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South America and Africa both have similar species, although frogs, lizards and snakes are more common prey than birds.

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Yeah, that one is truly odd and disturbing in its way.

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Which they technically are. :lol:

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Just saw a doco with a Pommy physicist wandering around the Z machine in New Mexico. And here's a bit of video showing still images of a flashover event, as well as its construction.

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Mysterious bird deaths in Beebe, AR over New Years. While I have no doubt that a mundane explanation will be found, an inventive GM could surely come up with a not so mundane one for an adventure.

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Elaan of Troyius had it exactly backwards. Pheromones in women's tears actually lower sexual arousal and testosterone production.

http://www.livescience.com/health/fe...re-110106.html

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Hmm...that actually makes sense, from an evolutionary POV.

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Five dastardly plots perpetrated by the Mossad -- at least according to certain Middle Eastern media reports.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._alleged_plots

- Trained spy vultures conducting aerial recon of Saudi Arabia

- Killer sharks set loose to undermine the Egyptian tourist industry. (Head-mounted lasers not yet ready for deployment.)

- Heavy metal festival organized to embarrass Gaza flotilla (particularly the German band)

- Facebook (for undermining the 2009 Iranian election, but really, do you have to have a reason to hate Facebook?)

- the "Christmas Day bomber" (to provide an excuse to retaliate, of course)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I've just recently stumbled on the Georgia Guidestones, a granite monument with creepy new-agey instructions for the future, and a Rosicrucian connection, that may have been commissioned by Ted Turner. I want to know how I've gone so long without hearing about this sooner, and why there isn't there an Illumaniti or INWO card for it?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

That one is a bit obscure. I'm from Georgia, and I'd never heard of it for 30+ years; only after I'd moved out.

Very fitting, though.

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Automated stock traders placing strange and currently-inexplicable orders (which don't even get filled):
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...traders/60829/

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Makes me think of covert channels {wikipedia article} in computer systems. Skynet has to communicate among its elements somehow.

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A sculptor is placing his artwork under the sea. It looks amazing. It can be found here.

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I wish I could remember exactly where I saw or heard this (book? TV show?). But it was something about weirdness in the built environment of London.

Somewhere in the city is a building, and in the basement, there's a metal grate. Lift it up, and there's running water underneath. Nobody has the faintest idea what the running water is or where it comes from.

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This strange non-specific introduction makes it sound eerily similar to an urban legend.

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The description reminded me of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere".

Basement damp and flooding is apparently not uncommon in London.

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Given the US trained Military Dolphins thats not as goofy as it sounds.

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Might be related to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyburn_(stream)

(An antique shop claims to have the Tyburn, a tributary of the Thames, flowing through its cellar; this is, at best, debatable.)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Not really as low testosterone actually increases the incidence of aggression and depression. That's the real danger of steroids, not the increase when taking them, but the sudden withdrawal when trying to pass a screening.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Russian scientists are set to pierce through Antarctica’s frozen surface to reveal the secrets of an icebound lake that has been sealed deep there for the past 15 million years.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science...urce=r_science

I feel the need to make a SAN check.

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More likely a "market garden".

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Depends. If it is one enterprise, done a profit, yeah sure. But a lot of people working their own plots, helping each other with bottling etc, I reckon it is more like an allotment model.

Which really takes my pedantry over nomenclature to the point of what are the internal dynamics within the settlement(s) in question? I suppose tis the call of the setting designer / GM etc.

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Houses and structures woven out of living trees.

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Once again, this is technically surreal for some, but too real for others. Bureaucracy in India.
I cannot but think of dropping a bunch of PC's into something like this.
<Bwahahaha>

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

And I thought the guys that wrote up the bureaucracy for Paranoia were just adding a couple of layers to Kafka - turns out they based it off Indian bureaucracy, but toned it down for a skeptical audience...

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The old Traveller "Exit Visa" adventure, as run by John Cleese.

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In my humble opinion, the fruit of the Buddha's Hand tree Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis ,looks alarmingly like a certain deity that resides under the South Pacific.

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Etrog, you say? Yemenite citron? I was expecting this, which is Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis, an even more squid-like variety of the insidious citron.

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I like the googly 'eyes' in the fifth picture 8)... Always reach for them from the top :|

Insidious is fun to say :)

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If you make it your desktop image, the eyes follow you around the room.

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Pizzeria owner attempts to sabotage competition with mice.

I'm not sure I'd normally think to mention this, but in light of Frost contemplating hantavirus as a possible biowarfare agent as part of a campaign background, it seemed apropos.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

So apparently this guy, specs and all, was a U.S. Congressman and a firebrand abolitionist whose penchant for calling out slaveowners led him to real physical danger. I here quote the New York Times on his mad skills:

When the war started, he asked for an officer's commission, got one, and led a regiment through the war. Survived it, too.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Okay, you intrigued me enough to look up more about the guy. Here is the NY Times article William quoted: Guns, Blood and Congress

A drier summary of the man's career: Charles Henry Van Wyck

His Wikipedia article, pretty brief, and mentions none of his mad ninja skillz: Charles Van Wyck

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Hmm, if that's named for Buddha's hand, it makes me wonder about the true power and effects of the Buddha's palm attack in Kung Fu Hustle...

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Just in time to field in the Zombie Apocalypse, it's the Kentucky long rifle machete crossbow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSU1jQoGIqo

Anyone care to work up GURPS stats? Pretty spectacular Malf results, I imagine.

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Who are these people, and how have they angered the gods so?

They act the victims, but to the occult-trained eye, it is obvious that they are themselves the harbingers of all this misfortune. Perhaps it has something to do with the newborn female offspring they brought with them?

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life...406-1d3kv.html

Story about a Swedish couple whose four-month honeymoon with their baby daughter encountered cyclones, blizzards, floods, bushfires and earthquakes (two thereof).

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I totally agree. Maybe we need psychics and people with Second Sight at our airport terminals, rather than metal detectors, X Ray machines and chemical sniffing technology.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Did you see the bit about him surviving the Boxing Day Tsunami? That was long before the wedding. Clearly, it's the husband who's cursed.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Maybe he was carrying the souls of the Boxing Day victims, who have entered his baby and now they are acting through her to wreak their vengeance.

In related news, the Vatican needs more exorcists.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/sympa...401-1crnr.html

So it was the Vatican's lack of action against this tsunami revenant demon child which caused all the recent destruction? Is there a pursuable class action in there somewhere?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Everybody always assumes that the Antichrist is male. Maybe Damien is just a bit of misdirection.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

http://www.expressen.se/resor/1.2391...i-katastrof-er
It's "Elinor", according to the original article. And Svanström means "swan power". Definitely occult.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Not really. In this case it basically means river (or at least, of the different
types of flowing water it can be translated into, river is the one that sounds
"right" in a name).
Ström in the meaning of power is specifically electric power.

Sorry.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Shows what you get for using Google Translate.

So ström would be closer to the English word current?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Either that, or they named their boy "Hydroelectricity"...

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The aptly-named satanic leaf-tailed gecko:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42576346...7?beginSlide=1

If this guy didn't have his picture in the Monster Manual, he should've.

I really want to see a new series with this guy introduced as the nemesis of the GEICO Gecko. Like Spidey and Venom.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The orange-red eyes seem to be common... the tail is a curious mimicking adaptation. You saw that Boulenger reported on them back in 1888?