Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Excellent dialog for the sage / mage / distracted professor character faced with the 8000-pound version crashing down St. James' Street.

Seriously, I saw the 1888 reference -- though the brief description in that link didn't mention Boulenger specifically. The eye color does show up in other geckos, but even this particular species apparently isn't all that rare.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

China bans time travel.

(Okay, not quite, but banning it to prevent showing someone changing history (And upsetting proper tradition) seems like it fits well here)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The real story is not quite weird, except in its relation to Big Brotherism... if it were a real headline, though, it would be pretty strange.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

WTF Korea. Mind you, this is showing up in legit newspapers local to me, and not just on the internet. From the most reliable source I know.

"DIY crucifixion in quarry includes crown of thorns

A 58-year-old former taxi driver described by friends as a religious fanatic appears to have crucified himself atop a quarry on Good Friday, drilling his own palms with an electric drill.

Police found the dead man surnamed Kim on a wooden cross at the crest of an abandoned quarry in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang, early this week after a report on May 1 from a passerby."

The print version of the story (today--the 6th here in the far East) notes that the 'passerby' is the guy's pastor, who lives less than three miles from this quarry and was out jogging when he found the, er, body. Police questioned him, as you might imagine!

Earlier versions of the story said simply a man was found crucified, and police were wondering whether it was a suicide. That one became a running joke on FB--wait, both hands nailed down and they're thinking suicide???

The quote above is from the JoongAng Daily, May 5th online edition. No luck getting a permalink.

So In Nomine fans...Kobal? Or evil Khalid?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Earlier this week, while researching an article for the SCP Foundation (which fell through - nothing I could come up with was this creepy), I ran across a story from a Swedish newspaper about an elk bot fly shooting its larvae into a woman's eye. Apparently, this happens every so often up there...

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Australian department of defence has suddenly lost their multi-decade collection of UFO reports and files. Of course, the government shredding all the evidence is a sine qua non of the conspiracy.

But one lone file remains, concerning mysterious phenomena at the Woomera military testing facility deep in the outback.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...disappear.html

What's in this file, and why was it the only one to survive the purge? Or is it just a red herring, while one of the other files has the truth? (Not "had", because they're not destroyed, only missing. Taken by whom and why? The Greys and reptoids already know they're here.)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110608/...weasel_assault

I'm not sure what horrible story could be made with this, but I'm sure there is one.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The man was carrying a dead weasel. It just shows the lack of knowledge that the guy didn't know that marten is subset of weasel. Just think how PC's would react...

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

But so few PCs put a lot of points into Mustelids! skill. If it weren't for RPK's new Mustelid Hunters series, I doubt we'd see that skill appear at all.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Are there stats for a Marten Net in GURPS Loadouts: Mustlid Hunters?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Those of you that are into music know that there are a few different ways to tune individual notes in a scale, with some esthetic differences. And since the relationship of notes is relative, as Pythagoreans were well aware, you need to pick some starting point.

It turns out that the modern standard selecting 440 Hz for "A" is actually a carefully engineered tool of the Rockefeller Foundation "that is 'herding' populations into greater aggression, psychosocial agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illnesses and financial impositions profiting the agents, agencies, and companies engaged in the monopoly."

While on the other hand, the "natural, instinctive attractive" choice of 444 Hz produces "good vibrations" that have been viciously censored.

The Rockefellers used this effect to help bring on WWII so that they could profiteer from the war industries.

http://web.mac.com/len15/MUSICAL_CUL..._Horowitz.html

Sounds like a natural fit if you ever wanted to play a "the PCs are a travelling band of adventurers/rock stars" game. The rebellious rockers in the 50s are rebelling against The Establishment, freeing young people from the insidious 440 Hz A. Or perhaps you take it back to WWII, in which case you've probably got a swing band -- in which case Glenn Miller's mysterious disappearance takes on more sinister overtones.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I'm not sure how seriously, I'd take this. It looks like good game fodder, but real life? Judging by some of the other stuff on that page, the author is a crank.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

A real-life crank, certainly; he probably didn't think he was creating fiction. Too off topic for the thread, do you think?

Good game fodder, as you say. The alternate 50s history has a puckish appeal for me. Fighting alongside NPC heroes like Elvis and Buddy Holly, your mission is to wield the power of rock to free the (real) people in this audience from the mind-controlling forces of conformity. Say, there's even a ready-made super-villain team to use as an Enemy right there in the video.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

A=440Hz has been standard since the mid 1800's... as many fixed pitch instruments can attest. And the older tunings are usually A<440, not A=444.

So, yes, a crank. DMD is a dental surgeon. MPH is a masters of public health. He's WAY outside his field.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Well, he's claiming it's a public health issue, so I suppose that means he thinks he's qualified to talk about it. OTOH, anyone who calls vaccines poisons and part of a conspiracy to kill off most of the human population should have his public health credentials taken away.

Nitpick: DDS is a dental surgeon. DMD is a dentist without the surgical credentials.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I'm not certain about its gaming potential...but this definitely qualifies as real-life weirdness (IMHO), assuming it's not a hoax (I would not be shocked.)

I suppose it might be used as an instance of mind control, or some kind of side-effect of something...

Women Flock To Drink Horse Semen Shots

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I cant find a news source but like a decade ago or something there was a town here in Brazil where all man started going blind! The small folk thought themselves cursed until they discoverd that there was high levels of methane (or something that started with M) in their system, and that the town had only only supplier of booze.

When they went to see this supplier, they discovered he was adding methane to the booze (it was not beer, it was cachaça), when asked towards his motives the old man said.

"I just wanted it to be a hell of a drink"

true story.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

If I'm remembering the Len Horowitz interviews correctly, it's not just about social control... his re-tuned scale is supposed to reinforce the resonant frequencies within living cells. His music makes you healthier!

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The giant, underground 10,000 year clock currently under construction:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/...ar-clock/all/1

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Methanol. Also known as wood alcohol. You'll sometimes get it in bad moonshine, and it will indeed make you go blind. (It has one carbon, CH3OH, as opposed to regular drinking alcohol, ethanol, which has two, C2H5OH.)

Also has a cameo in a line uttered by a bum in the beloved Star Trek episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever"!

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

At a guess, not methane, but methanol aka methyl alcohol aka wood alcohol. And yes, blindness is a sign of methanol poisoning (see link for list).

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Yes you are correct, its methanol.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Has anyone posted about the relatively recent mule offspring?
The one from china is genetically 3/4 donkey 1/4 horse with some features of horse, donkey, and mule.

The one from the U.S. is weirder because the mule mother only passed on her horse half of d.n.a to her donkey sired offspring making it another mule.

Now you can have a "realistic" half-elf from half-elf and human parents.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

There was a "ghost city" that appeared above the Xin'an River.

The video for it is pretty cool, it actually looks like the city is just sitting there in the water. The explanation that token scientists give is vague enough for use in a game too.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Indian Gas Boom is the backdrop to a campaign a friend of mine ran recently. There were all these torches, where a pipe stuck into the ground was lit. Towns made fountain-like flame displays. And there is all this oil down there, which we cannot now extract easily, due to the lack of natural gas pressure.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

"Giant lizards being hunted down in South Florida"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43580006...s-environment/

Adventurers needed, of course.

Nine non-native Nile monitor lizards have been spotted in two counties so far. They're up to seven feet long. But a little exaggeration for game purposes never hurts. Maybe these are just the babies, or a first wave of runts displaced by the _real_ threat.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Apparently it's an old story, but I stumbled onto this on a Korean talk show. The Curse of 'My Way' Karaoke

The TV program used "The Ring" style imagery to make it seem spookier than it is.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Treasure!

Story here.

Unimaginable riches buried for hundreds of years in vaults beneath a temple complex as the government changes hands repeatedly and adventurers tromp around on the surface looking to make fame and fortune in exotic lands? Possibility of terrifying idols to inhuman deities, or scoffing scholars breaking a seal never meant to be broken?

Why is there not a GURPS India. sigh

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Lots of perfectly non-weird uses for the Broadcastr smartphone app, which basically lets you associate recordings with a particular place (GPS coordinates from your phone), where other users can then hear that recording when they pass by.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/20/br...r-android-app/

My first thought on reading about the app, though, was "Stories from the past imprinted on a place that you later experience? Psychometry." It's not much of a stretch to imagine automatic recordings all over the place, with the wizardly possessors of high search-fu (or just good search engines) able to pick out the relevant records from the background babble. With only a little more extrapolation, you can record things like emotional state, too.

Casual technology is starting to become indistinguishable from psi powers, if not magic.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Technology is approaching the point of being Sufficiently Advanced™.

Welcome to the future. :D

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Grease Devil panic grips rural Sri Lanka
Monster hunters from around the globe converge on the scene to investigate -- and slay.

Sure, the authorities tell us it's all natural, just humans, criminal elements. We've heard that one before.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

This is not weird, but it offers the possibility for weirdness. Namely, if rats did not carry the Black Death, what did?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Humans, of course. Worse than rats, really :)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Bruno. You are being way to rational for my liking :P

However, given my children's preference for rats as pets, a bit of me has to agree with you. I am suspecting that the rats were merely a scapegoat.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

It's one of the few benefits to being a shut-in. Avoiding all those nasty diseased humans means I get sick once every few years at the most.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Secret underground rooms found under Fateh University, Tripoli, Libya.
Technically not all that weird in itself, at least not compared to some
of the things already mentioned. But the potential...

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Sometimes weirdness is where you find it. I ran a one shot adventure based on the news story that U.S. forces in Iraq had dispatched troops to guard certain archeological sites, even before the oilfields were secured. Sounds relatively innocuous by itself, but in a Call of Cthulhu context, it takes on a much more dire aspect.

Now, I'm not saying that the whole invasion was a pretext to keep What Lies Beneath dormant, but you'll have to make up your own mind.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I dunno, if you stop and think about it, actual disease is basically scarier than any metaphor that stand in for disease. For example, you often see zombies stand in for disease, but you can at least shoot a zombie in the head. With actual disease, all you can do is shut yourself away, rocking back and forth while the world around you dies.

I imagine the reason you don't see realistic epidemics depicted in most horror is that it's a little TOO bleak. At least you can fight a monster (You can fight plague too, but it's too slow and too technical to be of interest to a general audience).

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Iran is cracking down on squirtguns and their owners. Remember, if squirtguns are outlawed, only outlaws will have squirtguns.

The Super Soakers are perhaps being smuggled in by those specially-trained spy squirrels Iran reported back in 2007.

It's certainly weird, though if you tried to put this in one of your games anywhere this side of IOU, you'd probably have players walking out because of the unrealistic silliness.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Smith Mansion.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/201...205-PROUD.html

The kind of house you get when you have time, money, lots of wood, and vague notions of architecture and carpentry.

It ate its creator, too. "Wind blew him off a balcony" is the story for the mundanes. But just look at those spires, and the alignment with the moon. Clearly a half-finished summoning device, or something worse.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

At different times I recall both Robert Heinlein and Stephen King making comments to the loose effect that no author would ever dare be as bizarre and silly in their fiction as real life routinely is, for fear of alienating their audience.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

No, I don't find anything unrealistic about that. It's just difficult to find campaigns in which the characters would care that supersoakers were banned. Unless they were hunting vampires.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Don't forget that the Reptoids secretly lurking under the guise of world leaders are also vulnerable to water. It reveals them for what they are.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Good point.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

For when you're not in a position to force world leaders to say "Ka nama kaa lajerama".

I gather that they're vulerable to red paint too. At least, I assume that's why people keep trying to throw red paint at politicians. What else could be the reason?


Hans

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I'm reminded of the King miniseries "Rose Red".


This is an old one, but I like the idea of Google losing a major Florida city because it has potential for a major "Matrix" glitch kind of game. :D

Imagine waking up one morning and part ofyour city is gone... or better yet, you're in the part that's gone!

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Naturally. Most readily-available paint in large quantities these days has a water base. The pigment is just for the benefit of human observers.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Obituary of John Fairfax: Athlete, jungle trapper, pirate, lover, gambler.

The sort of guy who the adventure books star.

In 1969, he became the first man to row across an ocean alone. In later life, he supported himself as a baccarat player. Definitely someone you could meet in a Monte Carlo casino, a jungle, or the middle of the ocean. There's even a lost treasure in there: a shipwreck he spotted but was never able to salvage. Roll your next die in memory of a well-played PC.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Residents of the town of Clintonville, Wisconsin, have been for three nights now reporting a series of mysterious booming noises at night, accompanied by ground vibrations. Hundreds of people have met in the high-school auditorium to discuss the problem. City officials have investigated every angle they can think of: water / sewer / gas lines, checking with the military for exercises in the area, reviewing mining permits, inspecting the local dam, testing the landfill for methane levels. No one has been able to determine a cause. Audio and video equipment have failed to capture any evidence despite loud noises the night it was set up. However, there is a nearby seismic station that has been reporting unusual vibration.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-...m-in-the-night

The Dero are trying to break out. UFOs battle within the hollow Earth. CHUDs live deeper than you thought. Mole Men are surfacing; someone call The Tick. The last thing the Roswell alien said was "I'm sorry, but there is bad news."

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, has several empty frames hanging in prominent places. This would look strange if you aren't expecting it. The spots have hung empty since the art theft of the 90's.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

In the process of reporting all of the above.

Mane straighteners. Mane straighteners? What are we, spamming for My Little Ponies now?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

To those of us balding, anything shoulder length or longer is a fabulous mane. :)
Or
Don't diss the Brony Army. They will love and forgive the sh*t out of you.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Researchers find that white coats actually give plusses to intellect.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Weirder: there are identical twins in UK except one is pink and the other isn't. They have the same frizzy mop of hair but one is blonde and the other brunette.
I would have totally disbelieved this but for the recent article on the impossibility of cloning brindle/ tortoiseshell cats: the color codes are randomly activated in the later stages of development; any cells you select to copy will be either black or white but never brindle. Seems there's something in humans too - identical except for skin pigment? Weird.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

More strictly, one is pink and the other is brown. They've got identical features other than pigment, so saying they belong to different races is muddling the issue
(which is already complex). Tabloid magazines and TV do this regularly with the odd set of fraternal twins with the same disparity in pigment (but otherwise very similar mixed-race features).

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

In the U.S., if you have dark skin, you are black regardless of genetic heritage. If you have pink skin, then at best you can call yourself mixed.

In reality, race doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist as something that can be determined by vision alone.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

That particularly uncomfortable political situation was what I was trying not to get into, in order to not turn Roleplaying in General into General Chat. But mainly my point is that America is not The Entire Planet, and it sometimes helps to get out and see how other people look at the situation.

Race exists, as does class, creed, and funny-hat-club-membership. None of these groups are something directly relevant to biology, but belonging to groups and being able to stuff other people into groups without their consent is clearly pretty darn important to humans.

And I think that's about where this can stop.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I know. I only mentioned it because, you are Canadian and might not know how odd it is here in that respect.
Stating a cultural fact shouldn't be taboo even here. But I'll leave it alone of course.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

And, leaving that at that...

A series of explosions rattle Eastern Wisconsin, with no readily discernable cause or after effects.

Mi-Go mining projects in progress? FBI and Wisconsin National Guard suppressing a demonic uprising?

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I've read and re-read my post - I can't see the word "race" in it anywhere. Mind you, I am totally racist - Human Racist: one world, one race*, many minds.
But I've edited it where I think you're referring to.

*that we know of so far...

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I'm currently residing in a small rural town, population 15,000 in the SE. For reasons that are unclear to me, there is a Buddhist monk in full regalia wondering around. The first time I saw him, I thought I was hallucinating (which does happen). I just said "Namaste" and kept going. I just saw him again, though, and so did my father. Hmmm - is his name Ped Xing? Did he come from the tunnel network connecting Shambhala with the hollow world?

(yes, I'm back)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

One weird guy in "costume" wandering around rises to the level of posting to this thread weird?
You should come to Oregon. Every few minutes you will see the same. :)
Our unofficial motto is "Keep Oregon Weird".

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

For instance, here in Portland, we are the home of the one and only Unipiper

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Special Operations Actions Group of the (North) Korean People's Army's Supreme Command has announced imminent actions against South Korea.

Three or four minutes is of course far too long for a nuclear weapon explosion, and of course would hardly be unprecedented or peculiar, so that explanation is out.

Apparently Korean men who stare at goats get much better than American ones. Or perhaps the Manaclypse can be found underground in a cave near Punggye-ri.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I do not recall if this has been mentioned before, but it is definitely a case of real-life 'weirdness', or at least unusualness:

The Clock of the Long Now

More or less, there is an organization trying to build a clock that will run and keep time unsupervised for ten thousand years.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Perfect for the time traveler to calibrate their machine.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Not 'weird' precisely, but definitely unusual:

Independence Rock

It was a natural trail-marker for settlers moving westward in the 19th century, those who reached the feature by July 4 were considered to be 'on schedule' to get over the Rockies before winter.

Speaking of geological features, there is the old volcano in southern Illinois...well, sort of and almost:


Hicks Dome

Located in Hardin County, Illinois, amid rolling hills, farmlands, and deep layers of sedimentary rock and fertile soils, is this interesting feature. Suspected of being a proto-volcano that did not quite make it all the way to the surface in the Mesozoic Age, it's definitely not the sort of thing most people think about when they think 'southern Illinois'.

In fact, it is suspected of being part of a chain of such igneous oddities stretching across the southeastern USA, and some people think it might just be a remnant of the Bermuda 'hot spot' as North America moved westward driven by the motion of the plates.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

In a thread on spears:

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

World jumpers after they settled down!
Maybe Kromm really is part god.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Mimmoths are real!

Or at least mini-mammoths were.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

A knight in armor, on horseback, is riding across Canada. He just passed through my city :D

He's covering about 30km a day (on roads and sidewalks) for folks interested in low intensity long distance travel by horse, but can do almost double that on a long day (but he has to take days off to rest his horse and work for room and board on farms)

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

My apologies if this has been raised previously, but these old Yugoslav war memorials are rather weird. IMHO.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

On the same site, I came across the Victorian artificial arm, which these days is inevitably reminiscent of this arm.

Anyone for Terminator:1889? John Connor has ancestors all the way back, after all.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

There is a sadly unfinished fanfic by a pair of pro SF writers (Brenda W. Clough and Ryk Erik Spoor) out on the net. Terminators of Endearment, or Pride and Extreme Prejudice a Jane Austin/Terminator crossover.

Not Terminator but the Wild Wild West tv series had a Six Thousand Dollar Man episode.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Woman and two children go to beach, pick up some pretty rocks, go home. Rocks dry out in womans pocket, BURST INTO FLAME.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

There you go, a source for three military submarines, ex-Russian by way of Libya, out there somewhere, unknown to the major powers. Suitable for housing mysterious terrorist organizations, freebooting adventurer companies, or rich mad engineers.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

That's...

That's awesome.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

I think it was 6 Million Dollar Man had an episode with that premise.

Mysterious terror organisation in a submarine, I mean, not downfall of a dictatorship. And the organisation was a motley mix of nationalities- German, Russian, American and British.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown

Saw this name on Google Maps when I was planning a jaunt around Lisbon and just had to look it up. Any place with that kind of name could be used in all kinds of games.

Some description, from their site:

That must be their explanation for the bizarre brain diagrams, people with funny electrical hats, and odd shambling "patients" seen running around late at night.

Great place to host an unusual find from a traveling Fortean response squad, don't you think? Or a well-meaning lecture by an educated professor who scoffs at the ravings of that lunatic who had been on the digs too long?

So it's near to the ocean, studies neuroscience, has exhibition areas for its cutting-edge research, and is proud of its link to the creation of ancient knowledge.

Yep. There's gonna be an eldritch invasion around there any night now.

Re: Real-Life Weirdness
 

Appantly it can rain "Cats and dogs" with fish
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-Lajamanu.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raining_animals