NaNoWriYe and the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Coffee's on, and that's all I can really say about the day so far.

Through another blog I've found a link to the NaNoWriYe nessage board, which I'll have to investigate later. Hurray! Something to possibly light a fire under my butt about my novel! Trouble is, the site is as slow as molasses in January...

...which actually isn't THAT slow, as we know from the Great Boston Molasses Flood of January 15th 1919. No, seriously. I'm not making it up.

From the Wikipedia link above: Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was.... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise.

I'm surprised that more people don't know about the Great Boston Molasses Flood, but of course that was one of the years of the Spanish Flu pandemic, which was a much greater and more lethal tragedy.

EDITED TO ADD: ( Some diabetes details )

The Incredible Exploding Whale of Oregon

A video news report from 1970 on how NOT to get rid of a dead 8 ton whale, with thanks to The Exploding Whale. Note to engineers: Flesh acts like a fluid, NOT like a solid. This will drastically change how it reacts to a dynamite blast.

"The sand dunes there were covered with spectators and land-lubber newsmen, shortly to become land-BLUBBER newsmen, for the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds."

Listen carefully after the whale explodes and you'll hear the "splut splut splut" sounds of falling, burning chunks of whale meat hitting the ground around the cameraman a quarter of a mile away from the explosion.

From a newspaper article:

"The beach erupted in a 100-foot high column of sand and whale. Chunks of the animal flew in every direction and spectators began to scream and run for cover when they glimpsed large pieces soaring directly overhead."

One can only imagine what the tourist trade in Florence, Oregon was like during the following year, with tiny pieces of stinking dead whale littering the landscape. And I can't help but wonder if all the cats and dogs deserted the town in protest at the appalling stench.

A strange phone call

I just got one of my strangest phone calls in 14 years as a Wiccan.

*phone rings*

Me: "Hello?"
Other Person: "Hello... I found your name through your listing on Witchvox... and I was wondering... I want to study to be a member of the clergy."
Me: "Of the Wiccan clergy?"
OP: "Well, I'm not sure."
Me: *pause* [You want to be clergy, but you don't know which... o-KAY] "Well, Paganism is an umbrella term, not a specific religion --"
OP: "I know that."
Me: "-- so you sort of have to pick a religion to study in before you can look at clergy status. Is Wicca something you're interested in?"
OP: "Well, I'm more into Druidism."
Me: "Hmmm. I'm afraid I can't help you out with that, and I'm trying to think of who on my list would have Druidic knowledge..."
OP: "I was thinking maybe I could study Wicca and have Druidism as a back-up."
Me: *pauses again* [What the FUCK?] "Um, no, I'm sorry, that wouldn't work. While the two systems have some superficial similarities, they're quite different in most other respects. Studying in one would not qualify you for the other. But let me take your name and phone number and I'll see if any of my contacts know about someone who could help you."
OP: *gives me their name, which is quite obviously a made-up one, and a phone number*

You know, when you become clergy in a religion, hopefully you do it because you BELIEVE in that religion. You don't become clergy in two separate and quite different faiths. To me, that smacks of looking at both religions as a hobby, not a vocation.

*sigh* I'll see what I can do to help the person in question, but I hope they rethink their priorities.

Boingboing.net is love

I seem to be finding a lot of interesting things to blog about today...

Boingboing.net is love... oh, yes, it is. There are some especially good articles on the March 24th 2008 page.

But my favorite has got to be the one about 1968's predictions for 2008.

"IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.

"The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off."

You can find the full text of the article at the Modern Mechanix blog, with scans of the original printed pages.

*bookmarks the Modern Mechanix blog as a whole for my later surfing pleasure*