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The Schedule This Week

Stringing Together Our Little Orbs
Hello, and welcome to Monday.

Just for this week, we’re tweaking the schedule a bit:

Tonight we’ll be releasing another FlashCast, this time regarding zombies, cussing, and possibly the Antiques Roadshow.

If you have something you’d like us to discuss, or if you’ve recently fled Nigeria with a large stash of funds you’d like to release to me if only I could pay the brokerage fee, you can call our voicemail line at (206) 338-2792, or email us text or mp3s to skinner@skinner.fm.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we’ll be releasing Flash Pulp #127, in which PI Mulligan Smith must deal with some random, and uninvited, nudity.

From there we pretty much get back on track. Wednesday we’ll have another tale of The Collective Detective, and, for Friday, I’m cooking up a bit of a special surprise to round out the week.

Stay tuned – and if you’d rather just have everything delivered to your doorstep, why not subscribe via iTunes?

Sunday Summary

At The Monument To Robot Freedom

Join me on a walk through some of my week’s better tweets, won’t you?

A cliff on a moon made of pudding

My Office Window

Our Previously Terrifying Future

XB-70 in flightThere’s always a lot of nostalgia floating around regarding “the way things were”, and not always undeservedly so, but there are things we’ve had a hand in that leave me blinking at the possibilities for awe and disaster.

In the 1950s, nuclear power was all the rage – so much so that the American Government undertook to develop a nuclear-powered bomber aircraft that it could use to to deploy atomic weaponry from high altitudes, and at high velocity.

Not only would a nuclear-plane be able to maintain supersonic speeds, it could do so nearly indefinitely.

Imagine a sky full of planes that only need to land when their wings start to peel off.

Of course, reality came down heavy on the designers, and the radioactive aspects of the engine were pulled out of the contract.
WS-110

This beast was the first proposal for an alternate. As the wikipedia notes, “the “floating panels” are large fuel tanks the size of a B-47″ – and they were intended to peel off once empty.

Like the atomic aspect, the extra tanks were also eventually left in the design-room’s trash, and two prototypes were built, with a third canceled mid-production. Technology had simply outpaced their need.

What happened to the orphaned birds that once dreamed of being nuclear?

On 8 June 1966, XB-70A #2 was in close formation with four other aircraft (an F-4, F-5, T-38, and F-104) for a photoshoot […] the F-104 drifted into contact with the XB-70’s right wing, flipped over, and rolling inverted, passed over the top of the Valkyrie, struck the vertical stabilizers and left wing and exploded, destroying the Valkyrie’s rudders and damaging its left wing […] the Valkyrie entered an uncontrollable spin and crashed into the ground north of Barstow, California. – wikipedia

A simple accident that could have happened in any, or to any, aircraft; nothing mechanical, just pilot error – still, in an alternate history of ever-flying planes, it would have been anything but a simple clean up.

The remaining prototype is in a museum, where it probably belongs.

Flash Pulp 126 – Ruby Departed: Local Hero, Part 3 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and twenty-six.

Flash Pulp

Tonight we present, Ruby Departed: Local Hero, Part 3 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp126.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Walker Journals.

Ever been to a funeral where you’re greeted at the door by the guest of honour’s slobbering mouth?

Find all the tips you’ll need to survive the zombie apocalypse at http://youtube.com/user/WalkerZombieSurvivor

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Ruby wrestles with her conscience – and the undead.

 

Flash Pulp 126 – Ruby Departed: Local Hero, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

[Text to be posted]

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License. Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

No, not M*A*S*H

Here are two more mashups that I’ve recently discovered that I wanted to share. First, a song that would have sent the sixteen-year-old version of myself into an utter tailspin:

Led Zeppelin vs Black Sabbath – Whole Lotta Sabbath

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThU9BOWcmjM]

When I was young I had a very compressed sense of time – I remember having discussions with my Dad in which I was unable to differentiate between when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the age of pirates, and the era of cowboys.

I don’t see the recent trend for mashup creation helping that sort of confusion any.

Queen vs. Outkast – Hey We Will Rock You Ya

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LFYfCouzIY]

The Dangers, and Freedom, of Silicon

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zFdTrpjRjs]

Did you catch this video over at BoingBoing? Realistic masks are no longer the stuff of Mission Impossible, now you too can be an old man starting at the low, low, price of $700.

This is the same mask, I believe, recently featured in one man’s flight from Chinese oppression:

On October 29, a young Chinese man who was wearing a latex mask, cap and a cardigan sweater which disguised him as an old Caucasian man was able to board an international flight after passing Hong Kong airport security and make it on a flight to Vancouver, Canada. he took off the disguise and showed his true self sometime mid-flight. – Thaindian News

– and is from the same line of masks as the selection used by a recent bank bandit:

Silicon-Masked Robber From The Telegraph ArticleAccording to police reports, Conrad Zdzierak, 30, is alleged to have used the £450 silicon mask in an audacious string of six bank robberies in Ohio. – The Telegraph

I’ve often wondered what effect the internet has had on the perception of race and sexuality – it’s my theory that the uncertainty of the identity at the far end of the connection generates a greater need for tolerance – but we seem to be living in a world where even the likelihood of being able to believe your own lying-eyes is rapidly dropping.

What would happen if you were in the park with your ornery grandfather, listening to him complain regarding the personal affection a male couple were showing each other, only to have one of the apparent lovebirds pull back a layer of rubber to reveal a woman underneath?

Better yet, what would have happened if, eighty years ago, a black man in the American south had discovered one of these masks and realized it could be the key to a much better paying job?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8h_v_our_Q]