The Drabblecast ~ #217 "Followed" by Will McIntosh

Art by John Deberge

Another hit for Drabblecast this week as our host, Norm Sherman, delivers great stuff in the form of drabbles and twit fics, and amazing story, and more floppy boob jokes from Connor Choadsworth. The theme of this week was eating my brain until I picked up that ugly stick and beat the zombie off me, and then I realized as I was felt the change that this week was all  about the undead.

The drabble, “They’re Stocks Are Down, But They Will Not Die” was presented by prolific writer and drabbler, and new Drabblecast submissions editor, Nathan Lee. Nathan has been in the biz for some time now and has drabbles and writings appear on previous Drabblecasts, Pseudopod, and Daily Science Fiction. Check out his stuff, and I do mean his work, at http://www.mirrorshards.org/.

We are also blessed to hear the final conclusion of Connor Choadsworth’s “In Search of the Brain Eating Nandi Bear” part VI. A two part episode that blew my socks…, pants…, brains…, yes brains. With a clutch of boob jokes to carry the comedy, I have to say that this mini-series was not as good as “In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm” story. All in all though it did its job and now I have the rest of my life to think about poopy #2 pencils.

“Followed”, our main feature was a weird rollercoaster of emotion. Skillfully written by Will McIntosh, the tale in a sense is about how people avoid death. Death always come a shuffling after you when the time is right, and it doesn’t matter if your rich or poor, fat or thin, death always finds you. The acceptance of the end is the key to this one folks. I don’t want to spill too much into this so im just going to say check it out, because this is the stuff that Drabblecast is made of.



HPPodcraft.com – Episode #91 – Dreams in the Witch House pt. 2

Sorry for the late post on this one. This last Thursday the guys got a little farther in discussing H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House". In the last episode the essence of terror that surrounds Brown Jenkin was one of the main topics. A new character is discussed and the confusion of how Lovecraft intertwines Christianity with his Cthulhu mythos.

Joined again with Kenneth Hite, and the voice of Dave Stinton, Chad and Chris, deliver another hilariously informative installment in their three part series covering the story. Check it out!

Still need donations to get those great readings of H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" read by the mighty Andrew Leman.

Pumpkin in a Pear Tree

A strange site for a couple on an Iowa farm, as they look out to their pear tree. At first glance one would be confused to see a pumpkin growing not only on a tree but suspended so high off the ground. By the looks of it the pumpkin patch that it belongs to is engulfing the base of the tree, giving an explanation to how it got up there.

JaNelle Lovely, the land owner, says she found the peculiar site on Labor Day. She says many people have stopped out to see it for themselves, and she hopes it stays there until it turns orange for the Halloween season.

The vine that holds the pumpkin is wrapped tightly up the tree giving it support to hang like one of the trees own fruits. It’s a great idea, and I wonder if someone got it from somewhere else.

How does the song go? …… Two turtle doves, and a pumpkin in a pear tree…?



HPPodcraft.com – Episode #90 – Dreams in the Witch House pt. 1

The Boys are back from their two week vacation, and there not alone. This week we join hosts Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer, as well as guest host Kenneth Hite, and reader Dave Stinton, as they delve into H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”. In this first part, the boys scratch the surface of the actual story while they talk about the nuzzling human-faced rat, Brown Jenkin, and why he portrays such a terrifying character in this story.

Art by Chris Lackey

The HPPodcraft is a podcast that I have been listening to for a little over a year. I stumbled upon them on iTunes after I heard another podcast talk about the Necronomicon. Since 09’ Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer have been going through the list of H.P.L stories in order of when they were written. They rely on the donations of listeners to keep them going, and the support of all the fans to make the show better and better. On occastion they have been known to(with the help of those donations I was talking about.) release full story readings of Lovecrafts work. They’re definitely one of the things I look forward to every week.

They are 3/4 of the way there, but the guys need just a little more help to deliver a full reading of "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, with reader Andrew Leman

Glowing Cats Help In Fight Against AIDS

In 2008, scientists from the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, LA, made headlines when they played god and engineered an orange tabby cat to glow in the dark with a neon green shine. The purpose for the cute nightlights was to positively confirm a successful gene implantation.

Today the fluorescent kitties shined into the news again as team from Mayo Clinic have made another breakthrough using the glow in the dark technique. Believe it or not, there is a killer out there that is very similar to one that stalks humans. AIDS. Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), causes AIDs, and is slowly growing more and more a problem for cats across the world.

What Mayo Clinic has done is they have found a way to engineer cats to produce a protein that helps their bodies resist the FIV. By inserting a monkey gene into feline eggs before they are fertilized, the cats can grow up and possibly pass the protein production down to their kittens.

It seems the night light technique was used to help show if the gene engineering worked in the cats. A jellyfish gene is what gives the cats the radiated glow of a mutant, which is pretty much what they are, but cutter.

So why are people messing with the chemical design of cats and turning them green and making them more like monkeys and jellyfish? Glad you asked. See, humans and cats have a very similar gene structure when it comes to immunity and cells. HIV and FIV are both terribly good at depleting the body’s immune system, and preventing immune cells from fighting off infection. So in finding what we have about the protective genes that are possible to place in cat’s shows that not only can we maybe walk around glowing green, but we could have a way to prevent HIV/AIDS.

To see if the resistance works is to be seen I guess, but scientist feel they are closer than ever to preventing the deficiency.

“We haven’t shown cats that are AIDS proof,” says Eric Poeschla, a molecular biologist and infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic, “We still have to do infection studies involving whole cats. That the protection gene is expressed in the cat lymphoid organs, where AIDS virus spread and cell death mostly play out, is encouraging to us, however.”

So There you have it folks, they’re not for sale, yet. With this new technology I wouldn’t be surprised if people started looking over the idea of helping stop AIDS, and just want to get shot up with jellyfish glow genes.

The Drabblecast ~ #216 "The Book Of Eternity" by Mike Resnick

Art by Jan Dennison

This week’s episode #216 concludes Lovecraft month for the Drabblecast. The weekly audio fiction magazine had some difficulties getting finished up, but for those who couldn’t get their tentacles on the episode from the www.Drabblecast.org, could have swung over to iTunes (provided you own an iPod) and updated the feed. Anyhow I got it and I want to let you know about it.

First let me say that this is the first post Unspeakable Gibberer has done for any Podcast, and will not be the last, nor will it be the only Podcast we talk about. Second, this week’s episode was a great way to close out Lovecraft month on Drabblecast!

For the last couple months, Drabblecast has periodically produced an ongoing crypto zoology series entitled – In Search of The Brain-Eating Nandi Bear in which protagonist, Connor Choadsworth, teams up with his taintilizing competition, Von Tainthammer, to find a live Nandi Bear. So far we’ve seen boobs that look like floppy PVC pipes, tar-babys, a Cheshire cat, and mad cow disease, but still no Nandi bears. It’s been fun and this addition didn’t disappoint. Next week will be the sixth episode and the dramatic conclusion.

This week’s story is obviously based around a certain theme, or at least an item in particular, books. So I felt it was a nice path to be set on after hearing this week’s Drabble – My Secret Co-Author, by Evan Quinlan. A great short to make the hairs on the back of your hand stand up. Evan Quinlan lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has quite the knack for writing 100 word stories. Check him out at http://drabbleshire.org.

Now onto the main feature - The Book of Eternity by Mike Resnick. Im not one to give away the story, so I won’t dig too much into it. I do want to say however, that this story kinda freaked me out. For some it may not be much of a twist in the end, but I was doing mental flips when I heard this tale progress. I liked it so much I listened to it again. I am an aspiring weird fiction writer, and to hear someone with the smooth grace of Mike Resnick pulling off the style he loves to show is an honor. When Norm was reading off evil tome after evil tome, I was baffled on how someone is able to come up with such names and to write them in so neatly without the whole story sounding like a Barnes and Noble catalog on the occult section. Mike, has won 5 Hugo awards, 34 nominations for the award, and has also won a Nebula award. Check more of his stuff out at www.MikeResnick.com and please give this a listen on the Drabblecast!

Where's My Shoggoth?

There’s a new crowd getting into Lovecraft these days, and im not talking about your average cultists. I was bumping around Amazon.com one day looking for a couple new books to bury my nose in, when I came across this.

Little Wilbur Whateley has a god.
It's a big red god.
Other folks have gods, too ...
but Wilbur has the biggest, reddest god in Dunwich

I was dumbfounded, and lost my sanity as I scrolled down to see a relative list of children’s books based in the Lovecraft Mythos. A sense of hopeless joy washed over me as I browsed through the reviews of “Where the Deep Ones Are”, “The Antarctic Express”, and “Baby’s First Mythos”.

"Baby's First Mythos" is a collection of short stories and poems "to blast your childs soul" as one description put it, and is written by C.J. Henderson and drawn by Erica Henderson. The author of "The Antarctic Express", and "Cliffourd The Big Red God", - Kenneth Hite is quite prolific in the realm of Lovecraft, and  does an amazing job addapting two childrens classics ("Where The Wild Things Are", and "the Polar Express") for children, and I am happy to say that I will be looking forward to sharing these with my kids someday.

Interested in what else might be floating around for children mythos books, I looked around some more and came across what seems to be a promising book in the future. “Where’s My Shoggoth?” is a fully illustrated book from Archaia publishing written by Ian Thomas and dawn by Adam Bolton. The book has recently been finished and will be in Archaia’s spring catalog. The tale is about a young boy who loses his pet shoggoth, and in the journey to find it encounters a bunch of other Lovecraftian creatures. Im looking forward to grabbing this one and I will throw up an update when I hear more news.

 



IDW's The Dunwich Horror

Lock up your Necronomicon, and hide the cows, because here comes IDW Publishing’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”! Announced last July, Joe R. Lansdale will start writing the tale, while artist Peter Bergting will begin illustrating. As if people aren’t excited enough to see how Bergting will portray one of H.P.L’s greatest stories, but to be teamed up with eight time Bram Stoker Award winner, Joe R. Lansdale….. I have no words.

“It’s flattering to be working on a Lovecraft project, one of the most influential horror writers of all time,” says Lansdale, I would have to agree, I think I would simply go… well shall I say mad if I got to work on a Lovecraft project.

It is going to take four issues to get through, which im sure most people will enjoy more, but a sweet bit of desert for each issue will include a tiny adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Hound” with help from . I also saw while looking for info on this topic that readers are encouraged to ask their retailer about the variant Nick Percival covers and “The Dunwich Horror” prose chapbooks for each issue. Those will include original prose from the original story.

This is one of my favorite stories and I am happy to also say that I have heard that this is the beginning. That’s right supposedly there are more possible H.P. Lovecraft stories on the table for consideration. Praise Yogsothoth!!

I couldn't find the fourth cover, but im sure soon enough it will be brought to my attention.

Crikey Crocs!!

There’s BIG news in Manila, where a local village has been haunted and hunted by a predator whose size rivals beasts from the ocean. It seems after a three week hunt, a 21 foot male crocodile was successfully trapped along a creek in Bunawan in Agusan del Sur province.

One of the largest on record of being caught, this 2,370 pound monster had proved to be quite the match for the little Philippine  village. After a few missing fishermen, and a witness saying they saw the beast practically swallowing a water buffalo, something had to be done to protect the frightened villagers.

So after the help of some outside experts at a croc farm in Palawan province, and after four traps were destroyed by the huge lizard, the capture was successful. Around 100 people had to help grapple the croc from the water to a crane which lifted it into a truck.

But don’t worry; there are big plans for the catch. “It will be the biggest star of the park,” said Elorde, mayor of Manila, while explaining the new plans to build an ecotourism park for species found in their lands. Elorde added that the villager were happy to turn the dangerous croc “from a threat into an asset.”

Ahh nothing sounds better than when the indigenous want to be like Americans and exploit natural life. All in good fun though, the whole time I was hearing about this, I imagined Steve Irwin strolling along in this “park” and suddenly seeing this 21 foot monster. His heart would start slamming as he would grab the hand rail around the exhibit and scream leaning over the edge.

“Crikey she’s a Beauty!”

Swimmers Rash

It all started with that lake. Me and the girlfriend and some others made a day trip to this lake called Nevaeh. Took us damn near all day to find it, so when we did we decided to camp it out for the night, and sleep in the van. When we got there we took off strait for the water leaving a trail of clothes in our wake. It felt nice to cool off and I couldn’t help but feel at home and well… safe.

We kicked around and splashed each other for a while and then settled down for some dinner. While we were eating my buddy Conrad pointed out a little island about 100 or so yards out from our camp. It didn’t look that far so me and him decided to swim out to it and poke around. We had nothing else to do and the women didn’t want to join us for a night swim so we blew our kisses and swam out there.

The moon was bright even though it wasn’t fully sundown and it seemed as though we were disturbing something silent. It wasn’t until we got there that Conrad pointed out as we left the water, that there were no ripples on the lake.

The Island was small but seemed to have enough mass that it took us 30 minutes to travel all the way around it. The night was dark now, and the stars looked like glitter sprayed onto a black canvas. We stood in the water looking at how the moons intense reflection lit up the entire lake.

I was in awe when I felt a sharp pinch on the bottom of my right foot. I lifted it quickly and kicked as if to dislodge something like a sharp rock. But as I stepped forward and placed all my weight on that foot I fell in instant pain. I hadn’t dislodged anything and now it was in my foot.

I barked out in pain and grabbed for my foot. Sure enough it was a rock, but something looked weird about it. As I pulled it out with great discomfort Conrad jumped back as it began to glow a dull green. I dropped it instantly in the water, and like a flame the green glow was gone.

“What was that thing man?” asked Conrad in a shaky tone.

“Some sort of rock I think” I replied eerily equally as shaky.

I stood quickly and then bent back down, favoring my foot, and scooped for the rock again. Handful after handful presented nothing. And now not feeling so safe I suggested that we head back to camp.

“Aw are you ok babes?” my girl was asking as we stood in the water at camp and told the story.

“Its ok doesn’t even hurt now to be honest.” I said trying to act tuff, but in truth it really didn’t hurt.

“Kinda freaked me out at first, when it happened I saw the water cloud up and I thought I saw blood on my hand but I don’t know. Let’s get dried off it freezing out here.”

I was already favoring the foot to prevent me from stepping on the wound that I felt was there, and yet as my foot left the water a stabbing throb began to pulse through my foot. I winced and limped up to camp to settle for the night.

The fire was hot; I mean I couldn’t even sit within seven feet of that sucker. When I did get close it felt like my skin was burning and would begin to itch like it was dry. I mentioned this to Conrad and asked how he felt thinking that I might have caught some sort of swimmers rash. He was fine and snuggled up next to his lady by the dancing flames. Even the smell of the smoke was choking and I felt a little short of air at times. By this time the throbbing pain had spread up to my thigh and I could feel a sensation all over as if I my joints were locking up.

My girl came over to check on me and sat on my lap, which hurt like hell but I wanted the attention. I told her about the pain in my joints and she reached for my hand as if to kiss it but stopped before her lips touched his skin. She didn’t need to say anything because I saw it too. Under the skin, between my fingers, something was moving.

She fell off my lap and crawled away real fast, I think she was screaming, im not sure. I was suddenly hypnotized by something out in the lake. The island seemed to have a faint green aurora about it like a fog or haze and I could see things sliding from the smooth water and standing on shore. They looked shapeless and seemed to move like shadowy ripples, and then they began to sing.

It was loud and to my human ears it sounded like rushing waters flooding my mind. I jerked and fell out of the hypnosis and began to scream in pain. I looked at my hand and saw my skin begin to tear and leak a dull green fluid as three writhing tentacles broke through. And then with the last memory of my sapient mind I looked down to my injured foot and slipped in to a terrific oblivion as I took in the sight of a long slightly scaled tentacle.

I was something else after that, my mind new it and I felt it. I could feel myself leaving my old skin and attempting to support myself on my new limbs. As I shambled to the water, I looked back at the three faces that I once knew. My vision was blurry and I could not make out their expressions, but I heard with my new ears, what sounded like a brutal gurgling through water from both the females. I looked back to the lake and the moon and began to understand the song, and as I slid into the dark still water, I again felt safe.

 ~DJL

The Unspeakable Gibberer

Down dark paths of twisted pines

The wind blows through shadowed vines

And when the moon is full and high

One might see nights denizens near by

At the zenith of night cover your ears

For fear of gibbering’s none should hear

And don’t go peaking for things unseen

For all there is are unspeakable

By: David Leingang