Ken Newquist Forget about faulty wings and bad engines — the “killer spiders on airplanes” hoax wants you to believe that scary South American arachnids are preying on our friends in Chicago. Here’s the original e-mail: WARNING An article by Dr. Beverly Clark, in the Journal of the United Medical Association (JUMA), the mystery behind recent deaths … Read more
Has the dead hand of a notorious atheist succeeded in getting the federal government to ban the word “God” from America’s airways, thus forcing CBS to cancel Touched by an Angel? In a word, no. This hoax has been circulating since 1975, and shows no signs of going away, despite the fact that its primary … Read more
DC HeroClix: Hypertime builds on WizKids Games’ success with Marvel HeroClix: Infinity Challenge, adding some of the biggest names in the DC universe to the game’s superhero fray. As with Marvel HeroClix (read my review of the initial release in Science Fiction Weekly (Internet Archive), DC HeroClix is a miniatures based game played on one of … Read more
The SlaveMaster e-mail has returned to stalk the Internet, this time donning the persona of “MonkeyMan935” in an attempt to scare uninformed men and women. Like its predecessor, the MonkeyMan935 e-mail is a hoax. To date, we’ve captured two versions of the new hoax: Date Captured: Nov. 6, 2002 The state Police are warning all … Read more
With my Thanksgiving editorial, I urged people to piss off a liberal and buy something on Black Friday. And amazingly enough, it worked! In an e-mail succinctly entitled Go To Hell Kenneth an irate reader took me to task for my editorial. The e-mail wasn’t signed, so I don’t know who wrote it (and to … Read more
Once some fans encounter J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, they never truly leave it, choosing instead to keep exploring the myriad, mystical depths of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The rest of us though, could use some help staying in touch with the land of Frodo. The Guide to Middle Earth 2003 calendar does exactly that.’,NULL,8,NULL,’ … Read more
Why buy the world a Coke, when you can just forward an e-mail? That question’s at the heart of an e-mail hoax that promises free cola for fowarding a certain e-mail around the Net. Here’s the original e-mail: Date Captured: April 17, 2000 Subject: FREE COCA COLA FOR A MONTH Coca-Cola is offering four free … Read more
Well, it’s official. I’m 31. Doesn’t seem all that different from 30, aside from that whole “one year older” thing, and even that’s not a big deal. I may be a year older, but I’m also a year closer to where I want to be … and who I want to be. Aside from the … Read more
After years of talking about it, we finally ran our first game of Fading Suns last week. It was a Wednesday night session run by one of the guys in my gaming group, Damon Agretto, in his first outing as a game master for the group, and it went pretty damn well. We’re using the … Read more
An e-mail claiming to be raising money to save a kid dying of brain cancer claims you don’t have a heart if you delete the message (no doubt it will have been stolen by a rampaging band of kidney thieves looking to branch out into new markets). A later version, captured in December, includes a … Read more