Twin Peaks Soap Opera

I just finished watching all of Twin Peaks. I also watched the Twin Peaks movie “Fire Walk With Me”, which disappointed me in the same way as the Matrix sequels, explaining mysteries that were better left unexplained. When I finally get back to Call of Cthulhu or some other Pulp RPG, Twin Peaks (the TV show) is going to be my template. Twin Peaks made me understand how important soap opera elements are in my favorite stories. I never thought of myself as a soaps fan, but after watching Twin Peaks I looked up Soap Opera Digest, and found that their editors are tracking the latest developments on Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Lost, even Stargate: Atlantis!

I then discovered Soap, the Soap Opera RPG. It is diceless and involves plot tokens, which again pushes me away from CoC and more in the direction of Pulp RPGs I’ve mentioned before like Savage Worlds and Spirit of the Century.

Advertisement

Another Cthulhu Tattoo

http://inknerd.com/2009/01/13/so-much-for-sanity/

Action-Packed Ghost Stories!

That’s what pulp king Robert E. Howard writes in this collection, The Black Stranger and Other American Tales. I just finished this short story collection and the gems are the amazing Weird West and Old South ghost stories. The Western stories bring in Howard’s love of American Indians, and really make the tales vivid.

Deep in the Sahara Desert, There Lies a Mile-Wide Crater…

The Tenoumer Crater lies far from any inhabited place. Try zooming out on the linked map to see how hard it would be to visit this crater. Was this an ancient alien city, blasted from space by rival intelligences? If so, does any artifact remain to be discovered?

Three Bags of Human Skulls Carved into Bowls

Via Reuters,

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepali police have recovered a mysterious consignment of parts of human skulls packed in bags in southeast Nepal near the border with India, police said on Wednesday.

The seizure of 168 pieces of skulls carved like bowls was made late on Tuesday at Kakarvitta, 275 km (172 miles) southeast of Kathmandu, on the border with India.

 

“During our regular border patrol we found three abandoned bags. They were full of human skulls,” police official Yadav Dhakal said.

Abandoned Soviet Polar Nuclear Lighthouses

Automated nuclear-powered lighthouses were built along the freezing northern coast of Russia to guide cargo ships, but they all fell into disrepair. Finally, they were looted by ignorant scrap-seekers who also contaminated the entire site with radioactivity and probably killed themselves with cancer in the process.

The Hound of Mons

Via Fortean Times, The Oklahoma Evening News reported in 1919 that a mad German scientist had replaced the brain of a wolf with that of a German soldier (who had gone insane with hatred of the British) and then let the wolf loose into Belgium’s No Man’s Land during WWI.

I’d love to hear about modern ghost stories from Iraq or Afghanistan.

Massive Underground Lake Discovered

Via National Geographic, what appears to be one of the largest underground lakes in the world was discovered a few months ago in Budapest. It is a thermal lake that once heated a turkish bath. Scuba divers have begun exploring the pitch blackness.

Buried Spanish Galleon Found

You fools! What madness have you unleashed upon us all?! That galleon was buried for a reason!

Airborne Microbes Spread by Forcing Clouds to Rain

Via National Geographic, Climatologists are shocked at new evidence of ice nucleating bacteria affecting weather patterns for their own benefit.