300 Screaming Kids...

... or On This Day...

 I was just trawling through my dusty old archives, and wondered what we were up to on this day in the years gone by.
 It turns out that in 2007 we celebrated the 300th post of Inexplicable DeVice.
 In 2008 we screamed:

 And in 2010 we became an unwilling babysitter.

 That's it. Oh, some stuff happened in 2005, but it really needs an overhaul before I link to it, and I really can't be bothered right now - mainly because I'm tired and want to go to bed!

 See you all at the weekend! 

 

Seaside Stroll

 Except it wasn't really a stroll, more like a fast walk to keep warm!

 I thought I'd better make the most of the clear skies on Saturday, as the weather forecast for Sunday (today) was miserable. Although, as I sit here and type this, the sun's out (there are dark clouds looming in the distance, however)...

Cromer town from the strip of woods between Kings Chalet Park and Cromer Country Club

The offshore supply ship Putford Ajax, and the offshore construction jack up Neptune

Here they are in a bit more detail (although still fuzzy - they were a long way off).
I used MarineTraffic.com to identify them

A Git By Any Other Name...

 Yes. He's returned from fathering another monstrous brood: Beaky!

 No sooner does the temperature drop, than Beaky appears.

 Can't be arsed to forage for food in the woods? Well, why not terrorise the neighbourhood with shrill, piercing screams, and eye-removing aerial stunts until someone (i.e. me) relents and chops up a load of sugary sultanas to fill your fat little belly. Or leaves apple halves laying around in handy-to-get-to places. Or flings handfulls of meal worms about the place for whenever you'd like a snack.

 Bah!

  

Procrastinating with Evil Edna

Evil Edna (from Willo the Wisp)

 Evil Edna, a witch from the depths of my childhood, has cast her wicked influence on me!  She consistently thwarts me with her flickering images when I have something important or time-sensitive to do.
 A result of Evil Edna's meddling is this list of TV shows I've watched or I'm still watching, which has been languishing in my blog drafts for months.  I keep adding to it every time I ought to be doing something more constructive or useful but find something new to watch instead.
 I'm not really sure what the point of this post is supposed to be, though?  Originally, I think I'd intended it to play some part in the end-of-year Coven Awards (which -Yikes! - I'd better make a start on. I haven't even thought of a theme, yet), but it now seems to be a grim reminder of how I'm wasting my life...
 Oh, well!

Not The 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge IV

 This latest batch of books from over The Cusp is brought to you in the vaguest of associations with The 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge. There're only three books rather than the usual five this time due to busyness interfering with reading time.
 

Solicitation cover - may not be final

λ : Beautiful Robots Dancing Alone, by Marian Keyes

 I was lucky enough to be one of the beta-readers for this new novel by Strictly Come Dancing superfan Marian Keyes. 
 Actually, luck didn't come into it - I made a few small contributions for which Marian showed her extreme gratitude by letting me have a read before the official publishing next year!
 Here's the blurb:   

 It is late Spring 2016, and in a broom cupboard deep in the bowels of the BBC's Elstree Studios a Charles CVC370, sick of being relegated to vacuuming up sequins from Strictly Come Dancing, show after show after show, clatters and clanks into life! 
 Now Autumn, and during the live Strictly Halloween show the unthinkable happens: The BBC's troop of professional dancers are revealed to be robots when, provoked by Head Judge Len Goodman after he witnessed her questionable rumba with Greg Rutherford, Nataliebot deviates from her programming and carves a swathe of destruction throughout the Elstree Studios.  The computer virus quickly spreads to the other dancers and - under the direction of Antron du Borg - Aljažbot, Gorkatron, Otibot, and the Cliftoncons hold their celebrity partners and Strictly host Claudia Winkleman hostage.  Meanwhile, Pashpotbot seduces BBC Deputy Director General Anne Bulford, convincing her to overthrow Director General Tony Hall and take over the BBC for reasons not immediately apparent...

Hallowe'en

Happy Hallowe'en from Monstrous Marrow and Pungent Pumpkin!

Books Not On Chairs or Other Seating Conveniences...

 ... because I only have the briefest of windows available, this is all I have time for. I couldn't even find the time to plop a few books on chairs and take some snaps! Not that I have any chairs you haven't already seen in previous outings...

::

41. Time Lock (Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations), by Christopher L. Bennett (2016)

 The dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations have their work cut out for them protecting the course of history from the dangers of time travel. But the galaxy is littered with artifacts that, in the wrong hands, could threaten reality. One of the DTI's most crucial jobs is to track down these objects and lock them safely away in the Federation’s most secret and secure facility. As it happens, Agent Gariff Lucsly and his supervisor, DTI director Laarin Andos, are charged with handling a mysterious space-time portal device discovered by Starfleet. But this device turns out to be a Trojan horse, linking to a pocket dimension and a dangerous group of raiders determined to steal some of the most powerful temporal artifacts ever known...

 Exhilarating!

Mish Mash

 Due to the quite sudden turn of the weather at the end of September, I haven't been out-and-about on many walks/drifts-
 Or partaken of many flights on Broom!
 - so I don't have many photos of the Norfolk countryside for you.

Did I hear someone breathe a sigh of relief?

Probably. Those same stretches of beach were getting a bit tiresome. And that Cormorant was getting ideas above his station what with getting an agent and appearing on other blogs!

 Yes, all right... So, anyway, this post is just going to be a mish-mash of the least boring stuff we've been up to.

::

Saturday, 1st October

 First, some news from the garden: The passion flower that I bought last year and planted with a clematis behind the bench, has finally flowered! Yes, after two summers of not doing very much at all, it finally got its act together and started producing flowers at the beginning of October.
 Better late than never, I suppose.

::

Twisted October: Star Trek Art Challenge

 I had a fun afternoon yesterday creating some horror novel covers for a Star Trek fan art challenge being held on another social media website (no, not the dreaded FB - I don't do that any more). The challenge is below:

What if Roddenberry didn't invent Star Trek, with all its optimism, but Lovecraft instead? What if Voyager was primarily penned by Stephen King? What if Starfleet was inspired by 1984?

This flash contest will let those, who dare, explore the dark and twisted parts of the Star Trek universe. Or is this the Horrorverse alternate reality? You decide. Let us shiver, let us scream, give us something that will wake us from our dream. Give us a reason to be afraid of the infinite dark of space!

 I've used images (which I nabbed from here), titles, and quotes (from here) from the five live-action Star Trek television series: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and smushed them together in Paint (because I don't have Photoshop or any other such program, and wouldn't know how to use them if I did).

"Catspaw" (from The Original Series), written by Robert Bloch

Forty

 With thanks to Mistress Maddie, we have a new blog post! And to clarify (like Maddie did) we are not forty.
 No. Forty is something that happens to other people.
 This is a list of forty questions about us, that we will endeavour to answer as truthfully as we can. The answers will either be from me...
 ... Or from me, the Host.
 Right. Let's get on with it, shall we?

::

1- Are you named after anybody? My two middle names are the first names of my grandfathers.
2- When was the last time you cried? Saturday night watching the reaction to Ore & Joanne's American Smooth to "Singin' in the Rain" on Strictly Come Dancing.

3- Do you like your hand writing? I do, actually. Despite having enormous hands, the Host is quite dextrous with a pen or pencil.
4- What's your favourite lunch meat? Lunch meat? I don't really know what that is. Do we have lunch meat in Great Britain?
5- Do you have any kids? Not in stock at the mo. The cupboard's a little bare...
6- If you were another person, would you be friends? Probably not as I'd easily be able to pick up on the other me's insincerity.
7- Do you use sarcasm? Surprisingly little.

Not The 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge III

 This edition of Not The 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge comes to you a little late. Or a little early, if you're not bothered about having one every two months to match up to The Very Mistress MJ's original challenges?
 One of the reasons for this apparent scheduling fail is that I had an interminable wait before I could cross the Cusp Interface and come home. I left my friends' floating glass castle on Thursday—expecting to be back in time for The Very Mistress's Sixth Annual Infomaniac Garden Photos Event—but ended up stuck in a dizzying holding pattern in one of the Cusp departure lounges due to leaves on the line, or some other such nonsense! With little else, to do, I entertained myself with some of the least objectionable literature that had been left laying around the lounge...

ζ : Jeffrey Hunter was my Poolboy! by Ingmar Devine

 Jeffrey Hunter's sheer beauty and presence has managed to elevate this sad, cheap little rag (I mean, I know it was printed in the early 70s, but colour had been invented by then) to a must-read—

Must ogle, more like!

 Cwooaaarrghh, yeah!
*ahem* A must-read for any waiting room, holiday—

Or visit to the sperm bank!

 Right! That's quite enough from you lot!
 What was I saying? Oh, yes. Jeffrey Hunter.
 Once I'd got past all the pictures of The Most Handsome Man in Hollywood (which took some time, let me tell you), I was left with the text. And very poorly written it was, too. I found it quite difficult to follow the narrative and work out the timeline of events (and that's saying something for one who is now used to the annoyances of time-travel). But the characters, although barely fleshed out, did seem reasonably believable, and even a little familiar. In fact, the whole thing left me with a strange feeling of stretched out déjà vu.
 I think I'd better do some investigating into this Ingmar Devine. I wonder if we're related...?

Head in the Clouds

 We're on holiday for two weeks!
 So I'm taking this opportunity to visit a couple of old friends who, coincidentally, happen to be passing by this corner of the world. The wind has now changed, so their castle should be within a short Broom flight tomorrow morning. I just need to nip into Cromer to get a pair of sunglasses, as I shall be navigating through blinding white cumulus clouds for the majority of the trip.
 You see, they live in a (mostly) glass castle that floats about two-thousand feet up!

::

 

As it's a nice day, I decided to walk into Cromer along the beach