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Volume 7 No. 4 PLOKTA November 2002 This is issue 28 of Plokta, edited by Steve Davies, Alison Scott and Mike Scott. It is available for letter of comment (one copy to Alison’s address is fine, we pass them over to each other), trade (copies to each of our addresses if possible, please), contribution, editorial 3 Editorial 8 A Second Chance At Eden whim, or for an advance DVD of The Cabal Mike Scott Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In which we discuss why this Mike has also been exploring Steve Davies issue should have been late National Lottery Millennium Fund projects, with a trip to Cornwall to 4 That Walthamstow see the Eden Project. Earthquake Explained Alison Scott Alison Scott 9 Lokta Plokta Enterprises Alison explains her new fitness A bumper crop of locs this time, regime. With photos. No, we’re due to their non-appearance last not kidding. Although we can issue. We even tried to do a scarcely believe it ourselves. thorough search of Alison’s Mike Scott study, but gave up when our native bearers quit. 6 Protecting Flat Surfaces From The Weather 14 Carters Steam Fair [email protected] Steve Davies Steve Davies & Sue Mason www.plokta.com Steve continues his cultural tour The Cabal paid a visit to Britain’s of London with a visit to the Tate most traditional fun-fair. The Plokta News Network is at Modern gallery. www.plokta.com/pnn/ The cabal also includes Giulia De Cesare, Sue Mason, George the cat, Steven, Marianne and Jonathan Cain Art by Alison Scott & Sue Mason (cover), Sue Mason & Joe Siclari (8), Steve Kyte (2), Sue Mason (3, 4, 5, 7), Steve Jeffery (10), Kurt Erichsen (13) Photos by Steve Kyte (2), Alison Scott (3), Steve Davies (5, 14), Mike Scott (8), SMS (10), Tom Womack (12) Addresses of Contributors Sue Mason Giulia de Cesare, as for Steve Davies Kurt Erichsen Steve Kyte Others, see Lokta Plokta Cover inspired by the very wonderful Carters Steam Fair. Still in glorious PLOKTACOLOR™ Steve Kyte can use Photoshop too 2 November 2002 PLOKTA Volume 7 No. 4 Editorial BOLLOCKS SO here we are again with the traditional it’s- in fanzine production except for beer, the Bowled A Googlie too-late-to-be-technically-eligible-for-the- Internet, large meals, Dance Dance Revolution, As alluded to in the editorial, Novas-so-it-can’t-be-a-desperate-last-minute- more large meals, more beer, Giulia’s heavy Alison was searching for suitable bid-to-curry-favour-with-the-voters-honest- elf-slash addiction, Have I Got News For You fonts to use in composing the guv November issue of Plokta. But frankly, and Alison’s usual habit of spending 95% of cover of this issue. So, of course, it’ll be a miracle if this is actually being passed the available time in selecting the fonts to use she did a web search for “Victorian font”. It’s just a shame around at Novacon (Novacon 2002, at any on the cover. So, business as usual then. that the first result started “The rate), due to our complete lack of task Alas, Giulia has joined Steve in the Victorian font can be found to the orientation and goal focus at the past couple increased leisure society, and the Cabal are left of the nave…”. of Plokta weekends. Many of you may be now less than 50% employed (indeed, less thinking “surely it’s not been long since the than 20% employed if you don’t count Fanzine Articles last issue of Plokta. Or even, in extreme cases, government work). So she’s going to need to the last two issues of Plokta. You may have find a new excuse to give her physiotherapist We’d Like To See received the last two issues out of order, for spending all day hunched over a hot together, or not at all. OK, time to come Tobes and Max Hit The Road by, keyboard. well, Max and Tobes clean; we’ve had a bit of a cockup on the mailing front. Far be it for us to lay the blame “Elrond is my wallpaper, but Haldir My Trip Report by almost any TAFF delegate where it’s due, but Alison failed to post out is my screensaver” issue 26 for months on end, and Mike Why We Resigned by the decided that everyone who’d been at the con London fandom is looking for a new pub Interaction board could wait for issue 27 until after he’d got again, following the Sparkler Affair, the Why I want to run a Worldcon by back from his secret tryst in Cornwall (see Secret Policemen’s Piss-Up, the Murine Stephen Boucher elsewhere in the issue). So no need to worry, Infestation, the Gaseous Débâcle and other Anything at all by George Dave, we haven’t gone monthly. incidents too unsavoury to mention in a family fanzine. Despite cries of “we’re happy Personals Column here, we don’t want to move again!” from the electorate, Mike has been joining the pub It is a truth universally crawls organised by Paul Treadaway to try to acknowledged that a single fan in find a replacement venue—how we suffer for possession of all his goolies faculties should get in touch with fandom—and we hope that we might have Lilian Edwards. somewhere by Novacon. But updated details of the seemingly endless quest can be found on the Plokta News Network web-site Cute Cat Story (www.plokta.com/pnn/), which we haven’t It’s the time of year when our plugged since the previous page. feline friends begin to leave We’ve not got very far with the fanzine presents on the back lawn. We on previous weekends. In fact, our only hope “Don’t get noodles on the moose” think they’re trying to encourage us to store up birds and rats for for getting the fanzine out for Novacon is the winter. Of course, Spookie that this weekend we are (pause for dramatic This may be the last issue of Plokta for has a bad habit of eating the chord (or, as Douglas Adams might have put some time. Not only will The Two Towers be whole thing except for the beak it, “Shrubbery!”)) childless (if you don’t count released in December, but just after Novacon and the feet before presenting his Alison, of course). Yes, Marianne and we’re getting the extended edition of gift to his loving mum. Anyone Jonathan are staying with their grandparents, Fellowship of the Ring, containing four have an idea of what to do with a pair of ostrich feet? the cat is sulking in a garden somewhere in commentaries, 28 minutes more footage of Berkshire, and there is nothing standing in Aragorn, and apparently three more words the way of our relentless pursuit of perfection from Haldir. Cattle Mutilators Strike Again Remember, remember the fifth of November Storybook girls Dorothy, Alice & Pippa Bull Gunpowder, Novas and Plokta 3 Volume 7 No. 4 PLOKTA November 2002 BOLLOCKS That Walthamstow All-Electric Bollocks Earthquake Explained Hey, do you remember those great ads back in the fifties and sixties showing how you’d have “We’re having a Dance Dance cycling along a real road. And these machines an all-electric home one day? Revolution—just as soon as we figure out cost thousands of pounds. There were those lovely, sleek, what dance dancing is.”—.sig on DDR But then I discovered Dance Dance custom-built houses with lime and forum Revolution, or DDR to its friends. We were yellow colour schemes and furnished entirely in formica with IT WAS all Max’s fault. She mentioned, in a on holiday, back in Pensarn again, and added tailfins. They were sort of off the cuff way, that she’d been playing pinball in the beach arcade. Right populated by trim little playing dancing games on her Playstation. I next to the pinball machine was a dancing housewives with Doris Day hair, had a vague memory of seeing one such game. We had a go. We did very badly. We who wore aprons with unfeasibly game, in Namco Station—what will those looked very stupid. But I’d hatched a plan. nipped-in waists and perhaps a zany Japanese think of next—and it looked One bout of instant gratification later, I was few discreet tailfins even, as they like fun. Fun in an embarrassing sort of way. the proud owner of a Playstation, a dance glided about pushing a button here and a button there to But also, it reminded me of a theory I’d had mat, and a dancing game. “In your living activate the automatic duster, for a while. room nobody knows you’re a twit.” vacuum cleaner, sweeper and so If you want to get fit, you go to a gym, Of course, there was a SCART problem. on. All would be electric-powered, right? And there you do all sorts of It’s like this. How was I to know that I air-conditioned and remote- fundamentally boring things, along to cheesy needed three SCART sockets? My TV is controlled. dance music. Then you go home and play quite new, and so has two. The DVD player video games all night. So wouldn’t it be much plugs into one, and the cable box plugs into better if you could play a completely the other. And the Playstation? Well, I never obsessive video game that required you to be thought I was the sort of person who would physically active in order to excel? Play video own a Playstation.