Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

If you’re not familiar with the UK theme park scene, there are basically two main theme parks in the UK: Thorpe Park, and Alton Towers. And the former has had some curious business going on, according to this article.

I must admit that, when I first saw the headline, my first thought turned to the idea as an idea for a story. But then I suppose most things do nowadays. This, though; this would be the perfect scene for a Graveyard Book style story, and I didn’t really click on expecting to find anything too serious. Perhaps someone had been spooked by some kids messing around; had been subject to some strange prank. But no, it seems that managers at the park are so scared that they have called in somebody to perform an exorcism.

It sounds like, for whatever reason, employees were fiddling around with a Ouija board on the Saw ride, and afterwards a number of spooky things started happening: lights flickering, footsteps being heard despite no one being there – that sort of thing. It all sounds very fishy. I haven’t been to experience the ride yet, but wouldn’t flickering lights be part of what makes the ride scary in the first place? I find it strange (but quite interesting) that the suits have deemed it necessary to try and exorcise any demons or unwanted spirits.

I’m quite tempted to take a trip there and check out the ride to see if it’s still even spookier than usual, although I suppose by now Rev Fanthorpe has sorted it all out. I suppose it’s possible that one or two of these spirits from the alternate dimension escaped his cleansing, though.

I usually like to scan the news on Friday to see if there is anything interesting to write about, but this Friday I ended up heading to Colchester for my friend’s birthday, playing drinking games, and sleeping on someone’s sofa. It was a fantastic time; like being a student all over again, but I’ve had to delay Friday’s news stories until today. Already, there are quite a few that seem interesting, too.

You will notice that there is a theme to these pieces, although the two of them are still very different. The theme that they share, though, is motherhood: they are both slices of what makes the bond between mother and child unique and magical.

A heart-warming story, to begin, I feel. A story about a mother, who has woken from a coma after hearing her baby’s voice. Quite moving, no? But then, what about this: a newborn baby fell through the toilet of a train, landed on the tracks, and survived. The mother promptly jumped out of the window (people thought that she was committing suicide, and I suppose that would be my initial reaction, too), but it later turned out that she had pulled a James Bond move and rescued her baby.

On one hand, we have the power of voice; the power of that connection between mother and child. And on the other, that connection, that bond, is demonstrated in incredible fashion. Perhaps they should consider moving mother’s day?

There is an article here about rabbits, but they are rabbits of a very unusual kind. Particularly, it is their character: they are actively seeking out snakes, and killing them – or so it appears. Now, the speed rabbits breed at is well documented. They are everywhere. So the thought that some of them are rabid and determined and skilled enough to kill snakes is both interesting and somewhat scary.

The piece shows the lovely, fluffy, cute little animals in a more vicious light: the dead snakes are strewn all over the place, with bite marks all over their bodies. And snakes are pretty quick; it would take some fast thinking and dextrous moves to take one down. Are rabbits even fast enough to protect themselves, if the snakes retaliated?

After reading the initial article, I decided to see if I could find any more on it. And behold! It turns out that a video has emerged that shows one of the attacks taking place. Somehow, it’s not quite as vicious as I expected – I had a sort of zombie rabbit image in my head, something like 28 days later but with rabbits – but the video is more like a ninja rabbit: it hops all over the place to avoid being bitten.

I suppose that answers the question. Yes, they are fast enough to avoid snakes. Now I’m curious as to why they’re attacking them. Perhaps they have something to protect? But then – it did seem that the rabbit was very much the aggressor. Perhaps more information will be made available as the story develops…

Product placement – the very same advertising technique that is so prevalent in films and things, will soon be made legal on regular television shows – just not on the BBC, evidently. But this is unusual, to me. For a start, I didn’t realise it was even illegal, you see it so much everywhere. In fact, I saw some just yesterday … on the BBC, no less. On Football Focus, we were treated to a look inside the locker room of a team (I can’t remember if it was Manchester City or Arsenal), and everywhere we looked there were Lucozade bottles. Inside the fridge, on the locker room bench, out on the field – everywhere.

I would have assumed that this would have counted as product placement. Even if they were not placed there directly, specifically for us to see them, we still saw them; we still associate the success of Man City with Lucozade. If they drink it, maybe we should too. What’s the difference between voluntary and involuntary product placement?

Regardless, I’m not sure I’m sold on the benefits of product placement in the first place. It’s a similar thing to sponsorship. I’m not going to buy a television just because I see it across the shirts of my local football team. Will I buy Nescafe coffee because I see Simon Cowell drinking it on X Factor?

I don’t know, obviously it must have some success, or there wouldn’t be people queuing up to offer these services. There wouldn’t be predictions of £100m a year profits for the television networks in question.

It’s certainly an interesting one.

After watching the NFL opener on Thursday, I spent yesterday relaxing and lounging. As quite often happens when I spent a bit of time doing not very much, I discovered a couple of unusual news stories. One of them is funny, in a drunken and slightly unusual sort of way, and the second of them has a horrific irony about it, and both of them are curious and interesting, so I thought I would share them.

Yesterday in America – Madeira Beach, to be precise – a man was drunkenly stumbling around the beach, and started to pretend he was drowning. Apparently, he was doing it to lure teenagers close to him, before – wait for it – hurling jellyfish at them. I don’t know if he had any real plan of action, clearly and lucidly deciding that, yes, jellyfish would be the perfect throwing weapon to use on pesky kids, or if he just saw them and decided to lob them anyway. It must have been quite a painful choice of weapon, unless it was thought through and he had brought some form of protection, or knew how to pick the poor things up without getting hurt.

Regardless, it must have been quite a surprise to see them flying through the air at you when you try and save someone from drowning.

The next story is a sad one, and my thoughts are with the family and friends, but it is horribly ironic. A man was trapped in a lift, and he obviously prayed for help and safety, and he managed to escape. Then, deciding that he would immediately go to church and give thanks, an altar fell and killed him instantly.

I went to London today. One of my friends gave me a lift. But I popped into his house for a cup of tea before we went, and he showed me his new, rather wonderful phone system. I must admit, it was pretty fancy. Quite big – bigger than you would expect from such a modern, technological masterpiece – but yes, pretty fancy indeed.

It could play music, among its many and varied features, and it could also be used using only your voice, with no need to dial at all. It had a bluetooth headset that looked quite impressive in itself. Needless to say, he was quite proud of it; happy to be showing it off.

The city was quite fun; we did the whole tourist thing, we went to a few shops here and there, had a late lunch/early dinner. And it was quite a nice day. When I got back, though, almost automatically I had to fire up the broadband and looked up those fancy phones. Not to buy one myself, not really – more just out of curiosity.

Before long I had started looking into Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which I tend to do more and more now in the build-up to its release. If you’re into computer games, and in particular first person shooters, this game looks like it’s shaping up to be particularly wonderful.

In a recent blog, I wrote a little bit about selling your house in the recession. And I detailed a couple of ways you could sell it quickly, like with these cash for homes projects that can be quite nice if you are a little short on time, or else just in a hurry. I’ve also seen a piece here, detailing how you can use extra space in your house to earn a bit of money by renting out rooms, and that sort of thing. And all of it, together, sort of got me thinking; thinking of ways I could improve my own home, if I were looking to sell it – for cash, or otherwise – and what I would do to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

To start with, I would definitely need to start with outside; with the garden, and the driveway (which is strewn with all sorts of junk at the moment, whilst we try and find room for it). The garden would need neatening up, for sure. The garage would probably need cleaning. I would probably need to deal with the bathrooms as well, which are pretty shocking at the moment. The taps are the wrong way around in some cases, and hot water comes out of cold taps, and that sort of thing. The shower doesn’t work. I’d probably upgrade to a couple of nice bathroom suites, and do the job properly.

With so much emphasis placed on global warming in the media at the moment, and out ethical footprints, or carbon footprints, or what have you, it couldn’t hurt to add a touch of the ethical home quality to the place … some sort of solar panel to power the electricity in the garage or something. It couldn’t hurt, I suppose.

And once the big things were sorted (and there are a lot of big things, looking back on it), I would probably spruce up the interior a little, as a finishing touch. Get some nice furniture downstairs, and perhaps even some sort of bathroom furniture in the new suites to set it all off nicely.

Of course, all this costs money, too. It’s a painful circle.

There is a battle being fought in the world of books. A battle being fought by Google, in their quest for a vast digitalised book library, and a battle that has, until recently, slipped from my mind. But in that, there is something to be learned: it’s not the end of publishing that some people are making it out to be. Books can now become fully digitalised, and we will be able to read anything from Descartes to Robinson Crusoe on our computers, but physical, proper, hard copy books are still brilliant. People will still go out and buy books, because, quite frankly, there is no comparison: reading something in dead-tree format is far, far more pleasurable than reading something on a computer screen.

In any case, authors have until Friday to opt out of the $125m settlement – it’s not like they will be forced into it. Whilst I’m sure there will be those who don’t take part, I’m also of the opinion that they will miss out on free publicity. I doubt I’m not the only one who, stumbling across a book that looked good, would go out and buy the real thing.

When I think back to my time at university, I can see the appeal of such a project. It won’t be as much about popular fiction as it will be about research books, and classical literature, and books that are on the reading lists at universities. It will make life a lot easier for students (who, presently, have libraries that sometimes only have one or two copies of a book that 25+ people need), and it will make referencing a lot more enjoyable and stress-free.

But it will be pretty awesome from a writerly perspective, as well. Fantastic for information on a wide range of subjects. I’ll keep my eye on this one, I think.

I’m about to head to bed, but before I call it a day, I thought I would post up a bit about article that is one of the strangest news pieces I’ve read in a very long time.

The slightly disturbing images show that something of a cow graveyard is forming, and it’s interesting no matter what the reason for their apparent suicides. Ultimately, I suppose, it comes down to one of two things: they either jumped on their own accord, or, somehow, they felt forced to do so. The article mentions that there are no more large predators around the Alps to clear the bodies – but what if there are? What if there is something so ferocious that it’s scaring scores of cows to death?

I wonder if that scientist has already hatched his dinosaur from chicken eggs? More likely they will chalk it up to climate change somehow. Perhaps the new, hot air is meddling with their brains and confusing them, driving them mad.

Whatever the reason, it’s more than slightly strange. And a little disturbing, too.

Google Earth might just have saved the myth of the Loch Ness monster. If you go onto the program, and enter the correct co-ordinates (Latitude 57°12’52.13″N, Longitude 4°34’14.16″W ) you can see what is thought to be the beast swimming just below the surface of the water. Previously, it had been thought to have perhaps been killed off due to climate change.

Until now, there have been no “credible” sightings for over a year, so it is perhaps natural that the most elusive of monsters was thought to have disappeared. I must admit – I didn’t realise that the myth was so in jeopardy, but it’s nice to have something to fuel the fires again – even if it’s not exactly the most revealing of images.

There is also a curious article here where a scientist, who has studied bird evolution for a great many years, believes that he can hatch dinosaurs with a bit of DNA magic. I say “curious”, because, to me, it’s both interesting and slightly worrying: it is evidence of evolution, and shows how closely linked dinosaurs are to birds, but at the same time, how long is it now before someone takes this a step further and devises a fully realised Jurassic Park?

And we all know how that one ends…