SCP Item 8100201437060: "Hannigan."

 Item 8100201437060:  "Hannigan."

Class: Safe

Security Level: 1

Containment:  Minimal.

Description:  Bulky 1980's television set with wheeled stand and top loading Betamax player.  Requires electricity to operate.  Betamax tape winds and plays by itself, as if controlled by some otherworldly entity.  Attempts to replace the Betamax with a DVD or BluRay player, VCR or electronic gaming equipment have resulted in technicians contracting Egyptian plagues, which go away the moment Betamax is returned to the machine.

Displays one program, Hannigan, a plodding formulaic TV movie series which ran from 1968-2006.  Hannigan only has 21 episodes in total, but the anomalous television, according to most recent tabulation, has generated more than 367 variations on those 21 episodes, including several in which the detective is brutally murdered, loses his badge, or makes no appearance in the program whatsoever.

The effect of watching the program appears to be harmless.  Programming continues to play, regardless of whether anyone watches it or not.  The device seems to be merely a self contained universe of fictional characters embued with life through unexplained otherworldly energies.

SCP Item 38053563824: "The Death Collector."

Item 38053563824:  "The Death Collector."

Class:  Euclid

Security Level:  2

Containment:  Lock up.  Do not allow access.

Description:  Black Avaya conference phone with telephone headset and associated monitor and tower.  Object was acquired from the offices of Sunbank Private Label Credit Cards, now protected under bankruptcy, with name changed to (REDACTED).  Equipment uses telephone autodialing system to conduct collections calls with the deceased.  These business transactions sound completely mundane, often involving payments with real bank account numbers, but the person has recently died, and often the volume never rises above a whisper.  Customer audio can only be recorded with special equipment.  Only the operator's voice registers on standard recording devices.   

First recorded incident:  Grant Billington, 28, reported fraud on his grandfather's debit card two days after the man died from Hodgkins Lymphoma.  Telephone operator was subjected to disciplinary action, but management could not explain how the OP could consistently hold 5-10 minute conversations with someone they could never hear on recordings, and somehow acquire payment information, nor could they understand why their automated dialing system always appeared to send OP calls from a pool of live accounts, yet only record conversations between OP and seemingly nothing. 

Upon firing three OPS, Sunbank management decided the phone to be at fault, though no official apologies or reimbursements were sent to dismissed agents.

Sliders: Ruined multiverse part 4

 In "Fever," they land on a world with the plague running rampant. It's actually like the year 2020.  A lot like 2020. 

Multiverse impact: 

1. None of them had fully recovered from the plague. There's still a chance they were carrying. Quinn's girlfriend had to recover in a tent. Although their next slide was a world with widespread cannibalism, normal people could possibly encounter blankets or something containing the plague, and spread it to the rest of the world. Of course nobody cares if all the cannibals die.

It begs the question of what kind of microbes they already carry, and leave on other worlds. Maybe they are patient zero for some covid-like outbreak on a different world.

2. They handed several people wads of money from another world.  This would lead to counterfeiting charges, or some serious scientific investigation.

In the episode following, they stop an asteroid, but they had to help a mad scientist create an atomic bomb in order to do it. The impact is obvious: "If anyone messes with us...BOOM!"

Also there's the time travel/sliding device in the basement that Quinn tinkered with. I definitely seem to remember other sliders following them.

Zelda and the bag of poop

 A little disappointed that the stink bag in Zelda: Oracle of ages isn't more versatile.

For example:

Cat: I'm so hungry. I need food!

Link: I have a bag of s#$$. I think that will fill you up.

Man: This windmill isn't running properly. If only there were some kind of grease I could use to make it go faster.

Link: I have a bag of $###. It can make things slippery.

Man: I can't make my mail deliveries because I don't have a clock.

Link: Will a bag of $### help?

Man card

 As I carried in my laundry from the car in the rain, I realized I had two choices. I could cry about being single and having no one to help me, or I could be a man.

People these days make being a man something like a dirty word. They argue that you're not being in touch with your emotions or something, and it doesn't make things not hurt.

To be fair, it's not good to abuse someone and say "Man up." However, there's nothing wrong with telling yourself to man up.

Men had to use the man card when they built the first houses, ever since houses existed, and they couldn't cry about failing to build a house or having no one to help them build shelter. They did what had to be done, because they were men, and they had to get out of the weather.

A butler patiently endures abuse because he's a man, he's tough, and he can handle it. Plus he gets paid a lot, which helps.  When you're a boxer or a fire fighter, you gotta fight through the pain to do what needs to be done.  That's what being a man is about.

The man card is what you show yourself to remind yourself that you can endure difficulty without having to cry over every little thing.

Maybe it's not emotionally healthy, but it makes me feel better to say that I'm a tough man who can handle things on my own, than weep about nobody coming to help me.

If women want to take this idea and run with it, that's fine, but they already can take advantage of something men can't: Feminine charm.

Sliders: Ruined multiverse 1-2

 I haven't watched Sliders since the nineties. I forgot more than I expected. I'm making notes on the issues that never get resolved.

In the second episode of Sliders, they leave the parallel universe of President Oliver North with some interesting unresolved problems.

1. They have introduced two flying wasp spiders into the world. If they are not drones, the world is history. 

Quinn does not kill them due to his inexpert football throw, so they are still out there, ready to be cloned or bred, bringing the end of civilization.

Come to think of it, it would be best if that happened, for:

2. Quinn and Arturo left equations for the construction of a slider device. Someone took pictures. I am pretty sure this will become a plot point later on, but just in case they don't, let's hang on to that.

3. Rembrandt Brown slept with his parallel universe wife. If she becomes pregnant, the DNA will match the husband who went missing during the Australian war, but he probably will behave like a real son of the crying man, rather than the rebellious snot she currently has. It may have unforeseen consequences in the universe's history.

I wonder if their inability to go home was a butterfly effect from Rembrandt's slipup. Again, it would have been better if the swarm wiped them out.

4. I don't think anyone cares what happens with the commune after their guru left.  I guess, honestly, nobody cares what happens to society when they jump off to a new universe. But it does make you wonder if they made anything better.

Episode 3: Most of this storyline falls under the category of "Don't care, humanity will survive." 

Nothing jumps out as too damaging to the universe, except leaving behind the Constitution. Mainly I wonder if they understand the hastily scribbled document enough to make it into official policy, or if someone kills the prince and society falls back under the monarchy. Or if they left out some details and it's still not entirely fair or American. Hey, they did it all by memory, and a lot of people don't know or remember everything about it.

And what kind of ripple did Rembrandt make my telling everyone about James Brown? If the James Brown there is a doctor or an automechanic...

Also, a crowd of people saw them slide. That has to have some kind of consequence. Of course, this happens almost every episode.

Gays don't bother me

 It doesn't bother me that people are homosexual. What bothers me is how people try to sugar coat it. That's why I think they should have kept calling gay marriage a "civil union" and still give them property rights. Honestly I don't see any other legitimate purpose for those except property rights. 

To me it's about the same as sleeping with a whore. If I slept with a whore, I wouldn't dress it up and say it's something legitimate and holy and good as a real marriage, I'd call it what it is. 

It's one thing to live in sin, it's something worse to live in sin and claim what you're doing is sanctioned before God. And that's exactly what "gay marriage" does.

Just being gay doesn't offend me. The most offensive thing about our modern culture is how we are no longer allowed to call sin what it is.