Interregnum
Last night my brother held a birthday dinner for my mother, and we left my parents with my brother and his family in Shepherd's Bush. Later today most of the Plokta cabal is gathering here for the weekend. And in the middle, we find a few hours of relative inactivity.
There is no post in Britain on the 25th or 26th of December. And although they theoretically deliver post on the 27th, in practice there used to never be any post, and now there is only ever junk mail. My mother, whose birthday is December 27th, is acutely aware of this. The first delivery of personal mail after Christmas is the 28th.
And what lovely post we got this morning. Jordin and Mary Kay Kare sent us 'the littlest moose', which is a charming glass creature about 3/4 of an inch tall. Even better, it came in a tiny cylindrical tin with a clear lid, just about the right size to hold, well, a one pound coin. Or a tooth.
There was also the second issue of the excellent Chunga, produced by 'a caliphate, not a triumvirate' of Andy Hooper (publisher), Randy Byers (editor) and carl juarez (design). I'm interested to know whether that's a real division of work, or merely a theoretical one. The fanzine is available on editorial whim, and although they will send you a paper copy if you insist and for $3.50, it's available (though only issue 1 so far) for free download from Bill Burns' essential eFanzines.com and they suggest that new readers start there.
Chunga has a fine pedigree, and harks back to 2/3 of its roots with a page in Apparatchik style at the back of the fanzine. Elsewhere, Chunga has gathered an enviable list of contributors, and suggests that you might nominate some of them for the fan writer Hugo. Fanzines reviews come this time from Robert Lichtman, and include, shockingly, a review of a fanzine I don't receive. Andy Hooper considers Halloween and monsters (I wonder whether that was the original planned timing for this issues) and a thoroughly fanboy article grounded in a specific episode of Star Trek. Alison Freebairn tours current genre films while accompanied by the Ghost of High Fantasy Adaptations Present, while Randy Byers also takes the current state of genre movies as his theme, in a more orthodox overview. Specific reviews of the restored Metropolis and the graphic novel Fallout and a strong letter column round out this issue, which uses a loose theme to become more than the sum of its parts.
11:57:05 AM 
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