Posts Tagged JCCC3

Why Not All of Randall Munroe’s Suggestions Should be Implemented on JoCo Cruise Crazy 4


On JoCo Cruise Crazy 3, xkcd’s Randall Munroe told us all about the ball pit in his apartment, and finished by telling us how much it would cost to fill the entire ship with playpen balls. Somebody in the audience asked if we could have a ball pit in the game room next year. Some time ago, the powers that be announced that there will indeed be a ball pit in an inner cabin on JoCo Cruise Crazy 4. Later it became clear that this was all just a ploy to help Paul and Storm fulfill Kickstarter rewards for their next album, Ball Pit, but I’m not complaining.

Randall Munroe also told us how long we could survive if JoCo Cruise Crazy 4 were filled to the top with meat, and then how long we’d survive if we only had the other cruise passengers (which are conveniently made of meat) to feast on:

I’ve come to realise that this would not be a good idea to implement on JoCo Cruise Crazy 4. That is to say, it has the potential to be more awesome than we realised at the time, but it would considerably disrupt the programmed entertainment.

A few days ago, Randall made some calculations about the number of humans required to sustain a Tyrannosaurus rex. Apparently only half an adult a day. If there were a single T-rex on the cruise, then given the ratio of Sea Monkeys (JoCo Cruise Crazy attendees) to other passengers and crew, a Sea Monkey would have less chance of getting eaten by the King of the Tyrant Lizards than being chosen Monarch of the Seas.

However, assuming Randall was using short scales when he said ‘six hundred billion calories’, if the entire ship were filled to the top with meat, that would be enough to sustain a population of 2.5 million (2 500 000) T-Rexes for the duration of the cruise. And one of them would sleep in the meatball pit.

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Ace of Hearts: She Went to Pick Flowers (Mara Levi music video)


For the Ace of Spades I posted a music video incorporating some footage shot on JoCo Cruise Crazy 2, so for the Ace of Hearts, here is a music video I made with the help of a lot of sea monkeys for Mara Levi‘s song ‘She Went to Pick Flowers‘ during JoCo Cruise Crazy 3.

Aces of hearts with flowers on them

It was filmed on Coco Cay, St. Maarten, and the conference center (game room, for us) on board the Freedom of the Seas. While it’s a little ironic to film a video for this song during a luxury cruise, we had all the appropriate scenery available and I really wanted to share the song and hopefully get Mara some more fans. If you like the song and think Mara should have a few flowers, please buy it or other Mara Levi music, and maybe also support Mara’s band The Pushovers in making their first album together. And if you really like her, I certainly wouldn’t complain if you requested her for JoCo Cruise Crazy 4.

I got a lot of help from other Sea Monkeys (JoCo Cruise Crazy attendees) to make this, some of whom showed up and rescued the project right when I thought I’d never find the time or people or locations to pull it off. I didn’t even get everyone’s full names, so if you’re in it and would like a proper credit, let me know. I hope my amateur video editing does you justice.

My star Cass (‘she’) for example, showed up out of nowhere right when I thought there’d be no time to do it, with a rental car to get us to the beach, and agreed to be in the video with no prior knowledge of the song or of me. And when I was held up on Coco Cay because (having been Half Moon Cay where everything is paid using the ship’s room card) I didn’t realise I’d need cash to get my hair braided, another Mara Levi fan let me into the cabana area to film there instead of on the beach where I’d have made ‘old houses’ out of sand. The drawing and origami are by cartoonist Lar DeSouza, and I bought the flowers from flauxers, which is run by another sea monkey who also happened to end up in the video as a tenant. I had been confident from the beginning that some sea monkey would have a top hat they could lend me (there’s a whole ‘monocled monkeys’ group) but it would have actually been difficult to locate one had Robert not been wearing one from the beginning. A few more names are listed in the video description. I’m also grateful to the people who wanted to help but didn’t manage to meet me at the right places or times because I’m not very good at organising things and I didn’t get to the beach for long on Coco Cay.

Mara Levi says she loves it, in capital letters with three exclamation marks, so I’m calling it a success.

Flowers for everyone!

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King of Clubs: Some People I Met on the Cruise


A king of clubs with a ship on itHere is yet another parody of My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music, this time about some of the interesting people I met on JoCo Cruise Crazy 3 — not even including the official entertainers. I could fill several more verses and link to more examples of some of the descriptors; Sea Monkeys really are diverse, yet we have so much in common. I’ll add more links to explanations of the various people as video goes online. Some of these links relate to previous cruises, but the same kinds of people were on the third.

Whovians, früvians, knitters and quitters
Charming teen boys who don’t need babysitters
Folk most surprising and folk just like me
These are the people on JCCC.

Beardos and weirdos, who cares what the norm is?
Queer folk, craft beer folk and chiptunes performers [substitute ‘standup’ or ‘improv’ or ‘nerd rock’ here if you like; they were all there]
Coders and yodas and soda geeks too
All folks I’ll miss now that crazy week’s through

Linseed boilers
Fans of Euler’s
Scary horse head dudes
With 80s cartoon fans and two singing snorks,
There’s no-one this con excludes!

Dancers and -mancers and cancer survivors
Makers and bakers and pantses-McGuyvers
Writers, fist-fighters, devisers of clues
These are some people I met on the cruise

Those who keep horses, cats, dogs, dare I say ‘bees?
Artists, Kickstartists, mustachioed babies
Snake breeders, cake eaters, ‘fake’ geek girls too
Now that they’re gone I don’t know what to do

Famous vloggers
Weekly bloggers
Details I’ll forget
Please tweet, post in forums, put faces in books
I’ll see you all on the net!

Now if I may blow my own horn (which is probably out of tune) a bit more, here are a few other things I did on the cruise which I’m quite proud of. After using Mike Phirman‘s song Chicken Monkey Duck as mere word fodder to illustrate grapheme-colour synaesthesia and binary trees, as the cruise approached, while I was procrastinating from practising the poem I planned to recite for the open mic night, I finally got around to actually memorising it. Then on the cruise, I had the honour of singing it with Mike Phirman himself, and made one mistake (a monkey instead of a chicken; I am not counting singing the album version instead of the video version he does live, which has an extra pause in it, as a mistake), which I’m going to say was for the purpose of wabi-sabi.

Mike said nobody other than him had memorised that much of it before. I’m sure I’ve seen people doing it on YouTube, but perhaps they were reading the lyrics.

Later in the cruise, I recited my poem about Star Wars during the open mic, feeling justified in using Chicken Monkey Duck as an excuse for the inevitable mistakes (this is how it should have gone.) Still, it’s better than choosing a poem on the night and then reading it, as I did last year.

Mike Phirman (who, in case you were wondering, had said earlier that when you go on stage your body shuts down its vital functions and ‘you can really, really, really have to pee before you go on, and then you walk on stage and your body goes into like war mode, where it’s like, ‘There’s no time for that! We are at war!”) said it was awesome and Paul Sabourin commended my nerd pandering, so I’ll consider that a success! Sure, they’re pretty much paid to say that, but they’re paid to say it partly out of my pocket, so I’ll take it.

There’s one other creative thing I did on the ship, but that’s worthy of being the Ace. I will post it very soon.

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