And Then I Do My Moves, I Do My Holomoves

Once again, we have been deceived by our own ineptitude. The other day (okay, three days ago) some dude, aptly named “Tim,” wrote to us with this little tidbit:

Hi there.

I was at a trade show in San Francisco about a week ago, and struck up a conversation with a recruiter from some start-up in San Diego.

I went to the URL on the back of the card, and apparently, there’s some kind of puzzle on the site.

I wasn’t able to solve it, but my friend Tyler suggested you might be able to help.

Regards,

Tim

Anyway, this came via email instead of our handy tipline, so we kind of decided it was just a bad ripoff of the cryptic way Google has in the past solicited employees and we then proceeded to ignore it. Until today, that is, when we - amongst several other people, it seems - received a “mysterious” package in the mail, containing a photocopied, redacted memorandum, an origami crane, an empty packet of Emergen-C (doubtless having been raided and eaten by the crane in transit) with a sticker on the backside, and a bunch of little origami crane poop.

Needless to say, we were much chagrined to be scooped on this news by a guy whose name rhymes with “Turkistan.” We are curious as to how he rated a full, unredacted copy of the memorandum in question, however, while everyone else was forced to piece together chunks at a time for a minimum of satisfaction. Not that we even noticed until after the fact that there were pieces to fit together at all, but hey, what do you want from us?

More pics after the jump. Not pictured for decency, but still fun to mention again: origami poop.

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The Violette Letter

So our mail folder tells us we received the following tip 9 days ago but of course we didn’t post it because we had no clue what it meant, if anything. We never wish to waste our dear readers’ time unless there’s a bad joke involved, even though there are unlikely to be more than a dozen of them and they probably have nothing better to do. But anyway, this cryptic shit pisses us off:

Onward up the tiresome hill
Every house in Dary Dail
Elves normal mischief engulfs
Another night in Normandy goes

follow-the-dream

What the hell are we supposed to do with that, we ask you?! Well, as it turns out, we were probably supposed to pay attention to the sender’s email address to figure out it was related to this Violette’s Dream campaign, reports of which are cropping up at the usual locations, and which ostensible ARG may or may not be connected to an upcoming video game called Velvet Assassin, most likely an educational health game about STDs or some crap. Of course, that’s enough for Unfiction, which is all over this crazy farce already.

And no, we’re not at all jealous that we didn’t get any bars of gold, dammit.

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May Day Mystery Mansion

Whatever happened to the real May Day Mystery anyway? Well, here’s a new one for you, courtesy of some German-sounding dude with a blog.

Really, it’s a timeless tale: boy meets killers, boy runs away, boy gets blog. Unfortunately, the latter chapter pretty much precludes any possibility of a believable ending consisting of boy ever meeting a girl. Or a boy, for that matter. Maybe a furry, though. And there’s probably already one hiding in the “mystery basement.”

Do you know the path in shadow?
That’ll be my Elysium.
I was following this way,
Long and mazy, dark by day.
Now I’ve reached this part of me.

Do you know the place in shadow?
This is my Elysium.
Here is hidden Paradise,
Here is Eden, sliced twice.
Here I always want to be.

Did you know the place of shadows?
It was my Elysium
But beyond the horizon
Sun was born, so bright and strong.
Now, again I have to flee.

We suppose you might be wondering from whence we conjured that bit about the boy meeting killers, not to mention the whole mansion/basement thing. Reading comprehension, baby. Look it up!*

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Every Social is Better with Ice Cream

What happens when you tart up some lonely lookin’ girl and throw her in the middle of a party, take a few pictures of her, post ‘em to a blog, and thusly start an ARG? Well, in our case, you get arrested but we’re pretty sure that isn’t the true goal with this one.

Melissa Havergal is a young woman living in NYC, newly engaged, working as a design assistant at an architectural firm — in essence, she’s living a decent life.

What’s starting to cloud things, however, is her increasing paranoia about her fiancee, Jake, and her supposed best friend, Annabel Freeman, which is exacerbated by a handful of cryptic, menacing blog comments.

Anyway, we’re guessing it’s only a matter of time until some monster shows up and eats everyone. Roaarr.

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Digging in the Money Pit

Well hey, it seems this internet archaeology thing is catching on after all, and not just in an adult fashion: witness Havet Research. And what better challenge for a bunch of information pirates than to help locate some supposed buried treasure on some possible remote island in Nova Scotia, which may or may not be a province of the fictional country “Canada?”

Anyone with access to the internet over the last ten years has been perfectly capable of blocking out any mention of the mystery of Oak Island but for those weaker willed souls, the promise of hidden riches calls out to them like a siren luring a sailor to certain doom. And that’s exactly why we’re pretty sure that all the “money pit” is hiding is the treasured collections from some old Bigfoot latrine. Hint: the final layer is stank.

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Please Accept this Handbasket with Our Compliments

Yup, we’re going to Hell. And not because we previously posted something about an adult-themed ARG, because that was totally sweet. No, our final destination was selected due to our recent association with an organization called Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves, and Trolls (HETFET). False idols, all of them!

Said our tipster, Shera Vellots, which anagrams to “The Last Solver” (also “Svelte Harlots”):

I’m willing to say very little,
To protect mankind from pact acquittal,
Pry as you may,
Each day as we play,
Sharing info I’m quite noncommittal.

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The Terrible Secret of Monkeys

Pretty recently, in a galaxy not at all dissimilar to ours, someone came up with a brilliant idea: “What if people could easily adopt and care for cute little monkeys from space?” Curiously, he or she was not immediately laughed out of town by his or her peers, nor was he or she asked about the potential scatological consequences. And thus, we gather, a website was born where just such a thing was possible: Adopt a Space Monkey! At least, we’re assuming that’s how it went, due to a near-complete lack of information.

We adopted Spacey because of his cool name and the fact that he’s, according to his download page, “Good for long walks in the park and holding hands.” We’ll certainly concede that those stubby legs would make for any walk being longish but we’re a little disturbed by the positioning of his clutching little monkey hands. What is he really holding, huh?! His vacant grin betrays his true purpose.

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Sign Us Up for Camp Canyadigit

It’s no secret that Alternate Reality Gaming has been referred to as Internet Archaeology. But digging around on the series of tubes doesn’t tend to get you as dirty as digging in the traditional archaeological style. Isn’t it about time someone combined the two? No? Well, too bad! They did anyway!

Meet Agamemnon Cronides, who sounds like an ancient Greek king but who writes like your local newspaper’s classified ad section.

Missing artifact - 480BC Greek necklace. Family heirloom. Information wanted. May be in Siberia or Middle East. Archaeological Expedition on trail, info needed. Contact http://kronos480bc.livejournal.com/.

We’re pretty lazy, as well as oblivious, but even we were able to spot the link on that page to one Roberta Hope’s Patented Summer Camp for Science Nerds. How come we didn’t have this awesome kind of camp when we were kids? We just had a horse poop on our shoes.

Taming the Rivard Wild

And because secret sources are our specialty (say that seven times swiftly!), allow us to totally reveal our next one, just to sort of shake things up. Plus it probably is a fake name anyway. One “Jeffrey Cohen” wanted to “officialize” the fact that “The Rivard Project” is starting soon and not in November but that the ARG will last only few weeks.

That’s why we would like to have a lot of players, from novice to expert, if you could spread the word.

The most I can say for now is that we will one mission per week over a [five-week] period. The important thing to know is that once the registration period is over, we’ll divide the “agents” into two competing teams. There will be times during the game when the players will be required to “terminate” players on the other team if they want to take the lead and gain access to the final mission.

Apparently some of the “objects” required to complete the missions have been located in such well-known cities as Dallas, Montreal, Paris, Marseille, Austin, and Laredo. Wait, Laredo?

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A Fistful of Face

This hot tip is on the fast track as our sources tell us the campaign is slated to end on Sunday. That’s right, less than a week from today! It’s too bad that Google Custom Time feature wasn’t technically real. Wait, what are we talking about? We could totally backdate this post and fool everyone into thinking we were on top of things! No, you’re right…too far fetched to be believable.

According to our saucy secret source, “At the 5 second mark a QR code is shown on screen. Viewers have already figured out that it is significant, but have not yet scanned it.” What’s the hold up, anyway? Also, what is a QR code?

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