When deciding whether or not to vote on this completion, realize the following: Every single question of the SFZEROPRACTICAL could have been done better. In fact it would surprise me if there is a single one of them that wasn't done better by somebody. And it wouldn't surprise me if there's somebody who did a better job on every single one of them. In fact, the questions you don't see here, I'm assuming most people did better on than me.

And yet I still claim my work was exceptional. Why? Because I was done with all seven warm-ups and all twenty main questions within twenty-four hours of the start of the test. I was the only person to do this, or even come close.

Now onto my work.

I haven't included everything, because in pursuit of the 24-hour deadline GY0 Tom challenged me to meet many tasks were done in a hasty fashion. For this post, I'm leaving out the ones that were only there to prove I had done them in the allotted time. But here's the work I'm proudest of:

I didn't do anything special for this one, but I like the picture.

One of the questions asks you to make and then burn a paper crane. I burned mine in a cast iron skillet.



Next there were the gummies I nommed.

Proper gummies are know to be ferocious, but the ones I've encountered often haven't been. So I resolved to get the most menacing gummies I could find - sour Swedish gummy starfish. I nommed the entire red team in as few bites as I could, and found the sourness overwhelming. Here at last was that vengeful gummy attitude I'd heard so much about in Evil Sugar's praxes.

And then there was the time I jumped in a polluted river.

The Mississippi is less polluted the further north you go, and all of Minnesota is pretty good compared to how it is when it reaches the sea - but really, it isn't recommended to swim in it anywhere south of its headwaters at Lake Itasca. Which is far enough away that that's not where I did it.

I went down to my favorite spot by the river (which I like in part because it's close to where I live and in part because it's hard enough to access that people haven't left too much garbage down there. Sometimes when I go I make a point of cleaning it up a bit, but right now I had more important things to worry about. Like the fact that I needed to jump into a body of water while fully clothed.



I waded in slowly, because JJason had slowed down time around me (as he was still working on the warm-up that called for such a thing) but ultimately immersed my entire body. My head went under only briefly, during which time I did in fact open my eyes. I've seen clearer water before, but I've swum in worse.

Then again, a lot of waterways are polluted by things you can't see, while murk is usually just harmless mud.

Or how about my bribery?

The judges wanted to know what's in the box. So I posed with a box at my feet for the task where I taped myself to a public newspaper dispenser. Among various supplies for completing the text, it had hidden within it a banana - an answer to the mystery that is sure to make our simian judge Oswald happy.



And then there was Journey to the End of the Night: Doktor Harmon's Neighborhood.

I made it to the first checkpoint, a mile and a half from the starting line - but the chaser (me) caught up to me shortly afterwards.

Checkpoint design seemed less cool than in some real journeys. Like in Chicago, this one involved meeting an agent who behaved in an unusual fashion (in this case by speaking with a very-poorly-affected Welsh accent) and offered you refreshments (in this case, yummy Mexican junk food), all in an evocative location in the area. I'm just not sure what "Japanese Peanuts", Wales, and the Bridge to Dimension Zed have in common. I guess I'd have to ask the checkpoint agent (me) or the event organizer (also me) what they were thinking.

That one can be seen at http://www.vimeo.com/1152226 - wherein I document the safe zone around checkpoint one.

Or my Fibonacci Hymn.

I didn't sing the famous sequence of numbers, or anything related to it. Instead I honored Leonardo Fibonacci's greatest gift to mankind, with a musical setting of the first paragraph of his Liber Abaci, in the original Latin. In this he announces the power of positional numbering and promises to teach the reader to use it.



Finally, the ritual magic. Yes, really.

Hoodoo is a form of folk magic indigenous to the upland south, practiced primarily in poor African-American communities. It's also known as "rootwork" and people who do it are called "root workers" or "root doctors." If you grew up in the southeastern US, you've probably heard of it at least once (though you likely don't believe in it; I sure as hell don't). Otherwise, you probably haven't.

One of the more intimidating superstitions within the hoodoo framework is the idea that a magic powder, sprinkled where you will step over it, has the power to curse you. The classic forms this takes are something called "goofer dust" - which has the potential to kill whoever steps over it - and "hot-foot powder", which simply causes injuries to the foot or leg of the victim that cannot be treated medically without first dealing with the trick. (A "trick" is a hoodoo spell, especially a harmful one; putting it in place is referred to as "laying a trick.")

One of the warm-ups on the Practical required me to quickly come up with something devious and implement it. Since Team Skype had just been discussing the dearth of black magic on SF0, I decided to curse JJason. I mixed up some hot-foot powder according to one of the simpler traditional recipes, though the need for speed led me to substitute ordinary garden soil for the graveyard dirt. I laid a line of it across the threshold to JJason's room. (This was easy, since we share an apartment.)



Subsequently I had to reclaim my camera from him - he had borrowed it - which I carefully did without crossing said threshold lest the effects hit me instead. Foot-track magic doesn't do what you want it to, it hits whoever crosses the trick first.

For the record - his feet already hurt before I did this, but they did get worse. I can't prove the spell was responsible.

Later, there was a main section question exhorting us to reimburse someone or, for bonus points, to reimburse their life. I decided the best way to do that was to uncross JJason.

Uncrossing a victim of a foot-track jinx is, in principle, easy. You gather up all of the powder (because the spell is in the powder) and you throw it into a moving body of water so it will leave you. Or you walk all the way out of town, sprinkling a little bit on every crossroads you come to on your way. But gathering up every last speck of powder from carpet is hard, so after throwing what I could in the Mississippi River I used a more general uncrossing spell.

This involved carving JJason's full name into two wax pillar candles, lighting them, and reading the 37th psalm over them before allowing them to burn themselves out. Doing this in front of a mirror is particularly potent, as it is said to reflect the spell away from you (and, potentially, back on the person who put it there - not a great sign for me...) so I did it in our bathroom in front of the medicine cabinet, which has a mirrored door.

JJason's feet subsequently recovered.