I think I know what it feels like to be assimilated...
Wake up. It's 2am.
Huh? What? Who--?
I've been draining your sinuses down the back of your throat for a while now and just thought you'd appreciate the exquisite agony that swallowing will be until you can find the Halls cough drops.
I thought I'd finished you off a few days ago. Even for a sentient cold virus, you're wearing out your welcome.
Re-infecting your head was a bit of a last-minute deal. You know, I think we could make it big if we took our act on the road. Travel a bit, see the sights...
Find more victims whose innocent tissue supplies won't know what hit them.
I'm thinking bigger. How'd you like to be my 'Patient Zero?' I'd let you go out in style, surrounded by the best medical technicians the CDC has to offer, right before I turn them all into zombies or make their organs explode or something.
It's a poor parasite that destroys its host.
My host is planning to imbibe a mixture of chicken soup, Nyquil, Cold-eez, and Dave's Insanity Sauce. Killing you would be doing you a favor.
Meh. You've messed up my nose so bad that Dave's tastes like tomato juice at this point.
Anyway, I figure sixty-five million years is long enough to wait to cause an extinction event.
You wiped out the dinosaurs? Right.
Okay, it was a relative of mine. He hitched a ride on the meteor. Sure, the rock probably caused most of the damage, but intergalactic sniffles took out any straggling lizard-types bigger than a horse, and that's a legacy to be proud of!
Uh-huh. I'm not taking you to Seattle.
What? You'd rather stay home and miss the Emerald City Comic Con?
No, I'd rather not be blamed for sickening several thousand fans, celebrities, and the nice family that was willing to put me up for the weekend at their home with their two kids.
Like I can't eventually take over your central nervous sys-- uh, what're you doing?
Filling the humidifier with Alka-Seltzer Cold, Vicks, and whatever was left in that unlabeled bottle at the back of the liquor cabinet. I'm betting that after I finish touching the Monolith, you'll either be long gone or I'll get to claim you as a dependent on my taxes.
Fine, fine. Just don't toss bleach in there or anything. I'd hate to lose one of my favorite vectors...
That over-dramatization is my lame way of saying that I'm going to have to skip out on the Emerald City Comic Con this year. This is my first bail-out on a convention due to illness, and if it hadn't been sticking around for so long at such a level of persistence, I might have chanced it. But between the usual lack of sleep, the hauling, the desire to not make others suffer, I had to stay home. But something new of mine will be at the convention. Offworld Designs will have this new d20-themed t-shirt on sale, along with the others I've done in the past few months. I hope I'm not disappointing too many of you out there, and I hope to be back behind a table in a relatively plague-free condition.
While I convalesced, I got to read the second volume in the "Incarceron" series by Catherine Fisher. Entitled "Sapphique," it continues the sci-fi story of a world shaped by a war great enough to devastate the moon, stop the tides, and sap the energy reserves of humanity. 'Protocol' locks civilization in a medieval society with technology held by a select few in the sciences and nobility. The artifact of the previous technological age, a trans-dimensional prison called Incarceron, was supposed to be a self-contained paradise, but has instead become a hellish prison. The story thus far involves who will succeed the throne of this world, who will (or can) escape the prison, and what the ultimate fate of this society will be. This second story has quite a few surprises to unveil, and when this series is adapted for the movie theater, I'd expect comparisons to "The Matrix," but with what seems, at least to me, to be a better ending.
The FFN guys are participating in a kind of Nerf LARP event, similar to what was held at Bashcon. I didn't get all the details, but these are the rules I used as a basis for the strips. I also found that Nerf is, indeed, putting out a set of melee weapons. I almost had someone coming to the event armed with a 'Nerfzooka,' but Nerf footballs don't stick to targets terribly well.
Another movie is getting made that makes me scratch my head. The rights have been optioned for 'Devil May Cry', the video game franchise from Capcom. I tried playing the fourth installment in this series, and found it to be pretty wacky, mixing medieval with modern and generally being more concerned with style and aesthetic than having much of a plot (or at least, enough of one to make a movie). If someone wanted to make a movie about a guy who fights demons with bladed guns, I don't think they would have had to purchase the rights to the DMC series, but maybe they hope the fans of the game will come see it. It worked for the live-action "Dragonball" movie, right?
Okay, I have my humidifier set to "San Francisco Fog," my heating pad is keeping my feet warm, and I've got a goodly amount of decongestant running through my mortal remains. I should be good for a few hours, right? I do think this should be the last week of discomfort for me, barring the wife or the kid bringing me something new. I'm not saying families are bad for you, I'm just questioning all those longevity studies involving married people with kids. :)
At least it'll seem like I'm living longer at this rate, so let's knock a few minutes off that lifespan with:
- So FX is looking to make a TV series based on the "Powers" comic, and it looks like Katee Sackhoff wants to be Deena Pilgrim.
- Some art that that looks like it could have been created by Agatha Heterodyne from "Girl Genius." These are in a similar vein, full of steampunky goodness.
- There's another trailer for A Game of Thrones. It looks really good, though it seems that most dudes with gold or platinum blond hair look like they're wearing a wig to me.
- Give yourself a little film quiz with Famous Objects From Classic Movies, a silhouette-identification flash game.
- Take every frame of a movie, mash them all together into a sequential image, and you get Movie Barcodes.
- There's a new Simon's Cat cartoon, Sticky Tape.
- We're going to go with pretty much puzzle games this week, and that continues with Bustabrain 2.
- Previously, it was just a gag illustration of a spoofed childrens' book cover. Now, however, the sleeper has awakened: Goodnight Dune.
- There's a very short promo for the TV series "Terra Nova," featuring our first look at a dinosaur.
- Here's a charming cover of Take On Me by Anni B. Sweet.
- Scroll down through this article to see Stephen Fry in his costume for the Klingon opera he'll be appearing in.
- I'm not sure how much actual physics is in Energy Physics, but you get to zap and smash bad guys, so there's that.