When You Have Vampires, Part 2

So you followed all the tips in the previous guide, and you still can't get rid of those pesky vampires? Well, hold onto your blood, because we're back with another round of handy-dandy anti-vampirism tips. Let's begin with something that really ought to be obvious...

A Moveable Feast is Better than a Stationary One

If the vampires know where you live? GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE.

I don't understand why more vampire-targeted people don’t do this. Even getting a motel room on the other side of town is better than going back to the same house every night. I mean, it's no ironclad guarantee against exsanguination, but at least the bastards will have to put a little effort into eating you. It’s called hardening the target, jackass. Look into it.

And you know what’s even better than moving across town? Leaving the country. I mean, the country you’re in can’t be all that great anyway—it has vampires in it. So how about a nice new country on the other side of the planet? Someplace where the cost of living is low and you won’t wake up dead some morning, and then undead the next night?

The Proterozoic Eon, Part 2

Adapted from an image CC Paul Harrison

When we last left the Proterozoic Eon, it was 2.5 billion years ago and we were finally approaching the shore. It doesn’t look much like a modern beach, does it?

Those rocky protrusions in the tidal zone are stromatolites. They’re a little like coral, in that they're made by microorganisms and grow over centuries. But where corals are complex, multicellular organisms that build calcified structures to protect themselves, these stromatolites are made by simple bacteria—in fact, some of them are the same cyanobacteria that made those terrestrial desert crusts we saw on the way here.

When You Have Vampires, Part 1

Vampires: the princes of darkness, the scourge of innocence, and the sexiest goddamn dead people you’ll ever meet. Think you can survive? You’ve survived a zombie apocalypse, after all. You’ve avoided the pitfalls of being a superhero’s girlfriend. So you’re ready for vampires, right?

No, you’re not.

Unlike those shambling hordes of half-rotten zombies, and unlike those cretinous superheroes, vampires have a way of sneaking into your life before you even know they’re there. But there’s hope. If you follow these handy tips, you too can uncover, survive, and even slay the most seductive and cunning tribe of the undead.

Read on, mortal chattel.

The Proterozoic, Part 1

Imagine yourself on a barren world. The atmospheric pressure is high enough to walk around without a space suit, but there are only trace amounts of oxygen, so you'll have to wear a respirator. Oh and, I’d wear a hat too, since the UV radiation is high enough to kill you within hours. Sorry, I should have told you that before you got here. My bad. You might want to put some aloe on that sunburn.

The landscape is bleak, nothing but desert sands and bedrock scoured clean by unrelenting erosion. You see, there are no plants here to firm up the soil. There isn’t any proper soil, for that matter, because there’s nothing alive to make soil. Soil—the kind of soil we’re familiar with—is bound together with organic matter that doesn't exist here.

Yeah, this place is so barren, it doesn’t even have dirt.

More Letters

I've been writing letters again. Text versions are below the cut.

And more letters...

But in the end, all things must be balanced.

Perspectives Differ: Death Star Technicians

Here follows the final text message exchange between Death Star engineers Alysha Serasai, 1st Technician, Reactor Core Sector, and Rax Nooram, 2nd Technician, Outer Sprawls Sector 12.

Alysha: Up for dinner tonight?  :)

Rax: Sorry, can’t. I had to work late installing a homing beacon in an old Corellian freighter they tractored in and I missed the last express elevator. I’d take the regular elevator, but I wouldn’t get there until late. Why the hell does this space station have to be so damn big?

Alysha: It really doesn’t. They have a prototype version of the Death Star orbiting a black hole in The Maw. It’s a quarter the mass of this one and requires less than one tenth the crew, and it works just fine. I saw them test it. But now it’s just sitting out there, gathering accretion dust.

Rax: So why the hell did they build this one?

Alysha: You know how the Empire is. Why make something normal sized, when you can make it impractically large? All those subcontractors need to wet their beaks, and no Moff wants to command a battlestation that has less than a million people on it. Not enough prestige.

Rax: Ugh. Government.

MRE Review: First Strike Ration Menu 2 (Part 2)

I usually start these reviews with some background information, but I used up all the background material in the first part of this review, so... umm...

Hey, did you know the First Strike Ration, unlike a regular MRE, comes with a resealable bag that you can use for trash? Because, ummm, all that trash might attract bears or something. Or possibly because dropping loose trash creates a perfect trail for the Predator to follow. You know, on your way back to the choppa.

I really should have planned this better.