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.

Game Review: Violett

Violett is a point-and-click adventure game that's half Coraline and half Alice in Wonderland. Of course, Coraline was already part Alice in Wonderland, which means Violett is like a child born of first cousins. All the good hereditary traits are there, but some double-recessives popped up as well, leaving the whole package more than a little flawed.

You play as Violett, a precocious teenager whose family has just moved into a dilapidated old house in the middle of nowhere. They're not even unpacked yet and Violett's parents are already arguing, so she retreats to her crummy new room for a good sulk. Sitting on her bed, contemplating the inequities of life, she notices a glint through a mousehole in the wall. She reaches in and discovers a strange amulet, which begins to sparkle and glow in her hand. Suddenly, Violett finds herself falling through a kaleidoscopic void. She comes to her senses inside the mousehole, a shrunken prisoner of Her Spiderness, the wicked ruler of this tiny new world.

Mail Order

You can buy pretty much anything online, these days, but some things still surprise you.

I draw your attention to Bioreclamation, a company which bills itself as the "complete resource for all biologicals." It's a bold claim, but I think you'll agree that they live up to it, when they deliver fresh human tears directly to your door:

Yes, this is 100% real. If you want to buy some tears from these fine folk, here's the link. You can get your tears from a single "donor," or pool tears from several people. If you want a specific type of tears, like grief tears or onion-chopping  tears, I bet they'll be able to arrange it. But I'm guessing their standard tears come from tragic drifters that nobody will ever miss—drifters who drift no more, because they're now tied up in Bioreclamation's basement, with tubes stapled to their eyeballs.

As always, I do not receive any commission or kickback from the sale of items featured on this blog. That's how you know I'm being honest and objective when I say that you can depend on Bioreclamation for all your fresh human tear needs.

I'll tell you one thing, though, this is sure going to speed up development of my sorrow-powered laser.