All Together Now... Awwwwwwww

I am a dyed-in-the-wool (brown) Firefly/Serenity fan, also known as a "Browncoat". I've written a scenario for the Serenity RPG to run at the club (which I had to postpone because I was too sick to run, and had no voice). I'm also planning to run it at Origins this summer, and possibly at Gencon as well.

The scenario is inspired by a throw-away line from one of the Firefly episodes (Our Mrs. Reynolds), where Wash is trying to account for odd cultural preferences. He says: "Every planet's got its own weird customs. 'Bout a year before we met, I spent six weeks on a moon where the principal form of recreation was juggling geese. My hand to God. Baby geese. Goslings. They were juggled."

I just had to write a scenario where the crew has to deliver these precious objects, and of course I called it "Some People Juggle Geese". Well, then I got to thinking about how one might actually juggle geese... and so I Googled it. And I found Wash-o-saurus (go down to where it says "juggling geese" in the sidebar).

They are just incredibly cuuuute, and came, as described, in a Chinese takeout box with a bed of pretty shredded paper and a caligraphic scroll sealed with a Chinese coin that contains instructions on how to learn to juggle.

As soon as I can keep even one of these adorable little guys in the air with both hands, I'll call myself a gosling juggler. Then I need to learn to knit so I can make them little Jayne hats.

I have one sitting next to the computer as I type. They are so cuuuuuuute!

Ohgodohgod - I have cockroaches!

I just went out to the kitchen to get some water, and there, in the middle of the newly cleared and cleaned counter (I had a stack cascade failure the other day, so I put things away and cleaned, including bleaching the stains out of the formica) was a big, fat, brown cockroach. No mistaking it for any other bug. It just sat there, and I hammered on it with the water bottle. Then I put paper towel over it and hammered on it some more. When I picked up the paper towel it scurried off into the gap between the counter and the stove.

It was just one cockroach (I've never had roaches in this place, dammmit), but there's never just one cockroach. Ghaaaaaaaaaa! I'm Googling away right now to find ways to get rid of the little buggers, though I know it's a losing battle. I live in a condo attached to 3 other condos.

I blame the Noisy Boys Next Door, who leave their garbage sitting outside their back door for limitless time. There's a rotted mess that was their Halloween pumpkin still there. I suspect their interior housekeeping isn't much better.

It wasn't enough that they have to blast their music through our shared walls... now it's cockroaches.

Yurg.

Sickbed Movies

I've been serving the higher purpose of providing a reproductive environment for germs for the past week, and in between mega-naps and coughing jags, I've been catching up on my trash video. To wit: Bloody Mallory. Described as "Indiana Jones meets Buffy", this French film (dubbed in English) is about as wacky as it gets. It may be the fever talking (which broke Saturday night, actually), but I enjoyed it. It has a goofy anime feel about it, with a mute telepathic child and a transvestite explosives expert, along with a kidnapped pope and a Vatican bodyguard... oh heck, let me just steal the summary from Deep Discount DVD.

Perhaps the only entry in a genre all its own, BLOODY MALLORY is a neo-B movie French actioner, with a ghoul-busting babe as its heroine, and an aesthetic designed to mimic the look of Japanese manga. A pastiche that counts BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and RESIDENT EVIL among its influences, the low-budget flick sports surprisingly strong special effects, and a soundtrack by Kenji Kawai (GHOST IN THE SHELL). Mallory (Olivia Bonamy, JEFFERSON IN PARIS) had a difficult wedding night, when she discovered her new husband was a demon and was forced to off him with an ax. He cursed her as he died, and now she is forever bound to fight the forces of evil in France. A few years later Mallory heads up a team of anti-paranormal agents, comprised of an eight-year-old mute psychic who can occupy the bodies of others, and Vena Cava, a flamboyant transvestite with expert knowledge of explosives. When a routine mission in a convent turns into mass destruction, due to the appearance of a mysterious hooded woman who makes short shrift of Mallory's team, the goblin warrior knows something big is brewing. Barely escaping with her life, Mallory soon learns that the Pope has been kidnapped by the same shadowy figure, and despite the Church's disapproval of her activities, she is the only one who can save him. Mallory must enter an alternate realm to which the ghouls have taken His Holiness, and, with the aid of Vena and Father Carras (Adria Collado)--the Pope's leather-clad bodyguard -- battle a shape-shifting succubus and a female vampire, among many other nasty demons.

If I can find it cheap, I'll probably buy it (though Amazon's $23 is more than it's worth to me). Deep Discount DVD has it for $17 - maybe if they have a sale...

On the health care front, I took wisdom from this same time last year (when I went and ran at a con anyways, and ended up with pneumonia), and cancelled all activities (including my first run of a Serenity RPG game for the club on Sunday) and concentrated on sleeping, drinking lots of fluids and trying to get better. Oddly enough, it seems to have worked, and I take some comfort in it being unlikely that I have passed this on to anyone else. Good thing I put up a lot of turkey & brown rice soup at Thanksgiving!

Next up on the viewing list: Cursed and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.