Month: August 2005

While the space agency NASA is still searching for life on the planet Mars, NASA may may have put it there already.
The British newspaper The Sunday Times reports a bacteria from Earth might have escaped to Mars.

NASA believes the two rover spacecrafts Spirit and Opportunity, scuttling across the red planet, are carrying a bacterium from Earth.

Nathan Fillion today made a rather bizarre request of the Firefly and Serenity community – to boycott a comic store.

The actor who plays Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the show and movie, posted this on the official forum.

It is times like these that I feel like Malcolm Reynolds. This is something that would surely get you kicked into an engine. I just went to a comic store to purchase the Serenity comic for my mom. The sweetheart that she is, gave her issues (with her favorite character on the front) to relatives who were having trouble tracking one down. Please bear in mind that Canada is a wonderous place where the service industry is polite and helpful, and that this experience is not the norm. The store I chose, which shall remain nameless (Warp 1 Comics), at an undisclosed location (just off Whyte Ave), has the singlemost sanctimonious, condescending, dishonest a$$hole I’ve had the misfortune of meeting. My brother and I called ahead to find out they had one issue left, but upon arriving, found out they are gouging people $20 bucks for the damned thing! “That’s what they’re worth.” he sneered at me. I asked him to show me a listing of some sort to back it up. “Well, I just know what I paid Dark Horse for it.” He wouldn’t show me that, either. I am aware that Dark Horse wasn’t expecting these books to sell as well as they are, and that they are going into a second printing, but I just picked up three of them two days ago at cover price at another store. My brother piped up with a, “What an interesting attitude you have.” Let me tell you folks, this fella had an attitude, and a smirk that you wanted to knock off his face with a baseball bat dipped in dog poop. Of course, my brother couldn’t help letting this guy know who he was trying to hose by holding the issue next to my face. “This guy look familliar? This isn’t some JoJo off the street! He knows what he’s talking about!” Check this out- the reply of this one-eyed crap-catcher, who shall remain nameless (Darryl) was, (and imagine a dullards voice- how we make people we don’t like sound in a story) “Well, then you can call Joss Whedon and ask him.”
Wouldn’t a smart business man ask me to sign an issue and sell me one at a fair price? Wouldn’t that fetch a prettier penny than ripping me off for one issue? Congratulations, dude! You are now on the Browncoat $hitlist.
Never have I tried to wield power in this way, but if being Malcolm Reynolds has taught me anything, it’s to follow my over-developed sense of vengeance. BOYCOTT WARP ONE COMICS! If you are in the neighborhood, drop by to tell “Patchy” that Browncoats don’t take $hit from anyone. Tell your friends not to shop there, and lock ’em in the airlock if they do. Copy this post and e-mail it to fellow Edmontonians. Bump it to keep it alive.
Thank you. Thank you for letting me rant. If you feel I’m overboard, please feel free to, as Joss would say, contemplate silently.

The Captain

After a fortnight away in the faraway land of France, I returned home at about 3AM. Leaping into the pile of post by the door, I rummaged through until I found what I was looking for. Two tickets for the World Premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Serenity”.

When the Edinburgh International Film Festival launched its ticket sales several weeks ago, they clearly had no idea that “Serenity” was to become one of the most successful films the Festival had ever seen. 44,000 people flooded in to purchase tickets to the event, in the end resulting in nothing more than a complete crash of the web server, and jammed phone lines. The EIFF simply couldn’t cope with the demand. As some people grumbled and gave up, others swore at each other, but others (myself included) continued to attempt to make bookings despite being bombarded by error messages. After boxing around these for several hours, I managed (even after it had “Sold Out”) to get two tickets into my basket. I suspect this was because during the confusion, overbookings had occurred, and tickets were being released.

Anyway, with the golden jewels now in my basket, I hurried to the checkout, only to get slapped quite violently in the face by the site’s mathematical incompetence.