Moe Lane's Blog, page 657
October 7, 2021
10/07/21 Snippet, THE JOB’S THE JOB.
I finally figured out what’s happening! That’s always nice to know.
Patreon!Amanda Green may have had any number of talents, but delivering information wasn’t one of them. It took an hour to get the basic details. Let me summarize them for you: Green worked at ‘Mentor’ Quiroz’s antique store as an assessor and cleaner. For the last year she had been taking magical lessons instead of a pay raise. No spouse or kids, but she and Quiroz were both known in local occult circles. Most magicians don’t see any point in keeping what abilities they have a secret, and neither woman was doing magic as a full time job anyway.
Chauncy had shown up about a month ago, attached to an armoire from an estate sale. According to Green, it took him a week to coalesce as a ball of light that only a magician could see, and another week to manage your basic post-mortem Jedi translucent hologram, or whatever it was supposed to be in the movie. By now he could freely move about the store, use a cell phone, and talk loud enough for regular people to hear.
“How did your mentor feel about having a ghost around?” I asked Green. Particularly a naked one, I didn’t add.
The final DUNE trailer.
Grooving on this, ain’t gonna lie.
It promises to be interesting. I’m getting a lot of spectacle-viewing in my movies so far this year; interesting should be good for a change of pace, I think. And I don’t mind changes from the book, if they’re interesting ones. …I’m over-using that word, sorry. Anyway, it looks fun.
The RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY trailer.
So I’m watching the trailer for RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, and I’m asking myself: will my readers really care? And I still don’t know. Video game movies typically suck. But they get full points for the song they picked (starts at 0:57).
It is just somehow so dementedly appropriate that they picked that song. And they didn’t slow it down, or put it in a minor key, or anything. It’s straight-up the 1990s version. I respect subtle crazy-pants.
Question and Response of the Day, There Can Be Only One Final Shatner Quote edition.
James Lileks asks a reasonable question:
Shatner dying in space would be an utterly unique end to a career that no one could’ve predicted back in the late 60s… If I were Shatner, and I was toting up the odds, I’d think: what if? Could happen. Will there by time to say something? If so, what?
And then proceeds to come up with some answers. Alas, there’s no point. There is only one proper final Shatner in Space quote:
October 6, 2021
It was not a great day.
Nothing specific, just a cascading series of issues and whatnot and sometimes things stubbornly refuse to be fun, hey? I just… stepped off on the wrong foot, and didn’t get it right the whole day. It happens, I guess.
Although I was glad to get that airplane idea done. Had that thought in the shower and spent most of today trying to get in the right headspace to write it out. So, not totally unproductive, me.
The Surprisingly Interesting CYRANO trailer.
I found the trailer for CYRANO more appealing than I expected.
Maybe because the most obvious gimmick was overshadowed by the ‘It’s a musical!’ gimmick. That was unexpected. It also created another difference from the two definitive versions* I grew up on, which probably doesn’t hurt, either. So maybe it won’t suck? Guess we’ll see…
Moe Lane
*I will absolutely die on the ‘Steve Martin was just as good a Cyrano as Jose Ferrer was’ hill.
Location Seed: PanAm DC-8 [X] Waynesville Anomaly.
PanAm DC-8 [X] Waynesville Anomaly
Good afternoon! At 5:23 Eastern time an unknown aircraft appeared over the airspace of Waynesville-St. Robert Regional Airport in Missouri, then made an emergency landing. Air traffic reported that the aircraft ‘just [expletive deleted] appeared out of nowhere’ and ‘went for the runway like a bat out of Hell.’ The airport had enough time to clear the runway and assemble a fire crew, which was fortunately not required: the aircraft came close to crashing, but managed to stop safely. No radio messages were received or acknowledged during the crash landing.
Upon closer examination, the aircraft appears to be a modified version of a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 narrow-body airliner, with PanAm markings and paint job. Preliminary observations from the site indicate that there is something ‘weird’ about the engines, although the observer answered in the negative when asked if the weirdness was mystical, esoteric, psionic, or hyper-technological in origin. Other oddities of the exterior are a lack of windows outside the cockpit, and triple the usual number of emergency exits for an airplane of this (defunct) type.
Medical and law enforcement personnel entered the aircraft at 6:31 AM, to discover twenty three passengers and eight crew members, all of whom were dead of radiation poisoning (presumably gamma rays, because the aircraft itself is only slightly more radioactive than normal. Preliminary examination of the deceased’s effects are underway; we should have a report ready by the time your team makes it to the site. It is definitely known that printed records in the aircraft list it as Pan American Flight 666, Maxwell to Waynesville. And that the (mechanical) clocks in the cockpit list the current date and time.
But most importantly, fully one-third of the aircraft is hermetically sealed off from the rest, complete with lead shielding — and a multiply-secured heavy steel door. There are no breaches in the compartment, and no indication of other exits. Given the shielding, there’s a finite chance for survivors on the other side of that door; presumably, they could give us a better idea of who they are, and just what happened.
Unfortunately, we cannot take the time for a full preliminary investigation. Hermetic sealing means no oxygen replenishment, and while the compartment presumably has its own air system we have no idea how long it will hold up. Once you arrive at the airport and are checked in, a team will act with all due speed to open the door and assess conditions on the other side. Your team will be there to provide security, and containment if necessary.
One last note: it is possible that members of the investigation team might object to you carrying weapons. Ignore them. And keep an eye on them, too.
Yes, sorry: it’s probably going to be one of those missions.
Yeeeah you may want to punch the panic button regarding the Twitch hack.
This… doesn’t sound great.
god, what a mess
— twelve foot tall skeleton of andyb
https://t.co/xBq4DbtNfb(@AndyBenditt) October 6, 2021
They’re not saying user information is involved in the Twitch breach, but you’d have to be insane to trust a 4chan leaker. If you use Twitch, I would recommend changing passwords and slap on two-factor authorization. I know it’s a pain in the ass, but so are people getting your credit card number.
October 5, 2021
Talking with a bookstore about doing an author signing.
Nothing confirmed yet, but it’d be in early November. I should have enough stock on hand to handle signing for MORGAN BAROD (and maybe FROZEN DREAMS), but I’ll know more when I talk to the store owner. Actually, I have no idea how any of this works. …Guess I’ll learn!
In the Mail: @RobinDLaws’ KARTAS Pickman T-Shirt.
Link to buy your own here.
Not gonna lie, though: my take on the subject is possibly a bit more aesthetically pleasing. …Well, not really. There is definitely a different aesthetic, though.
