“You can't go there!” said Faith to Buffy. “It's too dangerous!”

“I'm driving,” said Xander.

“Oh. In that case, shotgun.”

“You can't go there!” said Giles, bursting in. “It's too dangerous!”

“Didn't we just have this conversation?”

“I meant Necrophilus.”

“Oh. Who's Necrophilus?”

“The guy we're fighting.”

“Oh.”

“They say he has seven white cats ... each more sinister than the last! And also an army of gay Hitler clones riding dinosaurs.”

“Oh, man,” said Xander. “I miss the time when all we had to worry about was Giles getting the occasional concussion.”

“Those were the days,” said Giles dreamily. “Although I seem to have forgotten most of them.”

So they all got in the car and drove over to Necrophilus' trailer, which bore the sinister legend AROSMITH ROCKS spray-painted on the side, and knocked on the door.

“You have passed the first test, which was looking me up in the phone book,” said Necrophilus dramatically. “But can you pass ... THIS?”

And he did a whole bunch of ninja shit and everyone fell down, except Xander, who glowered at him menacingly.

“But Colonel Mustard's Eleven-Fingered Strike spares no one!” gasped Necrophilus. “Why are you still standing?”

“Simple,” said Xander. “I'm wearing sunglasses ... over my sunglasses.”

“Curses!” said Necrophilus, and evaporated.

Do you like video games? I like video games.

Specifically, I like strategy games. If you can exploit a supposedly-improved-from-the-last-version-but-still-splendidly-incompetent AI's flaws to guide a severely disadvantaged nation from international buttkickee to international buttkicker, then I'm all over it like marshmallows on a guy with marshmallows all over him.

Among such games, my current favorite is Europa Universalis III. Europa Universalis III is probably the least politically correct game ever made. Continents, ethnicities, and even religions are not made equal. Want to play as the Incas? Get used to having all technologies cost ten times as much and having a religion which allows any other nation to seize your provinces without having to negotiate a peace settlement. Which, of course, makes it all the sweeter when you finally attain the level of skill where you can lead an invasion of England as the Huron.

I'm not quite at that level of skill yet, but I am currently gearing up for an invasion of Europe at the head of the Ethiopian hordes, and you can read about it here, if that's your thing.

I don't get it. The first thing that any sane person would do, upon discovering that they were now Death, would be to try to find a way to save people. Why is the protagonist the only Reaper who even thinks of trying? Why couldn't they spare five minutes of orientation to explain why it's a bad idea, instead of letting her fuck up repeatedly because she doesn't know what she's doing wrong?

Haven't had a whole lot of time to write recently, but here's something short for anyone who might be curious as to where I'm headed with this.

( It is my birthday; I had thought to have held it poor; but since my lord is Anthony again, I must be Cleopatra. )

It's going to be kind of a busy weekend for me, and I figured I would post this before I forgot. So, uh, happy birthday. You like canon far more than any reasonable person should, so I set this within what Wikipedia could tell me of Season 8 continuity.

(By the way, I'm assuming that everyone on my friends list already knows who waddis is. If you don't, you are a bad person and I don't love you any more.)

( This is almost certainly the first and last time I write anything set in the Abomination of Desolation that is Season 8 )