Tactical Highlighter #17

I have good reasons for being later than I’d like with this, but I’ll skip that part. In the end, they’re really just excuses, right? Just imagine they were really cute excuses and needed lots of smooching.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the death of Natalie Morris and asked you to donate to her husband and daughter. I don’t know how many of you did, but the podcast community in total donated over $20,000 USD. The podcast fiction community is truly the greatest community on the web. If you’re one of the people who contributed, thank you so very much.

You and all the generous souls who help out during tragedies like Katrina and the Tsunami help make the world a better place. And you make this cynical so-and-so tear up. Not a terribly difficult feat, but still a worthy one. Keep on being awesome.

• Dead Robots’ Society - Worlds Apart by Michelle Ristuccia. Michelle is my awesomesauce beta reader, and she won the DRS contest recently for best short story. The prize was an audio production of the winning story! Terry Mixon and Kimi Alexandre voiced it, and you should definitely give it a listen.
• Drabblecast - Varmints by Steve Lowe. I love this story so much. It’s almost like an episode of Big O! in some respects. Noirish, while not taking itself too seriously. Seriously a great episode.
• Drabblecast again - Teddy Bears and Tea Parties by S. Boyd Taylor, Homeostasis by Phenopath. I generally don’t bother mentioning the Drabbles on a Drabblecast, but Phenopath’s story here is worth linking to completely on its own merits. The main story, by Mr. Taylor, is horror. It’s not horror in the Saw 26 or Hostel 3583085 sense, but it is decidedly not for the kiddies. But please please please listen to this story. It’s the greatest.
• Drabblecast some more - In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm by Norm Sherman. The DC Forumites loved the Mongolian Death Worm series so much that they spliced it out of the episodes it originally appeared in and made it a standalone episode. Yep, I linked three Drabblecast episodes in a single week. Sorry, they’re great episodes and I’m a bit behind thanks to all the travel. I swear to never link three separate things from anyone in any given week until I feel a strong desire to do so again. But this is really great stuff.

Bonus:
• Moon. I generally don’t review movies here unless they’re really obscure or under-appreciated. I got a chance to see this one thanks to the Infernal Red Company With Horrid Pop-Unders. I’m not sure it qualifies as obscure, but I had a hard time catching it in the theater. The first third of this movie was exactly what I was expecting. Then things got … simpler. But then I thought it was going to end a particular way, and it totally didn’t go there. Sam did a great job of playing multiple Sams in a way that made you feel like they were simultaneously different people and the same person. I was constantly expecting Kevin Spacey’s GERTY to go HAL on Sam. Moon does go a little slow for some people’s taste, but it’s not as slow as Space Odyssey so I don’t want to hear about it being too slow, you rabble rousers.