Cat draggings

Armageddon Expo, Sydney Town Hall

Happy, happy, joy, joy. My copy of the brain-bending Big Finish audio "Scherzo", IMCO the zenith of the range, now bears the signatures of writer Robert Shearman, actress India Fisher AND the incomparable Paul McGann. Besides being technically the longest-serving Doctor Who, PM proved himself a real "man of the people" as a con guest, teaming up well with fellow Brit thesp Dominic Keating, aka Lt Malcolm Reed from "Enterprise", for a Q&A with fans. And he supports Liverpool!

Animania convention, Australian Technology Park

It took two plays of "The Tower Of Druaga" on "Namco Museum DS" to convince me it was pigs' garbage. It took an equal number of episodes of the subbed anime, screened in the main auditorium during this flawed-but-nonetheless-enjoyable gathering, to have me making a beeline for the Siren stall, to purchase the first season (12 eps) on DVD. Trashy origins and bog-standard swords'n'sorcery trappings belie "Haruhi"-level comic madness. I hope they can sustain it.

"M:TG - Worldwake" pre-cons, Addster's coffee table

The mono-black deck, "Fangs Of The Bloodchief", defecates on the other four from an impressive elevation. What was WOTC R&D thinking? Hours of meticulous testing saw mono-B finish on 4/4 match wins and 11/12 games, ahead of "Flyover" (U/W; 3M, 7G), "Rapid Fire" (R/W; 2M, 6G), "Mysterious Realms" (U/G; 1M, 3G) and the appropriately inflexible "Brute Force" (G/R; 3G). Furthermore, the average life total of "Fangs" when the coup de grace was delivered was 13. 'Tis but a scratch!

Entry destined to remain unwritten, this lifetime

For a while, I've been meaning to catalogue the gigs I was offered but, for various reasons, was unable or unwilling to accept. These range from the world's most complicated urban newspaper round ("Next, you need to throw a paper through this window and land it on the lounge") to a deputy principal position at an English school in rural Japan. Then there was the ticket office, local election, 2000 Olympics... However, there may be fresh news on the employment front anon :-)