They Lived Only To Face A New Nightmare: The War Against The Machines

When we published last week’s episode on Sunday night, we had lofty ambitions to go through a week’s worth of San Diego Comic-Con panel streams, pulling audio and dissecting some of the biggest news items of the con, and maybe having a guest to talk about the experience of being at the this year’s convention. Then all of our belongings staged a bloody insurrection against us.

Not eight hours later, on Monday morning, we awoke to the gentle aroma of burning insulation permeating the Home Office kitchen. Luckily, this smell only occurred intermittently, Unluckily, that interim was whenever the refrigerator compressor turned on. This required us to shut down the unit, run around like spastics to order a new fridge and purchase a bunch of coolers and ice, and pack every ounce of food we’ve ever purchased but not gotten around to eating into them. Note that this process didn’t include the beer.

Wednesday, we had high hopes to get back on track, but those plans were derailed by a nice lady, distracted by a bad day, who didn’t realize that the pretty red lights Amanda was showing her were actually being lit because Amanda was applying the brakes in her car. Amanda is fine (unlike her car), but by the time the cops and insurance company were gone, we just didn’t have the energy to match say, Geoff Johns’s enthusiasm about the return of Aqualad.

Luckily, the new fridge was delivered Thursday. Unluckily, it was delivered by gentlemen who didn’t seem to understand why it’s generally considered desirable to avoid slamming the front of a fridge into your plate glass storm door. I can understand why they didn’t consider this a big deal; considering the preexisting and extensive scratching on the front door that may or may not have intentionally resembled a gang sign, what’s a couple more dings? This meant a couple of more days without a fridge and with warm beer, and suddenly trying to hunt down Brian Michael Bendis’s explanations about why he’s turned Captain Marvel into a fascist for Civil War II kinda lost its luster.

Yesterday, we finally got the fridge and the ability to chill up some fine Berkshire Brewing Company Steel Rail Pale Ale… but our Web provider began warning us that we were so far behind on upgrades and capital improvements that we were in danger of being hacked by Rush. No, not “Russians”, the band Rush, who thinks Unix are how you get angelic voices on backing tracks. So cue a long Sunday of data backup and running upgrades, and boom!. Suddenly it’s 6 p.m. and we’re completely unprepared to produce a new episode for the week.

So unfortunately, we need to call a mulligan for this week’s show. We’ll be back next week to discuss DC FIlms’s Suicide Squad, which opens this weekend here in the United States.

At least, that’s the plan. With the luck we’ve had with machinery this week, the movie theater’s IMAX projector will mutate into a device that only warms Rob’s beer (a D.O.W.R.B! It’s a Kirby-esque villain that made Captain Marvel into a douche! I own that idea, Marvel! You hear me?) and we will be forced to review Sharknado IV.

Thanks for your patience. Talk to you next week,