Waking in a puddle of my own sick, having sleep-expunged at least my stomach’s memories of the night before, I thought about the day ahead. It was Saturday, the first day of the actual signing portion of the Supanova convention.

I’m terrible at early starts, and that day was no different, with me getting up with nearly no time before the driver came to pick me up from the hotel to convey me to the festivities. Doing what I could to scrape off a few layers of filth, I reluctantly opened one of the “complimentary” bags of peanuts that you just end up getting charged up the ass for and rubbed them all over myself, using them like an exfoliating sponge, only a sponge that is actually a cluster of painfully salted peanuts. I’d like to tell you that this was a trick I came up with on my own but it was actually feature in an episode of ‘Survivor Man’ in which he could not get out of his own hotel room.

Honestly, it was very difficult for me to sleep, and if anyone else in this city said the same thing I wouldn’t be surprised. It was the howling. The incessant, infernal howling that could only have come from the tortured throat of The Hatch, perching upon rooftops and crying out for another like himself to weep and terrorize with. No amount of counting sheep could buffer that damned sound. Is it any coincidence that, last night, a small child, having snuck out of their bedroom window to hunt insects by flashlight, was found ripped to pieces, it’s hands mere shreds? Everyone knows The Hatch burns with  insane jealousy over those with hands.

So off I went to the con. Overall it was an intimate affair, by the looks of the thing as I was driven past on my way to the green room, the break room where the various guests go to bitch about the heat and the flies and the fly-heat.

Having gotten there somewhat early, the green room was where I sat, waiting for my Q&A panel to start.

Really, the panel and the later signing sessions went very smoothly, with nothing too exciting to report aside from the fact that the Australians are a lovely bunch, polite and without a lot of the psychotic need to show off how weird they are like a lot of the American turnouts I have been through.

No, what’s absolutely for going into detail about is what happened around the signings and such. That’s the stuff, see?

Like I usually do after a Q&A session, I head back to the green room to hose off the rotten fruits and vegetables that I inevitably end up covered in (really, it’s a strange mix of rotten vegetable, rotting fruit, fine cakes and women’s underwear). While I was drying off, sitting on one of the many fine couches, I notice that Katee Sackhoff of Galactica fame is sitting across from me. She’s one of the big stars here at the convention, so it was no surprise that she’d be around, so I nodded politely and went back to meditating on evaporating the water using the power of my mind.

When I open my eyes, I notice Sackhoff is still staring at me, and not exactly a good way, more like I just sat on her favorite pet, or child.

Knowing I couldn’t have possibly done anything wrong in so short a time, I closed my eyes again, but it was no good, I felt her eyes burning holes through my closed eyelids. “Hello.”, I said to her. Now, I don’t normally have anything to do with actors and actresses like that. I know well enough that people from shows or movies that I like aren’t the actual characters they play, which cuts down on the amount of actual geeky fun I can have with them. No, what you usually end up with is some Los Angeles type more interested in talking about herbal remedies than fighting robots.

She stood up, without a word, legs apart, arms straight to the side like she was ready for a fight in a comic book. At that, I pulled out my DS and started playing some GTA, hoping to send the signal that I just wasn’t part of whatever moment the lady was having. The DS was swiped out of my hand, sent flying towards the wall, propelled at inhuman speeds, shattering against the wall.

Shocked, I look up and before I could say “What the FUCK, SACKHOFF?”, I was raised off the ground, not by any part of my body but for the fact that she had lifted the couch up with me still on it.

With a roar, she flung the couch, with me on it, at the wall as though it was a mere Nintendo DS. The couch took most of the impact, cushioning mine, but I had to slide out of the way as the thing came crashing back down to the ground. Desperately, I looked around the room at the various Supanova crew who were as stunned as I was, and in no position to leap into action to help me. Katee moved in for another attack, her arms raised like an old timey wrassler, growling like a bear.

“SACKHOFF! NOOOOOO!” I implored, not understanding ANYTHING about the world anymore. Through my wild panic, I still managed to wonder how the creators of Battlestar Galactic had managed to wrangle this monstrosity into acting and behaving like a fairly normal person on the show.

She had built up too much momentum, running at me like that, so at the last second, I rolled out of her way, watching as she slammed through the wall and the next and the next like the Juggernaut or possibly Ram Man. At that, we all simply froze in terror. I could certainly stave off death, but I could not deny it. Sackhoff was a machine, a terror of determination.

Not even the Supanova crew ran, though they were not the target of the Sackhoff’s hate…YET. It’s as though they knew that they COULD run, but that to exist in such a world that would allow such abominations is to deny the terrible truth of everything. We all simply watched as Sackhoff slowly turned herself around, shaking off the plaster and piping to aim herself at me for another run.

She ran. She ran and I waited, resigning myself to my Sacky fate.

Just then, a door between Sackhoff an myself opened, and in walked Hayden Panettiere , the tiny man that plays the female cheerleader on ‘Heroes’. Coming up to only about the height of the average human ankle, Hayden was a danger to anyone walking or running, especially if you are a force of terrible momentum like the Sackhoff was at that that very moment.

Panetierre stood there, just squealing for no reason that I could figure out, scowling something out about the heat and the bugs and who knows what else, her tiny arms waving about as she squeaked.

Sackhoff hit her like a semi, flipping like through the air with the exploded rags of Hayden on her feet, crashing through the window on the far side. She rolled on the sun-drenched concrete outside of the green room, taking out several cars along the way. A Mini Cooper carrying a car full of girls with cat ears was split in half as Sackhoff tore through it on her journey.

Katee came to a stop eventually, but then didn’t get up. Not then, not since. Cautiously we gathered around the thing, the woman, not daring to check to see if she was still alive, but we knew…we all knew that a thing like that cannot be killed, not even by tiny midget men. It was still active, still dangerous, like a bomb dropped but not detonated.

We’re never safe.

Chinatown was pretty cool. Ate at Post Mao’s.

More later.