where are your gloves and your helmet?

I have a meeting this morning about a server move project my office is undertaking, and this morning is one of those 'I'm awake, be happy you get that much' types for me. The green tea/yerba mate blend hasn't kicked in enough yet to make with the happy-making, so I'm just going to have to wake myself up with the following image that was discussed last night at some length in a phone call in RL:

Assuming that we get past the first movie scenario in a hypothetical smoosh-together of Ghostbusters and the Transformers ("Nobody steps on a church in my town!" "... particle stream weaponry"), there is one element of Ghostbusters 2 that I would absolutely love to retain for a second crossover, and given my feelings towards movie 2 that's saying a lot. Chuck Vigo the Carpathian out the window, skip over the lawsuit issues, let Dana stay a cellist, keep Tully's hands off Janine (Janine + Egon = OTP all the way), whatever, but we need the River of Slime.

Because you just know that a river of psychomagnetheric substance that animates metal objects into something very nearly self-willed and fueled almost entirely by hostility would totally wind up as a Decepticon performance enhancer.

And you know that Starscream would accidentally overdose on the stuff, rage himself into a thousand pieces in a frenzy of "OMP MEGATRON YOU SUCK I SHOULD TOTALLY RULE!!!!1!:!!!"...

... and that because of the slime, and because this is Ghostbusters, the shattered fragments would each and every one become a perfectly functional self-willed Starscream toy Transformer and the entire cloud of them would then all insist that 'we are Starscream, we should be leader' and start driving everyone around them out of their minds. Also probably allying with each other and betraying each other.

I'm pretty sure the appropriate collective noun for this entity grouping would be 'a chorus of Starscreams'.

When the influenza of 1919 rolled over the county of Essex in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, it left unnumbered dead in its wake. That was no surprise; death traveled in the Spanish Lady's train as surely as night followed day. Indeed, it was a leveller the likes of which no-one had ever seen before, outdoing even the Great War in its equity of destruction. For a thing had come to pass during the time of the War, a thing which no-one gave much thought to before, and could not be bothered to pursue after. Of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex was the least touched by the Gold Star- and that was because, if one made the effort to search, of the fact that of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex sent forth the fewest sons to the War.

Not that the young men of that part of the state were lacking in patriotism. Far from it! No, many a lad went off to volunteer, some of them in the armies of other countries in the days before America would give them the chance. Their young men were as willing to go of their own accord as any other. But that was the thing, you see. They went of their own choosing. The hand of the draft board fell lightly indeed upon the county, young men's numbers scarcely ever being called; and in some towns that hand was not felt at all. Kingsport was one such. Dunwich, another. Innsmouth's queer clannish folk never so much as heard a recruiter's voice, and that was just the way they liked it. And as for Arkham town, well, they'd given volunteers, hadn't they? If the government didn't call on them to send more than they wished to give, they weren't about to object. Keep the lads at the university or by their parents' sides, that was just the way it ought to be.

No one noticed, or if they did, they kept it to themselves. About the only man who might have said something was a young soldier from New York, a clerk by profession, born in the back woods of the Catskill Mountains. He'd spent long hours compiling and reconciling the records of the War Department, doing the duty of a bookish man so that stronger sorts might be free to fight. He saw a great deal, and even speculated upon what it might signify, before he was called. That was the end of any chance that he might speak. Not that he died- far from it- but the roar of the guns cracked young Private Martense's mind beyond all repair. He speaks not at all in his quiet cell in the asylum, save when the thunder of summer storms rolls overhead; and when that happens, he screams.

[ETA: The tag refers to topics raised in the comments.]

*hears noise in corner*

*shines flashlight into corner*

Oh, look, a brain. I think it's mine.

*gets baseball bat*

*pulls up a stool, parks butt on same*

*waits, watching brain grimly*

*brain watches back*

Listen, buddy, you may be three pounds of soggy meat and fat inside my skull, but one more friggin' mulebunny and I'm going to hurt you but good.

*brain just watches back*

Don't even CONSIDER pushing that scene at me again. I don't care if interrupting some kind of 'John Constantine summons and loses control of a horror' scene gives you an excuse to make Egon speak Hebrew! I have a baseball bat, you know!

argh...