Matt W Cook

Plasmodium falciparum

It started with a small hole in the mosquito net. A single mosquito flew in. This mosquito was a host to this parasite. At the bug plunged it’s little straw thingy into my sleeping body, the parasite-ridden saliva dripped into my blood stream. The little critters inside made their way to my liver, where they hung out until they felt they were ready to begin the hostile take-over of my red blood cells. It started out as a simply pain in the neck, literally. After that the pain moved up to the back of my head and I started to get a nasty fever and general malaise. Mr. doctor diagnosed my with malaria and gave me many a pill. It took a good week before I felt normal and I’ve lost a lot of weight (though I don’t think that’s a bad thing).

All better now, and I’ve got the Internet in my house. I’ll be blogging more often now. Talk to ya later!

Cook out

See the purple stuff? That’s malaria eating my red blood cells.

Matt

…they heard an ominous sound coming from below. It sounded strangely like a rusty brass-chainsaw starting up and digging into some wood. Shan had a momentary lapse of insight and commanded Barb-John to look down the trunk to find out what the noise was. But of course, dear Barb-John was deaf as a wet stump, so Shan had to wave for him to look.
Unfotunately, this also received no attention.
Fortunately, Shan possessed his trusty “Get Barb-John’s Attention” stick (which was basically a cattle prod that had a +1 electrical damage added on to its 1d6 base damage).
Unfortunately this caused Barb-John to tumble out of the tree.
Fortunately, Barb-John was wearing a parachute at the time.
Unfortunately, he lacked the intellectual fortitude to pull the rip-chord.
Fortunately, there was a large wagon full of freshly harvested cotton-balls below him.
Unfortunately, there was a nasty, rusty pitchfork sticking in said wagon.
Fortunately, he missed the pitchfork.
Unfortunately, he also missed the wagon.
And so Barb-John landed with a mighty mixture of a thud and a splat. What became of the rat, you may ask? The dear rat, it seems, had not only his own parachute but also the very intellectual fortitude that Barb-John lacked to pull the rip-chord, so he landed softly and was quickly reunited with his rather incapacitated and possibly dead fellow-sidekick.