The Spacers’ Home Companion Or If Garrison Keilor wrote for Joss

Brought to you by Mudders Milk Biscuits – Heavens, they’re tasty and expeditious. They give shy doctors the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. In the Blue Sun package with the dark brown stains that indicate freshness. Made from whole wheat raised in the Serenity River Valley by Norwegian bachelor farmers, so you know they’re pure, mostly.

Also brought to you by the Universal Duck Tape Council (Quack). Our spokes mechanic, Kay lee Winnit Fry, says “The Captain’s such a tightwad that if’ in it weren’t for duck tape, spit, bailin wire, an prayer Serenity’d either be on the drift or fall right out of the air.” Remember that all solutions are temporary and duck tape (Quack) is often as good a solution as any.

And now the news from Serenity, the little ship on the edge of the black where all the women are strong, the men are all good looking and the children are all above average. Outside, the temperature is absolute zero (not unlike Minnesota in the winter) and in the chatterbox galley, Norwegian bachelor Captain Mal and Norwegian bachelor mercenary Jayne are considering the latest plan gone south. Since both knew whose fault it was, neither was saying anything.

Across the table, Norwegian bachelor doctor Simon was resting from patching up these two criminals and considering using wood putty and duck tape the next time given that he wasn’t getting paid for any of these botched jobs. Then he started daydreaming about forming a HMO for smugglers and pirates. After all, some of these gangs had to be making money; they all couldn’t be this inept. As he was mulling this over in his mind, his very above average kid sister, River, skipped by and whispered in his ear “Give it up, Simon, smugglers and pirates don’t like filling out paperwork. That’s why they’re smugglers and pirates in the first place. You should join Doctors without Planets, at least you’d get to see some different bodies. Besides, when they start rehabbing the Reavers, you‘ll make a fortune doing plastic surgery.”

Just then, bachelor (probably not Norwegian, but who knows, given his lack of a back-story) Shepard Book from Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility came in seeking donations for the lepers on Whitefall. Quickly realizing that he was on the wrong ship for that sort of thing, he quickly left the way he came.

On the bridge of Serenity, Norwegian non-bachelor pilot Wash was supposed to be flying the ship, was playing with plastic dinosaurs proving once again that you can make a man out of a boy but you can’t take the boy out of the man.

Zoë and Inara, strong women both, who were standing, watching the men, were thinking “Why can’t these guys just grow up, learn to talk to women, settle down and get real jobs?”

Meanwhile in an office on the twelfth floor of the Acme Skyplex, high above a planet that likes to keep its secrets, one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions (such as who you really are). Guy Niska, Private Torturer.