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Make levies, not war!
So, it has been a while since I've updated, and Stuff has Happened.
A week ago Saturday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
enemy_anime, xerahanadu, stellar_dust, Roxy, and I went to the Baltimore Comic-Con. It was the first con of any kind I've ever been to. Yay! It wasn't as big as I expected. q-: It was lots of fun, though. I didn't go to any of the programming (if I go again I might) or talk to any of the big-name guests (although had I been brave enough, they were totally accessible.) Instead, I mostly wandered about in costume, picking up free stuff and looking through boxes of back issues. I wasn't sure I'd be brave enough to actually walk around in costume (especially since I hadn't seen anybody else dressed up, as of when the con opened) but I'm really glad I did: I got my picture taken at least a dozen times, I got used a proof in arguments about whether any girl like Hal Jordan (answer: Hal Jordan is dreamy, but Rot Lop Fan is better), people talked to me, nobody hit on me (well, except this one really skeezy guy, and his line was so bad I'm not sure whether or not he was actually hitting on me.) In short, I felt welcome, which is good, because otherwise I'd probably have spent the day drifting about trying to be invisible. I know enough about comics, thanks to the magic of the internet and my retentive memory, that I can play BS with any random fanboy, but I don't feel like I'm a *real* comics fan yet, 'cause I haven't actually read that many real comics, and my webcomics knowledge is all three years out of date. So I didn't go talk to Wieringo, or Gabe and Tycho, or any of the other names I recognized. Because I'm shy, even when wearing all spandex. (Note the yellow wristband, to keep me from using my power ring!)
Anyway, I spent $7 to bring home 44 comics, which is pretty good (and is helped by the fact that at this point my only comic-buying criteria are a)woobie! b)shiny! c)craic! and d) dirt cheap). Then we got home after chinese buffet dinner, and I discovered that Mom had gone out to a yard sale and bought another stack of comics for me for 50 cents each! They were an intersting mix, mostly first and commemorative issues from the early '90s with a few random TPBS thrown in. I was trying to figure out where they came from-- it felt like somebody's mom selling off the last of his treasured collection. Anyway, for archival purposes, here's what I got:
Free: Uncle Scrooge (FCBD), Programs (hero-con & comic-con), The Supernaturals preview, Teen Titans #27 (NMF) Finder #28
Eight-for-a-dollar: Superboy #2, 9, 10; Robin mini-series 1,3,4,5; Static 9; Battlestar Galactica #3; X-Files 27,31; Badger #21; Ambush Bug #4; Arthur King of Britain #1; Apathy Kat #4; The River of Fire part 2 (This is the worst comic ever, starring the Phantom, printed in India)
Four-for-a-dollar: Justice League Quarterly #5; Legionnaires #54; Legion of Super-Heroes #17; Superboy Annual #1; Static 10,17; PVP #17; Finder 26, 30; Girl Genius #6,7; Tarzan 1,2; RotJ 1,2,3; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 1,3; IJ Further Adventures 1,2
Two-for-a-dollar: Green Lantern: Evil's Might 1-3, Plan Nine from outer Space
Here's the ones Mom got me:
The Death of Superman; The Life and Death of the Man of Steel (This was better than I expected. Probably because it hadGuy Beetle in it;) Emperor Doom; Red Sonja (the movie adaptation)
The Rook #1; The Warrior #100; Electric Warrior #1; LODK Shaman #2; War of the Gods #1
X-men 169; Excalibur 12, 14; Iron Man 200; Squadron Supreme #6, 12; The Eternals 1,3; Wild Thing #1; Shadowhawk 2; Wildstar #1; Vogue #1; Visionaries #1, 2.
enemy_anime's portfolio was given to the DC editors-- cross fingers for luck!
Sunday was spent with people who had the mental age of a two-year old. Literally; they were all two-year-olds. I taught my first solo Sunday school class, and I have the pre-schoolers. Aaaaah! Help! Actually, I think I might be perfectly capable of managing two two-year-olds for an hour-- but make it two two-year-olds *and* their mothers, it more than doubles the work. (I should be working up tomorrow's lesson right now, instead of lj'ing. Oops.) Then my little cousins Janna-banana and Samwise the Brave were in town for a funeral, so we went to their grandparents' house to play. (Her Grace the Duchess of Daycare was supposed to be there too, but her brother Anakin1 was less than two days old at that point, so that family was a bit busy.)
Most of the week was spent gettingstellar_dust moved into her new apartment and ready for her new job. (She decided to take frey_at_last and siegeofangels' advice on my poll, and adopted a homeless futon that was on its third owner.) She's mostly moved in (and her apartment is extremely of the awesome) but she's had a bad cold, she hasn't gone grocery shopping yet, her checking account is almost empty, she has to get to work at 8 o'clock every morning, and she won't have internet until ... who knows, they'll call her. So don't expect to see her around much for a bit. Also, her new co-workers apparently spent most of last week reading her lj. Whee!
Today was the National Book Festival Mom tagged along, and we metstellar_dust, coming up from the other end of the Orange Line, at the train station. The festival had a good crowd, probably at least as good as last year's. The protest was very visible -- it was a game all day to spot-the-peace-marchers (and it was funny to see them with their anti-establishment signs and t-shirts, carrying the free seat cusions Target was giving away at the festival,) and every speaker I heard mentioned it (mostly in a 'more things change, the more they stay the same' sort of way) -- but there was no real disruption, except by the Park Service helicopters which kept circling the Mall. I was also impressed by the way mony of the peace marchers were so positive toward the military, signs like 'peace is patriotic' and 'support our troops-send them home!' It's always seemed to me that the worst thing about the way the Vietnam peace movement worked was its demonization of the military; and it will make me very happy if this iteration manages to make the case that anti-war is not the same as anti-military.
Anyway, we went through the Free Stuff tents first, of course. By far the best thing at the whole festival was the free CDs that were being given out at the poetry pavilion -- three CDs worth of famous writers and actors reading famous passages from Shakespeare and poems and war letters. If I get ripping working on this computer, I will YSI a few of the better tracks as my participation in the poetry memes I missed last week. q-: I wrote "Dai Stihó" on the graffiti wall. I also picked up a few suprisingly good local literary magazines in the States tent. Ooh, and an electric green bag to go with my bright orange one from last year! I wonder what next year's will be - hot magenta?
By that time, Neil was coming on. I think he had significantly less time to talk than last year. At least, it seems like it. The questions weren't terribly interesting (not like the slashtastic stuff people were getting out of him earlier. *sniff*) He read an Anansi story from the new book which gave me a sudden urge to search out a video copy of the time I was nine and played Anansi in a class play. I was slightly disappointed, though-- last year, one of the things that I was impressed by was the way he put in touches of accent when he did his reading. In the Anansi story I found the occasional affected accent to be gratuitous and off-putting. Hmm. HE also mentioned that the best part about last year was the sign language interpretation of the hangover scene, which was my favorite bit of that reading too!
He came up saying he'd like to do a reading but had been rushed out so fast he didn't have a book, so of course fangirls started offering themselves up to him. Then he answered a few questions, and told one girl that she should e-mail him the answer to her question and he'd promise to post it on the blog. And then he was shuffled off to be chained to a table and forced to sign for hours (He was still going strong four hours later when we left.)
I'd found my cell phone (outside, in the grass) just in time before I left, so I screwed up my courage and calledsiegeofangels before the reading. Eventually we found each other (we internet-met as a result of discussing gNeil at last year's National Book Festival, so this was a pleasing symmetry.) She was taller than I expected. It's always strange to meet somebody I only know from their lj self - I never know what to say at first, and what if we don't actually get along?. But it worked. It helps that she is awesome. We went off to lunch together; we had to hurry it a bit, because stellar_dust wanted to hear George R. R. Martin, but we got some nice conversation in, and I'm glad I got to meet her in real life!
Anyway, we listened to GRRM talk, in which he talked alot without actually saying much, and most of it could have been quotes from 'On Writing' (but he did namedrop gNeil! Oh Neil, you rock star, you.) He did talk about moving between genres, science fiction to fantasy mainly, which got me thinking (as such things usually do). His current series, after a string of SF novels, is 'song of fire and ice', which is old-fashioned, convoluted epic fantasy in the tradition of Eddings. Only, the worldbuilding is done in such a way that I'd had fun reading it as soft SF set on a long-lost colony. He was very insistent on it being fantasy, though. I was going to actually *ask* him about it but the talk ended to soon. Oh well.
And then I stood in line for his signing withstellar_dust for about two hours. Good, I've done that, never have to do that again! (To be fair, meeting and talking with the people near us in line was fun. But it didn't make up for the pain of the line-waiting. Especially since I've never particularly coveted signed books anyway.)
And then we had dinner and went home. The metro was crowded. I'm sleepy.
1not actually their real names, alas.
A week ago Saturday,
enemy_anime, xerahanadu, stellar_dust, Roxy, and I went to the Baltimore Comic-Con. It was the first con of any kind I've ever been to. Yay! It wasn't as big as I expected. q-: It was lots of fun, though. I didn't go to any of the programming (if I go again I might) or talk to any of the big-name guests (although had I been brave enough, they were totally accessible.) Instead, I mostly wandered about in costume, picking up free stuff and looking through boxes of back issues. I wasn't sure I'd be brave enough to actually walk around in costume (especially since I hadn't seen anybody else dressed up, as of when the con opened) but I'm really glad I did: I got my picture taken at least a dozen times, I got used a proof in arguments about whether any girl like Hal Jordan (answer: Hal Jordan is dreamy, but Rot Lop Fan is better), people talked to me, nobody hit on me (well, except this one really skeezy guy, and his line was so bad I'm not sure whether or not he was actually hitting on me.) In short, I felt welcome, which is good, because otherwise I'd probably have spent the day drifting about trying to be invisible. I know enough about comics, thanks to the magic of the internet and my retentive memory, that I can play BS with any random fanboy, but I don't feel like I'm a *real* comics fan yet, 'cause I haven't actually read that many real comics, and my webcomics knowledge is all three years out of date. So I didn't go talk to Wieringo, or Gabe and Tycho, or any of the other names I recognized. Because I'm shy, even when wearing all spandex. (Note the yellow wristband, to keep me from using my power ring!)Anyway, I spent $7 to bring home 44 comics, which is pretty good (and is helped by the fact that at this point my only comic-buying criteria are a)woobie! b)shiny! c)craic! and d) dirt cheap). Then we got home after chinese buffet dinner, and I discovered that Mom had gone out to a yard sale and bought another stack of comics for me for 50 cents each! They were an intersting mix, mostly first and commemorative issues from the early '90s with a few random TPBS thrown in. I was trying to figure out where they came from-- it felt like somebody's mom selling off the last of his treasured collection. Anyway, for archival purposes, here's what I got:
Free: Uncle Scrooge (FCBD), Programs (hero-con & comic-con), The Supernaturals preview, Teen Titans #27 (NMF) Finder #28
Eight-for-a-dollar: Superboy #2, 9, 10; Robin mini-series 1,3,4,5; Static 9; Battlestar Galactica #3; X-Files 27,31; Badger #21; Ambush Bug #4; Arthur King of Britain #1; Apathy Kat #4; The River of Fire part 2 (This is the worst comic ever, starring the Phantom, printed in India)
Four-for-a-dollar: Justice League Quarterly #5; Legionnaires #54; Legion of Super-Heroes #17; Superboy Annual #1; Static 10,17; PVP #17; Finder 26, 30; Girl Genius #6,7; Tarzan 1,2; RotJ 1,2,3; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 1,3; IJ Further Adventures 1,2
Two-for-a-dollar: Green Lantern: Evil's Might 1-3, Plan Nine from outer Space
Here's the ones Mom got me:
The Death of Superman; The Life and Death of the Man of Steel (This was better than I expected. Probably because it had
The Rook #1; The Warrior #100; Electric Warrior #1; LODK Shaman #2; War of the Gods #1
X-men 169; Excalibur 12, 14; Iron Man 200; Squadron Supreme #6, 12; The Eternals 1,3; Wild Thing #1; Shadowhawk 2; Wildstar #1; Vogue #1; Visionaries #1, 2.
enemy_anime's portfolio was given to the DC editors-- cross fingers for luck!Sunday was spent with people who had the mental age of a two-year old. Literally; they were all two-year-olds. I taught my first solo Sunday school class, and I have the pre-schoolers. Aaaaah! Help! Actually, I think I might be perfectly capable of managing two two-year-olds for an hour-- but make it two two-year-olds *and* their mothers, it more than doubles the work. (I should be working up tomorrow's lesson right now, instead of lj'ing. Oops.) Then my little cousins Janna-banana and Samwise the Brave were in town for a funeral, so we went to their grandparents' house to play. (Her Grace the Duchess of Daycare was supposed to be there too, but her brother Anakin1 was less than two days old at that point, so that family was a bit busy.)
Most of the week was spent getting
stellar_dust moved into her new apartment and ready for her new job. (She decided to take frey_at_last and siegeofangels' advice on my poll, and adopted a homeless futon that was on its third owner.) She's mostly moved in (and her apartment is extremely of the awesome) but she's had a bad cold, she hasn't gone grocery shopping yet, her checking account is almost empty, she has to get to work at 8 o'clock every morning, and she won't have internet until ... who knows, they'll call her. So don't expect to see her around much for a bit. Also, her new co-workers apparently spent most of last week reading her lj. Whee!Today was the National Book Festival Mom tagged along, and we met
stellar_dust, coming up from the other end of the Orange Line, at the train station. The festival had a good crowd, probably at least as good as last year's. The protest was very visible -- it was a game all day to spot-the-peace-marchers (and it was funny to see them with their anti-establishment signs and t-shirts, carrying the free seat cusions Target was giving away at the festival,) and every speaker I heard mentioned it (mostly in a 'more things change, the more they stay the same' sort of way) -- but there was no real disruption, except by the Park Service helicopters which kept circling the Mall. I was also impressed by the way mony of the peace marchers were so positive toward the military, signs like 'peace is patriotic' and 'support our troops-send them home!' It's always seemed to me that the worst thing about the way the Vietnam peace movement worked was its demonization of the military; and it will make me very happy if this iteration manages to make the case that anti-war is not the same as anti-military.Anyway, we went through the Free Stuff tents first, of course. By far the best thing at the whole festival was the free CDs that were being given out at the poetry pavilion -- three CDs worth of famous writers and actors reading famous passages from Shakespeare and poems and war letters. If I get ripping working on this computer, I will YSI a few of the better tracks as my participation in the poetry memes I missed last week. q-: I wrote "Dai Stihó" on the graffiti wall. I also picked up a few suprisingly good local literary magazines in the States tent. Ooh, and an electric green bag to go with my bright orange one from last year! I wonder what next year's will be - hot magenta?
By that time, Neil was coming on. I think he had significantly less time to talk than last year. At least, it seems like it. The questions weren't terribly interesting (not like the slashtastic stuff people were getting out of him earlier. *sniff*) He read an Anansi story from the new book which gave me a sudden urge to search out a video copy of the time I was nine and played Anansi in a class play. I was slightly disappointed, though-- last year, one of the things that I was impressed by was the way he put in touches of accent when he did his reading. In the Anansi story I found the occasional affected accent to be gratuitous and off-putting. Hmm. HE also mentioned that the best part about last year was the sign language interpretation of the hangover scene, which was my favorite bit of that reading too!
He came up saying he'd like to do a reading but had been rushed out so fast he didn't have a book, so of course fangirls started offering themselves up to him. Then he answered a few questions, and told one girl that she should e-mail him the answer to her question and he'd promise to post it on the blog. And then he was shuffled off to be chained to a table and forced to sign for hours (He was still going strong four hours later when we left.)
I'd found my cell phone (outside, in the grass) just in time before I left, so I screwed up my courage and called
siegeofangels before the reading. Eventually we found each other (we internet-met as a result of discussing gNeil at last year's National Book Festival, so this was a pleasing symmetry.) She was taller than I expected. It's always strange to meet somebody I only know from their lj self - I never know what to say at first, and what if we don't actually get along?. But it worked. It helps that she is awesome. We went off to lunch together; we had to hurry it a bit, because stellar_dust wanted to hear George R. R. Martin, but we got some nice conversation in, and I'm glad I got to meet her in real life!Anyway, we listened to GRRM talk, in which he talked alot without actually saying much, and most of it could have been quotes from 'On Writing' (but he did namedrop gNeil! Oh Neil, you rock star, you.) He did talk about moving between genres, science fiction to fantasy mainly, which got me thinking (as such things usually do). His current series, after a string of SF novels, is 'song of fire and ice', which is old-fashioned, convoluted epic fantasy in the tradition of Eddings. Only, the worldbuilding is done in such a way that I'd had fun reading it as soft SF set on a long-lost colony. He was very insistent on it being fantasy, though. I was going to actually *ask* him about it but the talk ended to soon. Oh well.
And then I stood in line for his signing with
stellar_dust for about two hours. Good, I've done that, never have to do that again! (To be fair, meeting and talking with the people near us in line was fun. But it didn't make up for the pain of the line-waiting. Especially since I've never particularly coveted signed books anyway.)And then we had dinner and went home. The metro was crowded. I'm sleepy.
1not actually their real names, alas.
Do I dare eat a peach?
Re: Do I dare eat a peach?
Re: Do I dare eat a peach?
On the other hand, it really is a very serial-killer sort of poem, isn't it? q-:
Re: Do I dare eat a peach?
no subject
That sounds like just about every provider I've had. :-P
It's always seemed to me that the worst thing about the way the Vietnam peace movement worked was its demonization of the military...
It just kinda seemed, well, slow to me. "We don't agree with the government sending our people to Vietnam! Quick- spit on those people!"
I wonder what next year's will be - hot magenta?
Nope; day-glo yellow, obviously.
no subject
I decided magenta rather than yellow because they've been sticking to secondary colors. But maybe yellow :)
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'm sorry, what were we talking about? XD