Yesterday was the best car experience I’ve ever had. I bought my Dad’s old truck so we went to AAA to do the title change. We waited maybe 10 minutes before being called to the window and $15 and ten minutes later we were out the door. We then took my old truck (1998 Ranger) to Carmax to see if they would even want to buy it. I had a big dent in the front left quarter panel but after about 50 minutes total time we were leaving and I had a check in my hand that was probably double what I had expected to get.
We subsequently heard from a friend that they bought their last car at Carmax a year ago and were only there for maybe 60 to 90 minutes which makes me want to never buy a new car again; I’ll just use Carmax.
I was cruising Usenet this morning and saw a guy posting about a band called Amarna Reign and he calls it melodic progressive deathcore. Really? Does that even make any kind of sense at all? I then Googled the band and the first two hits are their MySpace and Facebook pages. Apparently they don’t even have their own web site. A search on Wikipedia shows that they must have taken their name from ancient Egyptian history so that’s one good point in their favor.
This picture really doesn’t look deathcore, does it?
Probably my favorite part of Comic-Con is meeting the writers and artists in person. The best place to do that is the Small Press area and one of my first stops every year is to see Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles, (Th)ink and The Knight Life. If you aren’t familiar with his work do yourself a huge favor and pick up one of his books, I don’t know how to describe his art style except to say that it’s entertaining. His writing is always funny and every once in a while he touches on current social issues and will really make you think. Check out his official site at http://www.kchronicles.com/ to see the daily (Th)ink single-panel comics as well as the weekly K Chronicles; if you enjoy it then go all out and get the The Complete K Chronicles.
I again saw Keith at a spotlight panel about him & his work but this year was special: he was awarded an Ink Pot award which was a complete surprise to him. It surprised me as well since I thought they only gave those out at a special banquet. Even though Keith will re-use certain strips in his panels I always enjoy attending since I am guaranteed to laugh the whole time.
This year I also met Stan Yan, creator of The Wang. He was great fun to talk to so I bought his latest book, Erection Year and he did a neat drawing inside for me. My wife gets migraines from MSG which I mentioned to him since the front cover says “NOW WITH MSG!” so the character he drew inside (Wang’s mother) is saying “MSG is good for you!”
I was only able to attend Comic-Con on Thursday this year, hopefully I’ll go back to all four days next year. There’s so much to see and one has to be selective and ignore some areas completely in order to see the really interesting stuff in one day. It seemed to me like there was even more space dedicated to video games and this year, I really wish they would cut back on that and use the space for more genre related stuff. The toys were just out of control this year, huge Hasbro area for Star Wars/G.I. Joe/Transformers and there was a constant line at the Mattel area the whole day (for what I have no idea).
The wait to pick up badges didn’t take too long (only 20 minutes or so) but the line stretched all the way north along the front of the convention center, then wrapped around to the back of the building to the south. We got there at about 9am and had badges in hand by about 9:25am. For some reason even though the show opened at 9:30am the security guys (I hesitate to call them guards) weren’t letting people down the main stairs & escalators where everybody was coming out from registration. Luckily I am familar enough with the venue that we backtracked and went around to the Bayside area and went down those stairs to get in.
Steampunk was out in force this year, lots of people dressed up and more vendors than in past years. One booth had a giant selection of goggles and other paraphenalia; another vendor had a really neat steampunk mechanical arm. Lots of zombie comics this year, more than I remember from the last time I went in 2008 (I am not too sad I missed 2009 since Twilight was really huge that year).
I only picked up two of the convention exclusives this year (it took forever to read through the entire list on the web site): Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast and Neonomicon #1 written by Alan Moore, art by Jacen Burrows (and I even got Jacen’s autograph on it); fun fact: this was a limited edition cover for Comic-Con with only 1500 printed.
Devil Bacon from Mr. Toast (limited to 1000 produced for SDCC)
Neonomicon #1 (special Comic-Con cover)
While we were at the Mr. Toast booth we also picked up a vampire candy corn for the dogs to play with.
Vampire Candy Corn from Mr. toast
Next update I’ll list out the books that I got and the people I met (in all honesty as much for myself as a journal to look back on as for my readers’ benefit).
I’m a little impressed, I actually completed playing Borderlands last night. I think that’s only about the second game that I’ve actually finished (the other being Half-Life 2). I did it on Normal difficulty and only had to Google a couple of times for hints. Usually I get stuck on a game either because I’m not a good enough shooter or I can’t figure out where to find something. I put down Bioshock a few months ago because I couldn’t get where I needed to go on a particular map (even with hints) but I’m going to give it another shot because I really enjoyed that game.
I ran across this e-mail signature and it is definitely the longest one I’ve ever seen. Let’s step through it, shall we? (Apologies for the ugly pixelation but I had to blur out personal info and I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it.)
We’ve first got her name and title (all well and good) but then a full list of everyone for whom she is the assistant. Street address of the company is next, is that really necessary for electronic mail? Next is her e-mail address (couldn’t you just get it from the e-mail itself?) followed by phone and fax numbers.
Next up is a pithy quotation (source not identified of course) and then the company name, slogan and web site. Whew!
This is a great video documentary of a WWII Mustang pilot getting to not only see his own plane but fly another one 60+ years later. I was very glad to see his grandchildren so interested in what he had experienced during the war.
I just looked at the top search terms that brought people to this site and had a good laugh.
reqs: search term
—-: ———–
57: kool aid man
36: pygmy chameleon
23: doppelbock
14: sled game
13: mr woody hot dog cooker
12: kool aid
12: moose knuckle
12: mooseknuckle
11: sled games
7: cox newsgroups
7: bitter waitress
6: cthuhlu
6: weird
5: total annihilation unit pack
My Knights Exemplar Errants are going to be very strong on the battlefield but getting them there is going to be challenging. They are a pain in the butt due to the large part count on each model. I built a minimum unit of six about two years ago and didn’t buy the other four until now because I hated assembling them (not to mention painting all the detailed armor plates).
Now that the unit attachment is out (which makes them really strong) I decided to get the unit buffed out to full strength. Below is one pose with the sword & shield in hand plus crossbow on the back. The second shot is even more parts, crossbow in hands with sword & shield on the back.
That last Seamus shot was very small after cropping from the camera so here’s one of him after assembly as well as Madame Sybelle. Yes, she’s an overweight undead madame from a cathouse. Shooting raw pewter is sketchy, the high reflectivity can wash out the details sometimes.
Here are various Knights Exemplars Errant in my ghetto spray booth. The officer from tbe UA is on the far left and you should be able to pick out the standard bearer. The other four are the grunts from the two blisters that I just got to bring my unit up to full strength. Now I just need to grab the Errant Seneschal solo.
I finally got going on my Malifaux figures today. I started with Seamus since he looked relatively easy: one hand w/toolbag to glue to his wrist. Turns out I had to pin it since there was so little contact area.
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