Dragon*Con 2010

So, I finally made it back to Dragon*Con this year!  This is a good thing, as I really needed a vacation.  Andy and MSG had a room for me, which I shared with my old friend Marie and one of Andy and MSG’s friends named Alan.  I’ve met Alan before and all was cool, so I knew the room situation would be to my liking.  We were on the second floor of the International tower of the Hyatt, and that was an incredible room.  As usual, I brought way more stuff than we needed, on the off chance that it would prove useful.  As it turns out, we ate about 2/3 of the food I brought, used some portion of all of the supplies I brought (even pulls some meds out of my first aid kit), and we never found ourselves *needing* something for our visit.  Even if I caught some flack for over packing, I think the benefits of that outweighed the ribbing.

The trip there was kind of a bitch… my phone was being a real pain the whole way, and that had my GPS and navigation info on it, so finding the hotel was kind of a pain in the ass.  Parking was $75 for the weekend, and I had to park a block and a half away from the hotel, which made getting my gear too and from the room difficult.  Then there was the 4 hour wait in the muggy Atlanta evening before I got my con badge.  After that wait, in which a very nice fellow con-goer took pity on me and bought me a bottle of water to stave off heat exhaustion, I made it back to the hotel where Marie and Alan helped me unload the car.  We called it a night and got ready for the con to start bright and early on Friday!

I made it to more panels than I expected too, including one on Eureka and one on Warehouse 13.  MB Weston’s panel on Zombies vs. Unicorns was a hilarious group debate, and Cherie Priest’s reading and discussion about her Clockwork Century books was lots of fun.  I was a bit disappointed to see the DC Universe Online panel canceled, but I got a Beta Key for the game anyway, and have already given it away to my buddy Bobby, who’s dying to play it.  I didn’t make it to the Eureka/Warehouse 13 crossover panel, but between the other 2 panels and what I saw on DCTV, I got enough of a fix of both shows to be happy.  I really like the actors behind both shows, and it was really nice to see them out of character and talking as real people.  Also, Erica Cera (Jo Lupo, from Eureka) was crazy Hot in person.

The real fun of Dragon Con is rolling around the crowds, admiring the costumes and meeting up with old friends or making new ones.  I new the costume watching was off to a good start when the first group of people I saw was a Deadpool Universe group!

Thos of you who know me, know that I’m a huge Deadpool fan, so this sort of set the stage for me and the crowd over the weekend.  I took about 160 pictures total, and Andy, Marie, and Alan all took as many more themselves.  I need to get their collections…. Alan got a good shot of the entire Ironettes group, with Rhodie and Tony Stark.  I also somehow missed the bad ass War Machine costume rolling around the con.  However, of all the pictures I took at the con, this one is my favorite, showcasing some of the top badguys from the recent Batman Arkam Asylum game:

Predictably, I was blown away by that Harley Quinn costume.  I’ve always been a big fan of Harley, but the new outfit from the Arkam game was too hot for words, and the level of detail this chick went too on that costume really did it justice.  She even had the warden’s name badge on, with the character portrait from the video game.  Two Face and the Joker’s costumes both looked custom made, and the trio put on a fantastic show, just sharing drinks on the patio out behind the Hyatt.

While I was there, I managed to catch the Voltaire concert and his Q&A panel, both of which were a blast.  One of the big pieces of news at his Q&A panel was that he’s got 2 new CD’s out this year… one was a kid’s album (mostly a compellation), and the other was a Country CD.  The country CD took everyone in the room by surprise, and even got some Boo’s at the Q&A, to which Voltaire responded ‘THANK YOU!  That is exactly the right response, because I hate country music!’  He wrote this in the style of Johnny Cash, and it’s making fun of country music and country music ideals.  I’ve heard a few tracks off the CD, and love it.  I bought a copy of it and had Voltaire autograph it for Melissa, who will get it in the mail as soon as I’m done ripping the tracks ;)  I bought myself the live CD and his CD from last year, which I never got.  After his show, I even got V to pose for a ‘snarky’ picture, just for Melissa.

All in all, I had a blast!  I got to meet some interesting people, I got to hang out with old friends, and I got to really enjoy myself for the weekend.  It was totally worth it, and I'm already looking forward to next year.  For reference, here’s the cost of the vacation:

Food and Supplies bought before the Con:  $200
Room for the Weekend (split 3 ways):  $300  (or $900/3)
Parking for the Weekend:  $75
Money Spent at the Dealers Rooms:  $150
Misc food/gas/snacks/etc:  $75

Total Cost:  $800

Not bad for a 4 day vacation.  I’m going to shoot for the internationally tower in the Hyatt again, that was a stellar room, and if I can get it low again, it’s much easier than waiting on an elevator.  2nd floor was super awesome, even if we could hear the crowds out front of the hotel late at night.  Not a big deal, since we were all so exhausted at the end of the day that we slept through them anyway ;)

Crash

What’s on TV…

So, traditionally, I don’t watch a lot of TV, especially when I was still playing World of Warcraft like a crack fiend.  Now that I’ve broken free of that, and really don’t play games all that much anymore, I have to find new and creative ways of wasting time.  And by creative, I mean finding TV shows that don’t totally suck.  I’m very glad I have a really nice DVR system now… it makes watching the very limited and random selection of TV shows I can tolerate a hell of a lot easier.  So, what am I watching these days?

1.  The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart (and the Colbert Report, by proxy)

Really, kind of a no brainer there… I really think that the news I get from Stewart is as reliable as what I get from Anderson Cooper, and it’s a hell of a lot more balanced than anything I could hope to see on Fox.  Which I don’t watch.  Ever.  The stupid fuckers… (pssst!  I really dislike those guys!)  As for Colbert, I like his show, even though he’s being deliberately disingenuous.  He puts enough sarcasm in his delivery though, that it’s easy to get the point he’s trying to make.

2.  NCIS

What can I say… I’m madly in love with Abby, their happy-goth forensic scientist.  Also, the entire cast just works really well together.  I really got into the show when I started watching reruns on USA last year, and I went back and watched every episode.  It’s a good show!  They’ve got their gothed out science geek (double whammy for me, right?), their slightly chubby computer geek (who had a relationship with said gothed out science geek early on), their wise cracking detective, bad ass Israeli special forces assassin, and the silent but deadly (seriously, he was a sniper… and he’s taken out a couple people in the show that way) head agent.  The team interaction is great, the stories are well written, and the humor is right up my ally.  I can’t wait to get into the next season.

3.  Eureka

I just got into this show this season, after hearing that Wil Wheaton was guest staring in a zombie-themed episode.  That’s pretty much the trifecta of awesomeness right there… Mad Scientists, Zombies, and Wesley Crusher.  What did you expect me to do?  Anyway, watching that episode and the crossover episode with Claudia from Warehouse 13, I decided to watch the entire series.  I burned through the first three seasons in less than a week, and was thoroughly hooked.  The concept is awesome:  Take the idea of a ‘Spark’ from Girl Genius (i.e. a genius mad scientist who can invent all kinds of pseudo-science gadgets).  Now put about 3000 of those folks in a town in Oregon, and put them all to work for a company called Global Dynamics.  Hilarity ensues.  They’re doing something weird in season 4 though, involving time travel and ret-conning big chunks of the city history.  It doesn’t look like they plan on fixing the time stream, either.  Not sure how I feel about this, but I’ll keep watching it.

4.  Warehouse 13

In a similar vein to Eureka, this one is about a couple of secret service agents who got recruited to work for a secret government program that confiscates and quarantines ‘Artifacts’.  Where Eureka has a modern-science feel to it, this one most definitely has a steampunk aesthetic.  The ‘artifacts’ are devices or nick knacks held by famous people in history that have attained some sort of mysterious power or ability.  Things like Lewis Carrol’s mirror, that traps the soul of anyone who looks into the mirror for to long, and replaces that soul with Alice (who, by the way, is completely homicidally insane).  It’s a neat premise, and the cast has good chemistry with each other, so it’s fun to watch. 

5.  Haven

This one is brand new on SyFy.  It’s about a small town in Main, right on the coast, where a bunch of spooky shit starts happening.  My first thought…  C’thulu!  However, it looks like this was based on a book by Steven King about a missing persons cold case.  Not sure where the tie in to all the spooky shit comes in (i.e. the last episode had a girl who could draw someone’s picture, then anything that happened to the picture happened to the person.  Yes, someone had their face erased!).  I’m still holding out for a C’thulu tie in, but it may be a season or two before they get that far.

6.  Futurama

New season!  Need I say more?  NO!

 

So yeah… finally, TV worth watching, at least by my understandably abnormal standards.  Just in time for the new semester of school to start.  Nothing like having a distraction when I should be studying :P

Crash

What the hell is wrong with these assholes?

Ok… I know I’ve already written about the Prop 8 ruling… but lets face it, this is going to be in the news for awhile, and like anything else in the news, it’s going to get attention from both sides of the issue.  Today’s example in extreme asshattery comes from one David Frum, a republican author who wants conservatism to ‘win’ again (whatever the fuck that means), and is a regular columnist for CNN.  He’s written an editorial called ‘Bristol Palin and the Future of Marriage’.  In this article, Frum makes the case that the recent re-breakup between Bristol and Levi is more important than the ruling on Prop 8 last week, that re-legalized same sex marriages in California.  Frum went on to say things like ‘Same Sex marriage has lead people to believe that having children out of wedlock is normal’, and that children born outside of wedlock are less likely to finish school, more likely to experience poverty, and more likely to go to prison.  He attempts to make the case that allowing same sex marriages is tantamount to dooming children across the land to lives of uneducated poverty and prison. 

After reading this article, I would very much like to find David Frum, and kick him in the head.

So, let me start my rebuttal with the obvious glaring hole in Frum’s argument.  No where in his editorial, or in court last week, was anyone anywhere able to prove that same sex marriage leads to  less hetero-sexual marriages.  Furthermore, no one has been able to prove that same sex marriages promote promiscuity between unmarried couples.  (Hollywood does a FAAAAAR better job of doing that for us, but that’s another rant).  Since Frum’s entire argument relies on the notion that same sex marriages lead to more children out of wedlock, we could stop right here and be confident we’ve made our case.  However, I would like to point out the other, far more obvious fact about same sex couples (both in and out of marriage)… THEY DON’T HAVE CHILDREN ACCIDENTALLY!  I’ve never heard of a pair of lesbians having pre-martial sex and ‘accidentally’ getting knocked up!  It just doesn’t happen!  And if it did?  Guess what!  THEY AREN’T FUCKING LESBIANS!  We learned that shit in biology 101!  How the FUCK can you make the case that same sex marriages promote unwed pregnancies?  It’s fucking ridiculous, and Frum should be a ashamed of himself for committing such a stupid thought to words, much less publishing them in a national forum!

Of course, Frum’s own data works against him.  Allow me to present exhibit A:

Notice that Alaska is not among the handful of states that allow same sex marriages.  (It does allow marriage to first cousins though, which might explain Bristol’s mom… but I digress…)  However, Frum’s ‘data’ shows that nearly 30% of white women in 2007 who gave birth, did so out of wedlock.  Is he implying that 30% of the white people in the USA live in that 5% of the country, and that those 30% of white children born were born in areas that allow same sex marriage?  He is certainly implying that same sex marriage is the only factor that leads kids to think marriage isn’t necessary.  So, given her mother’s very public stance on the issues and her geographic location, the notion that Bristol’s exposure to same sex marriage made her think that it was cool to get knocked up at 16 before getting married, during her mother’s failed attempt at running for VP is really not holding much water.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I think it’s safe to say that some other factor lead her to believe it was cool to get knocked up early and unwed.  Hrmmm… what could it be, what could it be?  Could it be…. SATAN?!?!  Nope… it’s probably just some pussy in glitter:

But anyway, enough about Bristol.  I’m writing this post to rip on Frum here, for being an asshat and continuing to push the notion that same sex marriage is hurting our children.  Frum isn’t the only one doing this either.  Most analysts agree that the PR blitz in ‘08 about Prop 8 was largely successful because they played on a parents fear that allowing same sex marriages would somehow make their kids gay.  Now they are changing their tune slightly, and saying that it wont make them gay, it will just make them disrespect the institution or marriage, presumably because it’s not an exclusive thing anymore, and just old anyone can get married now!  It’s the same bullshit move with a fresh coat of paint tacked onto it.  It isn’t any more true now than it was in ‘08, and I’m sick and tired of seeing these assholes hide their intolerance and bigotry behind the shield of ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN!’.  This bullshit is doing more harm than good and it needs to stop!

If 2 people are lucky enough to find happiness together, let them be happy!  This doesn’t hurt anyone!  A Man and a Woman, a White and Black, and Jew and a Christian, who cares, and why are any of these couples fundamentally different or entitled to any different treatment?  Marriage is about love and happiness, plain and simple.  Denying marriage to same sex couples is teaching your kids that it’s ok to oppress people because they are different from you.  If you think that’s a good idea, than a few unwed teens having babies is the least of your problems!

I could rant on this for hours, but I have work to do…
Crash

Oh, the conversations I have with my mother…

So, I went home for lunch today, to find my mother (who’s in town visiting this week+), watching some space exploration show on the Science Channel.  The talking head on the TV made a comment about how we could potentially have a man on Mars by the end of President Obama’s second term.  Now… my mother is not a fan of the president.  At all.  She’s convinced that Obama isn’t a citizen, is a Muslim terrorist, and is selling out our country to the Chinese.  I’m not really sure when she became a rabid right wing nut job, but there it is, clear as day.  So, when mom heard that statement about Obama and space travel, her first reaction was ‘NO WE CAN’T!  OBAMA TOOK AWAY ALL THE MONEY FROM THE SPACE PROGRAM!  RAWRRRR!’  Of course, being the more rational of the two, I felt obligated to correct her…

I reminded her that Obama didn’t just call up the heads of NASA and have them all summarily shot in their faces.  Instead, he’s repurposed NASA towards more pressing terrestrial scientific endeavors, and turned over the task of manned space exploration to the private sector.  When asked who she would rather see running the show on space flight:  the Government or the Private sector, mom was forced to concede that we’re better off in the private sector’s hands.  The government bureaucracy is so inflated right now that between budget arguments, congressional committees, and ceaseless politicking, nothing serious would ever get done again.  However, in the past 6 months since the private sector has been let loose on the issues, we’ve already seen our first 100% private run and funded orbital object launch.  (Way to go, Space X!)

That’s the thing about my mother… she loves to argue politics, but she’s so mired in the conspiracy theories, hate and fear mongering, and eternal pessimism of the right wing that she can’t make a single argument that stands up to fact checking or the slightest amount of reason.  I make a habit of shooting down anything like that I hear her say, especially when I’m home for the holidays.  It would be hilarious, if she and my grandmother didn’t get into screaming matches over these very same things when I’m not around…

Anyway, little conversations like this make my day, especially when they result in mom having to admit that something the President did is working out positively.  I wish it was that easy to convince the rest of the folks around here of all that… but at least it’s something ;)

 

Crash

Prop 8 my homework!

(see what I did there?  Anyway…)

So, yesterday, in what will certainly be a court case for the ages, California Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker (appointed by Ronald Reagan, by the way) shot down Prop 8 as being unconstitutional.  For those of you who don’t pay attention to California politics, Prop 8 was the ballot initiative in 2008 that banned the state of California from issuing any more same sex marriage licenses.  Judge Vaughn overturned the law the grounds that it violated due process and equal treatment guaranteed by the 14th amendment.  In the verdict of the case, he said that the defendants (i.e. the state of California) failed to produce any evidence that backed up the claims that same sex marriages hurt heterosexual marriages in any way, nor was there any evidence that same sex couples were unfit parents.  He summed up the ruling by affirming that prop 8 was based on a moral point of view that held same sex marriages as inferior to heterosexual marriages, and that moral opinions were not a basis for any kind of law.  I could sum it up even more, but I have a better idea:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to
deny rights to gay men and lesbians.  The evidence shows
conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private
moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex
couples.  FF 76, 79-80; Romer, 517 US at 634 (“[L]aws of the kind
now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage
imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons
affected.”).  Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians
without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

CONCLUSION

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in
singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.
Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than
enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-
sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.  Because California
has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and
because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its
constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,
the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. 

You can check out the full PDF case briefing here.  Personally, I think is one of the best things to come out of the judiciary system in ages.  I’m hoping that this will be the domino to fall and start the chain reaction to legalize same sex marriages across the country.  I fear that my gay friends here in Alabama may have another couple decades to wait until it’s their turn, but at least this is movement in the right direction.

I’m glad to see legislation like this coming down the pipe.  Many analysts predict that in 20 years, same sex marriage will be legal across the country (well, except here in Alabama, of course).  Now that the ball is rolling, there are a few other laws I would like to see changed across the country.  For example, Pot.  Legalize that shit, and tax the hell out of it!  People are going to smoke it either way, the only question is who gets the profits… drug runners, or the US Government and Phillip Morris?  As much as I like to dish on the corporate fat-cats who are ruining America, I would rather see all that pot money go to US companies over Mexican drug lords.  Plus, legalizing it will free up a lot of police and judiciary resources to focus on real dangerous crime.  But that’s another rant for another time…

Crash

Starcraft 2… full of win!

So, I’m kind of a Starcraft fan-boy… have been for 12 years now.  It’s not that I’m a huge fan of RTS games, because I’m not.  In fact, the only RTS games I’ve ever really played are the Starcraft and Warcraft series.  However, Blizzard is a master at crafting epic and engaging stories to go with their games, and they suck me in every time.  The fact that they keep their RTS game play fun certainly helps though ;)

Anyway, it’s been 12 years since Blizzard released the first Starcraft.  My oldest friends (the ones I made in my ill-fated stint at Sewanee), remember how that game affected me back then.  Many people would lay the blame for burning out my junior year squarely on the feet of Starcraft and the Brood Wars expansion… They would be wrong, mind you, but I can see why they would say that (truth is, I was burned out either way and if I wasn’t obsessively playing Starcraft 2, I would have found some other equally distracting activity that didn’t involve doing my schoolwork).  Either way, I played a LOT of Starcraft back in my college days.  I was never a pro-gamer, counting my APM or any of that crap, but I spent a lot of time in that game.

So, with that kind of history, it’s no wonder that I got all kinds of excited when I heard that Blizzard was finally pushing out the sequel.  Blizzard being what they are, I knew it would rock story wise, and I had every faith that Blizzard would keep the game fun to play as well as engaging.  I didn’t pre-order the collectors edition (because they weren’t taking CE pre-orders anymore when I got to my local GameStop and ordered my copy), but when I went to pick up my copy on launch day, I found my GameStop had an extra CE copy, so I snagged it!  Bonus!

LAUNCH DETECTED!

Launch day was agonizing… I picked up my copy at 10:00am, then had to spend the rest of the the day at work.  The box was sitting in my car, just begging to be played, all day long!  I didn’t get home until around 6:30, and I had only gotten about an hour and a half of sleep the night before.  Still… for those of you who know me, you’ll know that I wasn’t about to let a little thing like sleep deprivation deter me from cracking open my shiny new collectors edition and fire it up!  The installation went perfect and a few minutes later I was watching the trademark Blizzard cut scene intro to the game.  I only intended on playing for an hour or so, because I’m trying to finish a research paper.  Before I could blink, I looked up and saw that I had been playing for 4 hours.  I did that again last night, playing until 3:00am without realizing it.  Nice!

So, the game itself is flat out fantastic.  The game play hasn’t changed much from the formula that made it such a success 12 years ago.  There are new units, new buildings, new tactics, and new tricks to learn, but largely the game plays just like it did back then.  I was happy to find that the hotkeys I remembered from SC1 still worked in SC2, and I was happy to see how naturally I fell back into my SC gaming groove.  The first SC2 game is Terran only in the single player, but there are a handful of bonus missions you get to play as Protoss.  The full Protoss and Zerg campaigns come out as separate expansions, which may be as far as 18 months out between releases!  CRAP!

What’s really got me hooked is the story!  In SC1, and even Warcraft, the story was told mid-mission, through scripted events, and between missions, through the occasional cut scene or scripted event.  All you ever got to see of a character was their unit in the game, and a small portrait image in the UI.  You were either looking at a loading screen, or loaded into a map for the duration of the game.  In SC2, they’ve taken that to a whole new level by borrowing the setup of the Normandy from Mass Effect.  Now, between missions, you retire to your own personal battle cruiser, the Hyperion.  There, you can talk to your crew, look after research projects, check the armory for new permanent unit upgrades, or hire new merc units in the bar.  I find myself spending as much time in the ship between missions as I do in each mission!

I’m only 2 days into the game, and I’ve knocked out the first 10-12 missions so far... those being the easy ones that teach you the basics of play.  I’ve also stumbled across the bonus Protoss missions, which I’m rocking my way through right now.  In terms of levels, I’m about 1/3-1/2 of the way through the game, but in terms of time, it’s more likely 1/4 of the way through, at most.  I’m sure the later levels will get much harder much faster.  As long as the story keeps pace, I don’t mind.  I’ll play the game on easy mode if I have too, just to get to more of those juicy story bits!

So anyway, if you can’t tell by now, I am totally in love with Starcraft 2.  If you’re any kind of blizzard fan boy (guilty!), you should totally pick it up.  Even if RTS’s aren’t your thing, the story is worth the game play, and you can play through on easy (or even cheat!) to get past the missions.  I know I’ll get more enjoyment out of this than the next 3 bluray movies I buy (which cost as much as this game did).  Seriously, I can’t endorse this game enough, just for the single player campaign alone.  Of course, I haven’t touched multiplayer yet, but I’ll get to that in my own sweet time ;)

--Crash

And your little dog, too…

So, I’ve known for some time now that my mother was planning a visit down to my place for the first week of August.  That’s no surprise.  She hasn’t been down here since this time last year, honestly I’m surprised she lasted this long.  She’s bringing her computer for me to fix too, which again, isn’t any big surprise.  I’ve long since resigned myself to being the family tech support monkey.  Whatever, it’s easier to just fix this crap and get it over with than try to teach them how to do this stuff themselves.  The only sense of impending dread I’ve had up until now is my mother’s propensity to extend a ‘few days’ into a ‘few weeks’, when she comes down to the coast.  Fortunately, I’ve got a major deadline right in the middle of her visit, so I’ll have an excuse to hide at my office for 10-12 hours a day while she’s here.  All in all, I thought I was fairly well prepared for her visit.  Until, of course, I found out that…

She wants to bring her dog with her.  And by want, I mean she’s already made plans on doing so, without ever having asked if that was ok with me or if I had any objections to it.  My mother’s dog, I might add, is less than a year old, and hasn’t quite mastered that whole ‘house broken’ thing down yet.  It’s a hyper active, yippy little meat sack of a dog, the kind of dog you could kick 20 yards.  It’s a miniature schnauzer, and I can already see it causing a world of headaches for me.  Why?  Well…

I don’t ‘hate’ dogs, per say, but I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a dog-person.  That’s why I have cats.  2 of them, in fact.  Nora and Kiera.  They are both typical cats, in that they know that they own everything in my apartment, including me.  If it’s head scratching time, it doesn’t matter that I’m arms deep in a computer trying to replace a burned out power supply, it’s head scratching time, damnit!  They are both very spoiled cats, and they know it.  So, putting a strange smelling, hyperactive dog that is larger than either of my cats in their space, and expecting them to live with it for at least a week… yeah, that’s not going to be fun.

Have I mentioned that my cats will not hesitate to show their displeasure at things that annoy them, with extreme prejudice?  I’m serious!  I’ve already been hospitalized once because of my cats…  I tried to break up a fight between the two of them a few months ago, and they both turned on me and clawed the fuck out of hands.  My left hand got infected and was at risk of needing surgery to undo the damage.  I spent a weekend hospitalized, with an IV in either arm pumping antibiotics in to fight off the infection.  Real fun, I assure you.

So, my mother is bringing her dog into my 2 bedroom apartment with my 2 homicidal cats, while asking me to fix her computer and put up with her in my space for no less than a solid week, maybe two...  What could possibly go wrong?

--Crash