Posted on
by

We made it to San Diego around 1:00. After spending an afternoon in Old Town, and a self-guided tour of the Whaley House (which we missed last year), we dropped by the convention center to pick up our badges for Comic Con.

It was around 8:00, and it was Preview Night (only open to guests and pre-registered attendees), so there was basically no line. Only one problem: no one seemed to be willing to give us our badges!

We walked up to the first open window at the line of pre-reg booths. “Hi, we’re here to check in. Last name…” “Try those two guys over there.” “Oh, OK.”

So we walked across the way to the two guys she seemed to be pointing at. “Hi, we’re pre-reg, we’re here to pick up our…” “Try over there,” they said, pointing to a booth further along in the original line of booths.

So we walked across to that window. “Hi, is this where we actually pick up badges, because we were over there, and they directed us over there, and they directed us over here…”

It was, so I handed him the bits of paper from when we signed up, a whole year ago at last year’s con. I gave him my name, he didn’t seem to be able to find it, I gave him Katie’s name, he couldn’t find that, and eventually I had to dig out the receipt (which I had just ripped off of the sign-up sheets, since we usually have to go to separate windows), show him that yes, we paid, and somehow he was able to dig up our registration info, because the badges had the right city any everything.

So we got in, checked out the floor, and I got a few leads on Golden Age Flash books (though again, people seem to be bringing mostly the good-quality expensive copies), and we left when the hall closed at 9:00. Along with everyone else on the planet, as far as we could tell. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as any day last year, but it was more than either of us expected.

Posted on
by

Some funny spam subjects that have popped up in my inbox or in the server’s spam traps recently:

  • freewheeling slush — Because slush that’s hemmed in by tradition just isn’t worth reading.
  • Planning buying trickles — In times of drought, even the tiniest stream is a wise investment!
  • Google Animal Gestation — I see Google is diversifying their business again.
  • Wanna Burn Movies? — For some reason I’m picturing a can of film on a bonfire, not a DVD burner.
  • I found something Daphne — It looks like a monster mask! Jeepers, this haunting is a hoax!

Brought to you by the Department of Word Salad. (I really ought to draw up a guest strip for Spamusement with one of these.)

Posted on
by

Found on a stamp vending machine:

Stop Family Violence: Semipostal

OK, it’s not hard to figure out from context that “semipostal” simply refers to the fact that some of the cost of the stamp goes to the Post Office, while some of the cost goes to the chosen cause.

But given the prevalance of the term, “going postal” as associated with violence, perhaps using the label with the “Stop Family Violence” stamp was not the best choice. Now, I’ll apologize in advance for the gallows humor here, but would “going semipostal” be what happens when you want to go to work and shoot people but decide to stay home instead?

Posted on
by

We found this in the gift shop when we went to the Pirates dinner show back in May. IIRC, it’s a toy/prop musket.

Party Weapon

But who comes up with these names? I mean, “Party Weapon?” By actually calling it a weapon, you’re suggesting it’s something I don’t want at a kid’s party. Well, unless I’m raising Klingons or something.

Random Addendum

Completely unrelated: while typing this, the “w” key on my keyboard got stuck. Or rather, my computer was somehow convinced that it was stuck, because it kept filling in Ws even after I unplugged the keyboard. After unplugging it and plugging it back in a couple of times, I moved my hand away from the connector and knocked over the top 3 or 4 jewel cases in a stack of CDs on my desk. They landed on the keyboard. After I put them back, the problem was fixed. 😕

Posted on
by

Some interesting comments by Warren Ellis in today’s Bad Signal on film budgets, and Superman Returns in particular.

$250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie.

This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking more than the GNP of Luxembourg in a single weekend is not actually enough to put a movie in the black.

It’s the “spacelaunch” comment that I find most interesting, as I made the same comparison a few years ago, from the other side of the fence: Assuming that the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars are typical, price-wise, it doesn’t make sense to complain that we’re “wasting” money on space exploration when a mission costs as much as two summer blockbusters. Manned missions are, of course, more expensive, but robotic missions? If we, as a society, toss away $250 million several times a year on mindless action flicks, what’s so terrible about spending a similar amount to learn something about our universe?

Yes, I know the difference is public vs. private funding. Movies are financed by studios and private investors, and space exploration is usually financed by governments, and therefore by taxes. But comparing the dollar amounts puts things in a different perspective—whether you’re astonished by the literally astronomical movie budgets, or realizing that exploring outer space is more down to Earth than it seems at first glance.