Wombat Rampant

Staying up all night to get things done. Effed a piece and have to start over.

It's so weird to be at just two full days to flight and know all I have to do is laundry and packing, and my biggest problem at this point is "Will my Penny Boots fit in the carry-on?"

Here's my signing schedule:

FRIDAY:
Image 2729 for Comic Book Tattoo 1PM
Papercutz 2046, 2048 4PM
I'll be sitting with kadymae and Ralph at the Eisners

SATURDAY
Image 2729 for Comic Book Tattoo 10AM

SUNDAY
Image 2729 for Comic Book Tattoo 10AM

I am the proud bearer of sponsorships from these folks:

Cartoon Frolics (NSFW)
Lene Taylor's I Read Comics podcast
Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls (Lauren Faust's awesome girl team!)
Christy Marx
InternetsCelebrities.com  (see their social hack parody Ghetto Big Mac)
Pam Noles, We Shall March! (Freaking badass blogger.)
Kat Kan (bookiekat here on LJ)

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I'm a long time reader and rare poster. I am thankful to God for the many prayer requests being fulfilled through this community. I would like to thank everyone for their prayers and in the meantime ask for your prayers.

The prayer request is for an 11 year old boy. He has a tumor on the right side of his brain and his left body is weak now. They are taking an MRI soon and surgery is scheduled afterward. Please keep him in your prayers and pray for a miracle.

- Jerry

So Kakkoicon is in 9 days and I'm already burnt out @___@;;;
I'm excited to dance a weekend away and there's lotsa cool stuff going on but....

I got myself into staffing masquerade.

We've had 2 months to pull off a years worth of years worth of planning. And here's where I start bitching.....
Around Anime Detour "E" approached me to help with the masq as she was going to sign onboard, I figured "okay I'll go check it out, "E" only asked me for help with our system and structure, no biggie".
Oh was I wrong.
I show up to a meeting round June, and "E" and I sit down to with "D". "D" is the head of the masq and at the time the only department member. The only department member, and the con is 2 months way. So I start inquiring about basic stuff:

What are your rules and guidelines?
Ain't got em.
What's your divisions structure?
Ain't got one.
What's the entrant cap?
Ain't got one.
What's your judging system?
Don't have one.
What's your judging structure?
Don't have one.
Where's the forms and paperwork?
Don't have any.
What's your resume look like?
Don't have one.
What's the department budget?
Don't know.
When's our programming block?
Don't know.
Do we have rehearsals?
Dunno.
Do we have a halftime show?
No.
Have you made arrangements with Volunteers?
No.
Have you made arrangements with Guest relations?
No.
Have you made arrangements with Hotel/Mainstage?
No.
Have you made arrangements with Security?
No.
Have you made any made arrangements with other departements?
No.

So basically the convention is 2 months away and "D" had done nothing claiming inexperience as his excuse. @_@
I'm sorry, but inexperience is not putting a entry cap or not planning a correct programming block or having rehearsals run long or not printing enough forms etc
This is case of full on incompetant flakiness.
So "E" and I gave him a chance to redeem himself, we gave him a list of things to get together by the next meeting.
Next meeting come around, he's emailed volunteers and done nothing else asked of him and goes off to another department's meeting while pulling on me and "E" the ulitmate flake-out line of "well you guys are doing so well without me, you don't need me".
At which point I tell him I think he should be sure to "reorganize his priorities" whilst writing him off as a irreliable flake in my head and "E" silently takes over the department.
And I feel awful knowing that he's a good friend of people I really like, but that doesn't mean he did a good job or didn't horribly inconvenience me and "E".
And I'm sure he sees us as some awful loud-mouthed commie bitches that pushed him out.

He did nothing and was then given straight up directions and handholding (I even had to ask him to write stuff down at one point) and he still didn't follow through, inexperience does not begin to excuse him. Not to mention he didn't have to be inexperienced, he was at Anime Detour and Convergence he could have made plans to volunteer.

So now we've got a semi-decent if not half-assed masq planned, we only had 2 months I'm very sorry.
What annoys me most is I don't think he (or Kakkoicon) understand how much he screwed up. IE pretty badly.
*palm face*

Oh well, please come to Kakkoicon have a fun time!
After the masq is over I will be in need of liquor and someone to scrape me off the sidewalk and into my bed. KTHNX.

Just curious...

What was your confirmation name? Why did you choose it? Do you do anything special on your saint's feast day? I'm thinking about it because today is Mary Magdalene's feast, and she was my confirmation saint.

RAAAARGH!!

Recently I started getting calls on my cell phone from weird long-distance numbers. When I finally caught one, it was an automated message babbling at me about my car warranty expiring and omg extend it now. Um, I have a Kia. My warranty isn't expiring anytime soon, thank you very much. I ignored the calls for a while, but they kept coming. On my cell phone! So finally I listened to the message all the way through and there was an option to press 2 to remove your number or whatever. I did that.

Today, I got more calls! Even though I asked to be removed! So I pressed the option to speak to a representative. When someone answered, as soon as I started to say "stop calling me" the guy hung up on me! Bastard! I called the number back, and it was an automated message saying "We're sorry if we called you by accident, we only call business numbers." Bullshit.

Now I'm so mad from being hung up on that I can't sit still. Stop harassing me! GRR!

Are there any Catholic talk radio on the internet?

I found an orthodox one: http://ancientfaith.com/

Turns out that Obama is too young to be President.  Phew.

I took a break from making comics! I didn't really mean to, but I was out of town, and then I was out of the country.

Over the weekend I went to Chicago to the Pitchfork music festival! It was so nice. I stayed with John Campbell and his thousand roommates (he has a thousand roommates) and had a wonderful time also with Sara Bauer and Tom McHenry! I was so thrilled to hang out with those guys it was straight up embarrassing.


John and I had a little talk about internets, later I drew it:



I get the question "what is it like to be famous on the internet" a lot and I think the answer is a blank stare.


Anyway, I must say, the set by Animal Collective was so good and definitely the best part but I was delighted to hear from this group, the Fleet Foxes, who have the nicest music and the nicest little video too (here is is for you!)



Of course, anyone who was there would have recognized John and I pretty fast because we are very recognizable people:



Anyway I am back now, more comics soon.

Is there any single book by a saint/mystic/church father/pope/etc that you repeatedly turn to because it makes you feel good and provides rich spiritual nourishment.

Apparently a group called the "Christian Voice" has seen Mattel's new Collector edition Barbie doll based on the likeness of DC Comics' Black Canary and are SHOCKED at seeing Barbie in fishnet stockings. According to the tabloid paper The Sun, in this article entitled, "S&M Barbie Lashed by Public," the group states, "A children’s doll in sexually suggestive clothing is irresponsible – it’s filth." Note that this group is the only group quoted, where apparently they not only are the "voice" of "Christians," they are also apparently representatives of the public in general.

The fact that the design is based on a comic book character is mentioned but not exactly played-up, nor anything about the origin or intent of the outfit. The fact that it's part of Mattel's Barbie Collector line, a line of dolls that is intended for old teen and adult collectors, not children, is not mentioned at all.

You can see the doll here at Mattel's Barbie Collector Website. You'll note the "for collectors 14 and up" at the bottom of the page.

Along with the rest of the sane world, the designer of Black Canary's costume as seen in Birds of Prey, Amanda Connor, responded to the "controversy" with giggling.

Just to go into more detail about what I mentioned earlier, I'm about halfway through Summer anime reviewing for www.s1e1.com and thought I'd talk about some of the stuff I've watched, for gits and shiggles.

Antique Bakery - Boy Love that doesn't immediately suck. By which I mean, they aren't having sex within the first episode. I know this may be hard to believe, but I really want this to be good. Plus they work in a bakery, so there's delicious cake :D It's also a comedy.

Blade of the Immortal - Lacks the more unique style of the manga, but so far the story and action have been good. Very violent, so if it makes you queasy, stay away! :D

Hidamari Sketch x365 - I haven't seen the previous series, but I'm thinking about going back to download it. If you don't like slice-of-life comedy, then it's not for you, but it's quiet, funny, and has a really great style to it.

Sekirei - This season's Kanokon (to quote my friend Willie). Boobies, battles, and babes, Oh my!

Ryoko's Case File - Eccentric female police administrator investigates supernatural occurrences with the help of her subordinate. Intriguing enough for me to download the second episode.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - Beautiful, popular girl is secretly a major otaku. Guy finds out her secret, but vows to help her protect it. Not as bad as I would have thought, but not that interesting either.

There are other shows I'm forgetting I know. If anything sounds interesting, I can point you where to get it or go into more detail, if you like (or you could wait for the www.s1e1.com site update to go live whenever it is that I edit my reviews).

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Before our contract ends. Then we find out if we're going to strike... I hope we don't, but understand why we would and should... I just hope that if we do strike that it's a short one, maybe just a week or two....

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Haven't had time to post much lately. Too much work to do. We're working overtime and I've even started taking stuff home on my USB drive to work on, which I never do usually. I'm barely able to check stuff online right now. What's new with people? Anything interesting?

Everytime I watch this, I feel warm and fuzzy inside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg9t7uXkLyA

I've also been reading some of the E3 demos and previews of Fallout 3 that have been released throughout the Web (I'm much too lazy to provide all the links so you'll just have to Google them yourself) and I am really liking what I am seeing. I just played Fallout 2 a couple months ago, so the old game is fresh in my mind and it seems like they are delivering on the right feel for the game for the most part.

The demos focus on the combat system, which is neat to see. There's two ways to fight--one is sort of real time, and it is basically "Oblivion with Guns" as predicted--first or third person, guns firing in front of you. It looks like an FPS, but this is apparently deceptive, as it is still an RPG and you can aim at someone "perfectly" and miss if your weapon skill score isn't high enough. The other way to fight is a pause-to-fire system called VATS -- this brings in, essentially, the old Fallout combat system as much as they could/wanted to recreate it. The game pauses, and you get a targeting screen, showing your chance to hit different body parts (just like in the old games, but more graphically detailed). You can then select the part you want to shoot and fire, and you get a slow-mo shot of the results. If you stay in VATS, your moves are counted by Action Points, again like in the old game. You can toggle between the more RT and pause-based combat as you like.

As much as it's fun to watch that, it'd be nice to see more gameplay demos outside of combat. All the previews indicate it's supposed to be a pretty indepth RPG with a lot of dialogue, so it'd be nice to see some of that. Either the previews or lying, or they don't want to spoil it. We'll see--but so far I am quite excited.

To the point I've considered getting a PS3 or XBox (probably not an XBox) just to play it on there. We'll see if my old PC can keep up with it though. The game's been in development since 2004 and runs on the Oblivion engine, so I might be able to handle it okay. Especially since I have good RAM and video memory; it's just my processor I'm worried about.

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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )