(no subject)

gotta go wake up the troops for Saturday at Comic Con (Halle Berry's gonna be at one of the movie company panels today, no doubt plugging Catwoman...would not have known that if it hadn't been for Black Dub's entry). that is at 10:30. I don't know what I am doing today at the con; I am meeting somebody for lunch at the Bandai booth at noon and after I see the dealer's room, I may just move there and hold court.

I got my photo taken with roddy piper, the famous wrestler. Steve just wanted to take a picture of me and him, and Roddy, who was pretty tanked, said, "Aw, c'mon, be in the shot too!" I said, "You're the most important part of my life!" and Roddy said that was the sweetest thing he'd heard all day. He and his wife have been married 23 years, and he says it's just because he has a great woman. So there are actually two photos of me and Roddy Piper, one with Steve and one without. Photos were supposed to be ten bucks each; after buying the book and me saying that, ours were free.

I had a dream last night I hope wasn't prophetic. It was the new full-colour brochure from the US government explaining the new implementation of the draft. It had lines such as, "Now you have the opportunity to grow while you serve your country for only two short years!" It also had some bullshit from George W. about how his years in the "armed forces" made him grow as a person. I hope it was just a paranoia-dream but it could happen.

The ups and downs of Comic-Con

From day 2 (and I am tired so I don´t think I´m going to really go tomorrow), I have now come away with several ¨eh¨ indie comics (the kind I love, which are just published at Kinko´s), Yoshikazu Yasuhiko´s ¨Joan¨ manga which were half-off, a Jay and Silent Bob take San Diego t-shirt, the New Type 100% on Char´s Counterattack, a comic ¨El Muerto the Aztec Zombie¨ by Javier Hernandez (cuz I was looking out for Latino comic artists and/or writers) and El Gato, and ¨The Collected Prison Funnies¨ by Toronto artist and Taco Bell trattorieur Chip Zdarksy.

I went to the Kevin Smith panel. He´s pretty funny, pretty raunchy. I got my courage together to go to the mike to say something. He looked at me and said, ¨You´re so tiny! You´re so cute!¨ I said yeah, like Selma Hayek. He answered, ¨I was thinking more like Webster...¨ Anyway, I thanked him for making ¨Dogma¨. We also got to the Adult Swim panel, where they showed clips from the upcoming shows.

But I also made some nasty realizations about myself. Yesterday, I told Mike that when he told me about a certain fannish ex-friend of mine (we´ll call her Angie) had been hit by a car in Japan, my heart leaped because I HATE this woman, and had a wonderful moment of hoping she was DEAD. I don´t want to discuss the reasons. Suffice to say she used me for everything back in the 80s because I wanted so badly to be liked. I never thought I could hate someone so hard for so long, so obviously I have to work on that. For those of you who wonder why Catholics have confession, this is it. Holding onto hate creates karmic debt, for lack of a better term, and confession is meant to undo that debt. I really feel the need.

And I almost got into a fist fight. Comic-Con has got every event in the world, but the downside is that you get treated like cattle. They hired Elite Security to do crowd control, including crossing the street. But rather than turning OFF the crossing signals and having the crossing guards they hired do it, they have BOTH. Now, most of us are conditioned to obey the official traffic signals. Steve and I, along with a lot of other people, saw the sign go from ¨walk¨ to ¨don´t walk¨, so we started to walk. The crossing guard, Charles Syrtchick (I´m writing it here so I don´t forget the name), threw a fit and screamed at Steve to ¨GET BACK ON THE SIDEWALK!¨ Steve said, ¨Sorry, the light changed,¨ and he was told in a loud scream, ¨I DON´T CARE!¨ Well, I stormed into his face and demanded his name. He took his name badge, turned it around, and held it to his chest and said he wouldn´t tell me. I grabbed the badge, turned it around and said, ¨I´m telling your supervisor.¨

By the way, what I did there was assault. Don´t follow my example. He started to mouth off and Steve got me off him before I threw the first punch, which I was about to.

His supervisor inside said basically that they didn´t care either, and that Mr. Syrtchick had no obligation to tell me his name, and that he was authorized by the city as a crossing guard or whatever the term is, Steve will remember. We are fairly sure the supervisor was lying, because if he was a city employee he DOES have to disclose his name. We´ll be writing to the city, and possibly just going onto the committee at Comic-Con to find another company.

Now, back when I was sick in the brain, I could just blame this on the sickness. Now, I realize that I am violent, and I am hateful, and I have to do something about that. I did feel different angry at the guy with a clear brain, but the violence is still there. Some people would pull out the ¨embrace the violence¨ line, but that´s a load of shit, and I embrace that I have to END the violence in me in order to make a purer world. Then I´ll teach others to do it.