For those of you that haven’t heard, a group of scientists last week have voted Pluto off this island of planets we call our Solar System and demoted it to what is known as a dwarf planet.

For many of us, Pluto has been in our science books, in our culture, even in our cartoons.

(Fact! Sources seem to THINK that Pluto, Mickey Mouse’s dog, may have been named after the distant planet, er, non-planet, whatever… Another Fact, since that previous fact is a fact, it’s entirely POSSIBLE that Mickey’s dog could have been named after Uranus [Pronounced "your anus", I don't care what anyone else says.] …and Mickey saying, “Come here Uranus!” would have been responsible for leaving millions of children snickering for the last fifty years. Hey at least one of those Mickey Mouse cartoons would have finally delivered a laugh! Right?

Another fact. Pluto the dog was sometimes Goofy’s pet dog while Goofy himself was a dog, which means that a dog had a dog as a pet, which is totally weird!)

Since Pluto’s demotion, there’s been an outcry in the public forum from people who hold Pluto dear to their hearts, they love humble little Pluto as their ninth planet, and see no reason to change it.

What do I think Pluto’s demotion? Well, to dear Pluto, I say, “Good riddance! For too many years you’ve ridden on the coattails of all of the other REAL planets, trailing along on the outside trying to keep up at your own pathetic pace. I mean, it takes you an astonishing 248.09 Julian years to go around the sun. While everyone else is all finished with their own orbit (Neptune, your nearest neighbor, finishes it’s orbit in 164.88 Julian years), your still playing catch-up and coming in dead last! Talk about weak! And we’ve also had to tolerate you and your rebellious personality too, The way you keep that eccentric orbit around the Sun, while all of the other planets step in line and elegantly keep the same orbit as each other, YOU feel a need to have some bizarre, out of whack, orbit that makes you stand out in the crowd. I mean, you EVEN have the balls and the unmitigated audacity to orbit closer to the Sun than Neptune when you near your perihelion… That’s bullshit… If you want to be the ninth planet, you have to STAY the ninth planet (even though your not a planet). You can’t cut in on the inside of the eighth planet, and and take the inside track! That screws everything up as to what order all of the planets are! Plus cutting in on a neighboring planet, in this and any other galaxy, is just plain RUDE! Oh yeah, and BIG DEAL, you’ve got a moon, just like most all of the other planets, in fact you have three moons, that’s two more than the most awesomest planet of all, Earth! But, who cares, your so small that your not even the center of gravity for your largest moon, Charon. You both revolve around a shared center of gravity putting both or your barycenters out in the middle of the space between you two… So even though you may THINK your a planet with Charon being your moon, your actually nothing but a stupid binary system with Charon. HAH! Talk about lame!!!

And your atmosphere, what about that! It’s all mainly Nitrogen, Methane, and Carbon Monoxide… You know what those three gases remind me of? Yeah, the stink that comes out of my cars exhaust pipe and farts. Yeah, real nice, Pluto…

Oh yeah, and while you float around out there thinking your so cool, guess what? Our Earth’s moon is bigger than you, I mean, your only about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of our moon, and you have the impudent boldness to try and call yourself a planet… Puh-leeze!

The only thing I have to add is that it’s a shame that our astonomers took so long to figure out what I knew all along, that you’re just a stupid dwarf, piece-of-crap, planet our there on the fringes of our solar system. They’re sloppiness and laziness resulted in you being added to a plaque that is now riding along with the Voyager space probe out in the galaxy somewhere supposedly showing a map of our solar system which included our Sun and all of it’s planets, wrongly including YOU… So now, if any aliens out there find Voyager, they’re going to look at that map of our solar system and say, ‘Hey! This almost looks like that one star system out on that one outer spur of the galaxy, That must mean there’s life there! Oh! But wait, this map shows NINE planets, and that system only has eight planets and some dwarf planets… Oh well, whoever sent this spacecraft must be located somewhere else. Let’s keep looking over on the this side of the galaxy!’ And now those aliens are going to be looking for us on the wrong side of the galaxy and never find us. Thanks a lot Pluto!

So good riddance to you, Pluto. Have fun hanging out with all of your other rebellious dwarf buddies, 2003 UB313, 2003 EL61, and 2005 FY9 to name a few… Hey I know, since your not an official planet anymore, maybe we ought to rename YOU so that you so you won’t feel so out of place around all those other lame trans-Neptunian objects who aren’t cool enough to get a REAL name, since you were discovered in 1930, how about, 1930 SUX.”

Get Lost Pluto!

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/14/robots-learn-teamwork-uprising-imminent/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/14/robocup-in-underway-in-germany/

But there’s still a chance that the apes could take it from the robots. Robots will need some time to advance it’s A.I. and form a society before they can imprison us in underground caves where we’ll mine ore for their armor. Apes already have a societal structure and with their advancing intelligence, they just need to learn how to operate weapons, and with mankind fighting itself over religion and territory, the apes will easily flank us and next thing you know, we’ll be stuck in cages screaming, “IT’S A MAD HOUSE, A MAD HOUSE!!!”

http://www.koko.org/world/signlanguage.html

Today Koko is asking for an Apple, tomorrow she could be handing out XM8 assault rifles to her fellow apes and using her sign language to tell them to kill all men (I say, we kill Koko now, just in case).

While a distant third, there is still a chance that invasion from UFOs could take the planet, that could happen tomorrow and beat the robots and apes both in taking over the Earth, so you can also place your bet on that one if you like.

So, here are the odds so far, these could change due to any news articles showing advancement in robot technology or ape intelligence (or alien hostility).

Robots take over Earth and either enslave or exterminate mankind.

- 8 to 1 payout

Apes take over and man is turned into mute, over-dramatic cavemen and kept in cages.

- 18 to 1 payout

UFOs invade and blow up White House with big super power laser from bottom of ship.

- 37 to 1 payout

-Bonus wager-

Mexicans take over and exterminate mankind.

- 4 to 1 payout

Please deposit all bets at the Paypal website to sean@camp11.com. Leave a comment on who your betting on.

Thanks,

(While Koko’s vocabulary is quite impressive, there was a sign that was missing from her lexicon that she should know, so I constructed my own…)

We were discussing an upcoming camping trip that we’re all going on (along with Matt and Janet) to a campground in Santa Cruz. While talking about the trip, my nephew, Nikolai blurts out, “Are there any wild animals there!?!?” To which I answered, “Not really, although you do want to be careful of the CHUPACABRA!!!”, “The what?”, Nikolai replies… And I start describing the fabled goat sucking monster that comes in the middle of the night, pierces the necks of goats and other farm animals with their sharp fanged teeth and proceeds to drain them of all their BLOOOOOOOD leaving a trail of dead carcasses all over the land!!!…”

As I’m telling the story of the legendary Chupacabra to all four wide eyed, attention struck children, I notice my sister on my side giving me the “ix-nay on the onster-may” eyes, since she, and not me, is going to be the one dealing with all four kids bawling their brains out while having nightmares in the middle off the night…

I immediately get the hint and start doing damage control by saying, “Uh, uh… but, uh, lucky for us, the Chupacabra isn’t native to these parts! It mainly exists in Mexico and the Southwest area of the US… there haven’t been any Chupacabra sightings around here, so you guys don’t have to worry about him.” As Sherry and Mike start to relax about my idiocy of me scaring the kids with monster thing, I continue, “…BUT YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT THE UFOs!!! They’re everywhere, and they come in the middle of the night and ABDUCT you while you sleep!!! Then they do all sorts of WEIRD experiments on you, but you won’t remember anything because they WIPE your memor-”, and my sister snaps her head back over to me and yells, “WILL YOU SHUT UP!!” and turns back and shakes her head at my stupidity…

I can’t wait for the camping trip now!… Matt! We totally have to get a freaky alien sounding whistle and some red and blue colored gels for our flashlights and shine them on their tents in the middle of the night while blowing the whistle!!! Er… although, with my luck, one of the kids will come running out of the tent all screaming and freaked out, think I’m an alien, and kick me in the balls… So, maybe not… plus the fact that I’m sure I’ll be all passed out and snoring immediately after dinner… The kids will stay up later than me and they’ll probably be the ones shaking my tent and scaring ME in the middle of the night and I’ll come running out of my tent, groggy, and in my tighty underwear running around all dazed and hideous wondering and grumbling, “What the Hell is going on?!?!”… and a new monster legend will be sighted and added to the annals of cryptozoology… The fabled “White Blubber Creature” identified by it’s glazed eyes, the slobber encrusted around it’s mouth, pale wrinkled skin, strange sporadic curly hairs growing off of it’s shoulders and back, and stench of bad breath… An ugly monster that will scare children for years to come. “Be careful, from out of nowhere, this White Blubber Creature will come at night, and eat all of your food!”

In our dinner conversation, I was also surprised to find that Sher also didn’t know what a Chupacabra was… God! Sher, I suppose you don’t know who “Bigfoot” or the “Loch Ness” monster is either… Jeez…

Here…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chupacabra

Zacarias Moussaoui is currently being tried for his part in the conspiracy that resulted in the attack on the World Trade Center. He’s up for the death penalty and has no remorse about what happened on 9/11.

With this case in the news… I’ve been thinking… There seems to be no doubt that he’ll get convicted, but there’s going to be some problems with the conviction…

The problems are, He’s up for the death penalty for being involved in the conspiracy of 9/11…

Now, if he gets the death penalty, he’ll become a martyr for his fans… another hero for his terrorist imbecile followers to admire and idolize and seek vengeance for. So the death penalty could be a bad idea.

A worse idea would be jailing him. With this dickhead alive and in prison, it’ll just open the door for his terrorist buddies to take hostages to try and use as leverage for a prisoner swap… The U.S., of course, won’t give in to their terrorist demands, which could mean some innocent lives can be lost.

So, if we can’t kill him and can’t jail him… what to do… hmmmm….

Being the thinker that I am, and pondering the dilemma last night, I came up with a solution.

…Let him go…

You heard me, let him go… Fly him back to the Middle East and drop him anonymously straight into the heart of Pakistan or Afghanistan…

…with one exception…

Give him a makeover…

Shave that beard, comb that hair, put a baseball cap on him, a nice-big American flag t-shirt, some jeans, and maybe a big Bald Eagle belt buckle, and then dump him anonymously into the Middle East…

He’ll be dust before he even gets a chance to speak! And when the truth comes out as to how he died and who killed him?…. There won’t be any martyr. Problem solved.

Bye-bye Zacarias Moussaoui, have a nice life…. all two seconds of it.

In some cases, these colors will run!

The famous Triple Talaq is in the news again…

Man Accidentally Divorces Wife in Sleep

NEW DELHI (AP) - Village elders ordered a Muslim man in eastern India to leave his wife after he accidentally divorced her in his sleep, a news report said Tuesday.

Aftab Ansari uttered the Urdu word for divorce, “talaq,” three times in his sleep, prompting his worried wife to discuss the matter with her friends, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.

Under Islamic law, a husband need only say “I divorce you” three times to secure a permanent end to his marriage.
Muslim leaders in the couple’s village in West Bengal state found out and decreed that Ansari’s unconscious utterances constituted a divorce, PTI reported.

But 30-year-old Ansari said he had no intention of leaving his wife of 11 years.

“I have not given talaq. When I uttered talaq three times I had taken medicines to help me sleep,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
The religious leaders said that before remarrying, the couple would have to be apart for at least 100 days and that the wife, Sohela, would also have to spend a night with another man and then be divorced by him.

PTI reported that the couple has been ostracized because of their refusal to abide by the decision of the village leaders.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20060328/D8GKKLR80.html

All this guy needs to do is a little research… In religion, if there’s a law somewhere, you’re pretty much guaranteed that somewhere down the line somebody else has reinterpreted and rewrote the law to fit they’re needs and incorporated it into the religion… With just a little Wikipedia clicking, the guy can slap that famous hadith, Rukanah v. Islam, back at his religious leaders and tell them, “I said the triple talaq in one sitting, so shut the fuck up… I’m still married, the prophet says so!”

One relevant hadith:

Once Rukanah pronounced three divorces against his wife but later he was very sorry for it. When the Prophet asked him, How did you divorce your wife? Rukanah replied that he had pronounced three divorces. The Prophet asked, Did you pronounce it in one sitting? When he said, Yes, the Noble Prophet said, Treat it as one divorce only and if you want you can take your wife back. And Rukanah took his wife back. Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_talaq

If that doesn’t work, then he should just change factions or denominations, that way he can still be married AND faithful to Islam… When the religious leaders say, “Sorry bro, you said the triple talaq, in the eyes of Allah, you are now divorced…”, Aftab could just say, “Oh yeah, well, I now declare myself a Shi’a and we don’t believe in the stupid triple talaq, so you can suck it you stupid ignorant Sunni, you’re a disgrace to Mohammed, and I’m still married.”

Bam! Problem solved.

Shi’a and Sunni traditions

While Shi’a and Sunni accept the same sacred text, the Qur’an, they differ somewhat in their approach to recorded oral tradition, or hadith. Shi’a believe that the split between the Shi’a and Sunni began with Muhammad’s death, when a small number of Muslims supported the successorship of Ali and the rest accepted Abu Bakr, then Umar and Uthman.

Shi’a

Shi’a view triple talaq as a jahiliyya custom, forbidden by Muhammad, reinstalled by Umar and hence haraam. Twelvers believe that if three divorces are pronounced together, even one divorce does not take place.

Hey, if anyone else out there is having trouble with their religion trying to boss them around, let me know… I’ll help you find away around those pesky religious laws… If we can’t find a workaround, we’ll just write some amendments and append some new laws into the religion, maybe even create a new denomination, or, hell, a whole new religion for you to follow, that way, you can just write your own book to suit your own needs… You might even become a religious leader and be able to make some money with it! That’s where such entrepreneurs as The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, L. Ron Hubbard, Jerry Falwell, Robert Tilden, and Pat Robertson amongst many, many others got their starts and ended up amassing their great fortunes. KA-CHING!

But you also wonder, “Hmm, what if it’s a scam!” In the past, this drove you crazy, “What if it’s real? What if it’s a scam?” I finally found a solution to that problem… Rather than letting them control the transaction, I decided to control it. If the dude isn’t full of shit, he’d be willing to work with me… Here is the e-mail I received:

Dear Friend,

Greetings to you my dear friend, this proposal
will come to you as surprise. This is because
we have not met before.

I am sending you this email regarding the huge
opportunity that will be of mutual benefit to
the two of us.

I know that a transaction of this magnitude will
make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring
you that everything documentation that will bring about
the success of this transaction would be provided.

However, I am Peter Boltton, the personal
assistance to the late Mr and Mrs Charles B. Yates
Citizens of the United States.

My Boss and his family died in an air plane crash on
November 12, 2001 in an Airbus A300-600 jet,
registered N14053 which left JFK bound for Santo Domingo’s Las
Americas International Airport, crashed into the
Belle Harbour neighbourhood of Queens, New York
shortly after takeoff from John F.Kennedy International
Airport. Killing all Passengers on board. You can confirm
from the website below http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587
unfortunately him and all his family members lost
their lives since then I have made several enquiries to
several Embassies to locate any of my clients
extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided
to trace his relatives over the Internet to locate
any member of his family but of no avail, hence I
contacted you.

I contacted you to assist in repatriating the money
and property left behind by my client and his family
since I have no place to locate any of his relatives. I
can easily convince his bank in the with legal practice
that you are the only surviving relation of my
Boss. Otherwise the Estate he left behind will be
confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank
where these huge deposits were lodged.

Particularly, my late Boss had an account with one
of the banks Europe. Valued at about US$16.5Million
(Sixteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States
Dollars) which I witness the documentations in
Europe before he left for the states on 10 Nov 2001.

Conseqently,The bank issued me a notice to provide
the next of kin to my Boss since I have been
unsuccessfully in locating the relatives.
I seek your consent to present you as the next of
kin of the deceased so that the proceeds of this account
valued at US$16.5Million (Sixteen Million Five Hundred
Thousand United States Dollars) will be paid into your
account and then you and I can share the money. 55% to me
and 40% to you, while 5% should be for expenses, tax as
your government may require.

All necessary legal documents that can be used
to back up any claim we may make will be provided.
All I require is your honest co-operation to enable
us see this deal through. I guarantee that this will be
executed under a legitimate arrangement that will
protect you from any breach of the law.

Reply immediately,
Alt:email office2007@jumpy.it

Yours Faithfully,

Mr. Peter Boltton

N.B. Please indicate your telephone and fax numbers
for easy communication in this mutual transaction.

An obvious scam, But “What if this time it’s real!!! I could be a millionaire!!!” So I responded, using an anonymous e-mail account of course…

Dear Peter,

This transaction sounds great for both of us, although, I am curious as to how you found me since I don’t know you. But that doesn’t matter, this transaction is beneficial to us both and will help us both out so I will accept your proposal. I will set up an anonymous Paypal account to which you will make a personal deposit of $5000.00 US in an act of faith so that I know that you are serious about this transaction. Since you are in control of $16,000,000 dollars, the $5000.00 shouldn’t be an issue.

Once I see that the amount transferred to my account, I will contact you so that we can arrange the transfer of the full amount of the transaction. After the transaction is made, we will split the full amount, 60% to me and 40% to you. I will take the 60% because you must be desperate to move this money since you are choosing a total stranger, such as myself, rather than a friend, to complete this transaction with. Without me, you are stuck.

Please reply with your phone number so that I may call you to tell you the Paypal account name to which you will deposit the $5000.00 so that we may get this business deal rolling.

Please reply immediately.

Regards,

Your “Friend”

There… now if the “business proposal” is on the up and up, he will have to make the first monetary move. If it’s a scam, he’ll either not respond, or respond trying to take control of the transaction back, of which I’ll respond trying to take control of the transaction back from him… In any event, it will be very entertaining waste of time with stupid back and forth e-mails.

Feel free to use and edit my reply e-mail for your own personal use… However, if you end up with $16,000,000. in your account, you have to share it with me.

Last night Farah and I watched Hollow Man on DVD. I actually saw this movie in the theater when it first came out, but because invisible man movies are so awesome, I bought the DVD and like to watch it again and again from time to time.

The story goes like this, Sebastian Somebody-or-other, played by Kevin Bacon, is an awesome scientist hired by the government to work on making people invisible. The story starts out that he’s already figured out how to make animals invisible, but is having trouble bringing them back to a visible state. He finally cracks the problem and, after experimenting with few Gorillas, he decides to experiment on himself without authorization from his government bosses.

He cons his team, who also includes a smokin’ Elizabeth Shue, into thinking that he does have authorization to experiment on himself, so they go along with him and they make him invisible, but when it’s time to bring him back, the irradiated chemical concoction that worked on the apes doesn’t work on him and Sebastian stays invisible. Sebastian is pretty much an asshole. Confident and arrogant, he thinks he can do no wrong, so he’s always talking shit to people. While invisible, he goofs with and spys on his co-workers, getting off on his invisibility. There is one horrific moment when, right before Sebastian is made invisible, we have to tolerate seeing Kevin Bacon’s naked ass, but the movie makes up for it later when we get to see some boobage. While invisible, Sebastian sneaks out of his quarters and creeps into the control room and feels up a female co-worker while she’s sleeping. This was pretty cool. While he’s feeling her up, you can see her boob all moving around and getting felt up, but since he’s invisible, you can’t see Sebastian’s hand! It was weird and creepy, but hot at the same time! Unfortunately, we never get to see Elizabeth Shue’s boobs.

All efforts to find a way to bring Sebastian back fail, and being invisible for longer than was initially expected starts making him crazy, angry, and violent. So, now you’ve got this nuts-o asshole running around being lame, and he’s really beginning to dig his “gift” of invisibility and wants to keep it, but his co-workers are crying that they’re going to go tattle on him to his government boss and figure out a way to bring him back… Sebastian realizes that the only way to keep his invisibility intact and a secret from the world is to kill everyone who knows about his invisibility.

The special effects are eye-popping which makes this movie a super-awesome, ten plus-plus rating. And, yeah, yeah, there are flaws in the story, dialogue, acting, continuity, characters, action, details, etc, etc… But the invisible special effects are so fucking bad-ass, that none of that matters.

Farah, works in a lab, and she started whining about them not following proper lab procedures and shit like that. In one scene, Elizabeth Shue’s character is drinking a product placement Coca-Cola while in the lab doing some lab work. Farah got all uptight about that. She says that there’s no way food or drink would be allowed in a lab while experiments are being conducted. Hmph, if it was me and I was thirsty, I’d drink a goddamn Coke while experimenting, I do it all the time while working at my computer and I’ve only spilled two of the Cokes on my keyboard, and it still works fine… So what’s the problem! Hmph, proper procedures,… no Cokes while doing an experiment… Bullshit! Farah and her proper procedures… I know if Coca-Cola offered HER company a million dollars of funding, she’d get a new memo outlining a new “procedure”, that all employees are now required to drink a six-pack of Coke in the lab each day. Hmph, dis’ my fucking movie… Let’s see YOU create an invisibility potion, then I’ll start listening to you about “proper procedures.”

Although, I do have to admit, I had some problems with the “science” of the movie myself. You see, the invisibility thing works like this, some irradiated chemical concoction is injected into the animal or person and it produces some sort of quantum phase shift in the cells of the body making the cells completely invisible. This all makes perfect sense, but at one point in the movie, Sebastian is barfing after having some tests done to him and the barf is invisible. Now, if he’d just eaten some of his product placement Twinkies™, like he’d been doing, eating them through the entire movie, then he should be barfing up all these half digested Twinkies into the toilet. Although,.. it could be that his stomach was empty and he was just barfing up stomach acids that were created by his quantum shifted invisible body or something, so I guess the invisible barf thing could fly… But then I got to thinking, what about poo. Poo is just the left over waste from food that doesn’t get used, digested, and processed by the body, so shouldn’t THIS waste still be visible? Shouldn’t Sebastian be walking around, all invisible, but with a big, long visible poo log wrapping around inside his invisible intestines? If they’d thought about this detail, I’d have more respect for the flick… But, at the same time, I also understand that I have a weird gift for noticing these kind of details that that not everyone else has, so I can live with little bit of carelessness… So, even though the poo detail was neglected, I still give the movie an A++ for all of the awesome effects and visual tricks that they threw in front of my eyes.

Hollow Man rating: Rules!

Wondercon: 2006!!!

Last weekend I got to experience a comic book/sci-fi convention in San Francisco… I’m not really into comic books, but I have a friend, Tim, who loves them and who kept bugging me to go to this major comic event… I was hemming and hawing over it since the event wasn’t really my thing, but Saturday came around and I didn’t have any plans, so it was either mow the lawn or go spend the day in San Francisco… so I asked Farah, my girlfriend, if she wanted to go to a comic book convention in San Francisco, after explaining about how it would be fun to go to something different, do some fun people watching, and get out of the house for a day, she finally wiped off the stink look that she had on her face and agreed to go. I called Tim and said that we were on our way.Princess of Wondercon!

We met Tim at Jillian’s, a restaurant/bar at the Metreon that was across the street from the convention center. We were already there having lunch when Tim, Tim’s brother, Lance, and another friend of ours, Rick, showed up. They were cool enough to have already purchased us our tickets/entry badges so that we wouldn’t have to wait in the two hour line, which was a good thing, because if I had to wait in a two hour line, I would have just said, “Later!”, turned around, and drove back home… Tim was also nice enough to write names for us on our name tags so that we didn’t have to bother with it… I ended up being Dr. Von Frankenweiner, or something, and Farah was Princess Bubbles… Nice.

The convention was being held in the new Moscone West building on Fourth street. We got to the entrance and after my Dr. Von Frankenweiner badge was thoroughly examined, we were granted access and were now in the presence of WONDERCON 2006!!! The place was packed with all sorts of ner- er, people meandering around with half of the people dressed up in costumes. Tim and Rick were excited about seeing a presentation by Kevin Smith, of ‘Clerks’ fame, that was supposed to start any time now, so Farah and I trailed behind them as I looked around, jaw agape at all the commotion, costumes, and craziness as we made our way toward the main auditorium. We entered the auditorium and Tim found us some seats. Tim then got up to go to the bathroom as the three of us stared at the huge pillar that was now between us and the main podium where some dude was currently talking – Nice job, Tim. So, while Tim was gone, we got up and moved to a better location. The pillar was still somewhat in the way, but not as bad as before… actually it didn’t matter, we were so far back, you couldn’t hardly see who was at the podium anyway, they did have projection screens, but still, I didn’t recognize the guy talking, so I didn’t really care…

The best thing about the new location, was that there was some dude dressed up as the Hulk who was sitting all by himself in front of and to the side of me.Hulk Lonely! I stared at him rather than the guy at the podium because The Hulk was WAY more interesting… THIS guy should be up at the podium talking. In my head, I started reciting dialogue of what the Hulk would say up there, “Hulk no like what Ang Lee did to me in movie!!! Why not Sam Raimi make Hulk movie!!! Sam Raimi make much better movie than Ang Lee!!! RARRRR!!!”. But, as I stared, I couldn’t help it and started feeling sympathy for this poor monster all hunched over in his torn shirt, green hair, and purple pants who was sitting there all by himself… “Hulk sad, Hulk lonely…” is all I heard echoing in my head… I was finally tapped on the shoulder by Farah and informed who was droning on and on at the podium and it ended up being J.J Abrams, the creator of Lost. He was talking about something, but the sound was reverberating in the hall so much that I couldn’t understand a word. I noticed that he looked fairly young, and I started thinking, “Shit, he’s THAT young and he created Lost!!! Oh my Ghod! What the hell have I done with my life!! Nothing, that’s what!!! I suck.”, I now felt as sad and lonely as that poor hunched over Hulk that was sitting in front of me…

Tim finally returned and somehow found us in the seats where we’d moved to, I don’t know how he found us, it was so crowded there. I supposed we should’ve called him on his cell and told him that we moved so that he didn’t have to stand there wondering where we went… eh, whatever, hindsight is always 20/20… Sitting there, we realized that Kevin Smith was a half an hour overdue… I was getting bored so I started looking through the Wondercon guide and found that there was a symposium on television horror hosts. Supposedly to be in attendance were, Bob Wilkin’s, John Stanley, and some other dudes whose names I didn’t know. Horror hosts, for those who don’t know, are people like Elvira, the vampire looking chick… Local TV stations would often have late night campy horror movies with a personality hosting the showing, making inane jokes and puns,… like a radio DJ, or MTV “VJ”… I used to watch “Creature Features” on Oakland’s channel 2 when I was a kid… Bob Wilkin’s hosted it on that channel for years, then later John Stanley took over, so I knew who these two guys were. So, I decided to go check that out. Farah was up for anything else besides listening to J.J. Abrams answer moronic questions from the nerds in the audience, and so we said, “Later!” and bailed out on Tim, Rick, and Lance.

At the Horror Host symposium, the room was a little less than half filled, and they had all these old horror TV show hosts lined up behind a table on the stage, the youngest guy had the most energy and did most of the talking, he was a host from Channel 54 or something… I only knew Bob Wilkin’s and John Stanley, both of who I was surprised were still alive… actually, Bob actually might have been dead… he looked like the Cryptkeeper and didn’t move or say one word the whole time we were there. I think he was just waiting for the stupid convention to end so that he could get out of there, cash his check, and buy another bottle of Wild Turkey to wash his lonely tears away with. The guys on stage droned on and played games with the audience while projection screen behind them played footage of themselves in their glory days…Will The Thrill!While staring at the stage waiting for something entertaining to finally happen, Farah tapped my shoulder and pointed to this character sitting across the aisle… His nametag said, “Will the Thrill”. “Will the Thrill?!?! If you say so buddy, but the only THRILL that you look like you could deliver would be a free car detail that you’d throw in with that used 1995 Ford Fiesta your selling."

I say Watson. Lord Vader’s
speech is quite dramatic
Beyond Will the Thrill, I noticed something that I’m still trying to wrap my head around… a couple of dudes dressed up as Sherlock Holmes and Watson, sure, fine, but from the neck down they had Stormtrooper costumes on… WTF!!! I’m now wishing that I would have been thoroughly debriefed on to what what to expect when I was entering here with this Wondercon thing, because I’m still a bit traumatized by whole Sherlock and Watson Stormtrooper thing. Turning my gaze back toward the front, there was now a dude who had just sat down right in front of me who had this incredible amount of hairy fuzz growing off of his ears. I stared at the ears and the fuzz growing off of them and tripped out on it for awhile. It was an exquisite sight as the earfuzz glowed from the backlight of the overhead fluorescent lamps. I tapped Farah on the shoulder and whispered to her and pointed to them. All she did was say, “Ew…” and go back to watching the boring presentation, she clearly wasn’t as fascinated as I was with them. I finally took a picture of the ears so that I’d have proof of their existence, and I just sat there staring in wonder at them… After a few minutes, they finally started to bother me and I couldn’t think about anything else but those ears, so I decided it was time to go and I grabbed Farah and we bailed out of the Horror Hosts symposium.

Hey dude, while your shaving your head,
why don’t you hit those ears too!

Back out in the main lobby, I called Tim on his cell and he happened to be nearby, so we reconnected. Rick had disappeared somewhere with Tim’s brother, so the three of us, Tim, Farah, and I, wandered down to the flea market and vendor area. This area is the booth area with vendors selling every sort of conceivable comic book, sci-fi, and cartoon related novelty and merchandise. We wandered around with Tim’s eyes alight in the glory of all of the comic and sci-fi related merchandise. Lucky for me, I wasn’t really interested in any of this collector crap, which means I wouldn’t be losing any of my money buying it. Good!

While we were wandering, Tim says, “The porn stars are in the back corner…”, “Hunh! Wah!! Porn stars!!!”, I exclaim. “Yeah, the porn stars always set up a few booths at these things… they sell the opportunity to take a photo with them, as well as sell their autographs and such, to all the nerds here… I already got mine earlier.”, Tim says. “Really?”, I reply and I turn to Farah and say, “Uh, maybe we should check that area out… you know, out of curiosity… it, uh, could be funny, or something, you know, uh, checking out all the dorks getting all bent out of shape over the porn stars…” Farah, looks at me, “Um, yeah… all the dorks…” So, we started making our way in that direction. The whole vending area was packed with people going nuts over all the comic related crap… After a couple of stops at the various tables so that Tim could examine the assorted collectables, we finally made it to the porn star area, and it was, of course, super crowded there.
Porn avenue is a……great place for kids!

I managed to get a couple of snapshots of the area in general by just holding the camera over my head and clicking. While I was entertained by the scene there, I kept noticing the look on Farah’s face, and could tell how she wasn’t so amused, so we hustled ourselves through the crowd trying to get out of the crowded aisle.Do you believe that Aria didn’t
even know that The Punisher’s
real name is Frank Castle!!
HAHAHA! Talk about lame!! Throughout the chaos, I did notice Tim talking to one of the porn chicks. He was no doubt trying to get her opinion on and debating what she thought of “The Punisher” movie that was released a few years ago.

As we broke through the crowd, we found our way down another aisle and I came across a booth that had a shitload of bootleg music videos… I stopped in my tracks and started feeling the saliva well up in my mouth… “No NO! Not music videos!!! My weakness!!! There wasn’t supposed to be anything here for me to be interested in!!! NOOO!!!”….Sixty dollars and four rare bootleg music DVDs later, I tell Tim and Farah that we have to get out of here before I stumble across anything else to buy. We end up traversing down another aisle trying to find our way out of the room and we come across the fanboy area of the booth scene. This area is where all of the comic and sci-fi clubs set up their nerd-fan club booths. Tim points to a exhausted looking man sitting behind a booth with a “Please get me the hell out of here…” look on his face… Tim says, “That’s Peter Mayhew! He played Chewbacca! You can get his autograph if you want!!!”, and I say, “Er… naw, that’s alright.” Poor Peter looked like he was just about one autograph away from going nuts and I didn’t want to be the one responsible for him snapping, letting loose with a loud Wookie growl and rampaging through the flea market area throwing tables and chairs around. I didn’t want to be the one in the headlines the next day, “AT THE WONDERCON CONVENTION, ACTOR PETER MAYHEW WENT CRAZY AFTER SUPERFAN SEAN MCGUIRE ASKED FOR HIS AUTOGRAPH.” Screw that, I don’t want to risk any headline like that, not the fact that I would have caused Peter Mayhew to freak out, but that my name would appear in the paper as the dork that asked for Peter Mayhew’s autograph at Wondercon…

Farah found a ‘Firefly’ booth with the Browncoats. She’s into ‘Firefly’, a short lived sci-fi TV show about a renegade cowboy like captain and his ship and crew who are constantly fighting their way out of the crappy situations that they constantly somehow get themselves into (Where do they come up with these original ideas!)… I’d never actually seen the show, so I had no idea what this was really about. For some reason, Firefly fans call themselves Browncoats, and we were alerted to the fact that there was going to be a Browncoat meeting at a room upstairs in about twenty minutes, and we were invited to come.Tim and Count Dorko Farah was all excited and interested in checking this out, so after a photo-op of Tim with some random dude who was wandering around dressed up as Count Dooku, we made our way out of the flea market area.

We ended up finding Rick and Lance and we all wandered up stairs to check out the meeting of the Browncoats… Tim and Rick, like Farah, were equally excited about this special event. We made it to the room where the meeting was being held and entered. In this large, about 40′ x 50′ room, there was a projection TV in the the corner showing “Firefly” episodes with a few people huddled around it and a few other groups of people scattered about chatting with each other. There were rows of chairs all lined up and facing forward like there was going to be a presentation. We found a table with some seats in the back of this large room and got comfortable while we waited for everything to start. We sat, waited, looked at our watches, waited some more, looked around at the people, looked at our watches, looked at the people talking, looked at the people watching the TV, looked at our watches, then finally looked at each other as we all came to the same realization together… That the meeting has already started, and this is it, people watching TV and talking in small groups about the TV show. There was no plan for the meeting, nothing outlined… The fans just figured that everyone would show up and the meeting would magically create itself, but the only thing it created was a room full of losers. Even Tim and Rick called these people nerds and we bailed out of there.

Tim looked at his watch and alerted to me that ‘The Ultimate Avengers’ cartoon movie, which was headed straight to DVD, and that wasn’t going to be on sale in the stores until the following week, was having it’s world premiere here at the Wondercon!This extremely long line is for a cartoon. The showing was going to be held in another room in the next ten minutes. Tim and Rick got excited, and we found that the room number was right around the corner of the Browncoat’s meeting room.We walked down the hall and found the room and then found a line with about 500 (or more?) people in it stretching down the walkway and around the corner into oblivion… We quickly canceled the idea of watching the cartoon (Thank God!)… Tim and Rick can be pretty hardcore fanboys, but they have their limits.Brandon and BryanWe journeyed downstairs and found in the large, main auditorium, that Bryan Singer, who directed the X-Men and X2 films, was there pimping the new movie that he directed, ‘Superman Returns’. So we went back to the main room to check that out. We found and got seated in some pretty decent seats which had a great view of the stage and podium. As as we waited for everything to start, it figures, a woman with big, fat head and a bunch of flowers and shit in her hair, conveniently seats her self directly between ME and the PODIUM! By then, the place was fairly packed, so it was impossible to find another row with five seats next to each other, besides, everyone ELSE in our group had a great view of the podium, it was just me that was stuck with a beautiful view of this woman’s mammoth head! My view of the PodiumSince everyone else’s view was great, I just decided to just deal with it and watch the presentation on the big projection screen. The event finally started to commence and it started with some previews of the movie and then, eventually, Bryan came out. Bryan ended up being another relatively young dude who’s out there directing blockbusters while my old, lame, do nothing ass sits out in the crowd of nerds. Bryan seems a little overwhelmed at the ocean of dorks spread before him, but he handled it well with some amusing patter… he rapped a little telling anecdotes about this and that then introduced Brandon Routh, the actor who plays Superman in the new movie. Brandon ended up being some super good-looking young punk and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Farah was sitting up and taking attention. Hmph… whatever… It’s not like he has REAL super powers… He’s just an actor pretending to be super… “so you can sit back and calm down, Farah. He’s just a normal loser like the rest of us… Hmph… so he’s humble, charming, good looking, and plays Superman in a big blockbuster Hollywood movie… big deal… I could do that too if I was good looking, and talented, and, uh, g-good looking.. and… doing more with my life than going to, um, comic book conventions….[sigh]”

Bryan and Brandon finally wrapped it up, and bid goodbye to a loud round of applause, and an emcee came to the mic and told us all to stay seated, that there was a surprise for us… We waited with our heads craning around looking for the surprise, and finally, some people came out and down the aisles and started handing out ‘V for Vendetta’ masks to everyone. We each got one and then shuffled out of the room excited about our exclusive gift for being such dedicated nerds. Of course, half of the people had to try the mask on immediately as we all made our way out of the auditorium. Since I wasn’t smart enough to take a photo of the sight, you’ll just have to use your imagination and visualize hundreds of nerds shuffling towards the door with at least half of them wearing these ‘V for Vendetta’ masks. For Farah and me, the day was finally winding down, so we decided to call it and started heading toward the door with Tim, Rick, and Lance walking us out, we took our time exiting and I took some more photos of all of the costumed dork, uh, fans who were posing around the main floor for photos. On our way out, I noticed that a lot of people use these conventions as an excuse to wear whatever stupid, irrelevant, old costume they happen to have gathering dust in there closet…
WTF!?!?The Pink Panther?!?! GHOSTBUSTERS?!?!

We said goodbye to Tim, Lance, and Rick, and I gave Tim our badges because he wanted to try to see if he could make a few bucks selling them at a discount to any of the badgeless nerds outside who were still buying tickets to come in. Farah and I wandered outside and I noticed a hulking character sitting on the ground in a corner partially hidden by a pillar, smoking a cigarette with a woman hovering over him and seemingly trying to hide him from the crowd and I noticed that it was Peter Mayhew again hiding from all of the nerds so that he could just have a smoke in peace. I thought about asking him for his autograph, and asking if he sign it, “Chewbacca” instead of “Peter Mayhew”… but decided that that wouldn’t be cool.

Farah and I headed back to the parking garage, got the car, and upon exiting, found that they’d closed a major San Francisco main street because of some Chinese parade… the closing of the street left two extremely crowded and car filled roads being routed down one stupid street with no cop controlling the traffic, the intersection was completely jammed with cars, so the traffic light was useless, it would turn green, then red, then green, then red, with no where for anyone to go… it was an “every man for himself” situation and complete anarchy… All of the cars would inch and jockey themselves through the intersection trying to get through. There was no courtesy, no friendly, “No, you first, please, I insist!”, just ugly, “Me first, Asshole!!!” road rage, it was pretty sad… So, after I flipped off the jerk who was trying to get in front of me, I managed to force my way into and through the intersection and we made it to the freeway and finally home… I hate San Franshithole. Here, enjoy some more photos, click on them to make them bigger…

Fun Yoda!	Comic conventions are for homo- Hunh!?!?!	Hey buddy, the “White Swallow” bar is around the corner, this is the comic book convention
[crackle-crackle] Uh, squad leader, maybe you should lay off of those double venti banana mochas for awhile.	Holy crap. What happened to Wolverine’s face!?! It looks like it didn’t heal right after that last battle!	Alien costume, pretty cool. Security Guard costume, eh… not so impressive.
	What do you do when you have TWO costumes laying around?

]]> http://camp11.com/?feed=rss2&p=100 http://camp11.com/?p=31 http://camp11.com/?p=31#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:47:24 +0000 Sean http://camp11.com/wordpress/?p=31 After reading more tragic news today about the Islam vs. Denmark thing, I decided that, to hopefully distract the Muslim world from Denmark’s insulting cartoon, a more uplifting cartoon is in order to help ease tensions and hopefully start a road of peace between the Muslim’s, Denmark, and indeed, all nations and religions.

Please feel free to forward this to any major news media. But please include these notes, so that I don’t get a Jihad called on me in case anyone misinterprets it.

For anyone that’s having trouble interpreting my unique artistic style, this cartoon shows Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all shaking hands, getting along, and smiling.

The guy on the left is Jesus Christ, he’s there to represent the Christians. The weird ball of energy thing in the middle is there to represent the Jews. Since I don’t really know who or what the Jews believe in or worship, I decided to just draw the Jewish God as a glowing orb of spiritual energy, this was much easier that actually researching what the Jews are all about. The guy on the right represents Islam, I’m not saying who that is representing Islam. Instead, I’ll let you, the viewer, decide who it is, that way, you only have yourself to blame for putting the wrong face to the figure and breaking any religious laws. So, if your thinking that it’s Muhammad, you are soooo in trouble.

For Christmas, Santa brought him some pet hermit/tree crabs. It was a hermit crab terrarium kit with a note that the crabs would arrive later in the mail. Sure enough, a week later a box arrived with two living hermit crabs. (I’m now wondering if I can mail myself to Florida to visit my dad. It’d be a lot cheaper, and the cramped box wouldn’t be much different than riding coach, except for the fact that I wouldn’t have to deal with the fat person, who inevitably ends up next to me, hogging the armrest for the entire trip.)

So, Vitali received his hermit crabs, and decided to name him after the main characters of a movie I’d recently shown them, Bill and Ted, from ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’.

Bill and Ted, the tree crabs, where a pretty exciting addition to the family. Mike, Vitali’s dad, and I had fun reading the hermit crab user’s guide that came with the crabs. (Did you know that one tree crab will attack and fight another tree crab in order to take his shell? He’ll actually grab the other crab, beat him up, rip him out of his shell, and move in saying, “Fuck you pal, this is my shell now!” It’s true. Mike dubbed this “SHELL-JACKING!”)

Sadly with Vitali’s busy life of video games, and television, Bill, followed by Ted, died before we could videotape and document a shell-jacking episode.

Vitali as well as the rest of the family were crushed, and so my sister, Sher, decided a funeral was in order to help heal the wounds and provide closure to the whole affair.

For the funeral, she suggested Vitali write a eulogy to pay honor to the heroic, US mail traveling hermit/tree crabs. Below is the Vitali’s heartfelt and poetic eulogy to Bill and Ted, two special tree crabs…

While Vitali was writing his eulogy, Karina, his younger sister, got excited about it and was trying to help him write it, but, Vitali, of course, didn’t want any help, so she then decided to go off and write her own eulogy. Here is hers:

Goodbye Bill and Ted… The best tree crabs… ever.