Comic-Con 2006 Report, Part 2
Note: The Gameboy Advance that I thought had been thrown away has been found since the previous post, but the digital camera is still missing.
Below is a rough record of events that occured on Sunday (7/23):
12:15 AM - Ordered a combo meal at the Taco Bell drive-thru. It was the first real meal that I had in the past 24 hours. I tried to take my time eating it all, but I couldn't.
1:00 AM - Parked a couple of blocks away from the SDSU campus, heading for the Library Book Reserve room. It's open 24 hours during school, so I went in to use a computer. After checking my email, surfing around, and getting a few "this computer is for coursework only" messages, I decided to wait a little before continuing.
2:00 AM - Fell asleep at the computer that I was using. Surprisingly, I was never interrupted by the library staff or security. Neither did I wake up myself before my cellphone's alarm went off.
8:00 AM - Waking up to my cellphone's alarm, I immediately left SDSU and took the freeway back to the downtown area of San Diego.
8:30 AM - Stopped at Jack in the Box to get a burger and milkshake. As soon as I started eating, some guy came from the line saying, "If you can't understand me, learn some English, or go back to Mexico...I really don't give a fuck!".
9:30 AM - Arrived at the convention center 5 minutes late after parking a little farther away than the day before. Because I was a volunteer, I was let in instead of having to wait in line. Once all of the volunteers were gathered and given assignments, I was directed to the ballroom directly across from the meeting point, where I would spend the next three hours.
9:45 AM to 12:30 PM - Sat near the back of the ballroom in a chair with a yellow volunteer sign on it. My responsibility was only to ensure that no one tried to enter through the 'exit only' doors and to direct people through the entry door.
Around 10:15, the room got a bit livelier because someone came in. It turns out that it was the guy who plays Chekov on Star Trek (can't remember his name at the moment). After answering a lot of questions, he presented a clip of a new episode of Star Trek coming later this year (distributed on the internet), and a teaser for a currently unnamed movie. The teaser was about 4 minutes of a tiny skull surrounded by fire, growing larger over dialogue that sounds like it had to do with the persecution of witches or some such thing. Once that was over, the room was emptied for the next event.
The last hour I spent in the room was for a Marvel comics panel. We were shown the covers of upcoming issues of several series. One of the more interesting things was something called "Bullet Points", in which the identities of Marvel superheroes were changed. As I recall, because of Captain America's death, Peter Parker becomes the Incredible Hulk while on the run in Nevada, Reed Richards becomes an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D after being prevented from going into space, and someone other than Tony Stark becomes Iron Man. There was also discussion of a certain milestone concerning Ultimate Spider-Man #104 and a spoiler (which went over my head) for the next issue of The Runaways. When this event was finished, so was my volunteer work.
Between 12:30 PM and 5 PM, things went roughly the same as the day before, where I revisited some booths, others were gone (or I never found them), and saw some for the first time. I got to play New Super Mario Bros. at the Nintendo booth, which unlike last year, had only DS systems. Revisiting the Square-Enix booth, I played the Final Fantasy 3 remake on DS and a much improved demo of Final Fantasy 12. At Konami's booth, I still passed up chances to play Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, which was the only thing that interested me there.
Newgrounds was there (with the giant Alien Hominid costume) with a new game called "Castle Crashers", basically the combination of Alien Hominid's visual style with Golden Axe. I never asked if the game was going to be on something besides XBox 360, since that was the only system they had it for.
Within the last hour or two of the convention, I wandered back and forth between both ends of the main hall, coming across
Keenspot, a booth selling CDs and DVDs of stuff from Japanese rock bands like
Psycho le Cemu and
Dir en Grey, and several racks of shirts from
Stylin Online.
5:00 PM - The main hall and the rest of the convention center is officially closed, and so I had to squeeze through large crowds until crossing the street and trolley tracks.
5:45 PM - Stopped at the mall in Mission Valley to visit the arcade. Like earlier this year, they still had
Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, but newly added was
Soul Calibur 3: Arcade Edition. I played two games of both, though I did far worse at Soul Calibur than I expected to.
7:00 PM - Visited the last house that I had stayed at during the school year. No one was there, but I did notice that all of my mail was outside and in the mailbox, so I took the letters that were mine and left.
9:00 PM - Left San Diego, headed back to Las Vegas after filling up with $38 of gas.
10:00 PM - After fighting off sleep and seeing things, I made it to Temecula and exited the freeway, parking by a 7-11 store and intending to sleep only until 11:30.
11:30 PM - The cellphone alarm went off, but I still wasn't rested up enough to leave. It wouldn't be until 4 AM that I would finally be ready to leave, and another 12 hours until I would be back in Vegas.
Regarding the list of costumes I saw at the convention, I'm leaving it out. Why? Because I'm too lazy to include them now, though if anyone actually reads this blog and asks, I'll list them anyway.
Comic-Con 2006 Report, Part 1
After thinking that I wouldn't be able to go to the San Diego Comic Convention most of last week, I finally managed to know that I could definitely go once Thursday came. All I had to do was take a change of clothes, the cellphone charger, and not much else. Strangely enough, for all the last-minute planning I did, things didn't go as smoothly as planned. Below is a rough record of events that occured on Saturday (7/22):
12:30 AM - Finished packing a few items into my backpack. However, the digital camera I thought I had was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered that my crazy stepdad must have threw it away (along with my Gameboy Advance) because I left it in a box of toys. So much for thinking I'd get to take lots of hi-res photos...
4:30 AM - Just woke up from a nap taken at 1 AM. By this time, I thought I'd have been on the freeway and here I was just getting up. This was 2 hours later than I expected.
6:00 AM - Finally made it on the freeway after filling up my ride with $35 worth of gas. I was hoping to be able to make it from Las Vegas to San Diego in 4 hours and 15 minutes or so, but this didn't happen...
11:30 AM - Arrived in southeast San Diego after sitting through at least 20 minutes of backed-up traffic. I immediately went to Ralphs to use the restroom and withdraw money for a car payment.
12:30 PM - Finshed the car payment and went to go get some quick chinese food. After waiting more than 10 minutes for something that was supposed to be ready in 5 minutes, I left and headed straight for the Convention Center.
1:30 PM - Arrived at the Convention Center after parking in a nearby neighborhood and walking for 15 minutes. At the volunteer desk, I was given everything I needed to get in, but because I got there just a little too late, there was no work for me to do that day. Therefore, I just walked onto the event floor.
Between 1:45 PM and 7 PM, I did quite a bit of walking and standing, visiting many booths, including...
Square-Enix: Played Valkyrie Profile 2 and Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime. There was the opportunity to play the PS2 or cellphone version of Dirge of Cerberus, but I didn't get around to doing that.
Capcom: Played several matches of Super Street Fighter 2, losing all of them but coming closest to winning with Guile. It was one of those that ended in round 3 with under 20 seconds left and both of us with a small amout of life left. I also saw Lost Planet for XBox 360 and Megaman ZX, among other games.
Sony: Played Rogue Galaxy, though something kept crashing the game whenever someone paused and tried to reset it.
Snakes on a Plane: Walked through the booth, looking at the actual props used and some footage.
7:00 PM - The main hall closes, although the rest of the place was still open. If I wasn't walking around, I was watching some anime in the screening rooms while the sun was still up...
8:30 PM - The Saturday Night Masquerade starts. Although I didn't have a ticket to enter the ballroom where it actually took place, it was broadcast in another room, where I watched the entire thing. Most of the costumes (and accompanying skits) weren't that great, though there was one that took the cake. Called "Nintendont's", Mario, Pikachu, Link, Kirby, Princess (I can't remember if it was Zelda or Peach), and two guys from Fire Emblem manage to parody the old Batman TV series, Titanic, Brokeback Mountain, and some other couple of movies in a matter of minutes.
10:00 PM - The Masquerade nearly concludes after a few interruptions, jokes by the presenter, and a redoing of a skit with Evangelion 01 due to a technical glitch (the music didn't play the first time). Because I wasn't ready to leave yet, I went back to the anime screening rooms since I was too lazy to see what else was happening.
11:00 PM - I decided that it was time to leave since I was feeling sleepy and hadn't really eaten since I left Vegas (18 hours ago).
11:30 PM - Got off the freeway around the SDSU area. Before I managed to reach Taco Bell though, I was pulled over by the police. After showing my driver's license, insurance, and registration, they tell me that the lights between my license plate are out. It wasn't like that made it anywhere near impossible to see the plate, especially since anyone with working headlights could still see it...
Part two will be put up soon, detailing the events that happened Sunday and a list of costumes I saw people wearing on the two days that I was at the convention.
Dissecting the Musings of a Moron
So, I happened to come across
an essay from some moron named John Stoltenberg. In a nutshell, this
man coward argues that manhood is based on putdowns and therefore, he will refuse to be a man. Now, grab yourself a glass of ice-cold water as I pick apart this essay for the man-hating it is.
"So I got to thinking: If everyone trying to be a "real man" thinks there's someone else out there who has more manhood, then either some guy has more manhood than anybody--and he's got so much manhood he never has to prove it and it's never ever in doubt--or else manhood doesn't exist. It's just a sham and a delusion."
You know, up until this point in the essay, the reader has no idea just what manhood consists of, or how it is gained or lost. Just lots of griping about every guy thinking that every other guy they see must have more manhood then they do. Sort of like one saying no matter how bad you have it, there's someone else out there who has it worse. The reader may guess that manhood has to do with things like having a constructive hobby, generally treating others with respect and kindness, or some such benign character trait. Hell, even some mention of virtue and honor would've helped. Unfortunately, no such positivity will be afforded to real men. You know, because...
"As I watched guys trying to prove their fantasy of manhood--by doing dirt to women, making fun of queers, putting down people of other religions and races--I realized they were doing something really negative to me too, because their fear and hatred of everything "nonmanly" was killing off something in me that I valued.
That's why I feel a connection to feminism. I want a humanity that is not measured against the cult of masculinity. I want a selfhood that does not reject fine parts of myself just because they are not "manly." I want courage to confront the things men have done in the world that are damaging to women and that are also leaving no safe space for the self I hope to be."
This is where the plot thickens, so they say. I'm sure this guy has never noticed any women doing dirt to men to prove themselves as real women (i.e. not dependent on a man, blah blah blah), and why?...that would require the manly virtue of realizing that women aren't just perfect little angels waiting to be tainted by evil brutes men, and we can't have that from a man that connects to feminism, can we?
The author continues in his lame attempt to pull the wool over the reader's eyes by essentially arguing that men are some sort of hazardous presence to women (but never the reverse) and that manhood is just a man's way of rejecting those fine character traits that women must have. By now, I can clearly tell this guy doesn't want to be a real man since you know, a real man might have the manly pride necessary to actually claim certain heretical thoughts.
A real man might claim that manliness is represented by someone other than a drunken wannabe pimp at a frat party who has to settle for slapping the ass of any woman who walks too close to him and putting on a show for every other guy in the room. A real man might claim that a man secure in his sense of manhood doesn't have to lash out in a murderous rage should someone find out that he seems to be doing something feminine (note the use of bold and italics here. have you seen this before?). A real man might note that some the things we've been brainwashed into seeing as purely feminine once were considered masculine and could easily become so again if certain types of people weren't so busy making manhood out to be some villainous concept. A real man might even go so far as to say that men cannot afford to allow advertisers, feminists, and pop culture to define manhood more than your average Joes and your not-so-average Joes. Does the author dare take that bold step forward in the name of all that is man? Absolutely not.
"When I began to see how pornography makes dominance and subordination feel "sexy"--the very opposite of fairness--that affected me in a very personal way too. I had always been taught that dominance was the way "real men" were supposed to have sex; dominance was what I was supposed to be able to do in sex. Men had to be the conqueror, the powerful fucker. Well, I never got very good at that, and I always felt sort of a failure.
...
When I am feeling really centered, it's as if my selfhood doesn't have a gender. In the world I'm perceived as a man, of course; I live with the benefits and privileges of the social meaning of my anatomy. But my life path is really about refusing to be a man. I don't believe that manhood even exists. The only way to prove one's manhood is to win a fight or put someone down--which is just too dumb for words. And anyone who tries to get in touch with "deep masculinity" through myth is bound to be disappointed--because manhood is the biggest myth of all."
I think I see the real issue at work, finally. Here, we have a man loser who appears to have spent so much time worrying about how much he conforms to what enough people says is the standard of manhood that he would rather give up on the idea of being a real man (as in flesh-and-blood, not polygonal or pixellated) than accept the idea that he just may be a different kind of real man. I'd have a little more respect for this fool if he would've just admitted his anxiety outright and tried to address it, rather than placing the blame on men and only on men.
Such blindness to the true nature of manhood can produce this kind of idiocy. The only way to prove one's manhood is to win a fight or put someone down? No, that's just what feminists, insecure men, and the media trick fools into believing. To me, proof of manhood is not visible in silly fights (as opposed to important fights) or putdowns, but in things like technological advances and great discoveries, though morons like Stoltenberg probably don't want you to care about that. Because not everyone can be a genius, manhood can also be proven in less spectacular ways, none of which involve beating others down to prop yourself up, none of which would convince the foolish author.
I won't even say I "agree" with him on pornography. This is because while I detest mainstream hardcore pornography, it's not for the same reason. While Stoltenberg worries his little head off about dominance and powerful fucking, I simply detest mainstream pornography due to its premise - that while a woman is there to derive pleasure on the multiple body parts she has, a man is only there to provide a single body part (a hard penis) which must be prioritized above everything else that man has, only to render him useless after it has had its fun. On certain occasions, the man might actually engage in foreplay toward the woman, but of course his body just has to be so uninteresting or threatening that he'd never get to experience a woman pleasing him all over it. How so many guys can think this is an accurate portrayal of their sexuality is beyond me...I certainly don't fantasize strictly in terms of what I can do with my penis and I'm sure any other guy who doesn't give a goddamn what his peers would call him would say and mean the same.
Anyway, in conclusion, Stoltenberg is yet another self-hating man produced by feminism who obviously loves marginalizing as many men as he can, unless they're fellow self-hating feminists. His history of attacking the concept of manhood puts him on a very low level in my book. A level lower than that for the "I-like-wearing-women's-clothing-and-I'm-a-man-therefore-I-must-be-gay" crowd. Both levels are occupied by insecure men who merely put up with the conventional wisdom that it's perfectly okay for women to do what they want without wanting to be men, yet doubt - if not attack - the idea (and might I say fact) that men can also do what they want without wanting to become women. Both levels are part of a wider mass of men that have such profound disrespect for the continuum of male behavior and variety that they idolize women while trying to diminish themselves and other men who don't conform so easily.
So, John Stoltenberg, you want to refuse to be a man. That's fine with me. You're perfectly welcome to be nothing more than a cowardly wimp who attacks as many non-feminist men as possible, all while acting like women are incapable of doing any wrong entirely of their own will. Go curl up in a corner and shiver in fear as real manly men sound off on what makes a man without trying to focus exclusively on whatever percentage of men happen to actually rape, pillage, murder, consume hardcore porn, or do whatever else is used to make men look bad.
Nothing new, yet...
What I thought would be a decent week for trying to blog on a daily basis didn't turn out that way. I'm still unexpectedly falling asleep about an hour after coming home from work. Hopefully my proper sleep schedule will return this week, or there probably won't be any new posts this week.
I wish I could say that I'll certainly be going to
Comic-Con this weekend, just like last year, but unless these money issues of mine go away, it's not gonna happen, which is a shame because that would probably be my only opportunity at doing something exciting this summer.
Pardon my laziness...
When I started this blog back at the end of May, I didn't think that I'd neglect it this much. Perhaps blogging isn't really for me, but I'm not going to give up yet. It's just that where the whole Windows/Linux experimenting stuff took lots of time away a couple weeks ago, now it's unexpected naps when I get home from work followed by 2 or 3 hours of Resident Evil 4. I swear, I've seen the "You Are Dead" screen more times in RE4 than the rest of the series combined, and I'm only in Chapter 3-1 of I don't know how many.
At this point, I may as well just say that I'll play around with the blog's template code when I'm damned well ready. It sounds much better than "maybe I'll do it this week" every week. Also, I still very much intend to get around to finding articles and essays on the web to rip apart. There's one I've had saved as a draft for a month now. That one ought to be ready by the next posting.
While at work earlier this week, I listened on the radio as Method Man (or someone pretending to be him) called Las Vegas radio station Hot 97.5 and threatened the DJ over the morning radio show host supposedly claiming that he was bisexual. Soon enough, callers lit up the phones there saying that there was no such claim made that morning, and the show host himself said the same. What weirded me out about the whole thing was how my coworkers turned up the radio when the show host was on the phone denying everything - they made sure to get everyone's attention by yelling in a voice that's typically reserved for calling out part names or order numbers. The next day, Method Man apparently never showed up to the radio station, though he (or whoever was impersonating him) said he would. After that, I knew something wasn't right about the whole thing and that it was all probably just cooked up to get some ratings, and then it hit me...accusations of some male celebrity being other than heterosexual always seem to draw lots of attention from the crowd that otherwise wouldn't give a damn about the latest celebrity gossip like so-and-so getting married or what's-his-face being arrested. It's sad but true. I personally think some male celebrity should admit to being non-hetero on some talk show and open fire on the first 'fan' in the crowd that goes "eww", but that's the Resident Evil 4 and ginger ale talking.
