In November I went to the The National Big Apple Comic Convention meeting. I have since forgotten why. The only souvenir I have not in promotion for the event itself is

,
because I thought the guy who made them was giving one to me for free but then I asked anyway what it cost and he wanted five dollars for it and I would have felt bad if I didn’t buy it. I will have to show you what is inside some time.

I don’t like talking to people and leaving. It feels rude (not that posting the product of somebody’s independent labor and going “ha ha that! moving on” isn’t, but in this situation I have paid for the privilege). But staying can also seem rude. It may even be the case that if I stay it will be double, because I hate that song.

I just don’t like that whole museum that watches back setup. I’d rather be on the other side of the relationship. Then the awkwardness is someone else’s problem. Also, from a fixed position there is no pressure to keep moving. The only pressure is to move merchandise. And if there is one thing I excell at above others, it’s drawing attention to trivial things I have made and demanding money dollars and getting that.

You can’t see other displays, if you are one, but I’m probably not interested in most anyway. And if I was I wouldn’t want to spend my money so it may be better that I do not know. One time, I wanted Oreos. But also, to save money, I instead purchased Walmart brand Oreo imitations*. That proves I’m serious. It’s certainly not fun to eat these.

*I know Hydrox were invented first but I’m pretty sure Wal Mart is after Oreo customers, who are simple enough to catch but difficult to transport back to camp.

I see now among my clutter this object that I gained in Boston, advertising a “New England Fan Experience.” That’s the problem. I’m not a “fan.” George Takei’s voice is fun to imitate but I’m not in awe of his life, no.

A fan, I’ve never identified myself as one and I don’t feel like one. The conventional meetups were designed for FANS to meet their false idols and deliver praise, and buy stuff because they want it, not because they fear to upset the people who went to the trouble of making or collecting it and renting space. If all they can make me feel is pity, why didn’t I stay home and just sponsor some of those starving African children all the camera crews are so busy not feeding? And if I start actually thinking about that I’ll feel worse because I probably won’t do it.

And I wonder if anyone really considers itself a “fan” of this guy. Unless he invents pasta sauces in his spare time I’m skeptical his name and potentially imaginary profession bring much enthusiasm to the masses. If he’s anything like this Prego I’m sure his is at least an entertaining presence.

I saw Mark Evanier (he did some stuff, I hear) twice. Once upstairs near the armory (dueling apparently still a fairly common practice among the comic book club) and the second time, in the hotel lobby, where I briefly stared at him awkwardly, from a distance, wondering if I should say something (I did not). At that immediate moment it sounded like he was telling someone else about how a person had said something to him about his website, and I decided it would be peculiar if I did the same. I did think that he might be interested to know that due to my relative inexperience with the forces behind American comics he was the only name-tagged person in attendance that I knew by sight and why.

In my mind Mr. Evanier still owes me for encouraging more courageous readers to bask in the oddity of Skidoo, the not so wacky but rather boring and annoyingly improbable Skidoo, and he surely knows it, otherwise he would not have recently expressed an intention to attend less conventions outside the vicinity of N. America’s west coast this year. The strange thing is that he lives in Stockholm.

Yes, everybody in the whole prison ate the same meal at the same time and got quigley for hours because it was laced with paper laced with a thimbleful of LSD and nobody realized they were eating paper. I just thought you should know. A plausible setup would have replaced the lsd with msg, but even for a prison that would be irresponsibly draconian.