The Scotto Grotto (org)

Oh heaven help me, I’m going to “Tropicon” the weekend after next with Danny. This is a convention that we attend fairly religiously every year, in order to go out to breakfast and chat for a while, hit the con, poke a nose into the gaming or dealers room, do a little anthropology work regarding other fan-types, then head off to the Red Lion pub, or Pier 66 (usually only an hour or two is spent at the convention) to have a beer or two, and maybe some light fare while going over our obtained goodies. Last year was the occurrence of the aromatic fan-type that I mentioned some time ago. We’re naughty, in that we don’t pay to get in. We just saunter into the lobby, and then head to the dealers room. (The one exception was in 1998, when the guests were Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess… that was actually worth going to the respective panels, so we paid. I got a great too much coffee man CBLDF t-shirt, too, that year.)

Brief aside on con goodies – I used to wear a fishing vest at work so I’d always have whatever was necessary at hand as I made my rounds. It’s sole decoration was a con-purchased patch for “Logic Memory Systems, Urbana IL” on the left breast pocket. It was Halloween everyday for me, costumed as a tech rep on the HAL9000 project. Add an anti-static wrist strap with coiled cord artfully wrapped around my forearm and I was stylin’. /aside.

This year is going to be different…I fear it will be difficult to peel him away from the anime video room…and I think that I may get caught up in the dealers room more than usual, if they have treats for assorted folks there. I can think of things that my boss would really dig, and maybe a few things in mind for my sweetheart, too. Maybe get a feel for the current breed of RPG gamer, too, possibly sit in on a game of champions, GURPS, or maybe a card game (if I can remember any of their rules.) I hope someone has a cheapass games section out there… that’s been the biggest bounty in my recent attendance. Bitin’ off heds,( the dinosaur racing game where you run around a volcano, tossing boulders and biting each other…very fun) and Orcs in the hood (inner-city gang warfare with warring orc factions) in particular. Cheapass games puts out some fantastic stuff. Little board games and card games for between 4 and 8 bucks.

Looks like LJ is limping again. (UPDATE- according to status.livejournal.com – LiveJournal was completely offline at this time.) I’m glad that I write in notepad instead of the left ‘semi-connected’ LJ client… I logged it out to relog in to access a revised set of icons and it promptly refused to reconnect. (I knew it wasn’t the firewall, because I’m using a machine to hit my dial-up net connection, and I can still browse yahoo mail and some of the other sites I also frequent.

I hit random the other night, and got a journal whose text that mangles the English language with the cruelty of a psychopath struck by a bookmobile as a child and unable to forgive. After pressing it once or twice more, it confirms my feelings. Random is no longer a button I wish to push, unless I can modify it with a few parameters, like age / length of post / time spent on LJ, etc. I long for the search engine and some of the old functionality to return.

Saw this witch pic on deadjournal, and thought it was interestingly placed for Halloween.