San Diego Comic Con is On

San Diego Comic Con starts up Thursday and runs the weekend.

I will not be there. Tens of thousands of people will be there, but I will not be there.

The main stream media will swarm San Diego to show the rest of the world how crazy all those comic book Geeks are.  The comics (game/movie/whatever) media will make sure that the vast number of Geeks in the world feel less cool than the small number of people who were there for their exclusive this-or-that.  Hundreds of companies will spend millions of dollars making sure that I know that their exclusive products will be exclusively announced at SDCC.  I won't be there, but somehow I will still find out about all these products.

It's a Comic Con Exclusive!

I don't know how to feel about San Diego Comic Con.
I went once when it was a small local con I could drive to from my house.  1982, I think...  There weren't a lot of famous people there.  Walter Koenig from Star Trek, I think....  I remember just loving all those long boxes full of old comics and meeting a few other people who knew what the Invaders were.

Now I can no longer drive to San Diego.  And I watch what SDCC has turned into, and don't really want to fight those crowds to go there anyway.
So, I don't know if I am jealous that I am not in San Diego or not.

We have a great comic convention here in Seattle each year, Emerald City Comicon.  And it hasn't gotten so huge that it is overwhelming, yet.  And we have smaller shows, like Jet City and GeekGirlCon.  So I get plenty of comic convention action.

It is always weird though, watching the comic industry and its big-money cousins the gaming and movie industries go ape shit over San Diego every year.  They hype normal developments like they are monumental events and even delay perfectly mundane releases so as to have something exclusive to launch at Comic Con.

So I guess my personal take on San Diego Comic Con is pretty cynical at this point, but I still kind of wish I was there..

The Times they are A Changing

I listened to the President’s Sorry State of the Union speech last night. You couldn’t tell that it was 2008 this year. That could have been his speech from 2004 or 2006 or any year after the invasion of Iraq. Either he is out of touch with current events or he thinks we are. Pretty uninspiring.

I listened to Obama’s victory speech after the South Carolina Primary. That guy knows how to deliver on the podium. He was not my first choice for president, but I am beginning to be hopeful. There is a lot to like about Obama, and as the saying goes: Democrats fall in love—Republican’s fall in line. I am definitely not in love with Hillary. We do not need to continue the imperial dynasties of the 80s and 90s—we need some real change. And I would rather have an inspiring leader than a grizzled old veteran of Washington D.C.. An Obama presidency has the possibility of really shaking up the status quo. And I really like the idea of John Edwards as Attorney General in an Obama Administration. Let’s hope that idea catches fire as well. But it might bring too many changes to the Washington Bureaucracy, so don’t hold your breath for an Obama/Edwards ticket in November. The establishment hasn’t finished flexing its old muscles yet.

The remaining Republican candidates are fighting it out to see who the conservatives will fall in line behind—they don’t care if you love them, you just have to respect them. It doesn’t really matter which one survives as long as it isn’t Rudy Giuliani. I think he is the only candidate remaining that would make a worse president than George W. Bush. But any of the remaining Republicans will keep us safely operating in the past, just the way the old white men in Washington D.C. like it.

Either way it is the unconstitutional party organizations that will decide for us. They just keep the appearances up that actual citizens voting have anything to do with the party bureaucracies and their private plans for our government.

Meanwhile the President of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, passed away last Sunday. Growing up in the LDS church, I know this is a big deal to the faithful. The single source of all direct communications with God on earth is gone. So the church will focus attention on how wonderful the recently departed Prophet was while the old men in Salt Lake City decide who the Lord wants next at the helm. Odds are on President Monson who has reached the safe age of 80 years old to be the next Seer and Revelator. Apparently God only talks to young people, like Joseph Smith, once every thousand years or so because is stirs up so much trouble and change. So I am sure that if the Lord does not choose Brother Monson he will pick some other suitably aged white man who just happens to have spent the last 30 to 40 years working his way up through the Church Bureaucracy. Anything else would upset the money changers in the temple too much.

But those are just my opinions. I don’t have the weight and tradition of the bible or the church or god to back me up. I don’t have alliances within the party to call on to spin and support my assertions. My opinions have to be tested against the world and sometimes the world backs me up and sometimes it doesn’t. But I think the world is more important than any Bureaucracy, and I wish others would extend their horizons to include more than just their tiny tribe, church, party or country. There was a time when expanding human horizons and self image to incorporate groups like tribe, church, party or country were evolutionary steps forward, but now our horizons need to expand again to include the world as a whole and the entire Kosmos if we are able to grow that much. Again, just my humble opinion.