Yesterday, I went down to San Diego for Comic Con, the world’s biggest comic convention yadda yadda. I’ve got nothing against comics—in fact, I rather like the web and manga variety—but as far as U.S. comics go I’m pretty clueless. So, I spent a lot of time randomly wandering around, collecting free things and watching geeks.
Observations?
- There are lots and lots of people who are very, very good at drawing things. Alf and I dropped by one booth, Design Studio Press, full of ridiculously talented Art Center College of Design students and instructors showing off their books. It was pretty sobering.
- American comic posters (generally speaking) get kind of boring after a while. A lot of them have extravagantly drawn characters in flashy dynamic or dramatic poses. Because they’re so uniformly flashy/dynamic/oversaturated/laborously drawn they start to look a bit flat. It’d be a nice to see some variety, may be throw in some relatively understated stuff.
- Geeks are damn horny. The evidence is… abundant. I mean, yeah, you’ve got your asexual geeks, but they’re definitely in the minority.
- Comic Con is a b.o farm. In the exhibit hall, which is practically wall-to-wall bodies, sweaty fellow’s unique musk gets added together a couple dozen thousand times over under the lack of a God is readily affirmed.
- Geeks are a whiney lot. I don’t know if it’s because complaining makes for an easy conversation or what, but damn does your average geek love to do it. (Although, to be fair, it’s not like there was a lack of things to complain about.)
- There were lots of artists/writers/etc. around looking to give out autographs, and not a lot of takers. Generally, it seemed that people swarmed the popular figures and left the rest to rot. I felt bad, but I guess that’s the way it goes.
- Mackenzie totally doesn’t sound like the way she sounds when I’m reading her blog.
- It’s weird to see the cartoonists behind the comics I read on the web (Lesnick of Girly, Tycho & Gabe of Penny Arcade, etc.) just sitting around. Lesnick didn’t have a lot of traffic and looked kind of bored; Tycho & Gabe had a freakin’ line that wrapped around their booth, plus staff selling a bunch of their crap. T & G, incidentally, are both bald pasty white dudes.
- The S. Korean government has an agency that promotes Korean manga and anime, and which had a hefty booth at Comic Con. They even staffed it with a rather bored-looking Korean lady wearing some big-ass frilly blue dress costume. That’s pretty cool; all the U.S. g’ment promotes is itself and its guns.
On the way back, I fought valiantly to stay the fuck awake. I turned up the music, turned up the a/c, slapped myself, sang loudly, drank a bottle of water… and finally, turned the radio to KIIS. That did the trick.
Who’s on Israel’s side
The Independent has a brilliant info-graphic that shows exactly who’s siding with Israel on the Israel-Lebanon conflict:
As I understand it: Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant resistance movement and political party, attacked several of Israel’s northern cities with rockets in an attempt to get Israel to release three Lebanese political prisoners. Israel retaliated against Lebanon as a whole and Hezbollah facilities specifically, with bombing raids, ground raids, naval blockades, and the capture of Maroun al-Ras. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Government is desperately calling for a ceasefire while disavowing Hezbollah’s actions. (Hezbollah has 18% of the seats in Lebanon’s Parliament; 27.3% including others in its bloc.)
Basically, the U.S. seems to be blindly pro-Israel and willing to hold all of Lebanon responsible, even though only a small portion of Lebanon is at fault. On July 16, Rice said the only way to fix things was “to deal with the extremists, isolate the extremists, and put in place moderate democratic states.” The thing is, Lebanon is already ruled by a pro-U.S. coalition. The longer Israel—with U.S. backing—hammers away at Lebanon, the more the Lebanese will feel betrayed by America over a militant faction of which they have no control, and the more Hezbollah will seem correct in their actions, thus pushing the whole of Lebanon into a war that doesn’t need to happen.
A comprehensive ceasefire is needed for both states; or, conversely, what favorable outcome could possibly come from continued attacks? As Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora argues, “Bombardment, killing, injuries, and destruction of all the infrastructure—this is not an environment in which you can talk.” Even if the Lebanese Government somehow capitulates to Israel, that doesn’t mean that Hezbollah would be stopped—that group is as much apart from the government as it is a part of it. What seems likely is the escalation of the conflict, as other Arab/Middle Eastern states come to aid of Lebanon and the U.S./reluctant Western-EU countries comes to the aid of Israel.
Also, why is the U.K. still our bitch? Join the EU already!
(thanks to kottke.org)