wombat_socho

Was on the clock from 12-9 today but only put in about four hours of work because there just wasn't that much to do. I have about 33 hours logged for the week, but despite some large returns I doubt Ill be on the right side of the curve. 

Got up at 0900, got dressed, and went down to BK to get french toast sticks, a bottle of water, and a Diet Coke; they didn't have sugar-free syrup, but I did at home so I just nibbled on the hash browns until I got to the post office. 

There I had a shitload of stuff waiting for me. Mattress topper, Komi, notepads, the Roughneck Chronicles off eBay, Burma and Chaco that I'd ordered off Kickstarter, Battle Brick Road ditto (5 copies of issue #2 because I forgot I already ordered one), a couple of kolaches from Butter Maid, two more Amazon Essential pocket tees, and Stipple-APA along with a couple other pieces of mail. I managed to get it all into the car with the assistance of a helpful lady, and got it all upstairs in two trips except for the wargames. No hurry on those. I unpacked the topper and spread it out; the instructions say 48 hours, but 12 will have to do. Around 1500 a knock at the door heralded the arrival of a UPS guy with my Surface tablet, which I took a little time to set up. Apparently Office Mobile has been folded into Microsoft Copilot, which is fine with me because fuck Office 365.The Surface Go is actually a little thinner than my Samsung phone in its Otterbox, though that will probably change slightly when the keyboard/cover arrives next week. It would have been here today as well, but the shipper wouldn't send it to the PO Box, so I put the home address on it, and of course it got rejected at the PO. Amazon agreed to just ship another one to the PO Box for no charge, which is fine. 

I conformed to the Law of the Fish by taking advantage of a Subway coupon for three footlongs for $17.99, which was actually cheaper than the B2G1 deal on the app, which I couldn't get to work anyway. One of them was a garlic roast beef sub that I ate Thursday night and the other two were tuna salad subs  that I devoured today for lunch and dinner. 

Took a break in the action from today's work to sweep the Giants, which after beating Pete's Brewers 2 out of 3 on Tuesday made for a good week. Still a game behind the A's, but we have over 70 games to go, so I'm not giving up hope. Carl Morton picked up two wins, Spaceman Lee finally got his 10th win, and Bob Johnson got his 9th save. Dave Kingman went on a tear against the Giants, blasting three home runs during the series . which was nice and confirmed the wisdom of my decision to trade for Braun and stick Dave in the #9 hole as DH. 

I'm on the clock from 12-9 tomorrow, so I think I'll make my bed and get in it. 

I suppose I could also describe this as a report on the state of my fandoms, and it will probably wind up on the Substack in somewhat altered form... 

"In the beginning, there was the Word." So it is with me; I have always been an avid reader, preferring SF, historical fiction, military & naval history, and biographies to other genres, though I did go through a stretch where I was reading a lot of mainstream fiction. Gave up on it because most of it was depressing and/or tales of awful people doing awful things or living awful lives. (See Bright Lights, Big City or The First Deadly Sin.) I still do a lot of reading and have the Kindle and physical libraries to prove it.

Reading SF eventually (inevitably?) drew me into science fiction fandom. I attended conventions in the Baltimore/DC area and elsewhere from 1974 (Discon II, the Worldcon in DC) until 1983 when I got married and moved to Minnesota. There I became more active in traditional fanac: I pubbed a perszine, joined and dropped out and rejoined Stipple-APA, became involved in media fandom thanks to Space: Above & Beyond and the 59th Ready Reserve Squadron, went to a few Minicons, more Convergences and Diversicons and Arcanas, volunteered and served on staff for some of those, and eventually became heavily involved with anime fandom at Anime Iowa, so much so that I was one of the founders and chairmen of Anime Detour, which I remained on staff with until I left Minnesota for Virginia in 2007. I returned to Anime Detour (and continued to volunteer there) after moving to Virginia and Las Vegas, but eventually the staff there did my son dirty, and I severed all connections with them. I'll be going to Anime Fusion in Minnesota this year for my son's 40th birthday, but purely as a spectator. I dropped out of Stipple-APA after descending into abject poverty in Virginia, but after moving to Las Vegas in 2015 I became involved with the National Fantasy Fan Federation (N3F), sporadically contributed to N'APA, and eventually became treasurer along with wearing a few other fezzes. I am currently the chairman of Son of Silvercon, a small relaxicon in Las Vegas that aspires to become a mid-sized regional convention. 

Fandom led me into historical boardgaming/wargaming, which was a big thing in the 1970s and 1980s before TSR bought SPI at bankruptcy and gutted the hobby. I was a D&D dungeonmaster and a Traveller referee; I was also interested in several other RPG (Twilight:2000, Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green) but never actually played them. Wargames are still around, but it's a lot harder to find opponents, and games, like everything else, have become a lot more expensive thanks to inflation and the fact that it's a niche hobby now. Mostly I play video games like Civilization and Hearts of Iron IV, which have some of the flavor of the old monstergames. I used to be involved with EVE-Online as part of Goonfleet, and was there when we broke Band of Brothers, lost Delve and fled to a new home, reorganized under Commissar Mittens and grew to be a great power in the game again, but I don't remember clearly when I stopped playing. Probably in 2018, when I got horribly sick and was homeless for a couple of months. Everyone I used to know in GF is out of the game now, and I don't feel any strong urge to go back. Aside from the aforementioned strategic video games, I also play Fate/Grand Order and Azur Lane on my phone, the former more than the latter because Azur Lane's story is confusing and silly by turns. Played Cookie Run for a while but it wound up being more grindy than cute, and Girls Frontline just didn't hold my interest. I should probably get out and play more Ingress because the walking would be good for me. 

I came very late to baseball. As a kid, I was a fan of the Washington Senators, who moved to Texas in 1972 and took my interest in baseball with it. My now ex-wife was a Twins fan, though, and between her interest and Rotisserie baseball, I got back into it. For a few years I scored games at home for STATS, Inc. and published a newsletter on the independent minor leagues (which caused some road trips to towns like Aberdeen, Austin, Duluth, Fargo, and Madison) but that fell victim to Anime Detour, which pretty much ate my life from 2003-2007. I played fantasy baseball on Yahoo for a few years but dropped out of that; I was also involved in a Pursue the Pennant league until it fell apart in 1992. Nowadays, I casually follow the Nationals, Twins, and Red Sox, and am managing the Senators in a Dynasty League Baseball league run by fellow blogger Pete (Da Tech Guy), but Major League Baseball's current commissioner has alienated me with his woke stupidity, and I'm not much interested in seeing the A's when they move from Oakland to Las Vegas in a couple of years. 

I don't watch a lot of TV or movies. Used to watch a lot when I was married, but that went by the wayside in favor of watching anime, and these days I watch very little because Hollywood isn't making a lot of stuff that interests me, and I find video games more rewarding. Someday I'll probably finish watching Fallout, because it's on Amazon Prime and the first five episodes, which I saw while visiting Stacy McCain this spring, seemed pretty decent. People tell me I should watch The Expanse, and maybe one of these days I will. Webcomics fall under this heading; I was really really interested in Girl Genius, Megatokyo, Erfworld, and a couple of other webcomics, but I fell out of the habit of following them (probably around the same time I stopped playing EVE-Online, for some of the same reasons) and I can't think of any webcomics I follow at all, with the exception of Terminal Lance, Clinic of Horrors, and occasional postings by Merryweather Media. 

Not sure where this really fits in, but thanks to my Dad's final assignment with the JCS, I acquired an interest in nuclear weapons and power, which has led me to a seat on the board of the Nevada Security Site Advisory Board, a group of citizens who provide oversight to the Department of Energy's ongoing cleanup and monitoring work at the former Nevada Test Site. I don't get paid for it, but they do reimburse me for my travel expenses, which is nice, and the work is interesting, with a lot of callbacks to some weird history. For example, they're currently demolishing & cleaning up Test Cell C, which is where testing of NERVA rockets and Project Pluto went on during the early 1960s. Coincidentally, there's some discussion of nuclear rockets again in connection with Elon Musk's ambition of going to Mars. 

It occurred to me this morning after finishing a rare Saturday morning In The Mailbox that I am probably missing out on a lot of webcomics and podcasts I might enjoy because I'm simply not aware of them.

On the other hand, I've stopped following a lot of the webcomics I used to follow religiously. Sinfest was balanced for a while between feminist BS and amusing story, but now it's tipped over into the feminist abyss. Screw it. Day by Day became less funny along with the politics it was satirizing. Penny Arcade...got tired of the crudity and the references to games I'd never heard of and knew nothing about, and the constantly aborted story plots got on my last nerve. There were tons of cool possibilities and they just threw them away, or couldn't figure out where the stories were going. or maybe the stories were just extended in-jokes that I never really understood. Skin Horse and Rip Haywire stopped being amusing for different reasons, while with xkcd, the snark outweighed the amusement more often than not.

I am still following Girl Genius, Schlock Mercenary, Freefall, The Specialists (on hiatus), Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, Erfworld, Terminal Lance, and Megatokyo. Exterminatus Now is done, unfortunately, and with the death of Larry Latham, so is Lovecraft Is Missing. I was hoping his widow could find someone to wrap it up, but I guess that's not going to happen. 319 Dark Street is done.

Podcasts...for some reason, I've never taken a shine to those. I was too young to really appreciate radio dramas, which were petering out when I was a kid, and despite the recommendations of friends and family, I just haven't gotten into Welcome To Night Vale or any of the other 'casts that might be relevant to my interests.

Given my druthers, i would rather read or play videogames than watch TV online or listen to podcasts, and movies these days just cost too damn much for me to just up and go to see if something's worth watching. I think I've been very, very lucky that the last few movies I've seen (The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) have all been worth it.

Did Robert Downey nail this role, or what? I've always had a soft spot for Iron Man; it was one of the few comics that I got a chance to read as a kid, although I never quite got around to getting a subscription to it later. Anyhow, the movie was very well done, FX well done but not obtrusive, and from what I gather on Wikipedia, they actually stuck fairly close to the original continuity. Also, kudos to the scriptwriters for keeping Pepper Potts a 1940s-style Girl Friday. (Her put-down of the trashy Vanity Fair reporter is priceless.) Highly recommended, though most of you have probably already seen it. #^_^#

Odysseus the Rebel. I've liked The Odyssey ever since seeing Kirk Douglas as Ulysses. BAD ASS.

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Now playing: Front 242 - Modern Angel
http://foxytunes.com/artist/front+242/track/modern+angel

I've been following the excellent Lovecraft Is Missing since Balticon (just coincidence, I found it through some other link) and now LiM has turned me on to a most excellent "reboot" of the HPL franchise: Young Lovecraft The strip is originally done in Spanish, but the creators have thoughtfully provided an English translation. Hilarious!

Also worth noting: The Gentleman from Lickskillet, a daily political strip (h/t brian_edminster) and Skin Horse, a bizarre and humorous mix of X-Files, animal welfare, anthropomorphic animals, obscure government agencies, and an attack helicopter that doesn't really understand that it's not a teenaged geek flying an attack helicopter simulator...odd, but usually funny.

P had e-mailed me about going out to dinner, and since she was wanting to eat in an actual restaurant instead of the bar & grill/fast food joints we usually eat at, we went down to the Casablanca Restaurant and did the Petite Feast with lamb, onions & garbanzo beans for the entree. All very good, the bastilla appetizer especially.

While waiting for our reservation to roll around, we wandered up and down King Street and spent some time in Aftertime Comics, which is a tiny storefront jam-packed with comics, graphic novels, action figures, and related stuff. Melody availed herself of the Absolute Sandman collection, or volume 1 of it at any rate, along with an Alan Moore book. I faunched after an American Flagg hardback collection, which was signed and numbered, and several Frank Cho Liberty Meadows collections, which were not. Maybe after Detour, when I expect to have disposable income again. Hopefully. I have to say, this is one of those stores I could walk into and blow half a month's pay...AND I'M NOT EVEN THAT MUCH INTO COMICS.

Well...evening began with Moroccan food and good company, ends now with Lou Reed and Digger. Truly, I'm living in a Golden Age. :)