August 10, 2011
Hey, look! I'm not dead!
I'd say I've been busy lately, but you all know that would be a bald-faced lie. I have been sick for the last month, however, which severely limits the amount of giving-a-crap I'm capable of on any given day. (Yes, I've been to the doctor. Twice. Whatever mofo of a germ has infested my system, it's a hearty one.)
Anyway, here's what's been rattling around inside my head recently:
· I went to Otakon at the end of July, like every summer since 2006. (Or maybe 2007. Can't remember.) It's starting to outgrow the Baltimore Convention Center with its attendance of more than 30,000, and it's starting to show in places like overfull rooms, people being turned away from said rooms, and multi-hour lines just to get into the rooms before they fill. I realize that standing in line for certain things is part of any convention, but it's reached the tipping point from "inconvenient" and is now well into "friggin' annoying".
Aside from that, though, I still enjoyed myself. I got to see Eyeshine at the pre-convention festival on the 28th, and again at an acoustic set they did the evening of the 30th. I can't really figure out what genre to call them, but they're pretty decent. (The band's site calls it "edge rock" which I was unaware existed until just now.)
Also from the convention I need to upload photos to Picasa at some point. Which involves getting them from the phone to the computer so I can weed out the bad ones first, so I can upload the good ones, which will then appear as another image gallery on the phone. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but I can't be bothered to figure out what.
· For a while after Nemesis was released I had an idea for a follow-up series, based on the Romulans cooperating with the Federation to explore the region of the galaxy "behind" the two powers' claimed space. This time around the ship would take honest-to-$DEITY Marines with them, instead of a bunch of red-shirts (well, since it's TNG-era, yellow-shirts, but you get the drift).
I even went as far as to design a Marine work uniform (basically the same as any other DS9-style uniform, but with a black undershirt instead of red/yellow/teal) with a Marine-style communicator badge. I came up with an only-somewhat-retarded Starfleet version of the EGA using the Starfleet "arrow" and the starmap from the Federation flag. I may draw, scan and upload at some point if I can get one that looks remotely like what's in my head.
· Also in the waiting-for-inspiration stage is an idea for a dohjinshi that I came up with while waiting in line at Otakon. I have a few scenes in my head, but I'm currently short on that whole "plot" thing. And then there's the problem of my idea not being terribly original, and my utter inability to draw. And the fact that I'd have to distribute it somehow (presumably online). Given all that, I could see this easily taking up all my free time just to get up to a once-every-other-week schedule.
Which is a shame, because one of the scenes I have in my head -- maybe the second one I came up with overall -- is friggin' awesome. Maybe I'll take a whack at it someday.
· I have so many projects I want to do for this house: Repaint the walls, recarpet the floors (and switch the dining room to hardwood), install new windows, install an automatic garage door, redo the kitchen appliances. And I've gone through two summers now with no activity on any of those. Being a lazy sack is one thing. Having it rubbed in is another. When you're the one rubbing it in, that just makes you feel useless.
· On the plus side, I got Ginger to the vet for her rabies booster three days before the old one expired. On the downside, the last time I went to the doctor for a checkup or immunizations was in 1994. At least I'm taking care of the dog.
Edit, 9:29 PM: Corrected the Japanese word above. Dohjin is a person or group. Dohjinshi is apparently the word for self-published comic I was looking for. Of course, I could've just said "self-published comic" to start with, but that lacks weeaboo cred. (As does picking the wrong word, probably.)
