A safe return to Michigan

I am now safely back in Michigan.

My room is a lot like how I left it. A disarray of things scattered against the walls, empty floor beckoning me constantly to curl up and stare at the ceiling, boxes lurking in corners, and my bed gently purring...

Wait a sec. Purring?

On closer inspection my bed appears to have an extra entity not originally placed there by me upon my exit to Arizona. As I've been out, my roommates have gotten themselves a cat! The feline appears to be black in coloration, making him perfectly camouflaged to sleep on my bed.

They're calling him Cat for now--there is a name but I haven't fully heard it yet. The reason is because they're still deciding wether or not we're going to be keeping him or sending him onto a new home. He's a rescue kitten, from what I understand, although now a full year old; the person who got him for my family works for a local humane shelter and paid for his neutering and microchipping. He's healthy and happy.

I spend almost all of my day indoors at home, so he'll have plenty of company while I'm here.

I am also told that he has a harness. Although I am not sure what kind of energy he produces that we might harness him for it... Alright, so it's so that we can him outside on walks. This has only been done once. I might try it myself sometime.

I remember when Djenna was joking that she had gotten me a surprise.

I had asked if I was getting a pony.

A cat will do.

Some fanart from one of my artists

One of my artists (Rebecca Gunter) just came back with some fan artwork for Vexations. It's a cartoony Vex Harrow. Absolutely adorable. I am so thankful I have these wonderful artists to work with.

My return to the north

Looks like my return to Michigan is upcoming. Just got Volume 12 released, so that was excellent. It's the end of my year.

There are so many amazing people that I'm going to miss. And some that I'm going to try to take with me.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful time while I was here.

I think that I will be posting some book reviews for what I read over my town down here in Hades; but as its time to return to Olympus...

Okay, so my friends back in Michigan seem to suggest that I have a Demeiter complex. The seasons change, I move between Michigan and Arizona -- unless, my moving changes the seasons? Hmm? Has anyone else noticed that it always rains when I leave?

YouTUBE and the murder/suicide of Tony48219

This guy has been little known on YouTUBE for some time—he was berserk, crazy, and barely audible in his vociferous screaming when he shouted people down, cackling with barely withheld crazy. At the time, he was just a fringe idiot, the sort of babbling drunken crazy that pukes in the town well; only seen by some time-to-time when someone decided to use clips of his insanity to frame other messages.

Nobody expected him to fly apart.

This tragedy has been bringing together a lot of different people on YouTUBE especially in the communities that Tony48219 moved in. It is … a shock to the system, a reason to cry, to laugh, to hold serious conversations, and to rant mindlessly. DonEdoxus2, The Amazing Atheist, JezuzFreek777 and many others have been throwing in their 2¢ on the issue.

We’ve lost someone. He certainly wasn’t a cornerstone of sanity—he wasn’t even that popular—but he went out by murdering another person, snuffing out her life along with his, and we might yet remember him hoping not to discover the fragility of the human condition in his descent into madness.

It’ll be solemn to see where we go from here. We've seen a loss...

This horror will fade, it will soothe with time, but the echoes of it will still shape the community we build.

Anizona 2009: Lasting Impressions

To wit, I have only had one experience with a convention before—and I spent the entire time under a table (more on this later)—so I cannot say that I have much of an idea for exactly what a convention should be like. This said, I am still going to be a little bit hypercritical of some of the more major faults that fell out; but I am overall pleased with Anizona ’09 and I really hope to see them again.

The schedule and programming were hell to find especially on the web pages. None of the navigation took us anywhere we expected to go, and no information was forthcoming. In fact, this became quite a bear and possibly wrecked a lot of the events at the con due to people being unable to find them…but it gets worse…

The schedule and programming booklets were alphabetically sorted! In the immortal words of our ferret, “Because we encounter events in alphabetical order in real life rather than chronological, I like all of my schedules to be alphabetized.” This rendered the booklets pretty much useless to the con-goers except as amusing distractions whist looking up events we might want to see, but quickly discovered we either missed or had to miss to see something else (which we only barely discovered later by flipping to another letter.)

As for organizing and actual programming that was wonderful. There were a number of excellent panels, events, and random nonsense going on that managed to fill out the days with good cheer. I didn’t get a chance to go to most of them, but instead rather enjoyed mingling with all the other characters.

The registration fee ($20) was amazingly acceptable and absolutely wonderful, and in fact rather makes up for the programming issues. This particular cheap cost made it a lot more permissible to actually show up, and be part of the con culture.

All this said. There is no Anizona next year.

According to many of my friends this event was much better organized and run than any before it—even with all its faults—and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. (If for no other reason than someone, whom I adore for this, decided to come and cosplay as Vex Harrow. She made the con one of the best events I’ve ever been to in my life.)

Volume 12 Cover Artwork

Here's the cover artwork for Volume 12. I am going to try to get prints of both these covers. It might make this particular run a little bit more collectable.

 

 
(c) 2009 Lise-Lotte Tjernstrom

http://tjernstrom.deviantart.com/

 

(c) 2009 Zak Hennessey

http://lrcommissions.deviantart.com/

This upcoming volume is named Waking the Stones and I'm trying to juxtapose the two separate worlds that are described in it. It's about time that we get a better understanding of what's going down in Phoenix, and Darlene is going to be our guide. She was stolen away in Volume 3 and now she's being given back to us in Volume 12 to deliver a message...

I hope everyone enjoys this last installment of Vexations for this year. It's been an excellent, however tiring, run!

Anizona 2009

I just spent the entire weekend at Anizona 2009. An event which Arizona really needs badly, which everyone who attended the closing ceremonies has heard is going to be on hiatus for at least a year. So there will be no Anizona 2010.

I have collected a certain number of notes from the experience—including some observations on how many Naruto headbands vs. Urahara hats appeared (Friday, Naruto won; Saturday, it was definitely Urahara.) We saw zombies, mercenaries, a giant moogle, Yoshi, and many excellent cosplayers. We even experienced the Gong Show which was an amusing jaunt—at least Friday and Sunday, the Saturday Gong judges treated the thing like the worst of American Idol and fairly much made the experience a bit of a letdown. If I had it in me, I might have actually tried to sing at the second one. Except that judges didn’t want singing, and I’d already caught some form of con crud.

Yes, there really is a word for it: Con Crud. Whenever you put that many people together, for that long of a time, some form of epidemic is going to spread—in this case it’s an evil sort of phlegmy sore throat. Knocked out the upper-register of my voice. Try singing with no upper register.

Geeks are also not well known for their hygiene and cosplay outfits quickly pick up dinge and funk even in a matter of 24 hours worn.

In the news of the neato and sweet, a friend of mine even came on Friday, cosplaying as Vex Harrow.

I will work out some of the other stories from the event as the week wears on.

No Mill Avenue Nights this week—it was all animé convention.

And there are indeed photographs.

Small update that isn't so small

Hails everyone, I just wanted to let everyone know that Volume 11: The Shattered Violin is now available for reading online at Mill Avenue Vexations. Ssh.

Nah, I'm kidding on the hush part -- go tell anyone thou damn well please -- tell a lot of people. I just haven't had a chance to write up my full release and post and everything to bring cheer and joy to everyone. Everyone let me know what they think.

The actual, highfalutin notice will come shortly. I just wanted to let everyone know.

Link.