So the bike is out and I rode it to work this morning. I had to wear the liner in my jacket and my gloves, and my eyes still watered. But it was sunny and beautiful, even if it was 30something degrees Fahrenheit out. And I was riding my bike. Which puts me in my happy place.

All I think about on the bike, other then the curves in the roads, the other vehicles around me and the road coming up is the scenery. No worrying about the part at work that needs to ship on Friday and which we are having . . .issues with, nor the multiple specifications I have to wade my way though to ship 2osomething parts that would be cheaper just to rerun, nor the other problems that were running through my head before I sat on the seat and push the start button.

After I ranted today for approximately 5 minutes about that part I have to ship on Friday (lets use inferior process B to prove that we can make parts using superior process A, sure that makes sense) to someone, that particular someone asked me if I think about this stuff at home.

Usually I don’t. Usually on the ride home I’ve learned to forget about it (unless like now, I want to blog about it).

Riding home today I saw the leaves on the trees starting to come out. They are that light green color that reminds me of the cover to Cerebus #114 (my first issue of Cerebus!) with that lovely Gerhard colored cover. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow morning so I can ride the bike in to work.

I don’t believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.

But in more exciting news – glamourpuss came out today! w00t! Go to your store and get your copy. And if you didn’t see it the other day, the cover to glamourpuss #2 has been released.

When I was stationed in Panama, I got this “Happy Birthday” Memo:

(click for a bigger picture)

As much as it makes me laugh, it was still more effort then any other of my jobs gave my birthday.

I’ve been riding the bike less then a week and already the four wheelers are doing stupid things again.

So yesterday I went out for a ride to the grocery store. I had to get some stuff for breakfast this morning as I was all out of milk, eggs, fake sausage patties. You know, the breakfast essentials. I had my blue “house coat” on under my jacket, my jacket shell and my back pack for my groceries.

I’m riding along enjoying the sun, and I go down this one bit of a “hill” and the minivan in front of me starts to brake and stops to take a left hand turn. Luckily for me I see the pick-up who wants to make a left hand turn from a side street into my lane.  The minivan driver waves the pick up ahead of me as I go to pass the minivan on the right. I slow down and brake as the pick-up cuts out in front of me.

Now normally I’d be a bit upset if this happened to me, but it wasn’t like I didn’t see it coming – I don’t think it’d happen if I was in a car, but that is neither here nor there – and I was passing on the right instead of stopping like I was supposed to.

As the pick-up  pulls out in front of me I could see the driver see me in his rear view mirror. He raises his hand as if to say. . .I dunno, sorry, I would hope, but possibly back the heck off? I dunno. It wasn’t a shrugging of the shoulders in that “I’m sorry” type motion, more of a wave to say he saw me. Well, if you saw me, why did you cut out in front of me?

But whatever. I could get over that with a few cuss words. What really irritated me  was this guy’s pick-up bed of mulch. It didn’t have a cover on it. When he cut out in front of me, I started to get a face full of mulch. Thanks asshole. This guy saw me, he knew what he had in the back of his pick-up, do you think he pulled over?

No.

He continues on in front of me. It was slow going as he didn’t want to lose all his mulch – so he was aware that he thought he would have crap flying out of the back of his pick-up if he went too fast. Do you think he put two and two together?

No.

He either didn’t realize that some mulch was indeed flying out of his pick-up hitting me in the face. Granted it wasn’t large pieces, it felt like sand almost. But it was mulch, because it didn’t have the same bite that sand has when it hits you in the face at 40 mph.

Which makes me think he didn’t care about me riding behind him. So when he finally put his turn signal on to take a left hand turn, and took it so slow that I passed him on the right: I looked over at a woman sitting in the passenger seat that was looking right at me and I gave her a full bird salute. I had a few choice words too, hopefully she heard them through the window, or perhaps she could read lips.

NOTE TO PICK-UP DRIVERS: If you have stuff in your pick-up bed that could potentially be stirred by the air currents and lifted out of your pick-up bed,  then put a cover over it. For instance: leaves, dirt, mulch, grass trimmings, garbage, sand. Cover it up. I don’t care how slow you are going, small bits of it will be flying out of the bed, and you won’t be able to see it. But I will be able to feel it on my hands and my face. Covering my bike with your filth, covering my cloths with your filth.

That is why I gave you the finger. Not because you cut me off, which was rude in itself, but I was prepared for that stupidity on your account, but because of the shit flying out of your pick-up bed. Please don’t do it again.

Dave, via Jeff T, on the glamourpuss Bulletins blog has revealed the cover to issue #2 of glamourpuss:

I got the motorcycle out from storage today – it was over a friend’s semi-heated garage for the winter. We put the battery back in, the lights and all came on, but she wouldn’t turn over when I tried to start her. So we took off the air filter and sprayed some starter fluider in it and I hit the ignition at the same time, and presto! She came to life. All she needed was some oil and a new rear light bulb.

But more on that tomorrow ~ it is late and I need to go to bed.

I got the bike! I rode her home! She purrs like a happy well fed kitten! I was smiling the entire way home. I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow :D

Usually when I find a link of something that interests me I’ll add it to my Del.icio.us links list. I like their use of tags better then just plain book marking them on my broswer. Another bonus to Del.icio.us is that I can access the links via any internet capable computer rather then just my computer at home. Yeah, I know there are ways of saving bookmarks and being able to access them online, but there is the tagging system and that people can subscribe to an RSS feed of those links (or a particular tag of links) is pretty nice.

But I digress – here are some links that I came across that interest me recently:

• Precision Body Arts: I saw some pictures of some scarification work done by one of the artists at this shop in Nashua, NH on ModBlog that looked excellent. I would really love to get one done, and I think I know what I want done. I just have to save up some money, and then contact the artist for an appointment.
• Warren Ellis’ Twitter Feed: I don’t use Twitter and I don’t read any current Ellis books, but I get a kick out of his Twitter feed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Ellis’ work, having picked up everything from Stormwatch to Transmet to his new book, but I’ve been falling out of love with monthlies (at $3 a pop or more for 22 pages, I rather have a trade or a book). His Twitter entries are a couple of sentences and are just “bang! bang! bang!”. Some make you scratch your head, some make you laugh, and some make you scream bloody murder. If he says don’t look, for the love of Neve, be forewarned!
• Kawaii Not: Cuteness with a sharp jab in the side. Every couple of days a cute four panel vertical comic comes thru your RSS feed.  They make me laugh with a smirk on my face.
• All Over Coffee: I was in Borders a while back just going through the graphic novel section, when I stumbled upon Paul Madonna’s book “All Over Coffee“. It is a collection of the Sunday strip he does for a San Fran newspaper. The book has some of the most haunting and beautiful pen and ink washes. He captures the light and time of day with such amazing detail, it makes me remember how a day smelled when the sunshine struck the buildings like it did in the drawing. And not only is the art amazing, the words that go along with the drawing tell a bit about what was going on during the time that particular shadow was captured on that building.
• Sci-Fi Channel’s streaming feed of Battlestar Galactica: So on the day they released season 3 of Battlestar Galactica I got the first dvd from NetFlix. And I devoured it like Homer Simpson downing Duffs at Moe’s. I was sad when I finished season 3 as the fourth season was starting up in a couple weeks, and without a teevee and with cable I wouldn’t be able to watch it until the dvd set for that season was released. Or so I thought until I went to the Sci-Fi channel and found that they had a streaming feed of the show. w00t! Now I’m able to watch the show when it comes out ~ usually I wait until Saturday morning over breakfast to watch it. So far this season has been excellent.  The streaming feed “viewer” isn’t as good as ABC’s (which to me is the best, when I can watch HD teevee that is the same resolution as my monitor, the ad “breaks” are minimal and placed at the cuts in the show, that is pretty good), as this most recent episode had five “commerical” breaks ~ granted they were only 30 seconds each, but they were placed in the most stupid places: Starbuck would be right in the middle of saying something and it would go to commerical, after the commerical it would start up again in mid sentence. This is the first week the commericals have been so poorly placed, hopefully it won’t happen again.

I’ve put them up on Flickr here, just click the picture below to get to the set to see those pictures:

I’ve been to comic conventions before, but nothing like this. My first one was when I was 14: my mom drove me to the local Holiday Inn and I spent an hour looking at back issues of local retailers. My next convention was approximately 12 years later. My at the time girlfriend and myself drove down to Denver, to another hotel for the local Sci-Fi / Trek / Comic convention. It was mostly Star Trek stuff, as several Trek actors were going to be there. I don’t remember seeing any comics creators. There were some local self publishers and local retailers with back issues, that was about it.

Then in 2002 I went to the SPACE convention in Columbus, OH. It was the biggest convention I had ever been to. Tons of small press and indy comics creators hawking their books. It was good times.

Fast forward 6 years. All of a sudden I’m going to two major conventions: the New York Comiccon and San Diego International Comiccon. The NYCC was this past weekend, and it was quite different from all the other conventions I’ve been to in the past.

Jeff T and myself took the train down, and were greeted at Penn station by L^enny. He gave us the five cent tour of NYC as we walked the couple of blocks to the Ginger Man bar. After some taste stouts for the guys and a ginger ale for me (though I was disappointed that they didn’t have real ginger ale, just some Schweppes stuff) along with some warm pretzels and very tasty spicy mustard, we took the local rail back to Lenny’s place. It was 1am in the morning, but we still had time to drool over L^enny’s Amazing Fantasy #15, Avengers #4 and 40 long boxes of comics.

One early wake up and several pastries later, we were off on the express rail to the city. At Grand Central station we met up with a friend of L^enny’s, got some more coffee and pastries and at 9:30am walking into the Javits center. We had to hunt for plastic holders for our tickets, though the lanyards were right up front. When we did find plastic holders, they were of the wrong size. I folded my ticket a bit and shoved it in the holder and started the hunt for the line to get in to the show.

There were people walking around with bright yellow shirts that said volunteer, so we asked them where the line to get in started. They pointed us all the way over to the other side of the convention center. The line was on the main convention floor area, taking up approximately 1/3 of the area, but walled off from the actual floor. The amount of people already waiting was impressive. And more just kept coming in. By the time the convention floor opened at 10am, the entire large path for the line must have been full. Granted, there was large “holes” in the center of the line, this being one of the two:

But still, about the only time I’ve been in crowds that size is leaving a concert or a sporting event. I took this in the spot of the line along one wall, and to the left is the “front” of the line, after heading thru that pass the line turned left and a short walk later was on the con floor. The people waiting to the right were the “back” of the line. The convention floor opened at 10am and the line started to move very slowly. Then stop. Then move slowly some more. Then stop. It repeated this cycle until we got on the con floor at 10:40am.

Surprisingly enough, even with a crowd that size, in an enclosed space like that, the air felt cool. They must’ve  cranked up the air conditioning, it felt great. At times I could actually feel the cold breeze and I got a bit chilly.

We wanted to see the Steve Gerber Memorial at 11am, so we looked at the map for the panel rooms. They were on a lower level, not accessible from the main convention floor. So after waiting in line for over an hour, we had to leave the main floor. We saved some seats, and in a few moments Nate O and Mark B caught up with us. The Memorial was hosted by Mark Evanier, who while being funny was at the same time reverent.  Then a few other comics professionals spoke, including Paul Levitz and Gail Simone, and then Steve’s daughter and his partner spoke. They showed an old Merry Christmas video made by the animation studio Steve worked at, and opened with a presentation of Steve’s work. My eyes started to tear up and it was all I could do to stop from crying. It was a good memorial, and as Mark said while starting it, he would say Steve would’ve wanted to be there, but he was there – his ashes were in a box on the table, and they should throw them in the faces of the publishers there. Ha!

After the memorial we parted ways with Nate O, who wanted to look around, and was leaving early to go see a show. We headed up to say hello to the Comic Geek Speak and Indie Spinner Rack guys. Having paid for my dinner with the ISR guys, Marc and myself took off to a have a look see around. We knew we wanted to see a bit of Garth Ennis’ panel for Dan Dare and then Grant Morrison’s panel, so we had a couple hours to wander around the floor.

Up and down the aisles we went, hitting the publishers booths and then Artist’s Alley. We were just walking up and down Artist’s Alley, seeing who was there and occasionally snapping a picture. Unlike SPACE, these artists were not trying to get you to come to their booths – no puppy dog eyes pleading with you to buy their  books. These creators were busily working on commissions or talking to a small crowd gathered around their booths. If I had some money I would’ve asked Kevin Maguire, Peter Laird or Jim Steranko for sketches. As it was, I settled for some pictures. When I went to snap Steranko’s picture, what would’ve been a nice waist up shot, he put his hand up covering his face and said “No pictures please.” Ohhhhhkay. So I turned off my camera and put it down. I asked him if I could at least shake his hand, which he graciously said yes – and I thanked him for all his great comics work. He clasped my hand with both hands and said we’ll always have this moment.

Sure, but I’d like a picture too as memory fades with age.

We walked around the DC Booth,and while we were looking around there Gail Simone appeared about 3 feet away from me. I walked over an introduced myself as “Margaret Liss, Cerebus Fangirl”, which made me feel a bit egotistical, but I figured she wouldn’t have remembered my name, and prolly knows other Margarets, which one am I? Ohh, the one that likes Cerebus. She was all smiles and shook my hand and said hello. She didn’t have the look of recognition in her eyes, in fact she was with someone and had that con-glaze look in her eyes. . . the WTF am I doing now, where am I going and why is this person stopping me and talking to me? I was saying something and her 1,000 yard stare was off in the distance and then she started talking to the person she had walked into the DC booth area with. So wow, only a couple hours into the con and Gail was already . . .not really bewildered, but thinking of too many other things to remember our “chats” from her forum and email. Total opposite reception then I got from the first time I met Dave, but what can I say? Gail isn’t Dave.

The Garth Ennis program was labeled as “Dan Dare” in the program, with Garth’s name only appearing in the small print in the back. So this large room (several smaller ones put together actually) with all these free comics lying around on the seats, were empty. It wasn’t that crowded at all. We left halfway through, so we could get in the Grant Morrison panel.

The line stretched around the common area for the panel rooms and it took us a while to find the end of the line as there were several other lines forming nearby for several other panels. When we got in the room, it was packed, we grabbed two seats in the last row and sat down. People were still coming in, and it was standing room only for Grant. They opened with a monologue written by Grant, read by the moderator and pictures of Grant’s comics work and other things came up in a powerpoint presentation. Then it was just an open Q&A session for the crowd to shout out questions to Grant. Pretty fun. Except that there was no microphone for the people asking questions and we couldn’t hear a dang word they said. I don’t see how Grant heard them at all. There was a boom operator, but it looked as if he was there for the people videotaping the event. Because if he was there so we could hear the crowd’s questions, he and the sound crew sucked, as we could hear nothing.

After the Morrison panel was done, we tried to leave the room. There were two doors open on our side, and as soon as we started headed out both of them, someone shouted at us to only use one, as they were coming in for the next panel. I said a lot of good it is going to do you to get into the crowded room to get seats when we’re still standing in it and sitting on them. We would’ve been able to clear the room faster if your line wasn’t right in front of the doors and if you didn’t try to use one of the two doors from which we were egressing.  Idiots.

We wandered around the convention floor some more, and went to meet up with Jeff and Lenny after they hit the Venture Brothers panel. We stood on the main floor and just looked down at the mess that was the panel room. Oy vey, it had actually gotten worse then when we left the Grant Morrison panel. Unbelievable.

When Lenny and Jeff got out of the panel, Mark said his goodbyes and left to go see his mother, just in from England. The remaining three of us took off shortly afterwards as well, as we were headed out to the ISR ‘all you could eat pizza’ dinner. That was a pretty good time, and lots of good food. I even managed to win some Garth Ennis autographed comics – The Boys and Dan Dare issues.

Dinner was over all too soon, and we headed out to see where we would all be going for post dinner drinks and chatting. Outside the sidewalks were full of people coming out of shows, most notably “Gyspy” which was right next door. We were hanging out talking to the Vampire Cowboy crew when Jeff said, hey, it’s Stan Lee. We were like, what the heck did you just say? When Stan Lee with another guy walked passed us. Everyone cheered and was saying things like “Stan ‘The Man’ Lee” and Hiya Stan! Mr. Lee turned around, smiled, waved and said hello back to us. Only in New York City.

We made up our minds were we were going and decided to get a cab, but to do so, we’d go to a main intersection as no cabs were coming down our street. We went up the street and turned the corner, and who was ahead of us? Stan Lee still. He probably thought we were stalking him. We kept walking and he stopped in front of Don Shula’s steak house, saw it was closed and turned around and passed us again.

Grabbing a cab, we headed to a small bar for drinks, or ginger ales as the case may be, and some chat. We had to make it back to Grand Central by 1:53 or our pumpkin would leave and we’d have to find another way out of the city. Fortunately, we made the  1:5am train back to the suburbs. And in good New York fashion, there was some woman who kept visiting the bathroom to do a little dry heaving. She’d stumble out of the restroom only to stumble back about 10 minutes later. Ahh, the fun of drinking too much.

So I went to the game three of the playoffs between your team, the Montreal Canadiens and my team the Boston Bruins at the Garden in Boston. You seemed to out number us when I was walking around Boston with my friend. You gave him a few heckles because he was wearing his Bruins jersey, but it was all good natured. No name calling. No obscene gestures. Just some fun poking and  some bad singing (on your part. I’m sorry, but your chant / song is kinda silly. Catchy, but still silly.).

Our seats were up in the “nose bleed” section of 326, which seemed to be 20 flights of stairs up, but had a great view:

As I’m sure you’ll agree as you were sitting four rows ahead of me. But I bet you wished you we could’ve switched places when the rude obnoxious ignorant Bruins fans showed up and sat right down in front of my friend and me.

I would like to apologize on their be half for them chanting “You’re gay” to the same tune of your little song, calling you faggot, homo and other gay slurs. You would think my great adopted state of Massachusetts with its very gay friendly practices (we are the only state in the United States to legalize gay marriage. I agree pretty far back from your country, which I’ve heard that your entire country has legalized it. Way to go!) would not be so ignorant and intolerant when it comes to gay people, but it would appear we are. Hopefully with time we’ll learn that calling someone a gay slur, or even gay, is an insult only a 10 year old would use (no offense meant to mature 10 year olds that have reached beyond this stage and now insult someone by calling them a “liberal”, as if one of those really exist any more in the USA).

I also would like to apologize for these same Bruins “fans” throwing various items: beer, beer soaked towels & tee shirts, towels & tee shirts, peanut shells, nachos, etc on you. If it makes you feel any better, these fellow “fans” of my Bruins also spilled plenty of our crappy  “major brew” beer (you should try our micro-brew brews, they are pretty good and could stand proudly with a Canadian beer, ale, stout, etc) on themselves – though be it wasn’t intentionally. Not to mention the beer they spilled on their friends’ seats and didn’t bother to clean up for their friends, who then sat down in those beer soaked seats later.

I also would like to apologize for the one guy that tried to start a fight with you by taking off his Bruins jersey, coming down the three rows to your row and pounding his chest.  I think he thought this made him a “man” in front of his woman and his friends, but why would he just try to instigate a fight when he could have thrown a punch? The boy was all hot air and no balls. That makes me kind of glad, as I’m glad you’re not hurt. However, I don’t think he would have put up much of a fight with you. One of you could have knocked him out with one punch and save the rest of us from having to listen to his . . .crap for the rest of the game. So part of me wishes that your Prime Minister had just told President Bush to get bent and fuck off with our invasion of Iraq and put an end to it then, but we understand why you didn’t.

Ohh. Sorry, wrong instigator and jackass. I digress.

I also apologize for these same people yelling at you to sit down whenever you got up to cheer your team, or go to the rest room or just to stretch your legs. If it makes you feel any better, one of those guys stood in front of me for the last couple minutes of the game, and I miss the final score when the Bruins finally beat your team after a zillion tries.

And again, I apologize for my fellow rude Bruins fans.

However, I don’t apologize for making fun of your “bacon”, the mixing of french fries and gravy and calling it edible and your accent.

I do give you credit for Sarah McLachlan, Neve Campbell and Dave Sim. Thank you.

But your team still sucks. Sorry.

;P