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I woke up in the mood to write quite a bit but I feel my communication skills have fled me as of late, if indeed I ever had any to begin with. I can only hope someone out there will make some sense out of this.

Yesterday was the big day at the convention and it was cool. I wore my Harkness coat and Darrell and Darrin wore their jokey Star Trek thing I showed you earlier. Question: Why does everyone think it is Newhart, is there some similarity in costumes or is it just their names? We couldn't seem to find any similar outfits on google images. Anyhow... I am not sure if anyone recognized my outfit, though there was quite a bit of Torchwood merchandise for sale in the vendors area. Friday we did run into a girl who overhead us talking about Torchwood and said she loved it so Saturday we showed her my outfit. She said she liked it but who knows if this is true :). I did wind up getting some suspenders since the vest was more of a "Ianto" look. Nobody will know who Ianto is but whatever. I guess a very very large reason why I am so shy is that I never have anything to say that anybody will even understand, so why bother speaking? At least it was cool to run into some people who were fans of some of the shows we like. If someone mentions Babylon 5 you can bet I will have something to say in response, but that never happens in everyday life. I don't think anybody got Darrell and Darrin's costumes either but a number of people thought it was funny once it was explained to them. Today we will make an appearance in our old Prisoner outfits if we can get everything together.

Well unfortunately it seems like the highlight of Saturday was something I was not even there to experience! I was sitting in the big conference room listening to George R. R. Martin read from the as-yet unreleased 5th novel in his series. I have to confess I kind of felt like I was in a big college lecture hall again with my mind wandering! The chapter was mostly about new and/or little-known characters, with barely a mention of a character I actually knew anything about from reading the first 4 novels. I can understand that he didn't want to give too much away by reading a chapter about someone cool like say, Tyrion Lannister, but I have to admit I was a little perturbed when I found out what Darrell and Darrin were doing for that whole time! They had settled down in a little room where they were showing Babylon 5 episodes on DVD. A couple other random people were watching with them, when unbeknownst to me, Peter Jurasik himself wandered in and sat down to watch with them. I guess he talked to them a little but mostly watched and laughed at the funny parts. Later, when he was giving his official speech, he mentioned that he has never actually watched a whole episode of Babylon 5 and that today was about the most he had ever watched of it. I guess he missed the beginning of the episode but watched the rest. Well, I forced them to explain to me every detail of what transpired in that room so that I can at least *feel* like I was there :-) so now I don't feel so bad about it.

Above is a picture of Londo Mollari / Peter Jurasik, very like the autographed photo we managed to get. Except ours is addressed to Darrell, Darrin, and Denise and says something like "The Centauri Republic thanks you for your loyal support, my good and dear friends". I am quite pleased with it. We actually kind of got two photos for the price of one because just as he was finishing up the first one a big blob of silver ink fell out of his pen onto the photo and he graciously did another. By the way, I can see that the name "Jurasik" easily lends itself to puns and goos but I am not gonna request it because I would wind up making it too freakin' obvious :-)

The hall was packed for George R. R. Martin's talk, by the way. It is quite amazing that a large percentage of those people apparently managed to read all the thousands of pages of the first 4 novels. I did enjoy the question-and-answer portion of his talk. Not so many people came to Peter Jurasik's talk.

I'm perplexed at why Babylon 5 is considered so very geeky. It is more like a drama show that happens to be set in space and have some characters who look ridiculous. :P It seems though that when modern shows want to portray someone as a really big geek, they will portray them as a fan of Babylon 5, not Star Trek or anything else. :) Examples: in Buffy, the 3 geek villains were talking amongst themselves and one mentions to another "It's like the time you highlighted in my Babylon 5 novels", also another time there is a mention of Babylon 5 commemorative plates. In Spaced, the main character wishes to get himself fired from his job at a comic store and does so by telling his boss, "Babylon 5 is a big pile of shite". I'm pretty sure there are other examples. For some reason I just get the impression that this show is supposed to be the epitome of loser-geekiness. Here's another example, from King of Queens. Carrie: Don't you think [Spence] needs a date? Doug: No. He's got a very nice routine: work, dinner with his mom, Babylon 5, then sleep.

I have not mentioned all the events of Saturday. Out of the blue I also got a facebook friend request from an old childhood friend who is now living in Korea. She was online when I confirmed the request and she asked for my number so she could call me on Skype. This was 7:20 in the morning for me and 9:20 at night for her. I talked to her for about an hour and this was definitely a pleasant and unexpected event in my near-hermitage of a life. :)

--edited so as to appear less in need of institutionalization-- :-)

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Prayer for the Paranoid

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