... the director of Fast & Furious, Justin Lin. http://www.awn.com/news/justin-lin-dire ... ek-feature]So says AWN, at least.

An action-movie director? Really? Have people completely forgotten what Star Trek used to be about?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Joe Cocker has passed away.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Sailor Moon Inspired Wedding Dress
(with Cutie Moon Rod scepter made by Grant Imahara)
"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
--Dr. Seuss

... and my credit card has to lay fallow for a couple of days, so I can't buy page views right now.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I just stumbled across this article on Tofugu and really, it explains a whole lot about why Japan seems so off-kilter - it's because we have been given the wrong impression entirely.
http://www.tofugu.com/2014/12/08/bushid ... -bullshit/
Really, now that I've read this article, I think the best example in pop culture of how Samurai actually behaved before the Tokugawa Shogunate unified the country is in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke - everyone has their own agendas, act however they want to act, and not once is the word 'honor' dropped by anyone (that I can recall, anyhow).  It would also explain why Lady Eboshi had absolutely zero qualms about the honor of pitting rifles against swords and archers.
This is going to change how I write some of Garrick's steps as some of them are in pre-Tokugawa settings.

Do you guys remember the Gestapo agent in Raiders of the Lost Ark? What type of headgear was he wearing? 
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

(No, not the Bowie tune or the TV shows. The planet Mars.)

Maybe.

Anyone looking to clean up some closet space? I'm looking for Captain's Log issues in the 20's and 30's.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

The 1969 AMC 400 show car:




Now edited for hosting that won't turn it into an antihotlinking shunt image if you don't already have it in cache.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

When everyone seems to see the car crash coming, but the gobshite holding the wheel. I mentioned Otakucon a few months ago. Well, it's supposedly running right now.

What is is, really, is a demonstration of how not to run a con and pretty much every single way it is possible to fail at holding an event. It's a full-blown plane-crash of fail. But it has given us the LIST.

How to make a convention Fail, in 25 easy steps.

#1: Freehose your con's webshite on a server that serves up shitty abnoxious popup ads with a malware side-dish.

#2: Pick a name for the Con that ensures you'll be well down the google rankings, below the last crowd to infringe on Otakon's trademark

#3: Run it the fuck out of your own pocket 'Like one of the Big Boys'

#4: Turn it into a temple of your own Ego.

#5: Advertise a whole load of events that you never really had an intention of having, or advertise as coming, people you made contact with who dind't immediately say 'no'

#6: Threaten anyone who wonders how you plan to pay for it with a lawsuit for 'deformation'. Mispel defamation repeatedly.

#7: Threaten to sue 4chan.

#8: Promise to pay for it 'like the big boys', and make the guests 'take a cut on their appearance fees'

#9: Announce a venue you haven't actually booked.

#10: Not realise you haven't actually booked the venue, until 6 weeks beforehand. When it's been booked by someone else.

#11: Move to a hotel in the middle of the worst traffic snarl in Ireland. And wait weeks to update the website to tell anyone.

#12: Be so sceevy that the guests who do agree to come ask for appearrance fees up front.

#13: Still manage to loose one guest with about 4 weeks to go. Apparently, by 'negotiating for a better rate'

#14: Try to let this quietly slip by unnoticed by announcing it on Twitter during the middle of the largest con of the year, when they hope nobody will be looking.

#15: Hold your con in the 4 weeks between the largest con of the year and Christmas.

#16: Loose another guest by bollicking up the Airline reservation.

#17: Give the one guest who does show up exactly one event.

#18: Promise to announce a timetable 'tomorrow', 2 weeks before the event.

#19: Finally Announcing it 4 days before the con. Listing events for people no-longer coming.

#20: 3 hours of Cards against humanity 'tournament'. 3 hours of Flux. As an advertised 'event'.

#21: Geek Eire (A crappy Bootleg of Geek Ireland so bad, they consider 'Cowboy Bebob' an obscure anime)

#22: Get in such a childish strop over a comparison to DashCon, that you actually buy a ballpit and advertise it as an event

#23: No Ballpit in the timetable. After being promised. Other advertised 'big ticket' events missing too.

#24: A grand total of 35 people managed to pre-register. Most not even for the weekend.

#25: Get repeatedly told by multiple independant sources that your security officer is a a bit of a known cunt, with a history of harrasing con attendees, and decide to stand by him instead.

So, it seems, if you want to run a succesful event, take a look at what this gobaloon did and then do the exact opposite on every point. I do feel bad for the guest and traders, who're showing up solely to demonstrate they're reliable people, if at all.

And we do have succesful cons. Eirtakon has just surpassed it's tenth year - even if that was somewhat of a melancholy experience for me in a strange way. And Kaizoku con next February hitting the difficult second year promises to be interesting. (Even if some of us are packing so much Whiskey and Scotch into the RX8 that it'll be more a private whsikey festival, with some anime events, than a convention). There's a couple of others, and the odd failure to launch, but none that have managed quite this level of failure.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?