I spent part of the afternoon in the Fencon database putting in a few movies I was planning on showing at the show this year. Not much so far, I do have the show opener (2010: The Year We Make Contact) and the closer (Flash Gordon) plus a few miscellaneous slots filled.  That Stephen Hawking biopic I mentioned the other day is getting the slot before the Cabaret simulcast, which has worked out pretty well in the past for movies.  The movie that will follow the simulcast will be House of Dark Shadows. The original film adaptation of the TV series. 

I know I'll be screening at least one of Peter David's Babylon 5 episodes, I'm kind of wondering if I can scrounge up some episodes of Space Cases as well. It's a sci-fi kids show from Nickelodeon in the 90's. George Takei had a recurring role as a villain on the show, so it's got a double dose of awesomeness going for it. I know we'll have to play the Neil Gaiman Doctor Who episode this year. If it doesn't get the Hugo for best short form I'll be utterly amazed.

So far, I've only got a few hours slotted, but at  least it's a start.

I picked up Deadlocked the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel earlier this week and read it over the past two days.  This was the twelfth novel, and Charlaine Harris has announced the thirteenth novel will be the series' last. So we do have one more to look forward to. Though I must admit I wasn't as much into this book as the previous ones. Usually when I have a new book of a series I'm into I can tear through it in a matter of hours, but this time around I found myself taking a lot more breaks in between readings.  Overall the plot of Sookie and her Fairy relatives has been less than interesting to me.

The big mystery for Sookie to solve in this book is the death of a fangbanger on Eric's front yard a few minutes after Sookie caught Eric feeding off of her (and the fangbanger getting off on it) In between the search we have the usual moments of Bon Temps down-home folksiness and Fairy other-worldliness. After the past eleven books, this just felt a little formulaic to me. There really wasn't anything new here, and a lot of the story seemed to be just resolving some of the dangling plot threads of previous books.

It might be heresy to say this, but after finishing the book I find I'm more interested in the True Blood TV series than the novels. Since True Blood does not simply stick with Sookie's POV like the books, and it fleshes out a lot of the side characters, I just find the show just provides a richer environment than the books. Season Five starts in a few weeks, and it's based (loosely) off of the book Dead as a Doornail. Though the last episode of season four made it clear things were going to be very different.

And no, I'm not talking about the dreadful Aliens vs. Predator movies. The prequel for Alien was released three years after the first movie, directed by Ridley Scott himself and starring an actor who was on his way to becoming Hollywood's new leading man.

Yeah, I'm talking about Blade Runner.

Think about it, both movies feature futures where corporations clearly hold more power than government. Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation had it's massive pyramid arcology in the center of Los Angeles. Alien's Weyland-Yutani clearly held all the cards out in space. In both movies, the opportunities of life off world are explored; Blade Runner' s advertising balloons making it seem all so awesome and Alien showing it was mostly a job, a lot of times it was pretty lousy, except when it becomes sheer terror when facing down previously unknown life forms. Android technology clearly played a big role in both movies. In both cases they were presented as being stronger, faster, and smarter, than their human counterparts. In both movies the androids are presented as threats to humans, in Blade Runner it's due to the Replicants disobeying their human masters, and in Alien Science Officer Ash (who is secretly and android through most of the film) is a threat because he will obey the orders of his superiors, even if it means killing the rest of the crew.

It's real easy to see these two movies as within the same universe. Maybe following the events of Blade Runner Tyrell Corp found itself on the ropes following the news that one of it's own creations killed the company founder.The popularity of androids as consumer products dwindles as fear of what they could do. Tyrell Corp takes a dive on the stock market, and Weyland-Yutani, a megacorp with it's fingers in all the pies, is able to absorb Tyrell into it's fold. The public may not like androids, but the military does, and finds them much more useful and cost effective than human recruits. Weyland-Yutani's R&D section is always on the look out for the next big innovation, so when they get wind of signs of extraterrestrial life on LV -426 they send out somebody to take a look...

When I went into work on Thursday, they had an unscheduled dairy truck delivery arrive the day before. This was the usual dairy guy's day off, so I ended up having to cover in that department. I had three pallets of dairy to work out, the majority of which was yogurt that would not go out.

I really don't like dairy or frozen , not just for the cold but the fact you have to be so conscious of the sell by dates and you end up taking extra time having to move product around so that the stuff with the closest sell by dates is in front. All the milk and cold juice have those angled shelves you just put the milk on in the back, so that's easy enough.  The Yogurt case has a similar setup, but it's not as effective.  The back of the case has sliding doors inside the refrigerated room, and even has shelf labels on the inside of the case so you can quickly put everything.  Too bad planogram hasn't updated those labels since the store opened. 

When I get home, I realize the steel patio chair I've been using at the computer has broken. A weld between the chair seat and leg has broken. I'm kind of debating whether just to throw the thing out (it was a relatively inexpensive chair from Garden Ridge) or maybe go rent a welding rig and try to fix it. The chair is relatively lightweight steel tubing, which means I'd probably need to be careful about how  I run the bead. Considering how much a rental might run, and I would need to buy a welding helmet and some gloves,  I am uncertain if this would be that cost effective. Though brushing off the old skills wouldn't hurt.

Monday night my modem crapped out on me and I was without internet till this afternoon. Naturally this occurs at a time when I have various questions I need answering by the global mass of knowledge Isn't that always the way when you need to find out if Rodrigo Borgia was a contemporary of Henry VII or Henry VIII? (the answer being Henry VII)

Tuesday I get a jury summons! Always a lovely thing. Thankfully it was for Civil Court once again, which means an easy trip on the rail line and a wasted afternoon. First two times I did jury duty I just sat in the main summons room for a few hours till they told everyone to leave, then the third time I got called to a jury, but wasn't picked, I'm expecting a similar result again.

Except for spilling ketchup on myself at Burger King this afternoon, today seems to be going fine.

It seems there is a 2004 biopic of Steven Hawking starring Benedict Cumberbatch! 

Real Networks is suing Apple over some anti-trust issue about not letting iTunes access Real's Harmony service. Since I happen to own a model that's covered in the lawsuit, I registered with their site to get included in the case.

At best, this might end up being some piddling little check I get a year or two down the line. Something similar happened with another class action settlement I found myself lumped into. I'd completely forgotten about receiving the letter about it some time ago, and then all of a sudden I get the check. I ended up looking it up on the internet to make sure it wasn't a scam.

So I'm making certain to note this in the journal so I at least have some reference in the future.

Due to the weird weekend, I had this morning off. So Mom and I hit the movie theater to see the Avengers. It is a great movie and Joss Whedon really shows his skill as a director. He turns in a flawless superhero action movie. The Hulk, who honestly did not work that well in his own movies, ended up stealing the show in this one. Mark Rufalo did good job of making Banner at least as interesting as his green alter ego. If nothing else, just having the rest of the cast to work off of made the character more interesting.

Naturally, there was a post credit scene. I'm surprised they were going to go that route for the sequel, or whatever the next movie will be. It's an ambitious setup, and if they get Whedon back for the next one, I hope it will live up to the expectations.

We had the Saturday truck get cancelled since it was under 1000 pieces, so they moved it back to Sunday just so we would have some replenishment for the weekend. But it was the weekend of the big "The Shitops at Target"  brand rollout and worse than that there was word floating about some big wig from the home office was in the area, so there was the threat of a visit that morning.

So our manager in his infinite wisdom decides we need to come in at midnight Sunday to take care of the truck. Naturally, trying to get the whole crew to drop their weekend plans to come in at the middle of the night to work this truck doesn't work too well. We were distinctly short handed, and even unloading the truck was a slog at times when too many people were off the line. Combine that with Shay, the team's resident loud obnoxious nuisance being particularly annoying and full of herself. She and Kelly were fighting all night.
 
It was a relatively small truck, just 1900 pieces, but the shortage of people and generally demoralizing atmosphere it took us till 8:30 that morning to get done. That threw a wrench in my plans for the day, I was going to see the Avengers with ORAC, but I was too tired and just went straight to bed.

Even worse, one of the guys in the crew had already seen the movie and insisted on talking about it and throwing out spoilers all over the place. So overall it was an unpleasant night, and I'm quite happy to see it over.

samjohnsoncomics is this comic creator on deamwidth whose been irregularly promoting his comics on scans_daily since February. Today he gave a previewq of his comic The Almighties and the readers are not impressed.

Considering the story is a hyper-violent "parody" of the Avengers that's clearly coat-tailing on the movie's release, it's no surprise the fans at S_D are unimpressed. When people show up on the community just to promote themselves, it usually doesn't work out too well for them. Especially if they over do it and post a lot about their work. I recall a few other webcomic artists creators doing the same thing (oftentimes posting even more) and my usual reaction was not to even bother reading their posts. Though Sam Johnson's post has brought out all the snark and merciless opinions.

Knowing the scans daily community, I don't plan on posting any of my work on there anytime soon. Largely to avoid the kind of reaction a lot of the people on there are handing this guy. I at least appreciate how much my comic sucks, and don't really need confirmation.

http://his-spiffynesss.dreamwidth.org/9204.html.