Mr Connors' Latest Obsession

I will be Fan Guest of Honor and my wife Chris Dickenson will be Music Guest of Honor at CopperCon this Labor Day weekend.

I think we’re gonna join the rest of Merrica and spend a few hours eating pizza in front of the telly and watching two teams of armored folks battle over yards of territory. Then the prologue to Lord of the Rings will be over, and we’ll be back in the Shire for a while – the pre-restoration Shire, mind you – none of this new-fangled olde-time touristy construction [footnote 1].

By which I mean The Fellowship of the Ring. If a team I remotely cared about were in the Super Bowl, or if they were playing, say, outdoors in a blizzard the way Merrican football is meant to be played, then I might look in for a couple minutes on that other spectacle, whose very name I shall not utter here, as it is a Registered Trademark and I am not an Official Licensee.

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In other news, Mr Imahara of the Mythbusters reports that having four medical staples in his forehead [footnote 2] will not set off metal detectors. To which I reply, “Indeed, but which metal detector will it not set off?”

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Ye Footnotes:

[spoilers, dear]

Footnote 1: The Hobbit of course takes place partially in one of Nuevo Zeeland’s prime tourist attractions – a beautiful sheep farm outside Matamata. Lord o’ the Rings also shot its Hobbiton scenes there, but then struck the sets. People took tours of the beautiful sheep-farm anyway: indeed I would have done so myself four years ago, had things gone a bit differently.
So anyway:
When Mr Jackson and crew went back to rebuild the sets for the Hobbit, this time they built them permanently and will not strike the sets. Which means, I suppose, that tickets for the Hobbiton tour will cost more in the future.

Footnote 2: It seems that Buster the crash-test dummy smacked Grant upside the head earlier this week. So where the heck was Tory Bellici slacking off to? Is it not his function to take one for the team? And have the Mythbusters inadvertently caused the Robot Uprising we’ve all feared these several years now?

A blast from the past has resurfaced:

He’s an otherworldly guitar-strumming cat burglar trapped in a world he never made. She’s a disco-crazy thirtysomething detective living on borrowed time. They fight crime!

They Fight Crime!

I like ships of all kinds – airships, steamships, cruise ships, you name it – so I read Wooden Boat magazine, among others.

So it was with interest that I noticed that in the current issue – July/August 2011 – the “Around the Yards” section, which is about wooden boats under construction or restoration, mentions mostly Viking longships. Does this mean something?

• In Tonsberg, Norway, a re-creation of the Oseburg Ship. The original was buried for over a thousand years.
• Staying in Norway: Over in Haugesund, Dragon Harald Fairhair, the largest modern Viking longship in the modern era, is under construction.
• Meanwhile, in Anacortes, Washington, F. Jay Smith at Aspoya Boats is building a 56′ Norse ship, a replica and expansion of the Danish Skuldelev 6. This will be used for educational purposes.
• In Waterford, Ireland, the Waterford Museum of Treasures has commissioned a Viking longship of their own. This one is another Skuldelev 6 replica. Once the hull is completed, the remaining work will be performed in public view under a shelter at the ruined medieval Greyfriars church, all in time for this year’s Tall Ships Race, (which I see, just ended).
• For something a bit more modern, we take you to San Diego, where the San Diego Maritime Museum is building a replica of explorer Juan Cabrillo’s flagship the San Salvador. This is expected to launch in 2013. You can visit the construction site starting this month.
• And also in San Diego, this reporter was recently photographed at the wheel of the HMS Surprise. Despite no experience conning anything larger than a kayak, there were no injuries and damage was minimal.

I’m going through and deleting dead or Horribly Mutated links.

(Horribly Mutated: like the one that used to point at a science-fiction quarterly (which I support and recommend) and now points at a place that builds custom-tuned Loud Exhaust Pipes (which I abhor and do not recommend).

Basically, if a link still works and still refers to the expected subject matter, it stays.

I have (people tell me) a first-class mind.

Which shares a skull with a world-class snot factory.

Which drains into channels in that skull that drain badly.

I dare say my stupidest cat, with only 47 brain cells and no opposable thumbs, could build a much more efficient drainage system out of 14 random Legos and a few inches of old duct tape.

Juzd sayin’. Bass me doze Gleenex.

We just returned from a two-week driving vacation, in which I escaped the Day Job, which is based in the Bay Area – though we ourselves are elsewhere – by cleverly going to the Bay Area. We also visited friends in Southern California both on the drive up and the drive back.

Personal highlights include:

• Being photographed manning the wheel of the HMS Surprise.
• Touring submarines and an aircraft carrier
• The Winchester Mystery House
• Avoiding the Day Job. I nearly forgot what I do for a living.
• A lovely seaside hotel in Pismo Beach

Surely there must be more but I am fried. Fried!

• Four Shillings Short was in town, as Mr Tuerff reported to us – almost too late – so we went to see them, because they are amazing musicians, and great people as well.  Afterward we retired to Seamus McCaffrey’s for pub food. The game wasn’t officially over, but the Packers had it wrapped up late in the 4th quarter. I was aimed at a TV with a really shaky digital decoder, so it was more fun watching the psychedelic effects as the decoder failed to keep up with the signal, than watching the actual football game.
• By the way, it is completely freakin’ insane that the Green Bay Packers are the only team in American professional sports who are owned by the community. I say all pro sports teams should be owned by shareholders in the community.
• I had a MonkeyServants comic written but not drawn for the occasion. Real Life and the Day Job caused it to remain undrawn, so it is in the bin for next year.
• Best Poll award to James Nicoll, who posted the following poll on his LiveJournal:
  

  Who do you favor in the Superbowl?

  Leafs
  Arsenal

  In case you missed the joke here: two real teams, one plays hockey, the other proper football, what we North American heathens refer to as “soccer”.

• That is all.