It's neither, that's just everyone in Anaheim.

Blizzcon was non-existant on day two; the act of working around attending any such events was dwarfed by the expectation of attending that eatery over on Red Brook Lane, the pizza becoming more of a symbolic lust than just a last minute meal and reason to get away from the shining and gluttening optisim and tribal affiliations that seemed to be the Main Event over at the Anaheim Convention Center.

That didn't sound right.

There was a train. This I remember. There was also a girl I met yesterday that I ran into again on the train. Greasepaint, a leotard, elf ears, and a tired reluctance to actually be there that caused her and the other invidiuals thus attired in the back of the train to sway and remain quiet. Actually doubtful that it was reluctance, maybe just the swinging chant of a celebration that has forgotten why its celebrating anything?

Creating an association between oneself and an expressed form of some kind is always tricky; maybe not, but the whole exposure reeks of a tired soul or maybe someone just enjoying themselves. Or maybe not. Just that the moment of saying "I want to be that!" to the moment of actual realization when you start pretending that you are that, is non-existant; what changes? Why is time and emotion considered an investment worth pulling around and slugging over your shoulder in a wooden sword and some sort of gummy accessary to your face, or some other association that contantly reminds you that its an association? An aspect of life that, in a dark room late at night, was decided was "Crucial to my existance!" and pounded into the fleshy innards of the brain?

So I'm on the train and around their are laptops a jingle, sloshing cell phones, razerd heads bobbing with the motion. Or thats a cliche, maybe? Anyway, I'm talking to a girl and there will be a moment on the way back from the "event" that I will realize that I didn't come for her, or for some scrabble of bodies being pressed around glowing windows into another world; I came for no reason at all. And here I was, talking to a slender woman in grease paint who was looking into getting her degree in physics fairly soon, and was concerned about why the clouds wouldn't gather around her.

"Its in the air, maybe? In the wind?" she asked.

I could paint her a landscape of Gods, the Infinite, a sorted place of ideally placed mushrooms, but here she is, asking me a question with a answer of "You arn't high enough" and me failing on the expected cue to deliver it. Or its just me. Or maybe its the whole event; centralized around a gimmick that is a touchy subject because its just another airy mess of ideas.

We slept, sharing a seat side by side, she falling asleep and rolling to her side until nearly in my lap, me pressing against the window as every conceivable notion of life flashes across.

On the way back.

The way forward (or to say, to an arbitrary point that has taken some semblance of reality in my head) started much the same, except without the sleeping and instead with the munching of various foods that we had agreed the day before to bring; pizza was delicious, if not at this point trite.

I'm sure other things happened, except I spent most of the day not being rammed at by flashing tiles and a mess of people with reasons for narrowing their scope and burning themselves on a single mission, idea, troupe, tribe, place or event, that they seemed compelled to attend.

Or not. I'm sure I played some games or something. Or maybe that was just me trying not to get lost?

The only memory that hasn't been wiped away by the unfathomable powers of the mind as being crucial to my existance, was snooping around an arched airplane hanger that I assumed was used to house blimps, then wandering over to a parking lot and talking until I remembered "Maybe I'd prefer a bed tonight?" pulling the car into neutral and taking off down the highway.

draaal wrote:We ended with sharing a (different) beer a lovely, lovely mate brought me while I stood around and swayed with her outside the hall, tracing patterns in the sky while she told me about some of the numerical conundrums in World of Warcraft. Then I showed her the pizza parlor and she bought me a slice.

Good for you, man. I get the impression that some of the boys at a BlizzCon or QuakeCon get pretty ripe as the thing goes on, so it's good that you were able to meet up with women, who understand that just because you don't need WASD to spell, "shower" (except for the s) (and the w) you can do it anyway. Good show!

Bloody hell... I was there for two days and all I did was eat pizza? Yes; a pizza and a half, in three different consumptions, but the root beer (a bottled brand largely unknown to the west coast of the United States) and the gum (blackjack and a small serving of these root beer gummies) kept everything interesting.

I did wander into the Starcraft II demo panel thing and then promptly walked out after I realized where I was, when I came to after five minutes, which I'm sure is a feat of horrible awe and selfish malevolent disregard to all your interests but really, the whole convention was merely for one game. A game that never ends even when it does. Thats right kids, World of Warcraft. And one can only canter around and run into so many terminals displaying slightly textured, rendered polygonal displays, before the craving of running outside and blessing the Glorious Gods Be Damned Golden Sun takes hold.

So now that I've downplayed and destroyed the mystery of my attendance, lets talk about Starcraft II! No... Sorry. I played starcraft though, if its anything to anyone. And I had a cup of wine (I smuggled in) and a beer (someone else somehow got into the show). I talked with someone about sidearms and candy for an hour, then found myself talking with a charming girl in grease paint about revisiting newtonian physics (via Newton's The System of a World) and the relevance of constantly rediscovering (making sense of) high level concepts (here I brought the Principia Mathematica into play) and discovered she had covered Godel, Escher and Bach in highschool.

We ended with sharing a (different) beer a lovely, lovely mate brought me while I stood around and swayed with her outside the hall, tracing patterns in the sky while she told me about some of the numerical conundrums in World of Warcraft. Then I showed her the pizza parlor and she bought me a slice.

And that, my audience, was day one.

Or me. Preferably me.

It was somewhat fun! Blizzcon that is. $100 to be marginally delighted by branded merchandise!

And a vast assortment of merchandise there was! Also, a few blocks over was this half cafe/pizzeria that did the dough tossing behind a glass window exhuberance, and stocked blackjack chewing gum (the main event at the convention).

I'm told some stuff happened. A couple people who pretend to do something with numbers got pulled around and made into semi-interesting beings while describing an entertainment nearly a million individuals have played in the past five hours (the convention itself pulling those with a sort of vested interest in the medium together for a few minutes), but no, I actually didn't attend any of the panels.

I did spend a large amount of the time at the cafe, eating a moderately priced pizza I watched created from dough to platter, while playing starcraft (for two or three hours), then walking about dazed and confused until someone remembered they had to eat, and asked if I knew a place to eat around her'em dam parts.

And yes, I told them... I did know a place.