Fact #1: During my three-and-a-half days at Comic-Con last week I frequently thought how odd it was that, unlike past years, I no longer had a list of old comics I was trying to track down, and in some ways it was too bad that I didn’t have a reason to trawl through the dealers’ room.

Fact #2: Every day, eBay sends me an email if new items have popped up on a set of saved searches. I’ve been trying for several months to track down the rest of the WaRP Graphics Myth Adventures series (an adaptation of Robert Asprin’s Another Fine Myth with art by Phil Foglio), and every day I’ve grumbled that all that shows up are the issues I already have or the Foglio-illustrated editions of the novels.

I just connected these two facts. >:-(

(Originally posted on Livejournal)

Current Mood: 😡annoyed

Some random links I’ve come across today

Peter David: Getting Ink for the Fund – yes, Peter David has gotten a tattoo to raise money for the CBLDF. He follows up: “What have you done for the CBLDF lately?” Well, I’ve plugged it on my website and bought a T-shirt… (Edit: It seems Neil Gaiman just missed this by not answering his phone. Also, Newsarama has posted a follow-up story with photos)

Pir(l)ouettes – a commentary on Adobe’s history of the ampersand.

ACLU – Pizza – a funny/chilling animation of what might go on if a pizza place could cross-reference your health, library, and banking records while you were on the phone.

(Continued from part 1.)

Our hotel was located within walking distance of the Little Italy trolley stop. Diagonally across from a coffee shop (“It’s a Grind”) that we frequented during our stay was this restaurant:

Indigo Grill

Katie informed me that one of the Indigo Girls has, in fact, opened or invested in a restaurant, but this doesn’t seem to be it.

Here’s another restaurant (or more likely a bar) that we spotted, this time in Downtown San Diego:

Martini Ranch

This was Friday night with Sean, when we were wandering around the Gaslamp District and environs looking for a place to eat. We found ourselves wondering… was this a martini made with Ranch dressing? A place where martinis grazed and rustlers had to watch out for stampedes? Did they serve a crispy ranch martini with bacon?

Actually, “Grand Admiral” Sean should take the credit for the next one: I don’t remember if it was this year’s con or a past one, but he was on one of the escalators with Timothy Zahn, who remarked that the view always reminded him of the view inside the Death Star cannon. Inspired, I checked out that particular escalator, and Zahn’s right: it does look like the Death Star cannon!

[View from the escalator on the east half of the San Diego Convention Center]

And, in closing, an image from our hotel room this morning. It seems that Salvador Dali had somehow gotten into our room and transformed our soap:

'Melting' soap

(Continued in Volume 2.)