Photos: Dragon*Con 2017

[2020 note]: Among many of the things random visitors might be remotely interested in seeing, would be convention pictures from years past.  And of the several cons where I took my camera with me to take photos, Dragon*Con 2017 would be one of them.

I’ll be honest, this was a particularly trying D*C for me, and there was a lot going on in my personal life that was justifiably distracting me from having any semblance of genuine enjoyment during the weekend, and it was pretty evident as far as I was concerned.  But it wasn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the company of many friends that I did get to see.

However, the fact that there’s literally only a singular gallery from the convention itself should say enough about where my head really was, but there’s still some good stuff amongst the photo dump.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

With season 7 now in the books, all Game of Thrones fans are astutely aware that we are down to one season left, and if all the claims are true, there will only be six episodes.  So there are going to be six episodes left to close out a whole butt-load of storylines.

I’ve enjoyed the show all the way to current in spite of what people on the internet have been saying about it, and the incessantly endless debates between book purists and show-exclusive fans.  It’s entertaining, I don’t put that much tremendous thought into the plot, and the show writers are good at drumming up tension and drama, artificial as it might seem to some, and it leads to watchable television.

But six episodes to cover the sheer volume of plots and resolutions, that’s a tremendous task to be asking for, so I can’t help but be skeptical at what the quality of the final season can possibly be.  Maybe if every episode is stretched beyond an hour, they could literally buy some more time to tell more story, but if we’re talking about five hour-long episodes and maybe an extended finale, I just feel like season 8 is going to be a ride faster and more furious* than the entire Fast & Furious franchise combined.

*Especially considering the fact that characters are traversing from one end of Westeros to the other and back on horse and buggy faster than Vin Diesel could ever do a quarter mile, but let’s not debate semantics

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Draconian Punishments: driving with cell phones

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been driven to my wit’s end because of people constantly driving around while distracted by their cell phones.  It doesn’t seem to matter that such behavior is classified as illegal and ticketable by a police officer, but the reality is that there simply aren’t enough cops out there monitoring for this shitty behavior, and they’d most likely be disinterested in ticketing people for cell phone use when there’s speeders and even more reckless drivers on the road to keep vigil for.

At least once a day for the last few weeks, I’ve identified situations where I’ve nearly been merged into, witnessed someone absent-mindedly drive into a potentially harmful situation, or simply not gone on a light-turned green, if not multiple of the above.  My favorite (read: the shit that infuriates me the most) are the people whom you can see their heads dipped down, as the foot comes off the gas when their eyes leave the road, and they slow to dangerously slow speeds while they check something on their phones, and then resume driving like a retard when they realize they need to pay attention to the fucking road again.

Needless to say, I have laid down on my horn on nearly a daily basis, and I’m absolutely sick and tired of people on the roads who can’t seem to get the fuck off their cell phones.  Such doesn’t change much on people outside of their cars, but at least the repercussions of their idiocy aren’t necessarily potentially lethal (as much).

Regardless, the only way that this behavior is ever going to improve is to integrate draconian punishments for those caught violating the rules.  Fear of tickets and fines aren’t good enough, as it feels like 80% of drivers are still content to drive around with their eyes anywhere but the essential view ahead of them, so I think we the world, need to change things up.

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Photos: Europe Trip 2016, batch 1

[2020 note] Lost content, never posted in 2016 on account of brog downtime.  Photos of then-mythical gf and I on vacation in Europe, starting with layovers in New York and a visit to Ippudo, another one in Paris, where British Airways lost track of our luggage, and our arrival in Italy, where we spent a single night in Milan, before heading to Venice where we would take port on the start of our cruise.

Gallery encompasses our stops in King’s Landing Dubrovnik, Croatia and Kusadasi, Turkey, which was ironically my first ever foot stepped in the continent of Asia, despite my wanting Korea to have that distinction.

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Thoughts on Europe and cruising

Admittedly, I thought I’d be way worse off coming back from Europe after basically a two-week vacation.  Sure, the 22-hour trek that saw two layovers in New York and Detroit before getting back to Atlanta was pretty tiring, but I didn’t have that much difficulty in not using my recovery day, and instead returning to work immediately the next day.  Frankly, after two weeks unpaid, it seemed like the smart thing to do.

So Europe.  So cruise.  Long story short is that the vacation was pretty good, and I had a good time traversing various cities in Italy, and my first cruise ever was pretty enjoyable overall.  Maybe not as much relaxation as I’d hoped to have gotten, but I was able to sleep in for a few mornings, and those were quite pleasant.  Alternatively, there were a lot of mornings that were on the schedules of either shore excursions or travel deadlines, leading to some jam-packed agendas at times too.

Among the things learned about planning a destination vacation as such, is that in the future, shelling out a little bit of cash in order to have some travel insurance might not be such a bad idea.  Mythical gf and I got a pretty decent flight to Europe, but it was pockmarked with several layovers both to-and-from the states, and in the months approaching our trip, there were at least more than one deal that showed up with fewer layovers at a comparable price that made us come to the conclusion that perhaps there is some merit to timing.

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Why don’t final bosses ever get their comeuppance?

I make no promises that the things I write won’t blurt out spoilers to certain works of storytelling.  I can tell you right now two things I have in mind are Netflix’s Jessica Jones and the Game of Thrones television show, which has begrudgingly surpassed the novella, and will probably utilize plot points that will be spoilers to us book nerds but anyway.

Okay, it’s kind of a spoiler, but I’m not going to go into specifics; but the final conflict of Jessica Jones was pretty unsatisfying.  It’s a show that could’ve been wrapped up in 6-8 episodes, but since 13 is the magic number in terms of “seasons,” the song and dance kind of repeated itself twice over before it finally reached its conclusion.  Somewhere around the eighth episode, I knew the ending was finally coming, and I had an idea of what I wanted to see, but then I told myself to not hold my breath; because final bosses never get their comeuppance.

Needless to say, the fate of Doctor Who was not what I was hoping for, and I was left with this Kermit face when the final credits began rolling.  Perhaps this is a chief reason why I so unanimously and without hesitation, anointed Daredevil as the superior show, among the Hell’s Kitchen chapters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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