.
3) Not sure what to do here. Were you joking originally? The continuity is suspect. /xylophone, same rib, yada yada.
4) You’re right, but that was me being a sarcastic asshole.
5) I regret so, so much.
^ That post needs a “sent from my iPhone” signature.
What do passes for the whole shebang cost these days?
I can’t imagine how Uproxx hasn’t footed the bill for me to get high and go to SDCC and go Full Retarded Klingon and send a guy with a digital video recorder to follow me around and just document what happens. It would be like Wah-keen Phoenix shitting on a card table full of pogs just to be attacked by the wolf from the S’wallow Valley Mall…but with “Girls-who-are-like-sixes-at-best” dressed as Slave Leia watch on in horror and remorse.
More Comic-Con anectodes. Went a couple of years ago…highlights were getting a free Star Trek manga from some vendor/truck a couple of blocks from the convention center, actually getting Sergio Aragones autograph (f yeah!!) since I thought he was dead and finally the 22 oz bloody mary’s at the Hyatt next door that were garnished with pepperoni sticks and came with a beer back.
Everything else was brutal and grueling. Would definitely go again.
Also apparently “anectodes” are a new type of eye ball worm.
“Everything else was brutla and grueling. Would definitely go again.”
I could not have said it better.
(And I got Sergio’s autograph at a con in Anaheim in the early 80s on a drawing of Groo the Wanderer. Sadly, I ruin nice things though, so I don’t know where it is.)
#11 – SDCC is also the world’s largest Kevin Smith lookalike contest.
I hate to break this news but Kevin Smith is the worlds largest Kevin Smith lookalike.
Nothing is less special than spending the experience with about 50 people you love and 550 people you hate and 5000 you will never hear of.
Math is not my strong suit, but you get the idea.
I went to comic-con last year, and wore an Alien costume with a sparkly minidress and added Alien-boobs on it on the Saturday (I thought it would be a clever way to skew “sexy” without actually being, you know, sexy). My fake Alien-boobs were groped all day; I think because most people assumed it was a man inside the suit. I started whacking people in the face with a wooden axe I’d bought, and eventually I got kicked out. Good times.A man was taken to hospital in Bath after suffering a head injury in the city centre.
South Western Ambulance Service was called to the "medical incident" on Charlotte Street involving the pedestrian shortly after noon on Wednesday (November 7).
Traffic was temporarily brought to a halt, but had cleared in around half an hour.
An ambulance service spokeswoman said: "We were called at 12:17pm to reports of a medical incident.
"We attended with an ambulance and one patient was taken to Royal United Hospital with reports of a head injury."
Police were also in attendance as officers directed traffic.
An Avon and Somerset police spokeswoman, however, said she was unable to give any more details about the incident.
A bulletin on the traffic and travel website Inrix read: "Reports of slow traffic due to police incident on A4 Charlotte Street near A367 Monmouth Place. Near the dental surgery."Slavery is integral to the culture of the drow. While it is rarely practiced upon other drow, the dark elves consider almost every other race above or below the surface of the earth to be fair game. As the drow are the pinnacle of life, the race eventually destined to rule, it is only fitting that other races be made to serve them.
Usually, a surface elf so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the drow is doomed to a relatively short existence of such horror the elf will be glad for death when it comes, most likely on an altar. Dwarves too are seldom kept as slaves. Though the drow do not bear the same loathing for dwarves they do for their surface, there is certainly no love lost on either side. Dwarves, however, tend to be too stubborn and unyielding to be broken to slavery in any reasonable length of time. Further, the dwarves as a people have no tolerance for one of their own being kept in servitude and wars between the dwarves and drow have broken out in the past over the discovery that the dark elves were keeping a meagre handful of dwarves in chains. However, the dwarven skill in stonework and smithing is such that some drow cities will willingly risk it.
Slavery is a part of almost every aspect of drow society. Slaves are used for labour, for mining, for cleaning the streets, for tending fungus pits, for sacrifice to the ancestors, for gladiator matches, for war and for pleasure. Even the smallest drow settlement will likely have some kind of slave market and in the larger cities there is often a building dedicated to that single purpose, thronged on auction days by buyers and by proxies.
Though training slaves is a well-regarded and prominent business in drow cities, most slaves sold at market are sold untrained. Drow who desire training for their newly-acquired slave, for example, if the slave is intended to be used as a house servant, will have to seek out a trainer after making the purchase.
The slaves at market might be sold untrained, but they are not sold unbroken. From the moment of capture until the moment the hammer falls on the auction block, the drow slavers engage in a thorough and time-honoured campaign of humiliation, degradation and punishment to break the new slave of thoughts of rebellion. This is also when new slaves begin to learn the drow tongue, as the slavers bark orders at the slaves and whip them mercilessly for not obeying. The lash provides a driving motivation for the new slave to learn to understand as quickly as possible. Before going on the block for the first time, the slave is stripped naked, blindfolded and all but hobbled by a heavy weight attached to the slave collar. He is then ordered to perform various tasks made all but impossible by the blindfold and the weight and whipped vigorously if his performance is deemed unsatisfactory.
Once a slave is bought, his troubles are only beginning. The drow see no worth or value in a slave beyond the money invested in his purchase. Specially trained slaves, particularly those who excel in their new capacity as gladiators, soldiers or concubines, are considered more valuable and sometimes even earn the fondness of their owners, but a slave straight from the auction block can expect no such considerations from his new master or mistress.
Drow abuse their slaves at will, often taking pleasure in the act. A slave is punished for the slightest infraction, real or imagined, and a new slave who is imperfectly obedient will quickly begin to accumulate an inventory of his failings in the form of scars all over his body. More serious transgressions are likely to cost the slave toes, fingers, ears, eyes, the nose or even genitalia. Of course, any true act of rebellion is almost certain to result in the slaveâs death.  If not, he is probably doomed to a slow death of the most agonising torture his master can devise, possibly ending his days as a sacrifice on the altar. In most cities, any drow can punish any slave, even those belonging to another drow, in any way he sees fit â including death. If he does maim or kill the slave, however, he is expected to pay the slaveâs owner half again the cost of the slave to make up for the inconvenience.
Breeding slaves is uncommon among the drow. When it is done, it is only in the case of truly exceptional physical and mental specimens and even then is a rarity. Though the drow may value the gifts of an extremely useful slave, the breeding process and the following cost of caring for and feeding the offspring until it reaches maturity is simply too much trouble to bother with. It is far easier and cheaper to simply buy another slave, particularly for the wealthy drow who can afford such exceptional slaves, as they have much more important things to do with their time. There have been several attempts to breed slaves for profit, but the troubles involved, combined with the long childhood of most races used as slaves by the drow, make this all but impossible. The one major exception to the drow reluctance to engage in slave breeding comes from the mages of drow society, who sometimes breed slaves for the purposes of study and experimentation.
Humans and goblinoids of all stripes are among the drowâs favoured races to keep as slaves, but are by no means the only ones commonly kept. Ogres, ettins, trolls and hill giants, though sometimes difficult to break to the collar of a slave (or collars, in the case of an ettin), are highly prized for their great strength, frequently making up the front ranks of a drow army or fighting in the arena for the pleasure of the drow. Trolls usually prove particularly hard to train due to their general disregard for pain of any kind other than fire and acid but are in turn greatly valued for their resilience.