I woke up two episodes later, went back to the hotel room, cleaned up, and headed for AMVs, which were much more exciting. At this point, I was super low energy (and probably kind of lame) so I headed back to the room to catch a nap. … this was everyone’s plan, it seemed, because there was barely room for me to walk for all the bodies on the floor. Soooo I got on my comp and blogged Friday and Saturday.

After blogging, I sort of hung around and talked to people for an hour or two. Then grabbed breakfast, hit up the dealer’s room, tried to watch more AMVs/anime, and I either succeeded or failed epicly because and completely just forgot I met up with CCY and his friend at noon. Author wasn’t there (fucker!!) and no one else approached me with my sign (sigh…). There was some good punching. We chatted a bit, wandered a bit, and then next thing I knew I was waking up for the webcomics panel at 3 P.M. I know that sounds suspicious, but I promise it’s not what it sounds like. It sucked because Dom wasn’t there. What.

Somehow the rest of the evening burned away—I think we watched some Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Dennou Coil, and I think I fell asleep a couple times. Eventually I went to the room to nap only to run into a super-awkward situation involving a male friend and his female friend. It was lulz, though, because I’m good at making awkward awkwardly funny. An hour or two later, I hit up a pizza place nearby with the guy who watched School Days with me. After that, we went to Damn You Internets…

… is what I’d LIKE to say, but it was canceled. It turns out that maybe the convention center doesn’t like having watermelons spun on against their floors. Remember, with every full revolution of your fist, your arm grows one step longer. Instead of Damn You Internets, we cracked Nice Boat jokes while in line for the second Gainax/TTGL panel. The panel itself may or may not have been cool; I went to pick out Jason Miao but was easily distracted by the opportunity to watch AMVs across the hallway. It’s kind of sad because I don’t even like AMVs that much. Then again, I don’t even like TTGL that much, and that’s not even me talking about my feelings for Gainax. FLCL? You really don’t want me going there.

After some AMVs degenerated into Anime Hell, we went across the hall again, this time to the Karaoke Gong show, which was being run by Tommy. Yes, that Tommy. The Tommy who confiscated my sign at AOD 2006. The Tommy whose karaoke contest we trolled at AOD 2007. My friend lolikappa/Duk/Sunshine was signed up to do Shiraishi Minoru. I was lulzing at the prospect until two people before my friend did Shiraishi Minoru. At that point I decided that Minoru was corporate bastardization in a similar vein to Haruhi, and I took down the minoru-dan.dotq.org site in a fit of self-righteous fanboy fury.

My friend’s “Ore no Wasuremono” was total fail but it was total fail done right. Before singing, he dedicated the song to Tommy. Before the judges said their bits, Tommy told my friend that he had come a long way from the little boy with the lolicon sign. I /facepalmed but my friend on stage—and my friends in the audience—called out to me. I stood.

“Take out the sign!” they said. “We know you have it with you!”

I had previously put it in my pocket. A suspicious not-so-obvious troll staff member had told me to take it off, so I had. I had, however, made a grievous mistake right after returning from pizza. I had left it in the room. My pocket had no sign. I decided to go out in a blaze: I would empty all my pockets, rip off my clothes—”I HAVE NO SIGN!!!”

But. It was not to be.

After emptying one pocket, I found in the other my schedule for the convention. My schedule, which had been used as scratch paper by KigaMoosh at our Create That Anime! panel. My schedule, which had “FURRY!!!!” scrawled across the back. Changing my plans in a flash, I carefully unfolded the piece of paper and then held it out.

“I HAVE BECOME A NEW MAN!” I shouted. Tommy laughed. The audience—what of it could see the new improvised sign—went wild. It was awesome. My friends couldn’t contain themselves and burst out. I bit my lip to keep myself from cracking up. I was almost crying—I couldn’t be the lolicon I wanted to be. I had to become a furry.

Then some other shit went down, and I ended up going to bed at midnight.

That was a good day somehow, even if I don’t remember what the fuck happened for most of it.

BY THE BY HERE’S WHAT I BOUGHT AT THE CONVENTION:

ARIA FIGURINES

PRESIDENT ARIA

FINALLY, in response to some things said earlier:

Zeroblade:

Also, your con posts are composed of incoherent rambling.

No; they’re composed of sleep deprivation, euphoria, and enthusiasm. Incoherent rambling is the resulting structure, not the entirety of the composition.

IcyStorm:

Punch Miao for me. He’s been soiling the name "Jason."

Fucking Jason.

Os:

You noob. You dont go to cons to watch episodes of anything.

Shut the fuck up, Mr. I Don’t Know The Joy Of Enjoying Things With Others.

Jared:

So I herd you liek me

FUCK YEAH JARED

P.S. I will write about Monday ASAP. Also, I have new shit to disseminate regarding Damn You Internets. Also, next year I will panel as much as possible. It turns out that our Create That Anime! panel was the funniest and possibly best of all the events this year, so clearly we should do more of it

P.P.S. The only two things that would have made the weekend better than it was: more people watching School Days Saturday night, and Damn You Internets not sucking.

P.P.P.S. I should blog anime again sometime.

This was my bed Thursday night and Friday night

I woke up and went down to catch AMV Hells 3 and 3 mkII. Rika stabbing herself to What is Love made me laugh uncontrollably for minutes after the clip was over. Yeah, I’m a sick, sick man. After the AMVs, I watched the first Rebuild of Eva movie, which I deem a complete waste of my time. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, it was slick. But it brought nothing new to the table, and that made it far from interesting.

At some point I went outside to get a shot of the convention center.

After Evangelion, I went over to the Dealer’s Hall, where I bought some prizes for our game-panel (which I’ll get to in a bit) and a mini Aria figurine. I wasn’t yet ready to spend big money, so I didn’t get anything extravagant. I asked at one stand if they had any larger Aria figurines; all they had was a model of the Aria Company. Suteki as it was, I wasn’t about to spend my hard-earned lioncash on a model building.

Somewhere around this time (between 1 and 4) I picked up five or so more allies. That was tight.

After the Dealer’s Hall, I failed to go to an interesting panel (read: I managed to go to a fail panel), so I left and sat on the floor of the main hall for about half an hour, allowing the traffic to revel in my sign:

<3 me i’m lolicon

I got some awesome reactions, and it was good. I met up with more members of our party, and that was awesome. After that, I grabbed some burgers a block away and then returned to get a picture of the coolest Maka cosplayer EVAR…

you can resonate my soul anytime, if you know what I mean ;)

And actually, that’s just about all the pics I took on Friday. I took one more (of a fraction of my party) but I won’t be displaying it here for whatever reason. Friday itself—you know, the non-photo aspect—was far from over. Between eight and nine we collected more supporters, and at nine we ran our panel—Create That Anime!, based off of Mr. Savage’s AOD game. We spent the first twenty minutes or so spewing random (and apparently hilarious) nonsense at our audience, which was maybe fifty times as large as we’d expected. Then we ran the game for a bit. The game, for those not in the know, involves lists of tropes and improv summary.

After that, we loitered around for a while. A couple dudes and I went to watch AMVs but they had this one that was like an hour long and completely unbearable and eventually we got bored and turned in around eleven. Yeah, it’s a weak time to sleep, but we had big plans for Saturday night.

And that, people, was my awesome Friday.

(Yes, it’s Sunday as I conclude this post. Also, I’m sleep deprived and high on School Days and completely fucked in the head. I also just discovered that Jason Miao is at this convention, and am thusly sort of freaking out. ANYWAY, I apologize for any incoherence, and I laugh at those of you who wanted more pictures.)