Another convention has come and gone, again with me feeling that I'm just too old and too male for these kind of outings (and possibly the content around which it focuses). But that's a musing for a future post.

Today we intended to keep things short by just attending the autograph tables. My brother (whom you shall see shortly) was in the longest line of the bunch, along with what were surely a bunch of yaoi fangirls. If you don't know what yaoi is, I'm not going to be the one to teach you. While he was in the line, I decided to be an ass and get autographs from all of the other voice actors in the room, all the while casting him assholish faces.

I'll do a write up about the whole experience and the psychological state it's left me in later in the week, but for now, here's some pictures.

My signed swag

Signatures from Spike Spencer, Caitlin Glass, Jeremy Inman, Chris Cason, and Stephanie Young (not in that order)

Chris, dressed as Okabe Rintarou, aka Mad Scientist Hououin Kyouma

Chris and Caitlin Glass (voice of Miria from Baccano

Another long day, not so many photos, but it'll have to suffice.

Midna (Zelda - Twilight Princess)

Wendee Lee signing stuff (voice of Haruhi Suzumiya amongst others)

Some Mandolorian Bounty Hunter

It's running late, I have a meatloaf in the oven, and there's a crap ton of pictures to insert here. So my comments shall be saved for a later date.

Hit the break for aaaaallll the pictures.

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I'll be glad when tomorrow rolls around and I can just do a picture dump of cosplayers from the convention...

But, today, I don't have that luxury, so I'll just ramble a bit.

International travel is something that hasn't ever intrigued me much, save for two destinations. The first is a rather obvious trip to Japan. It's impossible to say that the Oriental archipelago hasn't affected my life and attitude in some way, so a trip there to see the source of it all is certainly in order. My two oldest brothers and myself are planning on fulfilling this order sometime next year.

The second place that I'd love to visit you probably wouldn't guess... unless you're one of the people whom I've told and subsequently think that I'm crazy for even thinking this. That place would be Prypiat, Ukraine - the city inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

I cannot explain why I find the whole story around the Chernobyl disaster so intriguing. Part of it is because I find nuclear power in itself utterly fascinating. I recall when the Great East Japan Earthquake broke out last year and Fukushima Daiichi began its series of cascading failures, I religiously checked the IAEA website for new information several times a day hungry for more information on what was happening. I did that for a solid two months, hanging on to every word mentioned about the core temperatures, water levels, radiation spread, and so forth. Maybe I just have an interest in nuclear disaster...

But, I digress.

Yes, the Chernobyl disaster is something that I've been interested in for a very long time. I remember reading again and again a National Geographic article on it when I was around 11 or 12. They had aerial pictures of the core shortly after the explosion, pictures of reactor 4 before the sarcophagus went up, cut away diagrams of the melted reactor material oozing into the basement. It's amazingly fascinating stuff. So, when a fellow redditor posted images of his tour, all those feelings of intrigue were dredged up again. Plus, Prypiat is now open for tours.

Granted, this is a tour of the ghost town outside of the plant rather than a tour of the plant itself (which I would prefer and then get cancer for having done), but that in and of itself would be pretty awesome, if not entirely creepy. Perhaps I can realize this dream in 2014 or beyond.

Unless I have a girlfriend or something...

My grand plan for this week has literally been ruined by bed bugs.

So, here's a picture of my eyeball.