Monthly Archive: May 2008

ROFLCon Reports Around the InterWebs

After the brain drain of New York Comic Con, I couldn’t bring myself to pack up and head to Boston for ROFLCon — and now I’m kicking myself for not making the trip.

Apparently, gathering together "a bunch of super famous internet memes, some brainy academics and a big audience" in Cambridge, MA, makes for a pretty good time.

On the comics side of things, the Dumbrella crew, Randall Munroe of XKCD, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and other assorted webcomics creators made an appearance at the show, and were joined by the likes of "Tron Guy" and the "Chuck Norris Facts" creators. It was pretty much a Who’s Who of Internet celebrities, and there was a good chance that if you’ve ever sent a link to a funny video or website, someone in attendance at ROFLCon had a hand in creating it. From what I’ve gleaned from various reports and Twitterings, it was beautifully unpredictable.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, neither Chuck Norris nor Rick Astley were sighted anywhere near the event.

If you want to find out what you missed, here are a few sites to check out:

Whitney Matheson of Pop Candy has a nice "Reflections on ROFLCon" write-up of the event, and the requisite picture of herself with Tron Guy.

Tron Guy makes a cameo in a ROFLCon-inspired edition of Overcompensating as Jeffrey Rowland explains why punching Drew Curtis of Fark in the groin whenever possible is absolutely justified.

Oh, and some radio thing called NPR had a few reports, too. Actually, they had one of my favorite descriptions of the event thus far:

If ROFL Con were real life, this would be Elvis sitting next to Double Elvis sitting next to the wheel.

Heck, even BBC was there. *sigh*

Next year, screw New York Comic Con — it’s ROFLCon or bust.

It’s Obama… Hilary… no, it’s Superdelegate! by John Ostrander

It’s Obama… Hilary… no, it’s Superdelegate! by John Ostrander

We’ve now had the Pennsylvania Primary and I guess one of the candidates saw their shadow because it looks like we’re going to have six more weeks of Primaries. It’s like the end of the first Rocky film – we’re getting to the end of eighteen rounds and neither fighter can score the knockout blow. And both fighters are looking beat to hell.

I’ll make my preferences known upfront. Between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I prefer Barack Obama. There’s a variety of reasons but let’s just say that, while I prefer Obama, I could support Clinton if she won the nomination. I can’t reward the Republican Party for eight years of screwing the country by voting to put another Republican in the White House. I admire John McCain as a person but he’s for continuing some policies that I think are ruinous.

That said, there’s one scenario I can conceive that I think would keep me from voting Democratic. It involves the super-delegates and it’s more likely to involve a Clinton candidacy than an Obama one.

Right now, the math doesn’t favor the Senator from New York. Obama’s lead is sufficient that, given the way the Dems award delegates proportionally in primary votes as opposed to the “winner take all” method that the Republicans use, Clinton won’t win the nomination based on either delegate count or popular vote. She’s makes claims to having “won” the Michigan and Florida primaries and argues that she should get those delegates. That would certainly help her but those primaries were already disallowed by the DNC; no one campaigned in Florida and Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan. Yeah, it’s messy and it cheats the voters in those two states and the DNC pulled a boner in handling the situation but you don’t hand the votes to Senator Clinton. She didn’t really earn them; the results aren’t valid.

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