My archaeology lab exam has just scientifically proven that I’m an awful person.

BONUS QUESTION #1: Write down the hierarchy of Linnaean taxonomy. Must be in correct order.
ME: Aw hell, that’s easy. (scribble scribble)

BONUS QUESTION #2: Name five people in this class.
ME: … FUCK

If you take away the hideous purple prose and appalling implications regarding female sexuality, one of the Twilight series’ major failings is that its main cast is a parade of equally unlikeable people. Your female lead is so vacant that if you looked in her ear you’d see daylight, your male love interest is an emotionally uninvested non-character who needs to match his foundation more closely to his actual skin tone, and all the other vampires and werewolves are defined by singular character traits (“Compassionate!”, “Maternal!”, “Muscle-y!”, “Wears pants!”, etcetera).

Less the case with the book version but more the case with the movie version: I find myself more emotionally invested in the lives of the peripheral characters, Bella the Reader Proxy’s classmates, than I am in the central love story (also Charlie, who is a total badass and made of moustache). This is not a good thing. If you’re spending 400 pages/2 hours fixating on the least interesting part of the story, you’re taking the exact wrong approach with the plot.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Twilight would have been a much better book if written from a plural first person perspective, the collective “We” of the student body, bewildered and fascinated as they observe these two self-created social outcasts, Bella and Edward, drawn together by sex and hate and obsession, orbiting each other, spinning faster and tighter until they’re both found dead in a meadow, eternally bound together through a mutual suicide pact. End with a description of the memorial shrine outside the couple’s lockers at school.

Sadly, the publishing world has yet to take my advice on what makes good fiction and keeps on churning out vampire novels instead while Stephenie Meyer rakes in metric shit-tonnes of cash. Such is the universe.

(I slapped this together as a minor assignment for my Creative Nonfiction class. The prompt was “the worst idea you ever had.”)

My brother Mac and I were born eleven months apart.

Please hold all comments on the biological implications of that fact until the Q&A portion of the evening.

Because we grew up so close in age, there was very little one of us did that the other didn’t. There was also very little one of us could do that the other couldn’t, except that Mac could throw a ball farther and I could lift a chair while bent perpendicular from the waist and then stand up still holding the chair because I’d been watching “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and decided to cheat using physiology.

It was with this “Anything He Can Do, I Can Do Better” attitude that I joined Mac’s U-10 mixed junior soccer team.

This was a terrible idea.

I became increasingly aware of this idea’s terribleness over the next few weeks as I learned that I didn’t like running unless something was chasing me (this is still the case) and that nobody was impressed by my chair trick and broad repertoire of veterinarian jokes (also still the case). As our first game loomed ever closer, in my desperation I asked to be put in goal since the position didn’t require any running or knowledge of game strategy (what little there was when the median age of the team was nine years old).

I considered this a fantastic idea until the opposing team scored their first goal. Through my leg. Not through my legs, as is the case with many goalies; the ball literally knocked my leg out from under me. Our team scored the next goal, but the scorer was eight years old so that goal was also scored on me. The next time the other team shot at the net it hit me square in the face. As I lay on the ground, to add injury to more injury, somebody stepped on my hand with their cleats.

I quit the team the next day. My parents were very understanding. They had been at the game.

Since then I have avoided team sports whenever possible, much to the dismay of a long line of junior high and high school gym teachers. My brother can now do many things I can’t, but he still can’t pull off the chair thing.

I’ll give my new next-door neighbours some credit: the apple tree in the backyard probably seemed like a fantastic idea when they bought the place. I can imagine it myself: apple blossoms in the spring, a playground for the kids and cheap applesauce anytime you want.

However, the thing is huge. And a mutant. And it hangs over the fence. So instead of Larry the Previous Neighbour inviting us over to pick apples, we have this:

They explode, too.

Yay.

Ever wonder what a line 100 000 people long looks like? I don’t. I don’t have to. I’ve seen it.

I wasn’t even supposed to be in the registration line today, but Amber, Friend of Cancerbaby, has no 4-day pass and has to get each of her badges individually. Of course, to get in line we had to get in the line to get into the line. Curse my amicable nature and inherent loyalty.

(For the curious, the line not only led out the door of the convention center, but all along the length of the building, round the corner and all along the length of the back of the building, through the Marriott Hotel loading area, all around the marina and ending on the other side of the harbor. Apparently the escalators broke. Let this be a sign of what will happen to society once the Apocalypse comes.)

Of course to be a geek, and Canadian, is to be inherently tolerant of standing in line. I have no problem with queuing up in return for some kind of reward, but no payoff equals grumpy Cancerbaby. Standing in front of five of the most annoying Anime fantards in all of the Pacific Rim also equals grumpy Cancerbaby.

The line eventually got moving and once everyone was mobile we were inside the building pretty fast (and ditched the fantards even faster). We missed the archetypes panel I wanted to go to, but we made it into “World of Warcraft Epic Loot” fairly easily. Not much new or exciting, except that Chris Metzen is looking increasingly like a Hell’s Angel. Jesus Christ. I feel like I should be begging him not to beat me up or take my lunch money.

We had a bit of time before the next panel, and thanks to the inevitable pull of my childhood we ended up at the LEGO pavilion. Specifically, the Bionicle area. I was hoping for something on the new movie, but no such luck. At least the carpets were nice and thick.

An aside, here. The best advice at this point that I can give anyone wanting to attend SDCC or any other huge comic convention in the future is this: invest in nice shoes. Something with arch support, maybe even insoles. Your feet will thank you.

Anyway. After our wanderlust was slaked we headed up to the “Women in Pop Culture” panel. Surprisingly, a lot of men were in attendance. Like, 60% of the crowd. I’m not sure if this is a statement on spec fiction fans’ willingness to embrace gender equality or a statement on spec fiction fans’ willingness to bone Zoe Saldana. Also, Sigourney Weaver has a portrait in her attic, hand to God.

The high population of “Women in Pop Culture” meant that we weren’t able to get to the “Myth and the Superhero” panel, which I wanted to go to simply because that was the basis of my English thesis. I suppose the gloating rights will have to wait another year.

Our next panel wasn’t until 4:00, so Amber and I went for lunch in the Gaslamp district. We ended up at the Old Spaghetti Factory, because I have about as much desire for culinary exploration as an 80-year-old English war vet. I won’t bother mentioning what we ordered, I’ll let your imagination run wild.

The 4:00 panel was “Tipping Point for LGBT Portrayals in Comics,” which we arrived to late. By the time we did arrive, it was painfully apparent that Patty Jeres wasn’t making any friends tonight. By the end of the panel the conclusion had been reached that we were at a turning point concerning sexual identity in comics, and that comics fans were more ready than most to accept gay characters, which was interesting since the whole panel had been crammed into one of the smallest rooms at the convention with no video equipment and sound engineering that was dodgy at best. Draw your own conclusions.

“Physics of Hollywood” was already full, so we killed some time at the Art Show before showing up at the Zeros 2 Heroes panel out of general principle. Some poor artist actually mentioned that he couldn’t find any writers to work with. I hope he’s got someplace to keep all the business cards. I said “hi” to Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin of Z2H while I was there, who has even more names now than she did at the last panel I saw her in at PureSpec. Seriously, this woman acquires surnames like I acquire neuroses. Morgan Jeske took a picture of me in which I will probably look stoned, because all photos of me turn out like that.

Amber and I had vouchers to see Mystery Team at Horton Plaza, but we were at the ass-end of the line and weren’t able to get in, so it was over to the Nordstrom to get Amber some nail polish (the makeup counter girl was very understanding when Amber had to empty her whole Comic-Con bag onto the counter to find her wallet) and then back to the hotel.

Called Mother to make sure she didn’t leave any more frantic messages on my cell phone, the hotel phone, my disposable cell phone, my e-mail, or my Twitter feed. She’s getting better at this.