I had an amazing time at the Ad Astra convention this Saturday. I was only there for a day, but a lot of stuff happened. I’m not going to write a full report for this, so I’ll try my best to collect all my thoughts right here.

This is a very “grown up” convention, for lack of a better term. I love going to comic book and anime cons, but let’s face it, there are a lot of obnoxious little brats there, of all ages, that sully the experience. Ad Astra isn’t like that. It’s lower-key, and everyone is there to have a good time without being annoying.

I saw this Alien vs. Predator fan film called “S.E.E.D.” Not bad for something done by amateur film makers. Really impressive costumes.

Pan told me, out of the blue, that I would be eaten by a shark. I replied that the shark would not continue beyond one failed attempt at a bite. No one was impressed.

They had an anime room there and I saw 4 episodes of Sailor Moon uncut. Hey, this show is actually pretty good! The edited version that DiC produced all those years ago really did the series a disservice.

All of the stage ninjas and masquerade crew worked really hard and I think we delivered a great show. Nothing really went wrong, and there were some incredible costumes. Some of the highlights included 2 Boba Fetts and 1 random Mandelorian Bounty Hunter, a Ghostbuster, Shaak Ti, a Back to the Future skit, and my favorite, Listerine: Action Hero.

We had a ninja pizza party after our duties were concluded. Gordon Rose even came by and joined us. It was fun and we were very noisy. Because this was a special occasion, I succumbed to peer pressure and drank a BAWLS. Just one bottle was likely the most caffeine I had ever consumed in my entire life, and I was feeling it afterwards with a bit of a buzz. I got home very late and was quite tired, but couldn’t sleep. So I watched Revenge of the Sith again. All told I stayed awake for more than 24 hours. Wasn’t really planning on doing that. Oh well.

2 girls grabbed me by the arms and dragged me onto the dance floor. The reality of this situation was slightly less exciting than this brief synopses would imply, but I don’t care because it sounds good. Heh heh.

The best part of the whole show for me was just being able to hang out with friends and people I know from conventions that I don’t get to see very often. I really do honestly think that I am a lucky guy. It was an awesome convention and I had a great time, so thanks go out to everyone who made that happen!

Sayonara.

This is a message specifically intended for the people out there who have taken it upon themselves to anonymously inform me of how much they dislike me, my artwork, and my website.

Bring it!

That’s right, keep it coming! Bring me all of your rage. Bring me your disappointment. Bring me your hatred. Bring me your insults. And tell all your friends to do the same. Believe me, all of that negativity, I want it! Bring it to me! I dare you!

Go ahead! Keep on telling me how bad my art is. Tell me I suck! I want you to. There’s no need to offer any constructive criticism. Keep making immature generalizations. Keep on painting your little picture of how terrible I am in such broad, ignorant strokes. Continue to wrongly assume that it will make a difference, force me to give up, or change any part of my daily life in any fashion.

Keep on talking about how you know other people who are younger and/or dumber than me that also have more talent then me. Please, continue to fail in showing me any examples. Please, continue to not tell me who they are. Please, don’t bother to cite any of your qualifications to make such judgments. Please don’t put anything I do into any sort of proper context either. And please, continue to think that this statement makes me feel bad about myself.

And while you’re at it, go and attack me personally too. Make fun of me. Make fun of my bandana. Mock my beliefs and my philosophies in life. Make fun of how my name is “Ninjatron” and I call myself a ninja. Make fun of how I like anime, because everyone knows that anime sucks. Make fun of my physical appearance. Make fun of how skinny I am, because it’s just so much cooler to be a fat tub of lard. Make fun of my clothing. Make fun of my goatee! And hey, since you’re taking it that far, talk about how I failed college, or how I didn’t even go to college, or other assorted lies. While you’re at it, make another untrue accusation and call me gay! It makes all your points seem just so much more intelligent!

Oh, and since your have such terrible things to say, you might as well conceal your identity behind a fake e-mail address. No need to stand behind your words. No need to own up to your actions. Being anonymous just adds so much credibility, doesn’t it? Please, continue to prove your cowardice. It really helps your case.

In all seriousness, I am a very negative, vengeful, and evil person when I want to be. All of these insults, all of these lies, all of this hatred, it fuels me! I will use it to my advantage. I will eat it for breakfast! It will become my source of energy and inspiration! It will make me continue to do what I do, and thus the only difference it will make will be my continuing to become better and better at it. I will become a success in spite of any garbage that is thrown my way, and there is no force on this planet strong enough to ever prevent that from happening.

If you really didn’t like me, then you’d leave this website right away and never return again. But if my supposed terribleness has become so entertaining to you that you have to tell me all about it, then I honestly thank you! Thank you for your generous contribution! Your intentions will completely and utterly backfire, and I will use all of your negativity to make myself stronger.

You are giving me exactly what I want. That means I win.

I can take it. I can take the worst that anyone has to say about me and still keep going. But there are a whole lot of would-be artists out there, and they all don’t have skin as thick as mine. If I can serve as an example to even just one other artist who has contemplated giving up on their dream after their hard work was rudely maligned like mine has been, then it’s worth it.

So, like I said…

Bring it!

You can’t beat me! I am invincible!

Bwaaaahahahahahahaaa!!!

Sayonara.

I feel obligated to write about something today, but I’m busy and I don’t really know what to talk about. Lucky for me, I got some funny e-mail today! Yay! So you know what that means. Let the games begin!

File this one under “Lost in Translation“.

quieroesas imagenes inomedegas agarar la tengo 11 años

Umm.. what? Why do people think I can speak Spanish? I don’t. This website is in English! No hablo español!

So, once again, it’s AltaVista BabelFish to the rescue! Let’s see what happens when I run it through a Spanish to English translator.

quieroesas imagenes inomedegas to agarar I am 11 years old

Well doesn’t that clear everything up! Not sure why this person is telling me their age, but based on that little bit of information I can surmise that nothing else was translated because everything else was spelled wrong or something. So, little help from any Spanishly-inclined members of the audience?

The next one is pretty funny. Funny because of what it asks, and funny because, for some reason, I am the one being asked.

hey i dont know who this is but all i know is that i LOVE power rangers, my name is dylan gray i am 14 years old and i have watched power rangers since i was 1 is there anyway you know someone who can contact me for an audition or maybe a part in the next and upcoming power rangers? if so please contact me RIGHT AWAY thank you

How do people come up with this stuff? Is this even for real or is this a prank? How in the hell would I know how to get a part on Power Rangers? If I did, I’d have done it myself! I’d be the black ranger, and I’d beat up all the monsters with my ninja style, then I’d destroy all the other coloured Rangers, especially that red jerk, and then I would reign supreme as the totally ultimate mega eternally awesome super unstoppable Power Ranger of all time forever.

If you want to be a Power Ranger, move to New Zealand. That’s where they film the show now. I am sure that the entire population of that country will have been featured on the show at some point judging by the way it’s been going for the past 3 thousand years.

Ok, that was good for a laugh.

Sayonara.

This past week, an image from my Super Sentai World review was hotlinked by JList.com, a hugely popular site selling Japanese products. The result was that my site just got hammered with bandwidth for about 2 days. There was more traffic going through here than ever before, and since it was just from a hotlinked image used without permission, nobody was actually coming to sykografix.com. That sucks. I didn’t make this website just so other sites can leach off my content. I made it so that people would come here! I have come to expect this sort of behavior from some of the more moronic people on myspace or xanga or whatever, but not from a professional site like JList.

I managed to get ahold of the owner and talk to him about this, but if circumstances were different this whole website could have been shut down due to the server overloading from that insane amount of activity. All that traffic I got absolutely nothing out of it. That site uses a picture on my webspace, and yet my site was getting the shaft until I brought the issue to the owner. Of course, it was not malicious at all on his part to hotlink the image, he just found it on Google and didn’t even think to ask if he could use it.

Bloody hell, people! You can’t just take whatever you want without asking! All those pictures you find on an image search actually belong to somebody! And that somebody could be paying out of their own pocket just so folks like you can look at it. At least have the decency not to steal it! Bandwidth is expensive, and nobody should have to pay for webspace just so some other clown can steal from it for their own purposes. That’s just not fair, so don’t do it!

If you have a website or a blog, than try to be more considerate of other people’s property. I tried to be nice to the owner of JList, and everything is cool now. But I can not promise that I’ll be nice to everyone.

Sayonara.

You know it.

Sayonara.