Not going to Comicon makes me sad



This is the year I turn fifty. It's not for a few weeks yet technically, but I already had a minor celebration with a bunch of high school buddies who are also passing the same milestone this year.

Another of the revels with which I wanted to mark the occasion was SDCC, Comic-Con International, or whatever it's officially called -- I wanted to go to San Diego. I have never been, although I attended some of Phil Seuling's early conventions and I've gone to several others cons. I thought that for a much as I have been involved in comics, I wouldn't want to pass a half-century without doing San Diego.

I had even started to make plans, when, wouldn't you know it, my sister decided that that weekend would be a perfect time to get married. Back on the east coast.

So, on Thursday, I won't be heading off to a weekend of geekish celebration in southern California, but rather a weekend of matrimonial obligation in central Connecticut. With great sister comes great responsibility, I guess.

So, I can't bring myself to talk about comics this week. I'm all choked up.

ATLAS Backpacker Research Group Meeting - Call for Papers


Backpacker Mobilities? will be an ATLAS conference on backpacker tourism to be held 26-28th March 2008 at Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India.

Potential themes include:

  • The rituals of preparation for backpacker travel
  • Relationships between work and leisure
  • Issues of gender, race, ethnicity and class
  • Issues of food and drink
  • Emotional geographies
  • Sub-cultural fashions in backpacking
  • Community contact and host-guest relationships
  • Engagement and negotiation of risk(s)
  • Backpacker moorings and migrations
  • Impacts on the mobility of others
  • Engagement with new and old technologies
  • Policy and planning dilemmas
  • The return home and the influence on traveller’s lifecourse
  • Change of backpacker phenomenon over time
  • Geographic diversity of destinations and/or backpacker contexts
  • Alternative methodologies in backpacker research

    For more info, select 'ATLAS Backpacker Research Group Meeting' from the ATLAS homepage...