Hoping you've had a good one today!

You might want to check in on this one:

http://www.cbc.ca/ontariotoday/2012/05/16/thursday-is-no-job-a-bad-job/

Diane, I think I'm a day or two early, but the best wishes for the day are well-earned in any case!

On the Unemployment front: I think our federal finance minister's engaging in a little self-blinding here with this item as reported by CBC News:

There are no bad jobs, says Flaherty

One more bit of fallout planned for our futures via C-38, hm?

Okay...we're seeing more than a little bit about SHIELD on the web of late.

Wired and Gizmodo have reported that the US Defence Department's PR people backed away from technical advising on the Avengers movie specifically because of SHIELD, and their uncertainty over SHIELD's place in the scheme of things.

lawmultiverse provided a little commentary of their own on the subject, and it wasn't their first attempt to understand how SHIELD could fit into legal pictures either.

Today, rfmcdpei made his own mention of a blog entry from Andrew Barton where the issue of creators needing to understand exactly what their fictional creations are supposed to be and be capable of, even if that understanding doesn't get all the way to the paying audience in full detail.

Here's what Andrew said exactly:

You know what, though? The military is right. According to the Defense Department, their main problem is that they couldn't figure out where the US military stood in relation to S.H.I.E.L.D., which Wikipedia describes as an "espionage and secret military law-enforcement agency," which really narrows it down - and, hell, I imagine it's easy as hell to maintain secrecy over something like a giant flying aircraft carrier. S.H.I.E.L.D. has, from what I understand, been the subject of fan debates over just what it is for a good chunk of the last fifty years.

Answering questions like this is important. They define what you can and cannot do in a story, and as such reduce the unmanageability of everything being possible into more restricted channels that can guide the flow of a narrative. Something that is shadowy, nebulous, and ill-defined even to the people writing it does not lend itself well to the best writing. Creators need to know how their creations work, even if that information never filters down to the audience.

I've had my own understanding of what SHIELD is supposed to be - mainly informed by the stories of Bob Harras and Dan G. Chichester published in the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD mini-series and the later relaunch of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD in the 1990's when SHIELD was reinvented for the first time, and somewhat further filled out by Jonathan Hickman's work on Secret Warriors and SHIELD in recent years. Among other sources.

It's my hope as a fan that we can get back to that framework: SHIELD as a planetary defence/intelligence service. The ultimate Blue Berets and as flexible as need be to handle the work in the back alleys as on the battlefield.

Your distance-travelled will vary, of course...

Specifically, thothmeister and ! Hoping today's being very kind indeed to the both of you!

Congratulations on still being with us all, guys!

Go read this. Now, please?

http://mariebilodeau.blogspot.ca/2012/05/i-admire-you.html

So...I went, saw one or two familiar faces - mostly tom_leroux promoting his new web-series Scream All You Want - and wandered around.

The crowd...was crowded. The line was so long by the time I got there - getting off the bus was simple enough, thankfully - that it took 30-45 minutes to get from the back of the line as of my arrival to the doors of the CE Centre. (It's a ballpark estimate, and I can't nail it down much better than that.)

The wait in the procession line wasn't boring, though. Lots of costumes put together with a wide range of skill levels. Some of the results suggest that perhaps CAN-CON ought to be tracking these people down to teach at masquerade "how to" panels if they haven't already come forward on their own. Hopefully, I'll be able to post pictures later over the next week.

I missed being able to say "hello" to fajrdrako and deakat (among many others!), and I'm sorry about that. Having familiar faces to talk with would've been a good thing.

Did not take in any of the panels. See "the crowd was...crowded" for why. Between that and the weather-induced exhaustion, the idea of just buying one or two key things and getting out and away got locked into the brain.

One of those Key Things was the Art of the Avengers production/concept art book devoted to that movie we've all been chattering about across the Net. Hardcover in slipcover case, and yes, worth every penny spent on it. I got a lot of stuff on their version of the Helicarrier that I was hoping for. Thinking that there's enough stuff that I saw on screen that could fit into a second volume if Marvel's so inclined.

The food court...was not well organized to my eyes. Plus I was tired and that will have aggravated my food paranoia.

Getting back downtown - or anywhere else - from the CE Centre by public transit needs work. And lots of it. I ended up climbing a grassy hill and was more than a little scared about stumbling and falling back down onto the traffic of the cross street running under the northbound # 97 bus route. And if you wanted to get to that bus shelter safely, you needed a far more roundabout route on foot. City Hall could stand to get an earful, even though it's probable that they already know about these issues.

Next year, I am considering renting a half-table for my own stuff. If the rates set for this year - $ 100 - still hold for next year. Should I dare hope for, much less count on that? At all?

So. Avengers was good, as mentioned earlier. This morning, I'm off to the Ottawa Comiccon.

More later today, I hope...

...with fajrdrako and a mutual friend of ours from the SF Society tonight.

It was worth the 2 hours-plus and eleven dollars.

More later...

1. The magazine Railfan Canada's looking for stories and pix to fill out future issues. Apparently, their finances are pretty good right now, but they need content. Big time. If the website doesn't provide their contact info, give me a shout and I'll type up the stuff from the masthead for you.

2. I am seeing Avengers tonight at Silver City Gloucester. Some of you who know this have already said "yes" or cited prior commitments. If you want to join in the "watching movies as a group" fun, be at the east-facing front doors of the cinema by 6 PM. I'll be out of the house by 4:30 PM EST at the absolute latest and will NOT have my computer with me to do last-minute e-mail checks.

Although I might have one of my sketchpads and some pencils packed away when I get there. Maybe.

3. Have not been forced onto Facebook's "Timeline" yet. Hoping it never happens.

4. Committed to attending the Saturday instalment of the Ottawa Comiccon as one of the regular fen this year. So that's a chunk of tomorrow spoken for. I'll know which chunk of tomorrow when I actually get there. Not sure of how much walking from the closest bus stop I'll have to do, to be honest.

5. Mitt Romney's proving to be a bigger willful idiot by the day, it seems, in my POV.

6. I hate dial-up speeds being sabotaged these days.

7. spacing_ottawa has just announced an extension on the Spacing Creative Mapping Contest deadline to May 31st!

8. The cuts to CBC's budget are still a mistake to me.

9. There is no ninth item. Yet.

salgoodsam pointed this out to me via Facebook: an essay by one Mike Spry about the situation in Québec and how it relates to the rest of us in Canada. I don't agree with all of it, but I do worry that we're being trained to stop Thinking Big and Dreaming Big in the best ways we possibly can. Moreover, it's something we can actively work on fixing as a country.

So why not dream?

Dream big.

Two interesting points re: SHIELD in the new Avengers movie - which I plan to see with assorted friends this Friday - that I thought I'd pass along:

Re: the Helicarriers

http://news.yahoo.com/could-navy-ever-build-flying-aircraft-carrier-222306735.html

Re: SHIELD's relationship to the US Department of Defence, if any and in what form

http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-cant-believe-avengers-181650003.html

Go read this:
http://thezeds.com/2012/05/06/budget-cuts-to-libraries-archives-and-information-centres-jeopardize-access-to-canadian-government-information/

rfmcdpei pointed this out to us all, and frankly he was right to do so.

To very loosely paraphrase Spider Robinson: never frighten even one librarian, much less an entire nation's worth of them. They control information in ways that governments should rarely if ever aspire to.

Details with a Newfoundland-specific focus here:

http://www.thetelegram.com/Arts---Life/Entertainment/2012-05-02/article-2968750/Live-music-broadcasts-fall-victim-to-federal-cuts/1

I'd like to know the answer to the closing question of this entry, too:

http://urbsite.blogspot.ca/2012/05/peering-up-to-portages-penthouse-perch.html

Anyone?

...I must be working on banners for local fandom ads. Whether my design work will be of any use is another matter.

I stumbled across this via one of the Canadian culture groups on Facebook:

https://utlibrarians.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/serious-situation-developing-at-lac-alert-your-colleagues-and-faculty-news-from-caut/

And this via other sources:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/visiting-library-and-archives-in-ottawa-not-without-an-appointment/article2418960/

Cause for no small amount of worry, yes?