Stupid Thing of the Comic-Con Week

I was talking about free swag earlier, and yeah, that sort of thing was really neat to get. The coolest piece of free junk I saw was at the Paramount booth on Friday. The crowd started to grunt and shout, so we pushed through to find out what they were giving away (on Thursday, they were actually handing out Blu-Ray discs to everyone . . . can you imagine that?). And I squeezed through enough to be handed something in a little plastic case. Once I had mine, I tried to back out of the cluster (to give other people a chance to grab one, but these wonderful souls actually WOULDN'T LET ME OUT of the crowd. Finally, I held up my plastic case like a talisman or crucifix, telling people "I got one, I just want to get out," and pushed my way through again.

It's amazing that tact and kindness does nothing in this kind of situation, and you have to be as rude or selfish as the next guy to even be noticed.

So, once Merrill and I met up again, I discovered that the little cases held these really awesome Stark Industries mini-hard drives (you know, those things you plug into computers to share data that are, maybe the greatest invention since the remote control and breasts). A search on eBay reveals them to be IRON MAN FLASHDRIVES, and they're gold in colour and as shiny as "Firefly" slang.
I put mine in my backpack and went about my day.

Later, we went to the Mattel booth and had to take a silly "which-products-do-you-buy-and-how-often" survey to get cute inflatable He-Man swords (an aside: I got one, but Merrill flashed his ivories and said he needed three, and got them), which I also put in my backpack. But the next day, as we were walking through the show floor, Merrill pointed out that my bag was open, and must have been for a long time.

The flashdrive and the sword (and I honestly don't know what else) were gone.

Things just kept disappearing with me all through the weekend. I lost my sunglasses Thursday on the way to feeding the meter and the Joss Whedon panel, and every time it happened, I'd joke that "I guess it went the same place my sunglasses went."

I didn't say it was a good joke . . .