*drowning-type noise*

Anne McCaffery, the author of the Pern books, is going to be at Dragon*Con this year, which is in Atlanta.

I WANT TO GOOOOOOOOOOO!! Blah.

Let's put aside the whole "My mother is an insane CONTROL-FREAK and wouldn't even let me go to my best friend's wedding, so how could I ever hope to be allowed to go by myself to some other city??" thing for a moment.

I hate going anywhere by myself if I've never been there before, especially if it's something like this (read: social situation/large gathering of people). I'd love to drag Tracychan with me, since she likes the Pern books about as much as I do, but that brings us to the next problem:

Money.

I have no car. Tracychan's car, while cute and DOOM-y, is not the kind of car I'd want to be in for that long of a car ride, especially after the whole "A truck ate part of my midget car of DOOM!!" fiasco. ... even if the car in question has managed to survive a round-trip from here in Miami to one of the Carolinas (sorry Tracychan, I can never remember which one it is). This is in no way a criticism of Tracychan's driving, as I have been a passenger in her car at least a couple of times and not cared. This is a "10,000lb truck vs. midget car of DOOM == pancake midget car" thing, and considering how much long-distance driving I've done in the past, I know that there are maaaaaany many of these trucks along interstate roads, and they are not always aware of decent-sized cars in their vincinity, let alone a midget car. And, as father has pointed out to me time and again, these truckers have usually been driving all night/day with no rest and only coffee to keep them from passing out completely.

So. If we can't/won't drive there... then what about flying? I don't like flying, but I will when I have to. All of the ridiculous rules they have nowadays about security stuff in airports gets on my nerves. I'm not going to start a huge long rant here about all of the stupid things they make you do. Suffice to say, when some random security guard stops a high school kid (me) and tells them to put the two-inch long nail file that's on my keychain into my checked luggage (which is already on its merry way to the airplane), it's a bit too much. Yes, I AM GOING TO STAB EVERYONE ON THE PLANE TO DEATH WITH A 2-INCH NAIL FILE!! BWHAHAHAHAA!!! *cough* Needless to say, I just took the stupid thing off my keychain and dumped it in the trashcan next to the guy. Fortunately, I didn't say something like "My dorm key is just as sharp and even longer than this stupid thing, are you gonna make me throw that away too?" or my boarding school would've billed me for the $25 replacement key... ^-__-^;;

But whatever. I've always wanted to go to a con, this one is (relatively) nearby, and ANNE MCCAFFREY IS GOING TO BE THERE (and Kevin Sorbo and Todd McCaffrey, too, but eh). So I suppose I could sacrifice myself and deal with the stupid airport rules. There was a page on the Dragon*Con website with prices for the hotels that have special con-goer discounts or whatever, and the prices didn't seem so bad. Some of the hotel prices said "three nights, four nights" and stuff like that, and others didn't, so it's a bit confusing, but from what I gathered it's about $165 for three nights. That doesn't seem so bad. And if I was going to be dragging Tracychan with me, I'd spring for her room too, duh (although I think the price is the same for a single/double room, but I don't know how keen she'd be on sharing a room with anyone after she's worked so hard to acquire a single room at uni). K, so that's a bit over $300, right? K, not bad.

Then I went to check flight prices. $350+. Per person. GAH.

Yeahhhhhh... so I don't think I will be going to a con, ever. :o( Unless I acquire a car at some point, but still. I mean, I love Anne McCaffrey's Pern books sooooo much (enough to actually break my "Do not bother The Great Ones that are my favourite authors" rule and send an email to her son Todd), but I'm still a realist. She's, like, 82 now or something. My dad's side of the family is considered to be "long-lived," and my grandma died a couple of months ago, a week before turning 90. Nobody lives forever, so the chance to actually see Anne McCaffrey in person will probably not be there for that much longer.

Of course, there's also the whole "I don't even talk to my friends, whom I know and am comfortable with, in person much, so what the heck am I going to say to someone who 1) is a complete stranger, and 2) is someone I actually admire??" problem. So, OK, I go there, and I see her. Then what? That's it? That's... kinda stupid. Go through all that trouble just to catch a glimpse of her from across a crowded room and not even say anything to her? Stupid. Especially since I view otaku-type people as inferior beings (you know, the ones who drool over their favourite authors/mangaka/anime creators/whatever, will literally KILL to get within 15ft of their idol, and, if given the chance to be face-to-face with them, will not SHUT UP until security guards forcefully pull them away), and anything that I could possibly say ("I've loved your books since I was a child," "I enjoy your work so much," "You're such an inspiration!") she's probably heard enough times in her life that it's just become annoying, or at least boring.

In the email I sent to her son (who has collaborated with her on some of the Pern books, but I haven't read any of those yet), I said how I wished I could give something back to Anne McCaffrey for all of the hours of enjoyment I got out of her Pern books, but that the dragons I draw are incredibly sub-par and unworthy. Which is true. I've pretty much only drawn two dragon pictures that don't look like carbon-copies of all the other ones I've drawn. I know I'm not completely to blame for this, since I've never actually taken an art class before, but I still can't help but feel that my work is just pure and utter crap.

Then this morning while clawing my way out of the realm of dreams to find out why people were knocking on my door at some odd hour of the morning I remembered the picture I drew of a scene from The Masterharper of Pern. No one has actually seen it yet except me. It's not awesome or anything, but it's not complete crap, either. I'd like to somehow get it to her, but I have mixed feelings about this. 1) It makes me feel like I think that my stupid drawing is SOOOOOOOOO AWESOME D00D that Anne McCaffrey HAS to like it (when that's not the case at all), and 2) a white page with a drawing outlined in black pen, and nothing else (not even shading, if I remember correctly) is rather boring, and unfinished, and definately not something worthy of being presented to Anne McCaffrey. But my colouring skills are SHIT. Even when CG-ing something, where I can erase mistakes and create 10,000 different layers as needed in Photoshop for all the different aspects of the piece I'm CG-ing (base colours, highlights, shadows, background, highlights of other objects, shadows of other objects, blah blah blah), it still only comes out half-way decent. And I only ever did that once, several years ago, so I am really out of practise anyway. PLUS, the piece I CG'd was a "portrait" type piece, i.e., the character is just sitting there, staring at the "camera," and not moving or doing anything particularly interesting. The picture I drew is of Kasia desperately trying to steer a rather small boat through a really rough storm without capsizing herself and her husband, on what is supposed to be their honeymoon of sorts. This type of thing is a lot different than "I am just looking at the camera and not doing anything." I am not particularly good at capturing "motion" in drawings, or emotions, really, but I think I did a decent job with this one. Except... there are no towering waves of DOOM or violent winds or even raindrops in the picture. So it's just... lacking pretty much everything that makes the scene what it is. Blah. And I have NO IDEA how I'd put any of that stuff in because, like I said, I am absolute rubbish at drawing things in motion.

*sigh*

I dunno. I mean, I know she doesn't expect her fans to, like, give her stuff for writing her books. She writes them because she likes to write them and enjoys doing so, and is also really good at it. But I just feel like "I love your books" is just not enough. But giving her my stupid drawing (provided I could even manage to get it to her in the first place) seems to me like the equivalent of a 3-year old drawing stick figures in crayon and giving it to her mom. Or, even worse, like that stupid Crayola commercial with the baby who scribbles all over the paper and the mother actually puts it up on the fridge. IT'S JUST SCRIBBLES!! GAH! The commercial is like: "You've shared many things together. Her first step. Her first word. Now, you can share something else: her first mark." I'm sorry, but a bunch of haphazard scribbles on a piece of paper doesn't impress me at all. And I'm pretty sure that's the kind of attitude any famous author who has such wonderful cover art on her books would have when receiving lower-than-amateur art from some idiot fan. :o(

Oh well. That's enough kicking myself for one day. Tune in next time for another long, convoluted, crazy rant about nothing in particular. Same lunatic time, same lunatic channel.