Shiny shiny goodness

So! My contributor's (!!) copy of the Anthology of Tony Stark came last night. It is beautiful, y'all. So, so, so pretty. The cover, it shines! The interior printing and paper is fantastic! The gags comics are funny, the art is amazing, the stories are amazing (the ones in English, anyway - elspethdixon, pandanoai, and crimsonquills all contributed. Folks, T is for Thong is in here. You need this book. And for $12 + shipping, you can have it!

I, uh, didn't actually look at my pieces, because I have wussy artistic issues, but I imagine they look just fine!

Another thing that is shiny - Coraline. Which I will be seeing tonight and, barring unforeseen suckage (not possible), several more times over the next week. I love the book, y'all. I love Nightmare Before Christmas. I love stop motion animation. I LOVE Neil Gaiman. I love (genuinely) creepy children's stories. If you too love these things, see the film. If you're in the Dallas area and want company while seeing the film, let me know and we will hook up.

The shear awesome of all this may, in fact, completely counter the bit where I have to come in to work Sunday. We will see.

Random Curiosities

So, a couple months back, I got an IM from an unknown username (Yahoo! based). It didn't look/feel like spam and I was feeling adventurous, so I replied - I don't remember the conversation that followed, but the gist was that they hadn't sent the original message and claimed they had gotten an IM from *my* account, neither of us knew the other, we were both very confused, and agreed to go our separate ways.

Just now, I got an IM from an unknown username, asking me if I knew how many calories a sneeze burned. It didn't look/feel like spam and I was curious, so I replied that I did not (and, btw, who *were* they?). They replied by asking me who *I* was and why I had contacted them (apperently, by telling them I was a robot and not to say 'domo agrigato' 'cause I'd hurt them. Yeah, I don't know either.). As we exchanged wtfs, it dawned on me that I knew the username after all, this was the same person as last time. My memory is crazy like that. We again agreed to go our separate ways.

I am *really confused*, y'all. Is this a scam? Harassment? A fluke? The Internet's attempt to bring two strangers together? Will it happen again? What the hell is going on?


Update (May 27th, 2009): Another IM from shimmeringsalmon, did not respond this time. Let's see if anything happens!

Update (November 9th, 2009): All is revealed!