"
Sealand was founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967 in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain. The island fortress is conveniently situated from 65 to 100 miles from the coasts of France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. The official language of Sealand is English and the Sealand Dollar has a fixed exchange rate of one U.S. dollar." - so sayeth the Sealand website. Quite conveniently, the Sealand site lacks and photos of this glorious offshore
data haven / pirate radio base- most likely because it looks like their precious 'principality' is just a
tiny offshore platform! And now, it has
been abandoned due to fire... Ha!
June 26th, 2006
Going to an Anime con is pretty surreal experience. Full-on no-holds-barred otaku frenzy. The weird thing is that by the time your days at the con are done, people traipsing around in Inuyasha & Naruto outfits *shudder* is nothing unusual. It's a strange tolerance expanding experience. Someone unfamiliar with the subculture might think anime con attendees are completely loopy. Here are a few other cons that are a bit on the fringe:
Furcon: "Further Confusion, or Furcon is an annual fandom convention celebrating the anthropomorphics genre or furry fandom". Riiiight, you can call it anthropomorphics, I call it
dressing up as furries.
Penguicon: according to Wikipedia. "Penguicon is the only convention in the United States that brings together the often-overlapping communities of science fiction fandom and Linux User Groups." More geeky, less freaky.
Star Trek conventions are not that uncommon, but are themselves quite unusual.
June 26th, 2006
I first heard the term
glomp when I was at Fanime Con a few months back. Wiki gives the definition: "Glomping is a form of greeting used by anime fans. A typical "glomp" involves bear hugging someone and latching on tightly, though not enough to intentionally hurt the recipient. Sometimes it includes a running start. It has since expanded into slang amongst otaku, primarily on IRC, chat rooms, and Internet forums as an extended form of greeting." This flickr photo really catches the spirit of a glomp - running up with gleeful exuberance to hug the hell outta someone.
June 26th, 2006