Executive Raccoon Royce and head wizard Austin Dern visited Genericon XV held this year in Troy, New York.  Available activities there ranged from peering in at three theater-style classrooms showing anime products; to sitting the art room, where pictures of dragons, pictures of cats, and pictures of dragons with cats sold briskly; to grabbing as many nacho chips and cold salsa as one could carry, washing down the snack foods with a slightly off-clear water which signage at the convention claimed was "fruit punch flavored."

Panels at the well-attended convention featured many of the leading Internet cartoonists from the northeastern United States.  Among those speaking were the guy who draws the web-published strip about a couple twenty something slacker types who work at the campus computer help desk and end up in zany adventures filled with pop cultural references and evil but cute fuzzy animals and invaders from other dimensions; the guy who draws that other web-published strip about a couple slacker college students who work part-time as tech support for a struggling little ISP and face evil but cute little animals trying to take over the world with the help of zany beings from other dimensions and extraterrestrial aliens and plenty of pop cultural references; the guy who draws that strip where aliens and evil fuzzy animals find they keep getting foiled when they try to take over the world by a pair of lazy guys just out of college who're killing time by working in the help center for a company's computer system that's chock-full of pop culture references; the guy who does the one where pop culture references and the skills of their help desk expertise help a couple graduate students fend off evil aliens and extra dimensional zaniness and the evil schemes of their cute and fuzzy pet; and the girl who draws that strip about cute cat-people going myah.  Pete Abrams, of "User Friendly," dropped in briefly to show off his daughter, and left without attending any panels.

Featured in the Dealers' Room were the books of various comic strips, like Kevin and Kell or Ozy and Millie, that there isn't much immediate urge to get exactly right this minute.  The video dealer provided a wide array of fascinating and hard-to-find copies of "Song of the South," "Mystery Science Theater 3000 Bloopers," the William Shatner episode of "Saturday Night Live," varied "Dangermouse" cartoons, and other things you kind of think maybe aren't quite completely legally licensed from their original copyright holders, unless the Disney corporation has decided to quietly begin selling "Song of the South" in those cheap plastic clamshell cassette holders that sit in the discount bin at Sam Goody's, with labels printed by an old Commodore MPS printer with a slightly misaligned print head.

But a convention isn't complete without fun and games, and this year Genericon provided a fine array of incomprehensible board games.  Royce and Austin read carefully the directions for a board game called "Union Pacific," which has something to do with trains.  Or stocks.  Or misplacing colored plastic train tokens.  They then re-read the directions, aloud, several times,

before concluding that they had no idea what they were supposed to do to set up, or what they did on any given turn.  Despite this, they did not play the game.  Similarly, efforts to understand "Cults Across America," and a card game that supposedly let one create a narrative story, and a few more that have been completely forgotten.  Eventually they settled into reading the questions from a "Trivial Pursuit" game to one another.

The convention was ultimately successful, and the art show saw more than a dozen pieces go to open auction.  For one of these pieces, the bids rapidly rose from the final pre-auction bid of $25.00, past fifty, and up to $75.00, when the woman who'd made the $25.00 bid cried out and ran screaming from the room.  At Austin's apartment that evening, Royce and Austin ate and watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 videos, and listened to a few LPs.

Arkitah, local centaur-like creature who has gotten into various tight situations usually involving his bizarre magical nature, has recently began to experience several lapses of amnesia and insanity.  He has been forgetting everything from what he said minutes ago to whether or not he remembered to feed himself.  (Magical) Animal Control ((M)AC) tells us that Arkitah is to be considered confused and dangerous.  His magical nature and breaking mind may cause something unpleasant to manifest.

In a statement released to the muck this Monday Royce, dean of the raccoon community, announced he was, "Hungry."

Pressed on this point, Royce explained that he would like something to eat, but would not specify precisely what.  He did agree that getting something would be good.

On Tuesday, Royce repeated his statement.  He noted that he had eaten breakfast, or possibly dinner, recently, but that this did not leave him feeling full very long.  A can of tuna fish was suggested as something that could be eaten, but Royce graciously declined, noting the probability that it would draw attention from Boki the seagull.

 By Wednesday Royce had amended his statement, explaining that now, "Royce hungry."  He hoped to get some sleep, though he noted it was very close to dawn and so bedtime was a long way away.

"Bored, Hungry" was Royce's opinion of his current status on Thursday, but he attributed the boredom to this week's episode of "Enterprise" being pretty hard to remember clearly.

Royce's status as of Friday was to proclaim himself "hungry."