After awakening, everyone more or less split up. Actually, I got up early and began looking for a way out of the Disneyland compound so I could get an inexpensive breakfast. However, after wandering around aimlessly for a few blocks, I gave up and headed back to the room. Another early riser, Golbie went to wake himself up with a few rounds of DDR (as was becoming his custom). Meanwhile, more than a few people (after they managed to drag themselves out of bed ;) went to buy tickets for the Masquerade. As for me, I stayed with Pyxie and Pokey.
 

Pyxie, being the only person with enough guts (and money) to even try cosplaying, had to get into her kimono before leaving the room. However, we found out quickly that the Masquerade had already sold out. After that disappointment, we wanted to console ourselves by buying hentai. Unfortunately for us, the next piece of news was that Disney had gone and censored the dealers room. Therefore, no hentai. One dealer was even being shut down for selling hentai. Of course, this pissed us (and many others) off to no end. First Pocohontas, then the $2.50 Cokes, and now this. Many attendees felt Disney’s family-friendly censorship had finally gone too far, and that extreme measures were in order. Luckily, there were no such radicals in our group, so we just settled for bitching about it to each other. Note: Okay, I’ll try to make this long story short. To be fair, it wasn’t totally Disney’s fault. Apparently the dealers who were being kicked out had sold hentai to a minor whose parents promptly called the Anaheim police. So Disney folded under pressure from the cops. And I heard that Disney had the right to “clean up” the dealer’s room since, after all, it owns the property. And as far as I know, no one, in our group or otherwise, planned violence. Whether or not they planned to buy hentai or not, I’m sure everyone was pissed by what they felt was blatant censorship by the U.S.’s most famous producer of animated features. Still, I doubt anyone had the means, much less the desire, to retaliate with more than just words. And I never saw Pocohontas, so I am in no position to say, imply or otherwise expound on whether or not I think it sucks. ;) But I refuse to forgive the $2.50 Cokes. That’s a total load of crap.

Two of America’s favorite rodents get what’s comin’ to them. (Or “The Happiest Place on Earth”)

  In the meantime, there wasn’t much else to do, so we went to the smut-free exhibit hall anyway. After all, we’d heard some of that non-hentai stuff wasn’t half bad. ^_^ After blowing some (more) money, I ended up in the artists’ room from the previous day. Along the way, I had somehow lost Pokey and Pyxie and joined up with Daran, Mabis, Locke, and Golbez—I think. (Damn, my memory sucks) After all the silliness of earlier in the day, something good finally happened as we had a reunion of sorts. There in the room with RPGamer fanart staffer Lorelai were two of our roommates from AX ’99, Zack Knowles and Amber Michelle. Daran had thought he’d seen them a couple of days earlier, but we weren’t so sure. Boy were we wrong! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA— Errm. Anyways, despite Disney’s sinister machinations and the lack of Masquerade tickets, it was good to see old friends who had decided not to hook up with us again for whatever reason. ;)

  Of course, Zack and Amber weren’t the only familiar people we saw. Later in the day, FFML’s piro1 stopped by our humble room and was quickly introduced to everyone (who was in the room at the time). After being freaked out sufficiently by this gathering of perverts and sickos, he quickly took his exit, under the excuse of family obligations.

Note: Heh. He did stop by for a few moments, but we didn’t do anything weird. Not that there was enough time to do so anyways. ;D At any rate, it’s always good to see a fellow FFMLer in person.

  Fortunately, the others had a better sense of direction than I. We made our way to the nearest Denny’s for a more economical dinner. Of course, a burger with fries cost about the same as it did at the Disney burger stand, but Denny’s burger was bigger and the fries were more plentiful. So it was actually worth what I paid. But since the wait for the orders of a table of thirteen people was rather long, we passed the time with conversation on such intriguing topics as the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the upcoming election, and how much Disney sucks.

Note: [after an hour or so of uncontrollable laughter] Actually, most of the more talkative people (i.e. Sky, Pyxie) ended up at one end of the chain of tables. In the meantime, at our end Golbez almost single-handedly prodded the rest of us into talking with such enlightening topics as our least favorite FFMLer, the best event at the Expo so far, and how much Disney sucks.

  After that it was back to the room to watch more anime. Again, my memory isn’t the best; I believe we watched several episodes of Pocket Monsters—that is, the Japanese version of Pokémon. (To hear Mabis tell it, they almost might as well be entirely different series) Anyways, Golbez returned late with news of more Disney transgressions: the all-night anime showings (mostly hentai stuff) had been closed down. As if that news wasn’t bad enough in and of itself, it also meant trouble for a lot of people who had planned on going to these showings both to get aroused and to catch some Zs in the room afterwards. Basically these displaced perverts were now being pushed around by Disney’s after hours crew, gettting kicked out of chairs and couches in hotel lounges. Where these poor misunderstood otaku spent their next few nights, I don’t know....

Note: You know what? I really hate when people leave their shopping carts in the middle of the damn parking lot. Really, is it that fucking hard to just push the fucking cart over to one of the cart corral? I mean, shit, you lazy ass bastards, show some fucking respect for the people who need to park. Why not just park in the lot for the whole fucking day instead of leaving your fucking cart in the space? Christ.

Huh? Oh yeah. The shutting down of all night anime, all that is true. I think maybe someone under age snuck in or something; all I know for sure is what I just told you.

Back to:

• THE INTRO!
• DAY 0!
• DAY 1!

• DAY 3!
• DAY 4 (& 5)!
• MISCELLANEOUS!

Disclaimer: This account contains a lot that could offend people. Sex. Porn. Drug use. Profanity. Violence. Anime. Crudely drawn pictures. Sentence fragments. A lot of non-white people. People celebrating a culture other than America’s. Disney-bashing aplenty. At any rate, if something offends you, stop reading. If your kids read something that offends you, tell them to go to another web site. If you’re really ticked off by it, then e-mail “cosmic_chicken” at “excite” dot “com” and I’ll listen. Certain characters, events, etc. referred to and depicted in this account come from Japanese animated films and television series and are copyrighted by their respective companies. Whatever the SPJA and Anime Expo have copyrighted belongs to them.

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