Mad science party Saturday at Borderlands! With wine!

Saturday night is MAD SCIENCE LADIES NIGHT at Borderlands Books, where that lovely and talented lady of mad science and shadow government, Shaenon Garrity herself, will be hosting the launch party for her brand new Narbonic Perfect Collection.

For those of you unfamiliar with Narbonic, it's a mad science/romance/gonzo journalism/geek culture/time travel comic that ran for six years before coming to an earth-shattering conclusion. All six years are now collected in a single glorious locale, with two mind-blowing volumes available for your perusal. The books are $30 for the set of two, or $17 individually; they'll be available for sale on Saturday.

(And yes, as always, you can contact the store to order your very own signed and personalized volumes, if you can't be there yourself.)

Shaenon will also have volumes one and two of Skin Horse, one of my favorite currently ongoing webcomics; these are $14 each, and so worth it.

The party will be from five to seven PM on Saturday, November 19th. There will be cupcakes and wine (boxed and bottled), and original art available for purchase at the low, low price of $30 a strip. If you've been to my house, you've seen several of these strips framed and hanging in my front bathroom. Fine art for everyone!

We hope to see you there! It's going to be a real good time.

We give as we get, because that's how the world keeps turning.

I asked Mom if we could go by the mall tonight after I got off work. "Sure," she said. "What for?" I told her there was a store I'd heard about called "Justice," and that they might have Monster High dolls. Mom, who is endlessly tolerant in some ways, thought this was a fine idea, and away we went.

Now, for the last month or so, we've been haunting the usual stores looking for the new beach assortment, the ghoulishly-named "Skull Shores." There are five dolls in the assortment, four of which have been released (the fifth, Draculaura, will be joining the set in the next wave of releases. This keeps you coming back to the shelves, even when you think you're done). We hadn't been able to find any of them.

We reached the mall, parked, and made our way to the Justice...where I immediately found all four currently available Skull Shores dolls, AND several Toralei dolls (the werecat I recently had wonderful people hunt for in Australia). I gleefully grabbed one of each of the Skull Shores dolls and, after a moment's consideration, snagged a Toralei as well. I wanted to compare her paint to the Australian version of the same doll.

Now, Mom and I go to Toys R Us a lot. I mean a lot. So we've come to know the people who work there pretty well, and one of them, M., also buys Monster High, for his little girl. Her favorite is Abbey Bominable, who is damn hard to find, and the reason that her father has also been awaiting Skull Shores anxiously. After a little more consideration, we grabbed a second Abbey. I paid for my toys (40% off the whole store!), and we decamped for the Toys R Us.

We took Abbey and Toralei inside, Abbey for M., Toralei to show the manager, since he's had people asking for her. M. was on lunch, and the manager said we might be able to find him outside. We went looking. Upon finding him, I thrust Abbey at him, going "Look!" He was very excited, since, well. Hell hath no nagging like a little girl in want of a specific toy. I explained that I hadn't found her inside, but we'd grabbed a second in case he needed her. He stared, and said (without handing back the doll—I think I would've lost fingers) that he had no cash on him. I affirmed that I knew where he worked.

Happiest. Dad. EVER.

I showed him the Toralei, so he'd know what she looked like. He asked, excited, whether they had another of her, too...so I handed him the Toralei. Dude, I have mine, and I am happy to play toy mule for actual small children. Tomorrow, I shall return to Toys R Us to get reimbursed for toys, and tonight, when he returns home, M. shall be a hero.

Karma is important. Pass it along.