6/8 Randall Munroe of XKCD at Borderlands Books, San Francisco, 2009 09 23 Part 6 kitty

Randall Munroe on a book tour, with a surprise appearance at Borderlands. Reading comments, things that he doesn't do, and Ripley the kitty stealing the show. Ripley, the Borderlands Sphinx, takes an interest in the proceedings, and Randall loses his train of thought. YOU'RE A KITTY! \o/

Summary:

While I am fumbling with my batteries, my friend JD asks whether he reads the comments for the LJ feeds. And he does. There is sometimes some really interesting stuff in there. There was one guy back in the day who said BOOBIES all over the feed and stirred up stuff. (he didn't mention the boobies bit, but he said the name and we knew who he meant and that troll's habits.)




Reddit?

He reads the top level on Reddit when he's supposed to be doing something else. (Sorry about the camera jumping.) He reads enough to make sure there's nothing he should know about -- once he learned his site was down that way. ("Hey Derek, did I get you enough traffic?")

He doesn't do too many events like this. He does get feedback from his friends. Feedback is interesting but also intimidating; he doesn't often seek out too much of it; he tries to avoid it sometimes. Too much navel-gazing.

Once he's done four or five events he realizes we'll all be reading it, and he flees to the stuff in his sketchbook. He draws things that make him laugh and makes his friends laugh.

[lots of inaudible -- this must have been about things that don't make it into comics.]

He probably won't do this much again, but he had a projector and shared doodles from his sketchbook. He was a bit worried about time crunch, but the bookstore was saying no worries.

He was thinking about girafftershave, that will probably not make it in.

KITTY RUNNING THROUGH. http://xkcd.com/231/ comes into play.

Angband: the Pedophile of Galadriel (groaning and giggling) -- these are not going to go into comics. Really.

Tupshin pets the cat. All coherent thought stops. Tupshin gives the cat to Randall. The cat bats the water bottle lid. His hands smell of chalk as he just went rock climbing. Ripley pursues the lid on the floor. Hilarity. Cat has lost bottle cap.

He has no cat; his family has one though. There are some allergy issues; this cat is mostly ok but not totally allergen-free; the really allergen-free ones are like $4000. A cat that expensive would have too high expectations from him for entertainment:

That was entertaining, was it $3000 worth of entertaining? He has the same theory about kids.

Cat returns, interrupts all coherent thought. Questions for him? For the cat? Maybe he and the cat could sign the books? Ink on a paw? ... and the bookstore staff does not shoot this idea down. *DOOM*

Little footprints all over. There's a great bash.org quote about introducing new cats: they read about buttering the new cat's forehead so the existing cats would see new cat, lick new cat, taste like butter, friendly.

(Does it work for people? Yes it does, says Tupshin, grinning like, well, Tupshin.) "Buttering a cat is a very effective way to butter the rest of the house, and I think that ink is probably the same way."

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• xkcd
• Randall
• Munroe
• Borderlands
• Books
• comics
• San
• Francisco
• Ripley
• kitty