Panic: Dispatches From SDCC

San Diego Comic Con is heaven for geeks and hell for their girlfriends. It's a boondogle, hornswaggle and bandersnatch all in one. Its become an entity unto itself -- an organism of mass entropy, swallowing everything in its path as it balloons to unearthly proportions. The disorder in this system is rampant and it is a system that -- with its 150,000 moving bipedal parts -- feels as though it may collapse at any given moment.

The herd shifts slowly, it's constituents bouncing into one and another like molecules slowly being heated in a beaker. The herd is made up of parts that become nearly indistinguishable, despite familiar faces and outlandish costumes, the masses become one pulsating beast. When panic strikes, I expect the following to occur (gleaned indirectly from W.D. Hamilton's article Geometry For The Selfish Herd):

• Individuals attempt to move faster than normal
• Interactions between individuals become physical
• Exits become arched and clogged
• Escape is slowed by fallen individuals serving as obstacles
• Individuals display a tendency towards mass or copied behavior
• Alternative or less used exits are overlooked.

I fear I will destroyed in a Geek Big Bang that will end all geeks and shower the universe with their exploded parts.

For now, the Hive Mind is focused on collection, but not just comics and free posters, its collecting information in the form of exclusive footage from film features or first-time announcements of special projects all carefully aimed at the bouncing molecules. A bullseye will set of a chain reaction that with cause an explosion of dollars months from now.

For now I remain in limbo, struggling to resist the herd and the draw of the hive -- a super heroic task indeed.