Metro Con and How you Can Grow Beyond your Founder

Opening Ceremonies 2019

This weekend would had been Metro Con last year, but Metro Con this year would had been held on the 11th to the 14th of July but due COVID-19 the event got cancelled and even if it was a low punch, we understand the circumstances and there is always one in the future that I can always go.

Metro Con for me is my first convention ever, I went to the conventions when I was 32 years old, I went because a former friend who knew I followed certain Youtuber, so she asked me to go with her and I said OK, I was mesmerized by the convention as it was my first event ever but that's a story for another day.

Aggretsuko Cosplayers

I find the story of Metro Con fascinating because there are plenty of activities, great cosplayers, the vendor's hall is a little bit small and the merchandise is not that varied but still you can find cute things and there is not a big artist alley but the soul of the convention are the cosplayers. A lot of the people that go are super creative with their cosplays, and is just fascinating to take photos but also to see what the cosplayers will do every year.

Continuing with the convention cases, this example goes with the San Japan case I exposed not long ago in which the founder got involved in a problem because he got exposed saying racist commentaries about guests followed by an empty excuse on Facebook in which he said he only followed whatever the attendees want.

The aspect on this case is what Metro Con did to linger out of the founder's image after he got arrested for statutory rape on 2009, which several reports indicated that over the years he was in to predatory practices before being arrested and subjected to register as such.

Looking at old articles, one from Anime News Network when the problem happened, the current CEO and Owner Alex Craddock "Roy Harms is our CEO, and a very close friend of mine. I trust him with my life, my dreams, and my 4-year-old child, and so would anyone else that has ever met the man." He continues,

"An arrest does not mean a conviction to or admittance of the crime being charged. In this particular situation there is one thing required for an arrest to be made, and that is a claim."
A problem with that statement, is that people seems to had forgotten about it, but even so Alex kept part of the promise that he made in the public statement 11 years ago and made the event family friendly over the years, and there hasn't been any sights of Roy inside Metro Con but that doesn't mean he still active.

Another problem and Alex statement is that Roy was convicted but not incarcerated, a quick search on the Florida Database he is still there, he got registered and he still subject to visitations from the county, but the problem is that even with visitation Roy was still present outside of Metro Con, such as 2017 in Holiday Matsuri and Omni Expo around 2016, even his Linkdn profile marks him as active on public events as a Trade Show Consultant which is somewhat hypocritical that he has still somewhat of a controlled access to a computer but there is no way to find if he is active on social media, but even a small search around Twiiter pop results about his doings being a sexual predator.

Now, what really happened that people essentially forgot about this scandal? The answer is no, people who are familiar with the development of Metro Con and have been going through the years they still speak about this incident, and people who are newer but get well positioned within the convention scene they also know it, I learned from a friend who has been going there from 12 years and it chilled my spine because is somewhat of an open secret.

But, the operations and how the event is promoted has essentially distanced from the era of Roy Harms, which from the information I had found under the tutelage of Alex has been positive and more fan oriented events had been placed inside the convention, but also they had brought people that are meaningful and varied within the guest spectrum over the years up to the point that as time pass by, there is not too much mentioning of Roy Harms at all that he was ever the person who founded Metro Con.

The Grim Reality for the Florida Democrats in 2018

7/12/2017 --- The reality in Florida to the Democratic Party is that it looks grim at this moment, there are questions towards funds and strong candidates.

Right after the last year election, many individuals affiliated with the Democratic Party started to gather more often in the Pinellas County Democratic Meetings as well on several other branches such as the one in Orange County, they switched venues to accommodate more individuals.

Within Hillsborough County, activist have launches New Tampa (1) and Temple Terrace clubs, but still even if there has some form of re-emergence, the panorama for the 2018 mid-terms elections looks grim as the party unity within the State doesn't seem to have any cohesion towards their message and socio-economical interest that could secure them the control on the upper chambers of power.

We have to understand that the last democratic governor in Florida was 19 years ago who was Kenneth Hood Mackay who replaced Lawton Chiles when he died in 1998 (2) while serving his second term; after that we had Jeb Bush and ending with Rick Scott; for the last 19 years every single one of them has been Republican and Florida essentially shifted from a blue State to a red one.

The main principle on the recovery plan lays on the economical growth which has been stale, and mixed with the inequality between the property and rental costs, with the rise of the child care and competitive wages there is a stagnation on the cost of living, in which Floridians are struck hard; essentially on a emotional perception there is no "hope for growing up economically"

The problem in the stagnation is that the job creation is aimed to specialized jobs but not the ones related to tradesman which essentially that is the main composition of the middle  and the disparity between the wealth of the Floridians (3). Economic stability can play a big role in the perceptions of the voters, but if the candidates know how to exploit those perceptions they can win a power position beyond any lobby influence.

There is still an expectation of a Democratic turnout, but the key goes on registering voters, recruiting, organizing and building vote-mail system in which it will assist any future voter with mobility issues to exercise their democratic power. The grim reality that democrats are facing in Florida is that not only have to persuade the voters that haven't been able to attract in 19 years, there aren't a charismatic set of people who can lead.

At least optimist remains. 

References:

1. https://www.facebook.com/newtampadems/
2. https://www.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governors-bios/page_florida.html
3. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article107857042.html

Conversations in a Bus: Proselytism on Seat Number Four

Phamplet

I am not scared of the idea of hell, because I've lived one for first 27 years of my life. As many times lately, I've been taking the bus, it can open quite a few eyes to travel in the mass transportation system and look what people are doing, as well listen to.

There is a fine line between finding a system of faith that can compliment an ideology, and being harassed by almost everyone that is obsessed on proselytizing their faith; because at the end, faith is just a mere business for the pastor. Look at Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer, they don't live the humbleness they profess but their sects they have to.

As I went in the bus, being stubborn and quick to react, I rarely accept anything from strangers, but yesterday I saw something it got my attention. The little pamphlet that is on the left side of the entry.

As I walked by, the person who offered the pamphlet was an African American guy, he was sitting alone on the fourth seat. He was sporting a red polo with white stripes, and he had an impeccable haircut, but he was in complete silent. I couldn't avoid taking the flyer because that way, it would let me to study him from the distance and eventually to took a few videos about the different people he tried to approach.

Nobody after me really accepted the little piece of paper, but then I have a morbid fascination on studying people as I mentioned previously. Is an old habit since my days of journalism that I still keep; the guy had several pamphlets as well several buses routes. I would believe in the ecclesiastical term, he was a missionary, or at least a volunteer with nothing better to do on his day off in order to fulfill his quota of "saved souls."

After a few last tries, the guy stop not far away from my house at Anderson Rd, and I assumed he took bus seven to go south to Hillsborough Avenue, in order to go to his church. Later we are going to examine the science of "saving" and how the different sects approach the people through this form of privacy and personal invasion.

As you can see the video is upside down, I apologize but I do not have any video editors at the moment and I don't feel to invest some effort to upload it on a laptop that is essentially dying. As you see in the video, a woman with red hair goes in, and walks behind, she eventually pass the guy I mentioned earlier and she says no. She sat behind him, and he tried several times to keep talking to her. Because, it is "important" to save people from something much of them don't believe on the same semiotic message as the sender of the message.

It brings me to the next question, and if any of my friends read me, I hope an answer "Why is so important to spread your message.? While in the process you can offend someone who is happy with the way they are." Why the obsession to live in close such proximity, almost and not to say a fanatical level of a book that is extremely outdated by this millennium.? As well, claiming that every single church, spawn from one obscure one, that almost was "cloned" with Photoshop from another one, to say that the church is the true church and then ridicule any other faith.?

Is almost childish, because Christianity as is today, with all those church that say that are the true church of God are just a mere offspring of Catholicism, and even so Catholicism itself has some obscure origin on a letter written by Ignatius of Antioch around on AD 107, and yet all this comes from a separatist Jew that was competing with other "Messiahs" in order to find his place on the convulsed times of the Roman Empire, and even so it wasn't until the year 313, through the Edict of Thessalonica that made the Catholic Christianity the official religion of the Empire. Yet, we could be adoring Mithra or any other Gods if it wasn't for the Romans; and, we are not going to go with the Greeks because they turned everything more confusing due the poor translation they made of the old papyrus.

Free thinking and free speech are two components that don't go well with religion; because, if the followers start questioning, they are committing the ultimate sin, questioning the authority; but, what really gets my attention around the pamphlet it is the way that is divided. As many charismatic sects, Neo Pentecostals and sects that were on the Second Awakening; they made their effort to reach the people who have doubts with their own life, or youth at risk.

The way that we see how some religious sect approach individuals, though spreading the good news, are in the hands of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the invention is relative new, as they tried to summarize their tenements in a simple way to spark the curiosity of the people and bring them in, into their religion.

Mass media itself played an important role, as in the 1900's revivals, preachers used radios and prints in order to bring people to their congregation, as of today they use Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter, and it proves that is good for the business as they can capitalize their web success through add-on and add-words to bring some extra but substantial revenue.

The little handbook could be itemized as the only way to salvation is to reject yourself, where you have to reject your life and accept you are sinner and the teachings of the preacher can save you. Free will it is the ultimate sin to whoever dares to reject any form of authority, not only religious, but towards the establishment order.

West Gate Baptist Church

And to the man who gave me the pamphlet on the bus, he was from the West Gate Baptist Church; but, this is not the first time I've had encounters where my privacy feels violated, not only by the West Gate Baptist Church but also by several others. Not only at the bus, but at the place I am working in right now.

It can be annoying when freedom of religion is contradicted within himself and let the freedom of expression be diminished. We are on the point that we are living more on a theocracy (at least in the South), and it's been given to the point that is OK to proselytize instead of supporting civil rights. Who knows knows,? but a ride in the bus, you can always learn something about people and how the interact with their surroundings.

The Other American Dream - The Lost People

Micro-Graffiti

Tampa, (Fl) --- I always say one thing - Go in a bus, walk around far away from the upscale neighborhoods, interact with different people and you will see a more to the ground reality about people who simple are forgotten by the dominant class. -, There is one American Dream, is not as a dream is just a cyclical nightmare for many but is also the daily lives for many people who aren't seen in the spotlight, people who are not forgotten but just not seen.

Bus drivers; fast food workers, employees of a supermarket, people you see on a daily basis or at least weekly basis but you don't know their names, but they always know yours.

Then, there is the American Dream that was lost in the shadows, the people who are truly lost. I keep finding traces where I live, but is everywhere about people who felt abandoned, people who just went to that side of humanity that lurks in causing harm because they couldn't know any better or fight for anything better, because there was no will power to face life.

I've walked many paths in life, and seen many people; I've been around different cities and neighborhoods, walked among many people with fear and sometimes without any traces of it; I walk because I don't want to understand the essence of humanity, I walk because  I want to see the different realities that compose the amalgamation of humanity is.

Why people forfeit the dream of a better life,? the dream of helping the community,? the dream of succeeding... maybe, my cousin Alexandra S. was right - we need people who have no aspiration in order for other people to achieve higher. - A form of natural selection I would say with my words.

Then, just by walking in the middle of the night, I saw so many different realities, people who go and work 15 hour days to keep the dreams of other alive; people who have a quality of person, manners but have no fault of living in a Section 8th neighborhood but will always treat other people with such an amazing quality, even strangers who are asking for help.

You will find in life other people who came here running away and never learned the language but found away to move forward; but, some people are just nasty, some people don't have any respect of manners and live according to their own ego-centrism. I ended up asking for a taxi after finally found my way back to the area near my house. I waited around a Red Roof Inn where the receptionist and the security guard where really nice and let me stay in the premises until I was in a safe place.

During that hour in the hotel I saw some people who in their behavior where extremely nasty and rude just to get what they wanted but the receptionist of the hotel always showed a class that was amazing, even when a Hispanic guy and a really awful lady of African origins wearing some kinky boots (not to say a cheap ass hooker) were asking to change rooms because the toilet wasn't flushing; the receptionist always had her poise. She kept her composure no matter what. I saw the other side of the American Dream, a dream that is much as a coin with two faces, where some people just give up or as a my friend Suly Rosado say "some people are just plain ass ghetto with no respect, except on their social services officers or the ones who give the food stamps." Then there is the more optimistic side - where some people aren't that lost and are facing adversity. But, do I am going to do again this joy ride by mistake.? Never again.

   

Tampa, Craiglist and Selling Marijuana around USF (Photos)

Tampa, Fl -- The problem with the cannabis and the traffic is taking new steps in Florida but in the Tampa area one dealer decided to face the public scrutiny and anonymously decided to post an add on Craiglist regarding the nature of his business. The laws in Tampa are strict where you can end up in jail for getting found in possession of small doses but dealing the product is a felony that the county will make the impossible to make the dealer and the producers to not see the sunlight again. The dealer in this case decided event to give his area around the University of South Florida which can give the authorities to expose an undercover operation in the university premises and the vicinity, but not only if an undercover operation or just a dealer are exposed the damage to the image of USF could be hard to fix, but the stupidity of the dealer to expose himself or herself on the Internet it is just amazing or in a lesser case they are cops who are trying to make a living by arresting some people who are trying to buy the product. Who knows.?

The Problematic of Panhandling in Tampa: No Real Solutions a Year Later

Tampa, Fl -- It's been a year since the war on panhandling was supposedly won, but the real solution on a problematic that affects third world countries as well big cities on the United States is far away from over. The problematic of panhandling is relatively new in the United States not being old since the days of Vietnam but over the years the problematic has grown so far that he BLS don't really have a concrete analysis on how much the phenomenon has grown over the last 5 decades.

The problem in Tampa lays that the city hall vainglory that the problem has been controlled but the beggars are still there on the mayor intersections in the city such as Hillsborough and Dale Mabry, around all Busch Boulevard or across 60th, on 10/30/2012 marked the year anniversary ban on Tampa's panhandlers but in a parallel  case that happened in Colombia over the course of the years you can't put the panhandlers out of the streets permanent unless the congress create a solution for the deficit in the job market.

According to the Tampa Tribune, Tampa's Mayor Bob Buckhorn said "Our medians had turned into the equivalent of Gilligans Island."  but Lesa Weikel a spokeswoman for the Homeless Coalition of Hillborough County expressed  that the ban was only to put the homeless away from the public sight and out of mind by removing them from the streets. A 2011 survey in Hillsborough County counted nearly 18.000 people who fit the expanded definition of homeless, meaning many were crashing at friend's or relatives homes, even cheap hotels but the American definition or icon of being homeless juxtapose what is being homeless in a third world country where being homeless is having no help at all from the government and trying to live the day by day as you can.

The evolution of being homeless has changed dramatically over the last 5 decades, social advocates say, with high unemployment and a steady pace of foreclosures have put people on the streets who shouldn't been there; yet the panorama of the United States regard being homeless in other part of the continent is vastly different as citizens aren't use to see beggars around middle class towns or in the suburbs; in Colombia was extremely common to see beggars and children begging for food and money on almost every corner, generations grew with the idea of watching people in the streets to the point individuals had become distant regarding other individual realities.

One solution in Tampa to aid the homeless came in the hands of the late publisher and activist Bill Sharpe whose work is well known through the city, as he founded the EPOCH newspaper as a resource to help the people in need on the only day panhandling is not prohibited which is Sunday but finding a real solution to a problematic that has generated a lot of social issues in other parts of the world is far away from being over.

Legal Rape, the Legal Corruption of the GOP in their Own Hands the Splinter Tea Party

Bill Nelson

Tampa, Fl -- There is a fine print between free expression and harassing individuals in order to persuade the population to vote for your movement. There is no doubt a corruption of the United States Republican Party by their own hands and by their proxy association with the extremist splinter group known as the Tea Party, while on a point there was the eternal dual debacle between liberals and conservators now it has become a fight between the shadow of what was the GOP into what it has become just a stream of political extremists who had associated with shady figures as the actual nominee (Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan) for the presidency of the United States his subordinate choice of companion, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Todd Akin, Chris Christie, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove and just to name a few.

The actual party don't represent anything from what the party was even 30 years ago, the party itself has mutated into a populist wave much as a high class version of Equator, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Argentina had become just a bunch of populist countries that promote demagogy and nothing else and the United States it's following that path and will follow that path as the moment Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will reach the White House, while it won't be the beginning of the end, just a jump into a dark ditch which will take years it will have an effect in which the economy will sink further beyond the Bush taxes because the middle class, the class that built this country will suffer and the international politics will do to as none of the G8 won't enjoy to associate with so called "fiscal conservators" that only will benefit a 1% of the population. 

If you want to know about the G8, the book G8 Climate Change Roundtable (Google Affiliate Ad) offer a glimpse into the politics of the most powerful economies as well the influences they have on the environment. With the recent pseudo scientific comments by Todd Akin, Don H. Dwyer, Santorum and just again to name a few have stirred a controversy on where people had saw the intelligence of the individuals who are in power and yet people keep supporting them which could a be a fallacy in which people don't really have a formed opinion on what is the best for the nation and for themselves.

On a Florida level, Senator Bill Nelson had faced in the electoral (as well many other delegates) on the hands of different super PACs, in the case of Nelson it comes from the machinations of Karl Rove investment on the American Crossroads by buying US$2.4 mill in television advertisement to blast Nelson and diverge attention on a Florida ground from potential unwanted attention by the stupid and out of place comments of Todd Akin about "legitimate rape" which makes us think if there is "legitimate rape" no doubt there is "legitimate bullying" and that's what the Grand Ole Party is doing more than ever.

Leap of Faith (Short Story)

LEAP OF FAITH

(A Short Story)

Faith was on the rooftop, she was alone, people on the bottom were looking at her; her life became a mess after her fiancé went to jail for cocaine production and trafficking. She was there alone in the Sheraton of Downtown Tampa, the police was behind her, trying to avoid a tragedy but they couldn't go closer as she was too close to the void.

- It's not about God will save me, salvation is just a shallow word lieutenant Michaels. She said to officer.

- Why you say that?.

- Because those are shallow promises, denial to avoid reality by people who can't see the world. You see, the world problems aren't answer by prayers, believing is one thing, putting in action what the dogma say is another. People will never change because they are just people.

- I can help you on finding a job, a place, just don't kill yourself young lady.

- Sorry Ma'am, if God really exist, he or she will forgive my acts, there is nothing to do here.

Then she jump, falling to her dead. Michaels was completely in shock because she wasn't expecting her to jump to her dead, everyone was in silence because a girl was dead, a girl who had information regarding a drug circle between Gainesville and Tampa Bay and now she was gone. Faith was used as an object and the Police Department didn't offered any protection as she was only a victim, her fiancé problems were following her and the dealers were going to kill her if she ever dared to said something, but at the end Faith took one leap and she saw the world fading, everything falling apart as she fall to her death. The world was deconstructing slowly, breaking into tiny pieces before she disappeared into the event horizon that men and women call death.