Awake

The problem with getting up at 1:30 in the afternoon is that it leaves one with no urge to sleep come 1:30 at night. I needed the con recovery, but I also need to be up tomorrow when the Ikeans show up with my shelves and Wil’s wardrobe.

Ah, shelves! I can unpack my reference books (a row of O’Reilly books, some big DK children’s books for artistic reference), my comics TPBs, the cream of my fiction. I’ll need more shelves eventually, but this should do for now.

Then I ought to head over to Brooklyn, pick up one or two of those small drawer units, check the mail, get my painting shirt. (All the shirts I’ve got over here are too nice to muck up with paint.) Should be able to do that and get back in time for the new Buffy.

With great power comes reduced import fees

Some of you will have already heard that the X-Men have been found inhuman by a court of law. Or at least, their miniature plastic representations have been so found. The story ran on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal (with a color photo of a Wolverine figure), but the article is hidden behind a for-pay subscription wall. A PDF of the court decision is available, and lawyer Eugene Volokh summarizes the matter in his blog. US import tariff law used to (in the ’90s, when this case started) assess higher import tariffs on dolls than on other toys, with dolls being defined as human figures. Marvel wanted the lower fees, and so argued that the figures’ non-human features made them other toys, cheaper to import from China where they were manufactured. Ironically, as Daniel Weiner points out:

The most incredible aspect of this whole sordid affair is that the U.S. Government defended the X-Men's humanity, while Marvel stabbed them in their non-human backs.

Me, I wonder how long it’ll take for this to show up in the actual x-books, and which x-author will get it in there first. (My money’s on Grant Morrison, of course.)