It's my journal. I can be an egotistical maniac if I wanna be one, okay?

I got two (count 'em, two!) notes, complimenting me on my blogs!

The late, and much lamented, missing rant on the ickiness of fandom these days generated a post from one poor soul (whom, partly out of love for the positive strokes but mainly out of sheer obnoxiousness, I will refer to as "Honeybunch") who thought they were alone in feeling this way.

Honeybunch, you are not alone. There are a thousand fans or more on-line who feel substantially the way we do. It's just that I'm the only person I know who is rude enough to keep calling the idiots, well, idiots publicly again and again.(*)

(* Purely my opinion, of course.)

My middle name is not "tact." It's something more like...well, I can't think of anything that strikes just the right note at this moment. I'll get back to you on it.

Still no flames on the subject have been received, though. Even though I was sure I'd offended dozens of people.

No one ever sends me flames. As I've repeatedly announced, you are no one in fandom until you've been flamed. I am resigned to being no one, but I'm not planning to take it gracefully.

The other feedback came from someone who stumbled across my political rantings and meanderings and decided I sounded intelligent. (!) Clearly someone who needs to get out more, but I'll take what I can get.

That's a lesson to all of us who do any writing. (It's not necessary to write, Honeybunch, in order to be active in fandom. Being a fan is about a lot more than churning out a few stories.) We may put the stuff out there, secure in the knowledge of what we were trying to accomplish, but when the reader arrives, it's up to them to interpret what they've found.

I have about six episodes of Spike BtVS stacked up to watch. I guess I really am losing interest in the show. I do have, as I noticed when cataloguing tapes last night, the episode where we learn All About Spike. I'm looking forward to seeing that one.

I'm still all thrilled about having been at Escapade. Rumor has it that most people blogging (or livejournaling, or diarylanding, or whatever) about the con are full of whining but as I can attest (having done so much random whining), it's a lot easier to find things to complain about than to compliment.

Me, I'm still pleased by the new location (restaurants! bars! bookstores!), the hotel itself (flaky bartenders and all), the panels I attended, and the discussions I fell into. I saw friends, met strangers, bravely walked up to people I barely knew and spoke to them (social anxiety disorder really is a curse), and made myself objectionable for a few seconds in at least one panel. What more could I ask for? I even got to ride a train!

I love trains. Some day I want to fly to San Diego and take that coastal train all the way to Seattle. And then I'll get back on board and ride it all the way down the coast again.

My love for trains is irrational, like my love for escalators. Unless I have more than three floors to climb, I'd rather take the stairs than an elevator, but if there's an escalator there, I'll ride it every time. Every evening I go for a walk. Half the time, my entire route is planned around a way to get to one door of the mall across the street from my house so that I can go in and ride the escalator up one floor.

There's a sort of "queen of all I survey" feeling about rising in a slow, stately manner above the heads of the hoi polloi. You can gaze down remotely upon the common people and think sorrowfully, but distantly, of their little lives and troubles.

If escalators went up more than one floor, I'd probably disembark with some kind of mental disorder. I'd insist that I was Charlemagne or Queen Elizabeth I or something and have to be locked up in a comfy padded room and have nothing but crayons to play with.

But they don't, so it's a fleeting insanity pleasure.

How did we get to escalators? I was going to write a long post about how Honeybunch suggested that I co-opt the BNF acronym, alter it so that it stands for, "Brave New Fandom" and begin to gather subjects members.

There will be a brief pause while I rid myself of certain delusions of grandeur.

[ ... ]

Okay. Better now.

Anyhow. Honeybunch petitioned to be allowed to join the Brave New Fandom but I suspect said petition will be withdrawn after Honeybunch reads this particular blog entry and finds how I've referred to them(*) throughout, don't you?

(*Personal pronoun hell strikes again.)

Anyhow. I would, except that I suspect the current BNF contingent would object to having their status-marker co-opted by someone who might not let them join the new group. Not that I care about most of them (I don't know them and they don't know me), but I do know a couple of people who have been slapped with the label and I'm not necessarily here to piss them off today. Anyhow, I like them.

Still, as Honeybunch reminded me, having a good acronym is as important these days as a catchy slogan. Now I not only have to find an appropriate synonym for "fan" but I have to find a short phrase that makes a good acronym, and then spell out the Brave New Fandom's Mission Statement in a catchy and memorable slogan.

Fandom is a lot of work.