Things That Look Stupid
Windshield wipers on headlights. I don't care how sensible they can be, they look stupid.
Those clompy sandals with the thick leather straps. With white sweatsocks. Grow up. Put on some real shoes.
Things Not To Do
I know calling a company and asking for a job is a scary thing to do, but toking down a big ol' doobie first will not get your foot in the door. I know it makes you mellow. I can hear it in your voice.
More good advice.
Things That Annoy Me
Okay, this week this is a huge category, but I'll stick with one example.
People who don't know how to surf the net. I mean, if you tell someone to go to "CNN" and they type "CNN" in on Google's search page and, when the results come up, they say, "I'm there," then I'm annoyed.
Because, you're not. Okay? If you're not reading the news, you're not there. And then if I ask you, over the phone, to tell me what you see and you say you see "cnn.com" then I'm tearing my hair out over why you can't see the link at the top of the page, without you ever mentioning that you aren't actually at the page.
An astonishing number of people I encounter have never heard of the idea of just typing a URL into an address bar.
But I'm just angry this week, I guess. The funny-hot-flash portion of the I.C. has now given way to the mood swing portion of the entertainment. Except, there's no swinging. Just intervals of red-eyed fury over inconsequential things.
Things That Fascinated Me
Posted by AnneZook at 03:51 PM | Comments (3)This morning, as I was attempting to leave the house and come to work, I spilled a full travel mug of coffee down the side of my coat, over the counter, into a drawer, and across the floor.
You have no idea how much coffee your travel mug can hold until the flood almost swallows your kitchen, you know?
I (very uncharacteristically for me) shouted a curse word, then mopped up enough of the mess to tide the kitchen over until this evening.
I also fought the lining out of my coat (it zips out, but it was stuck, and more cursing ensued) and threw it on the floor in a snit. It wasn't wet, only the outside part of the coat was drenched, but I didn't want it to get wet. I wore the wet part of the coat to work in some kind of masochistic fury.
I gassed up, at the cheap station that's on my way to work. $2.17/gallon.
I got stuck in traffic behind some kind of landscaping truck-and-trailer combination and I think they neglected to put the cap on a gas can in the trailer or something. They were certainly leaving a trail of gasoline as they went.
I'm telling myself that the gallon or two of liquid that splashed out of the trailer as they took out a curb rounding one corner was probably just water and not some kind of pesticide pollution, in spite of the smell.
I'm just saying. When Monday morning starts out like that, it doesn't inspire confidence for the week.
Believe it or not, I rather regret having accepted the offer of having Good Friday off. I'm not religious and beyond Christmas (which celebrates the religion of consumption, so I'm okay with it), I generally disregard all religious holidays. And the weather sucked, so I didn't get to do any of the things I'd planned.
On the other hand, the truth is that I like having a spring break holiday even though I'm no longer in school, so most of the weekend I just told myself I was on spring break. (As I understand it, a number of people also have today off as a holiday to "recompense" them for having "missed" getting a day off for Easter, which fell on Sunday, much like one gets when Christmas or New Years' falls on a weekend, but Easter always falls on Sunday, so somehow that seems very wrong to me.)
This weekend's excitement: Drugstore.
This may not sound thrilling to most of you but a couple of times a year I get to feeling all girly and I want to stock up on makeup and fancy lipsticks and useless concealers (I never have zits or circles under my eyes.) and eye liner and whatnot. This weekend was one of those times.
I bought three kinds of base, two concealers, two eyeliners, three lipsticks, and some powder. I bought a handful of other things, enough to bring the grant total up to just of $100. (Ouch.)
So...Saturday, after I got home, I gave myself a facial in preparation for playing with my new toys. Unfortunately I forgot the wash off, do not rub rule of exfoliation, and wound up causing a bit of skin damage I can still see today.
Two of the foundations were okay, but the third one was fabbo. Light, like I can't even feel it there, but with just enough coverage to smooth out some of those sun-damage and age-related imperfections that so liberally sprinkle my face any more.
The concealers were both fun but pointless.
The fancy new lipstick was too much trouble. It was a "twelve-hour" lipstick. "Put on the base coat. Do not rub or blot lips while you wait for it to dry. Then apply top coat." I might not have minded had I not noticed, on the package, the instructions to re-apply the top coat throughout the day "as needed." So, I guess the invisible base coat was the 12-hour part. Can't really see the point.
I don't read labels the way I should.
The second new lipstick was sticky and shiny and amused me all out of proportion to any improvement in my appearance. The third was my old stand-by, so I didn't even play with it. I know it looks fine.
The eyeliners were tricky. I know there are secrets. No matter what I do, eyeliner just doesn't make that much of an impact on how I look, you know? You can see it in the "before-and-after" makeover pictures in women's magazines at the hairdressers, women look dramatically different. But not me. I think it's trick photography.
Strangest of all...every, single thing I bought was the right color. I don't think that's ever happened to me before. (Okay, two of the foundations were a tad too light, but I don't ever "match" any of the standard foundation categories, so I'm used to that. If you're German-English-American Indian-African American, you don't shop "off the rack" for foundation. I've spent most of my foundation-time in my life carefully blending different colors.)
Other than that...I took the weekend "off" for the diet as well and consumed easily three times the calories I burned. Today, I am back on the diet and actually glad to be here.
And I worked on the SEN. I wrote. (Well...deleted. But I did some writing, too.) Then, of course, I couldn't resist sitting down last night to re-read and see what the latest slash-and-burn attack had done for or to that monster.
I'm sitting there...reading along...and then, I had the oddest experience.
I found myself nodding! For the first 17 pages, it seems to almost, sort of, very nearly work.
It's was the most astonishing sensation.
I'm watching BtVS, reading The Sentinel, and thinking about Due South.
Something tells me this isn't the best way to produce a decent OaT story, but I console myself with the memory that this wasn't shaping up to be a decent story even before I had all of these conflicting thoughts in my brain.
"Never underestimate the amusement value of your delete key," that's what I always say.
Well, that, and, "it's not fanfic if the fans can't recognize the characters."
If the proof is in the pudding, today's characterization pudding is lumpy. I got it, in places. In other places, we're still in who are these guys?-land but any progress is heartening these days.
In terms of the old delete key, I yanked another ten pages out today. About 4,000 words. And, as always, it improved what's left. This is a key facto to remember. The less I write, the better I am. (If I gave up writing entirely, I'd probably win a Pulitzer.)
I wrote five or six new pages, including a new sex scene which, I'd like to point out, with a great deal of bitterness, I really didn't want to have to do. Still. If you're changing from a Serious Case Story to a more smutty approach, you gotta have plenty of smut.
The new version of the story is finished.
It remains, "not very good" but I suspect it's rapidly closing in on "as good as it's going to get, all things considered."
I'm blogging at the moment while I try to decide whether to do another edit today, blow off writing and wait until next week, or see what kind of chaos the Btvs-Sentinel-DS-OaT combination in my brain would inflict on my Sentinel story if I worked on it for a while.
I'm also just a tad bitter about the fact that I'm having a three-day weekend and today, Reserved-for-writing-Sunday, is the first time we've seen the sun.
I can provide my own distractions from writing, without any assistance from Mother Nature. Why is Sunday always the nicest day of the weekend, the one that tempts me most to toss it all aside and go out to frolic?
Just the general spitefulness of the cosmos, I guess.
#1 - Sorry for the irregular posting. I'm just frantically busy at work and usually brain-dead by the evening.
#2 - In spite of my non-religious status, I never object to a day off, so I didn't protest at being offered today off. (I might have been less thrilled, if I'd known that it was going to be cold and gray and snowy. And that I'd still have to get up at 6:00 a.m., because I'd have a netmeeting planned.)
#3 - Still. It's nice not to have to go to work. I've been lounging around, drinking coffee, and wriggling my toes for several hours. I'm about at the point where I'm ready to get my shower and go find some lunch.
#4 - Since I was up anyway, I decided to go ahead and take a quick look at...you guessed it...the SEN.
You know that math experiment you have to do in school? The one where you take a line, and cut it in half, then cut one half in half, then cut one of those halves in half, and it goes on forever?
The SEN is that line. I took a look at the 42 pages I wound up with after my last writing bout, did some editing and smoothing, took another look, and cut 15 more pages. Seems to me that I've been cutting this beast into fragments for months...and yet I never run out of SEN to cut, you know?
Today's deletions included one of the two scenes I'd decided I liked in the original mess. I may have to put it back later, but at the moment I'm fascinated by the experiment of finding out just how much this story can do without.
I can see it now, can't you? In the end, what will I have?
"Let's have sex."
I mean, yeah, that's what a PWP is all about, but still.
Today?
Writing?
Hate it.
But in a fun sort of way.
That go great together.
Achenbach, one of my all-time favorite columnists, writes about his friendship (well, maybe) with David Duchovny. And about DD's new movie which is apparently a small gem.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)I'm still tossing bouquets to the latest Writing Guru. (Immediate Fiction, by Jerry Cleaver)
Today's piece of Useful Advice: "When you sit down, before you do anything else, write one sentence."
That's all. That's from the section on dealing with writer's block.
You don't have to fight your way through it, produce something worthy of Hemmingway, or beat your head against a wall. You don't have to write a scene or a chapter or even a paragraph on any particular day. Just one sentence.
Interesting concept, isn't it?
I mean, I don't do that, because I'm O-C. If I write one sentence, I need ten hours to finish the thought it starts, but that, of course, is the point.
I'm not unaware, having suffered through many of them, that there are days when producing one sentence, no matter how lame, seems an impossibility. During my next episode of blockage, I predict I will turn to that section of this book with relief.
So...where stands the SEN today? After all, it's Sunday, right? That's Writing Day, in Anne's World.
To begin with, mindful of Cleaver's advice, I wrote a sentence.
Then I deleted 40 pages worth of stuff that just wasn't working, including the only two scenes in the entire mess that I actually liked.
I even, with many tears and much cursing, deleted the Original Scene. That's the one I thought of first, the one I wrote the entire monster for.
I hate writing.
After that, I mopped my eyes, blew my nose, and got on with it. I wrote twelve pages of new stuff, some bits to bridge over gaps I'd created in the text and a few all-new scenes.
I'm proud to report that, while the entire SEN still sucks, it sucks in an entirely new and special way.
Now, instead of being distant and unapproachable, at least one of the characters is maudlin, self-absorbed, and unexpectedly emotional for no discernable reason.
I hate writing.
And now, I'm ending today's session caught on the horns of a dilemma. Do I write the one "missing scene" and the one needed transiton for the SEN, then do another rewrite of the entire monstrous mess in a week to see if it's as bad as I suspect?
Or do I take the two deleted scenes, the only bits I thought were halfway decent in the entire SEN, and construct an entirely new story around them?
There's a charm in the second idea. I get to abandon all of the problems I've created in the SEN, tell the mopey and depressed character to go cry on someone else's shoulder, and start fresh with the "decent bits" I've accumulated along the way.
Essentially, we're talking here about deleting another 25,000 words and, based on the amount of deleting I've already done, doesn't really strike me as that extreme, do you?
Heck...with what I've already got, a day's work should produce an inoffensive sort of PWP. And I'd be done with it!
You know...I was joking at first. But now I'm thinking...well, why not? There's something very attractive about that idea, isn't there?
'Scuse me. I have some writing to do....
Yes, in spite of my determination to abandon that monster to its fate, I found myself wasting spending half of Sunday on yet another re-write. (At least it wasn't a glorious day this time. It was all cold and gray and snowy.
Inspired by the Latest Writing Guru, I undertook yet another rewrite of the full text. This latest book is a good one. By page 9, I was grabbing for scratch paper to write myself a note covering the character motivation stuff I hadn't been able to identify before. By page 16, I'd accepted that the lacks in the story were to be expected and that the stuff that frustrates me by its absence is usually the stuff that gets written last, so it's not automatically that I suck is the reason the first two or three drafts didn't have any of it.
I think it's an age then. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I could learn by being told something. Nowadays, I have to be told six or seven times before it seems to sink it.
The good news is that the DS and the Sentinel stories are moving. Slowly, but they're moving.
The bad news is that I haven't figured out how to rid my brain of this SpikeObsession, so I can actually focus on writing at least one of them. I combed out the ideas a bit last night but my brain wasn't really focused.
Actually, what I did last night was have a snit.
Yesterday was...one of those inexplicable days when everything just seems ten times as hard as it ought to be. To the point where, at 4:00, I packed up my stuff, including my laptop (I'd brought it in to load some work-related software) and took myself across the street to Starbucks for a couple of hours.
I dabbled with my story ideas, drank a latte and brooded on how aggravating it can be not to be independently wealthy.
Sadly, one of the DS stories already promises to be longer than I had hoped. I was thinking, you know, 20-25 pages. Short stuff. Easy to toss off, not much pressure, that kind of thing.
I'm determined to keep the others short. Any of them start to develop complicated story lines and I'll have a nervous breakdown.
On the down side, I just did a demo of Hell's Own Software for someone so dumb she didn't understand the difference between creating a list of options and selecting an option. Shoot. Me. Okay, I've given it an obnoxious nickname, but seriously. This program is simple to use. "This is where you decide which options you want to appear on the page. This is the page where you select which option you want for that record." We did that about six times before she sort of got it. (Can't be an age thing. She sounded about 20.)
I contemplated a mini nervous breakdown earlier today, but then I ate some chocolate and the feeling passed. Temporarily.
OTOH, on the happy side of the street, I got a feedback e-mail on some of my XF stories! I can't remember the last time that happened. Years.
I'm not a fabulous cook. I produce...reasonably edible meals upon those occasions I venture into the kitchen wonderland. And I'm grateful for that.
Nevertheless, from time to time, I feel the urge to drag out four cutting boards, five knives, a garlic press, and a vegetable peeler, and have a little adventure.
One such adventure recently involved a recipe for Honey Garlic Flank Steak. To begin with, I know not of this thing called "flank steak." When I want a steak, naturally I buy a tenderloin. (It's the one cut of meat that can survive my prediliction for medium-to-well-done steak, erring on the side of well-done.)
The grocery store was less than informative. Although I scanned the entire meat cabinet very closely, I couldn't find anything labeled "flank steak." (Maybe that's what we really need? A law that says no recipe can ask for any ingredient you can't actually buy?) Anyhow, I grabbed some hunk o'meat that appeared reasonably close. (My knowledge of bovine flanks is, I think understandably, slight. The piece of meat I selected was flat. Based upon something I have no intention of sharing, I have an impression that flat is good.)
I assembled the called-for ingredients. Soy sauce. Fresh ginger. (Grated! Another utensil was required! Good recipes involve filling the sink with a variety of interesting one-use gadgets.) Minced garlic. Honey. (There was a pause in the festivities while the necessary honey was procured. We had honey. Once. Must have been some other recipe.)
After that, marination ensued.
Lacking an outdoor grill (Thanks to a lighter-fuel-happy neighbor who set their balcony on fire, grills are banned in my apartment complex. It must be some primitive influence in us all that draws us to watch with such childlike wonder the effects of, I'd estimate, half a gallon of charcoal lighter on a stack of hot coals. Presumably it was the much the same urge that caused said neighbor to attempt balcony flambé.), and...where was I?
Oh. Grilling.
I'm thinking this is where it all went wrong. I mean, all reports of "carcinogens" in grilled meat aside, let's face it. Meat never tastes as good cooked any other way.
For instance, it's possible that grilling would have, in some fashion, mediated the over-strong flavor of soy sauce. I'm a soy sauce fan, but it shouldn't overwhelm the entire meal, you know?
I miss my Hibachi.
That was pretty much where I was going with that. I like grilled meat and grilled vegetables. And I miss my Hibachi.
If I get 117 hits in one day, it has to be because someone cared about the Escapade Con Report. Makes me regret not having done a more intelligent job of "reviewing" the con.
Most popular category? OPC. That's "Other People's Children" or "fandom rants" so that's not surprising.
Most popular single page? Quite inexplicably, one of the many, many pages where I was doing nothing but whining about the SEN.
I am, for no good reason I can imagine, oddly popular in Israel and the Netherlands.
Amount of comment spam: Pretty high until this past Sunday. We'll hope MT-Blacklist takes care of that.
Now...on to the good stuff!
Note to self: Search entries. Find the word r-*-p-e and replace it.
On the other hand, I'm pretty amused by the amount of interest in the Karpenters In Kilts but sorry I'm unable to provide any contact information.
Searchers after wisdom:
Do you need to diet if you walk every day?
If you need to lose weight, you need to change your eating habits. You'd have to walk at a minimum pace of 5 MPH for 2-3 hours a day to burn any significant amount of calories. What most exercise does for you is to build up your muscle and burn fat, but please be aware that muscle weighs more than fat. You can get skinnier without losing weight. Good health is a combination of weight (lowered strain on your heart muscle, legs, and spine, among other things) and muscle tone (muscle works for you while you just tote fat around).
How many calories does running burn?
How fast are you running for how long over what type of terrain and what is your body type, your age, your current level of physical activity, and your weight? There aren't any simple answers to these questions.
How many calories to use to lose 50 lbs?
See last two responses above. Simple rule of thumb: 3600 calories = 1 pound, which works out to 180,000 calories to lose 50 lbs.
How many calories does the average person need?
Very few USofA citizens are active enough to need more than 2,000 calories a day (and most of us sedentary office worker-type need less, unless we exercise regularly). That's very broad. There are differences between men and women, and depending upon your age group.
How many calories are there in coffee?
Simpler. Cup of coffee, no cream, sugar, or sugary flavorings? Around, IIRC, 15 calories.
How many calories does sex burn?
How good was it?
How many calories in a boy?
Get away from me.
Enough already! Who am I, Professor Diet?
Sock fetish webpages?
Don't know. Don't care.
Recipe for cleaning coffee pot?
White vinegar. 1/2 - 1 cup in a full pot of water, Pour into water reservoir. Run the brew cycle. (Run at least two pots of plain water through afterwards, to remove the vinegar taste.) You should do this at least once a month.
d w dingus?
Heeheehee.
Mythological archetypes
No less than 22 hits on this one, with a few different word combinations. Someone must have a school project.
Fandom is the last thing anyone hitting this blog seems to have been searching for.
Except that at least five people were looking for my dear buddy Mallory Klohn. You'll find some of her fiction linked from here, but her lovely self is corporeally elsewhere.
Okay, so when I left the office for my mini-Escapade vacation, I was only gone for four days, granted, but during those four days, my e-mail and voice-mail just stacked up, waiting for me to get back.
Bossyboots is about to be out for five or six days and the first thing Buehler asked me is if I know how to check his (Bossyboots') voicemail.
I'm aggravated. If Bossyboots didn't have to do my work while I was gone, why do I have to do his work while he's gone?
Later note.... Okay, that was yesterday. I bailed on the diet last night, ate a big meal, and today I'm feeling more cheerful about it all.
(Two seconds ago, Buehler came in steaming because Bossyboots didn't put an auto-reply on his e-mail while he's out, wanted to know if I could check his e-mail. But Buehler will forgive Bossyboots. The problem with being the "good employee" is that people don't value the non-squeaky wheel.)
Ahhh..., the Glamorous Life Of Me.
More business travel impending. Am I going to sunny San Diego, you ask? Warm South Florida? Viva Las Vegas? No.
Branson, Missouri.
Kill. Me. Now.
Well...I can do a Familial Visit, just a quick overnight or two-day stay at the same time.
Also, New Orleans. I don't like New Orleans. I've been there twice and it smelled funny both times.
Also, all of that stuff about the great food is a lie. The last time I was there, I was there for a week and the only decent meal I got was at, of all places, a Benigan's. Actually, I was running a fever and had a savage sinus infection (that's the trip where my head exploded) and as near as I can recall, it's almost the only meal I had while I was down there.
I'm attempting to pawn New Orleans off on Sassy. I'm sure she'd love to visit there. Besides. She's young and strong. She can take it.
In other non-events, I've divided my desk in two. Metaphorically To my left are the papers, files, and notes about things that Must Be Done for the DarkGlass study. A project no one is paying attention to dies, and this one is going to die if I don't start feeding it the love.
To my right, debris associated with Hell's Own Software and that project. 102 clients and climbing, that's what I'm trying to organize for that one. I have it...not under control, but I have the screams down to a dull roar.
It does occur to me, not being as stupid as I look, that if I spent less time blogging during the day, I'd be able to manage both of these projects more easily.
Work ethic, where is thy sting?
Also? Men are weird. I'm riding up in the elevator with a guy just now and as the elevator reached my floor and I stepped forward to exit...out of the corner of my eye, I saw him grab his weenie through his pants. And I'm thinking, "What? Did it feel like it was going to fall off or something?
Once I posted (on a different blog) that a pet peeve of mine is sitting in traffic and seeing some guy ahead of me open his car door and spit on the pavement. Or walking down the sidewalk and having to sidestep the residue of some guy spitting on the sidewalk. And some guy posted this angry comment about "what do you expect us to do?" And I'm thinking...I expect you not to spit on the sidewalk. Is this a more complicated concept than I'm understanding or something?
I wanted to chat about the con earlier, but the backlog on my desk discouraged goofing off during work hours this week and by the time I got home in the evenings, my brain was fried.
(Remember the days when companies had enough employees to have someone cover for you when you went on vacation? I do...barely.
These days, forty-eight hours after I get back from a vacation, I'm as tired as if I'd never left. I have two more trips planned this year, one in May to see a dear friend graduate college Out East, and the Obligatory Familial Visit in July. I have to space these things out, otherwise the backlog of work on my desk would do me in.)
Besides, I had that whole SpikeFest to finish up in the evenings.
Con....
It was nice.
Very nice. The sun shone and the wind only blew a little bit and the rain didn't. There's a Starbucks within walking distance of the new hotel, which is pretty much all I ask for out of life. As a bonus, the beach was a short 2-block walk. A walk I took three times, with increasing enjoyment.
The hotel staff was helpful and charming. Especially the two delicious bellboys. Heh. Heh. It didn't hurt that there was a medical meeting going on when I checked in (young and handsome doctors everywhere!) or that a swim team (college-age, okay?) checked in to brighten our lives for one day.
Hmmm...the con itself, I hear you asking. What about the con itself?
Fine.
The con.
I had fun, okay?
I mean, I arrived at the hotel about three hours before my room was ready. So, I ate, for the first time that day. (I love having short layovers but the disadvantage is that you can sometimes go six or seven hours without the opportunity to buy food. On my return trip, for instance, I wound up with fifteen minutes of free time in LAX. I had time to buy food, or a book to read on the plane. The choice was simple and, fortunately for me, the flight attendants on the plane were happy to give me a couple of extra bags of pretzel-mix to tide me over.
After all that, I walked to the beach. Ahhh...sand! And debris.
Did that.
Walked back to the hotel. Watched the yummy young doctors and the sweeter-than-sweet bellboys. (Wondered exactly when I'd gone from being a woman admiring attractive men to being a dirty old woman because the attractive men suddenly became so much younger than I am.)
Walked around the neighborhood and explored what stores were within walking distance. Found nothing worth walking to. (Later I was to discover my mistake.)
Went back to the hotel. Read. Waited for People I Know to arrive.
That pretty much covers the first three hours. You'll be happy to know things picked up from there.
That evening...dinner at the nearby House O'Meat, where I was served a steak that was inexcusably tough, considering the price. Accompanying me to this MeatFest were Ashlyn and a couple of her Vegas Cohorts. (Later that weekend, said cohorts and I were to have a chat and agree that face-to-facing once a year via Escpade does not, for some of us, a friendship make. But we also agreed that if we met again next year, and possibly the year after that, we might all agree to become friends.)
PostMeat, I returned to my room and fell into a coma.
Friday arrived.
The con begins! (Well, no. Anyone who is everyone arrives on Thursday for Escapade. So, technically, the festivities commence with the Thursday Evening Encounters. These generally commence around 4:00 p.m. and involve various and sundry of us lurking in the hotel lobby, available to pounce upon and squeal over new arrivals.)
During the course of the weekend, I went to only one fandom-specific panel and to a handful of more meta panels.
(I'm a big lover of meta-discussion. I know it's become a dirty word in fandom, but get over it. The only reason people don't like it is because, as with all discussions on conceptual topics, it allows idiots to spout nonsense. Between intelligent, rational people, meta-discussion is very stimulating. So, it's stimulating at Escapade.)
I have little of interest to say about these panels. Some years I talk incessantly and make myself obnoxious. This year I confined myself to a total of, IIRC, three "raise your hand and speak" comments in official panels. That has to be some kind of record. (I mean, aside from the year when I was Between Medications and too freaked out to leave my hotel room 80% of the time. Let's all take a moment and give thanks for Modern Medicine.)
Panel the First: "Where Have All The Good Conversations Gone?" In terms, you understand, of the Escapade panel. Good suggestions ensued. Fascinating suggestions, in fact.
Me, I know that running two tracks of panels (one for fandoms and one for meta-discussions) is already a nightmare for the organizers. They've opened up a third track of "come as you are" programs that the attendees pick and schedule for themselves, so the smaller fandoms have a chance to get their own panels. With three tracks, you'd think each panel would be small enough that you could really get a discussion going, but it seems to me that many of the panels have far too many attendees to really come to any conclusions in as little as an hour.
(I want the world to like what I like so I have people to talk to in "my" fandoms and stories to read. But I don't want them all at My Panels because it cuts into my opportunities for grandstanding and hogging the conversation. And, "conversation" in Anne's World is a monologue.)
Next, I tried "You Can't Say That About My Friend" (How loyalty is killing fandoms) - I went to this by accident. (I meant to go to the SG1 panel in another room. I'm not a SG fan, but I thought it might help me talk to my friends who are.) This one was tedious. (No, fandom is not now and never was a place of universal kindness and civility. No group liberally sprinkled with people who are emotionally six years old and yet possess the invective of street thugs is going to be "nice.")
I arrived late (which is how I failed to notice, at first, that I was in the wrong panel) and spent most of the time thinking about how lame some Escapade panels are.
This made me reflect on Panel #1 at great length, and to remember some of the panels in the early days. Tiny rooms, a third of us sitting on the floor, talking, arguing, interrupting each other, and piling into the hallway to continue the debate when we had to give up the room to a different panel. I really think the tiny meeting rooms were an asset. None of this spreading out, sitting in the back row, getting lost in the dark gloom of the meeting room corners stuff. Nope, we were all in there, knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow.
Physical proximity (assuming all parties are practicing Modern Hygiene) encourages livelier debate.
About this point, I completely missed a panel I wanted to attend on how slash has changed with the advent of the internet. It's a pity, because I had a lot of mean things to say. Unusually for me, I also had some very good things to say. No one will ever know what any of them were now.
There was a panel bemoaning the fact that movies won't show "slash" that I wanted to attend, purely for the sake of pointing out that if it's canon, or "real" then it's not slash. The question about just how timid USofA movies are about discussing or portraying homosexuality in history is a completely different topic than "movie slash." I do hate the blurring of the lines between "slash" and "homosexuality." They just aren't the same thing. (This appears to be a battle I'm destined to lose, but I don't intend to quit fighting. There's little that has less to do with Real Life than fanfiction, even aside from the unrealistic portrayal of men in 8o% of fanfiction.)
Moving on, I did not attend the panel on LJ but I heard much about it. (Cultists!) Many things surprised me. The idea that a conversation started in one LJ "belongs" to the owner of that LJ and that moving the discussion, or carrying it on in a different LJ is "theft" surprised me. From whence comes this attitude that any one person in fandom "owns" a conversation? Still, I'm not on LJ, so it isn't my problem. (See: fannish conversation as AnneZo monologue, above.)
Similarly, I didn't bother to attend the panel on "what to do" if the pairing you like isn't the primary pairing in a fandom. Another pointless topic, from my perspective. I went through all of that in XF (I was writing Skinner-Mulder, most of the rest of the world was writing Mulder-Krycek) and have nothing to add.
Me, I think a better topic might have been, "what makes you think you're entitled to organize fandom for your personal benefit?" and if it weren't for the fact that I'm as guilty as anyone, I'd suggest that as a topic.
(rudeness removed)
I won something in door prize drawings! I never win things, but I won a $25 Borders gift certificate! Hooray for Escapade! Hooray for presents! (I put it with the $20 gift certificate I got for Christmas and went off this past weekend to have a blow-out. Now I have to find bookshelf space for five new books.)
Friday night - big Welcome Aboard! party for everyone at the con. I went. I wandered the crowd. As usual, I saw almost no one I knew. Always confuses me, how invisible I am in a crowd. I mean, I'm not that short. I must put out some kind of psychic, "I don't talk to strangers" vibe. And since my friends like me best when I'm in a different state, I rarely blame them for pretending not to know me in public.
Saturday...I slept in! Then I found Meghan who revealed the existence of the longed-for Starbucks and forced her to walk over with me. (It's good for your butt, Meg. Besides, I bought you a drink, as a thank you, okay?)
I totally wanted to attend a panel on what you, the writer, get out of writing your story (putting readers aside for a moment) but I got involved in one of those inevitable "hallway panels" that Escapade is so famous for and missed it.
(Most of the panels I wanted to participate in but missed, I missed because of these hallway panels. These are not infrequently the best discussions I have at Escapade. Once again...people excited about a topic, huddled together, all wanting to contribute and all having time to contribute because the group is small.)
I attended a panel about Methos just because it was being put on by a good friend and enjoyed it much more than I expected to. Much, much more. For the first time in a long time, I can almost see myself writing HL again. Certainly I was feeling the MethosLove to a large extent by the time I walked out the door. (I was even surprised to notice that my previous DuncanIndifference has mellowed over the years to a sort of amused tolerance.)
Saturday night was Sushi night. About nine of us walked to a restaurant. They courted early deaths or lifelong digestive disorders with sushi. I had the chicken.
After that, the vid show. I spent an hour working in the con suite (I generally do 3-5 hours worth of volunteering) then retreated to my room. I'm not a vid fan. I am, I'm aware, almost alone in this approach to fandom, but I'm at peace with my outsiderdom.
Besides, owing to a conversation I had with the illustrious Kat A. earlier that afternoon, I was finding myself inspired to abandon the SEN and work, instead, on a less-intimating story.
After a three-year absence, she pointed out wisely, you shouldn't start back into writing by tackling something the size of War and Peace. Take a smaller bite. Write a PWP or two in a fandom you find easy. Ease back into the process.
(That's one of the best things about Escapade. Those with knowledge, reaching out to give a lift to those of us pattering along behind.)
By the time I stopped Saturday evening, I had a 20-page start on my current Due South story and I'll be dedicating a heaping helping o'eternal gratitude to the courteous, patient, talented, and all-around amazing Kat.
I've always liked her.
Of course, she also pointed out that she spent 4 years working on her last long story, which was a bit daunting for those of us with WritingADD. (Besides, it's not like anything I turn out will be half as good as what she writes. Did I think I'd turn out a minor masterpiece, I might be inspired to put that kind of effort into a story, but I don't, I won't, and I don’t think I will.)
Sunday morning, the Big Breakfast. I did not miss it, making this the first breakfast in about three years I've managed to attend.
I went to "The Tipping Point." This was a panel to explore why some fandoms explode suddenly into supernovas while other fandoms grow slowly and still other fandoms never go anywhere at all. It was very interesting, in spite of the fact that we spent most of the hour defining terms.
I'd hoped to discuss the actual fandoms, instead of potential underlying mechanisms.
You know...how a fandom comes on the scene at the moment when a group of fans are ready and eager for it. It has, I believe, a lot more to do with characters and situations in the show/movie than it does about who is spreading the world and how. I think, if you could trace the path of the Exploding Fandoms, you'd find an emotional path laid out clearly. Fans run en masse for a new fandom that provides the right new emotional blast for them.
And, finally, "Where Do We Go From Here?" An Escapade Wrap-Up panel. Very interesting. I look forward to seeing what transpires next year.
In between the panels I attended, or missed, I spent a lot of time in conversation with small groups of fans here and there. Discussing characters, writing, canon, and other fascinating topics.
I capped the weekend by stealing three zines from the zine library, a fact I will be confessing to Ashlyn via e-mail when I tell her I'm returning them. I know they have to close the zine library so she can pack it up and take it home, but the last evening of the con is the one when I have a lot of time to read. And with the dearth of any new zines I want to read, turning to the zine library is natural.
I know you waited a week for this. I'm sorry it wasn't more fascinating.
But Mallory? I have your songvids! I'll get the disk sent this week.
ConReport. In progress. I meant to finish it this afternoon but I had to spend two hours installing MT Blacklist. I'm going to be leaving comments open now, to see if it works.
In the meantime, naturally I've been SpikeFesting.
Angel S5. Finished. (The Sentinel and DS stories should move faster now.)
Read the hidden stuff only if you're okay with spoilers, cause that's all you'll find.
From Shoshanna.
List five fictional people -- from television, movies, books, whatever -- that you had a crush on as a child (or early teens). Then post this on your LiveJournal so other people can know what a dork you've always been.
I don't have LJ, of course, but I decided to play anyhow.
1. Michael Landon, as Little Joe, on Bonanza
2. Russell Johnson, as The Professor on Gilligan's Island
3. David McCallum, as Ilya Kuryakin in Man From Uncle
4. Bill Cosby, as Alexander Scott in I Spy
5. Leonard Nimoy, as Spock in Star Trek
Note that all of these are television crushes.
I probably read 50 books for every 1 television show I watched, but back in the Kansan Dark Ages, when I was young, books for kids didn't lend themselves much to crushing. I mean, even something as innocuous as Jane Austen's books were confined to the "adult" section of the library, out of my reach until I was, IIRC, 14, by which time I'd crushed on a dozen television characters.
Anyhoo...I guess that's a pretty dorky list, so I'm fulfilling the requirements of the meme.*
David McCallum and Robert Redford are the only two blonds I remember crushing on in my entire life. (At least...until the advent of PlatinumSpike, in very recent years.) And I'm still crushed on McCallum when I see him on Navy NCIS.
An Escapade Con Report will be forthcoming before long.
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* No...on second thought, reviewing that list, it's not nearly as dorky as it could be. It's very predictable is all. And does a lot to reveal how very old I am.