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Taking on the Rocky Mountains
General | Posted 11 years agoAlrighty then. Time again for some more Tales of Interest. Tonight's episode, Rocky Mountain Fur Con! An uneventful drive out, really, apart from its length. Losing my stop in Canton was a big change in the character of the trip. The first jaunt out to Aurora was over eight hours, so quite a trip. It went well though, apart from the torrential rain that happened only during the couple minutes wherein I had to stop for fuel and at no other time. Fuckin’ cheeky sky gods. All that driving made for a lazy day on arrival, certainly, and it set the tone for a few more lazy days to come. One we got to talking I realized that I’d devoted so much time to getting the itinerary worked out and making sure that I could actually be in the place that I meant to be in at the appropriate time I gave comparatively little thought to what I’d be doing whilst there. It was a little late to revise that though, and there’s nothing wrong with a few quiet days to catch up with an old friend. I suppose “uneventful” is a better term than “quiet”, seeing as my friend’s daughter has reached an age where screaming makes up the overwhelming majority of her communication.
I got to add a second entry to my list of Tiny Dogs I’ve Met That Weren’t Unrepentant Assholes. They’d gotten a Dachshund recently and it was also at an extremely high-energy age. Everything she did was full-throttle weaponized adorableness. She would zip all around as fast as her comically short legs would carry her at the slightest provocation and was constantly clamoring for attention. She knew that jumping up on the couch was a great way to get my attention, and her attempts to make the leap were quite reliably entertaining. In the end though, she got into my suitcase and chewed up my good belt, so I’ll call it a wash.
We never did manage to come to a consensus on which movie to see, but the one big event that really did work out was laser tag. They have unlimited play for $12 available on Thursday, so we got to have a good long session of that. We got our money’s worth, certainly, playing for several hours to our utter exhaustion. I suppose my next Incredibly Short List would have to be physical activity that I enjoy, so I’ll add laser tag on there right underneath bounce castles and above… I can’t think of another example actually, so I’ll just leave it at that.
It’s always such a stark contrast to visit this guy, what with his family and his two jobs to support that family, he’s always got something going on. Even when he’s doing everything he can to spare some time, I still find myself sitting around at his place using his X-Box to watch Youtube videos on his big screen TV. Not a bad position to be in, certainly, but also not what I came there to do. I didn’t exactly keep tabs on what time was spent doing what exactly, but I had enough time there to finish Crash Course World History and get all the way through American History too. So yeah, I had a bit of time to myself. I guess all the sitting around and doing nothing is appropriate, seeing as I’ve been doing a lot of that these days.
After that I was off to Ace’s party. That was something of an odd scenario, as I was at a gathering of several dozen people, of whom I knew precisely one. Of course that matches the con dynamic pretty well. The people that I know ratio at a convention is usually about 1:400, so when looked at from that perspective this was actually a much less burdensome situation. I made out pretty well there, overall. I managed to burn up an entire day without really noticing, so I could safely say that it was a good time. Ace’s friends are a pretty even mix of furries and gearheads, both pretty easy groups to get along with, even if I have very little in common with the latter. One of them brought a Corvette Stingray with them, and on numerous occasions they would literally say “Hey, let’s go look at the Corvette some more!” and they would all go giddily flock around it to fawn over their idol for another ten minutes. Didn’t really get that at all, but then we got drunk and played volleyball with a comically large inflatable ball, so that I understood and we all got along again.
Two fursuiters got properly decked out and added a little life to the party. Tiggy and Doctor Fox were both excited to have a chance to bask in the adulation of the crowd. Tiggy made the very generous but possibly irresponsible decision to let some of the drunk girls borrow his head, the resulting hilarity was well worth the risk. Strange how generous I am in assessing risk when someone else anted up for it. I was a fair bit warm even though I was just wearing my human disguise, so I greatly admired the resilience of the performers. I sat for a while next to each of them pointing a big box fan at them, since I felt bad for them and I wasn’t doing much else useful. Doctor Fox mumbled some exasperated gratitude as he leaned into the stream of air. I sat and chatted with him for a little while as he recovered. It was a nice chance to get to know him a bit and… wait, are we holding hands? Ah well, whatever. It’s in fursuit, it doesn’t count. For some reason that only would’ve been weird if he’d lacked claws and had the correct number of fingers.
I’ll have to add that one to the bookjacket of my memoir. “You know, if not for the big cartoon animal costume that would’ve been really awkward.”
The Town of Carol Stream certainly knows how to throw a welcome home bash for a veteran, I’ll give them that. The whole yard was lined with little American flags along the curb, which of course everyone knocked over when they were getting out of their cars, but you know, good thought. We got a visit from the Red Bull Beetle, bringing refreshments for those of us dissatisfied with their inability to hear their blood pounding in their ears at all times. The two Red Bull girls parked in the spot that I had recently vacated when I noticed that it was next to a hydrant. No one was particularly worried about it as the police presence in the sleepy little town was scant at best. And then of course eight police cruisers and a couple fire trucks showed up.
Like I said, this place really knows how to welcome someone home. It was all for Ace’s dramatic and very temporary return to his roost. That was a real unexpected treat. We did lots of photos with the whole squad, did competitive breathalyzers and got pictures of us being thrown into the back of a squad car. You know, all the things one usually does when they encounter the police in a context other than having just broken the law. And for the record, yes, one of the officers did tell the Red Bull girls to move their car. I was just blown away by that whole production. I get a few free drinks at the American Legion now and then, but damn do these guys put on a show. I suppose it’s fitting that my and Ace’s respective welcomes mirror our respective enthusiasm about the Navy.
Speaking of the Navy, Ace took on the mantle of the time-honored tradition of forgetting that your tolerance ebbs somewhat when you spend three months at sea without drinking a drop. I got to sit back and watch the most entertaining progression of him going through happy drunk, silly drunk, emotional weepy drunk, and holy-shit-what-did-I-just-do-to-myself projectile vomiting drunk. Yee-Haw! Anyways, he’d asked if I’d like to come with him to autocross the next morning and a concert that afternoon and I’d said that I’d take him up on it, even if it now looked like he’d be offline for at least a day, if not two. We managed to stop him just short of hospital drunk, so he was not in the best spirits. Though he certainly had the best of spirits in him.
Even though I was relatively certain that the next day would just be me saying my farewells to a friend doing his best washed-up corpse impression, I elected to stay the night there. I’d been there a lot longer than I’d planned to, and that would have me arriving in Ohio between midnight and one in the morning. Seeing as my friend in Oxford had to work the next day, I’d presume he would rather that I not do that. It got me out of renting a room and it gave me the chance to say goodbye in a way that Ace actually had some statistically significant chance of remembering, so I went for it. I even got a mattress instead of a couch by virtue of its intended users already passing out in other locations. They also had a mixed-breed small dog of more typical small dog demeanor, but he was tolerable for the most part outside of waking me up at odd hours and his excruciating habit of eating my leg hairs while I was still wearing them.
In any case, the next day Ace was still throwing up which was… kind of impressive, actually. I took that as my confirmation that he wasn’t going anywhere today and got ready to leave. I was in no particular hurry, mind, but I was surprised to see that he’d actually gotten himself together enough to head out to lunch. He even felt like going to the concert afterwards. Apparently staying drunk through the night had enabled him to stave off what ought to have been quite a crippling hangover. A feat that only professional drunks can pull off with any reliability. We rounded up a couple of his old friends and headed out to a fair that was in town for the weekend.
The band that he’d taken us there to see was a local operation called 7th Heaven. A pretty solid group of traveling minstrels, really. It’s nice to hear a band with some good fundamentals. Diction, tone, and musicality, all very good. You don’t see that often enough these days. Performance has gotten to be too much about fancy effects and stage spectacle, the actual good music part of the performance has gotten left behind. The best was yet to come though, as after their opening set they got to the 30 Songs in 30 Minutes Challenge, which is very much what its title would suggest it would be. They segue through the best parts of thirty old classics far faster than should be possible. I’d thought that it would be a silly gimmick, but the whole thing was extremely well put together, and the way that they made all those different styles of music mesh together smoothly was quite impressive. They even did plenty of songs that I knew, so I found myself singing along at a number of points. It was enough to catch the attention of the band, it would seem, because I got one of their albums when they were handing out free ones to first-timers. The heat had withered us by the end though, and so we took our leave.
On the way home, Ace thought that he might check in on how the autocross event was going. Even though he couldn’t compete on account of his innards still being pickled that morning, he knew a few people there, so it was worth visiting. With this inspiration came the noteworthy complication that he didn’t know how to get to the event from where we were. You’d think that getting to the point where we could see it from the highway would be the hard part, but that’s not how the American highway system works. I was content to sit back and let this slapstick play out at first, after all, what use would I be? I did end up helping some in the end, as I brought to the table some useful skills like reading roadsigns and recognizing places that we’ve been before in our search. In any case, we made it and got to see the fancy obstacle course that they had set up in a big parking lot of a stadium.
I’ve likely mentioned before my profound indifference to motorsports, so it was fair to say that my enthusiasm for this event was lukewarm at best, tepid even. It may be a bit hypocritical of me given how subdued most of my hobbies are, but ‘Yeah! Racecar, go fast!’ isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Still, it was at the very least somewhat interesting to be able to watch the cars executing some pretty difficult maneuvers from so close by. This course was a lot more about control and handling than speed, with sharp corners and tight spaces featured heavily throughout. Tiggy had enough runs left for each of us to take a ride, and I’ll admit to feeling just a little bit of excitement at that prospect. After one run though, he said that having a passenger was throwing off his weight balance and he wouldn’t be able to take anyone else. And like the small child that I often emulate with my behavior, being denied something made me really want it. Even though I don’t really know what they’re on about most of the time, I’ve found gearheads to be a congenial and sociable bunch, so I went for it. I threw on a helmet and walked up to one of the cars to ask the driver for a ride. She seemed flattered that I was impressed by her machine and how she used it, so she said that I could hop in.
Going through that course was most assuredly worth doing once. There’s a lot of exhilaration to maneuvering at speed that you don’t get from simply going really fast. There’s tension and excitement, the ever present threat of knocking a cone over and feeling the shame that comes with even the slightest of errors. It’s a pretty good time altogether. The things that they do with these cars are also just damned impressive. They have these obstacles called garages that are roughly the size of two parking spaces arranged lengthwise. They have small openings at opposite ends of the long sides, necessitating their navigation by weaving through the thing almost sideways. Some of these things I couldn’t navigate at any speed, let alone racing speeds, and indeed, garages are impossible to traverse without going fast enough to swing the back wheels around and drift through the turn.
Regardless of what I think of car culture in general, there’s always a certain amount of fun to be had in watching someone that’s really good at what they do. That made it well worth the price of admission. And given that the price of admission was signing a waiver absolving them of liability if I injured myself doing this, debasing myself a little in front of a stranger and bullshitting my way through some gearhead talk while we waited for our turn, I’d say this decision had quite a hefty profit margin on it. Of course once I got back my true colors showed again. There was more gearhead talk among Ace and his friends that I was woefully unprepared for. I did indeed talk to the driver for quite some time, and my audience found it inconceivable that I wouldn’t have picked up an extensive dossier on the car’s design, performance capabilities and vital statistics in that time. If it’s just a little idle back-and-forth, I can sound like I know what I’m talking about with just about any subject. That’s something that you learn in the Navy quite quickly, as it’s far more useful than actually knowing what you’re talking about when your supervisors also don’t understand your job. When confronted with a direct question like what kind of suspension the car had or what the cylinder displacement is, it’s kind of hard to sneak around that question. Hell, I couldn’t even get past the easy ones.
“So, which car were you in? The Bel Air?”
“The one with the girl in it.”
“Yeah, but what kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know. It was the orange convertible that Claire was driving.”
“You learned her name but not the model of car you were in at the time?”
“Yes. I believe that my priorities were well in order, thank you very much.”
This sounds like a setup for a ‘one of the guys’ sort of joke, but that falls kind of flat given that I was the only person in our group more interested in women than cars.
After that we all went to Buffalo Wild Wings to fuel up before we parted ways again. They have Strongbow there, so I had a couple of them. The way everyone else was visibly sickened by the mere presence of an alcoholic beverage was quite a reliable source of amusement. I’d forgotten how much fun day-afters can be when you were once again the responsible one. I’d paced myself and stopped drinking early in anticipation of needing to drive out the previous night, so I got to lord my unpoisoned gullet and functioning brain over the rest of those assembled. Hey, ya gotta savor the little things.
After that I was on the road again. Once more quite an uneventful trip. I’m beginning to wonder when my luck will run out and I’ll have an ill-fated trip fraught with disaster, but for now these have been nice. The worst thing that happened was my new radio transmitter widget started to lose out to a local station. I’m thoroughly impressed with how long it took that to happen. It made it through a whole audiobook on the way in, so I’m very happy with that purchase. The remote is a little irritating to use, but I usually just tell it to go and leave it alone for a couple hours, so that never really comes up. The other fancy technical machine that I added to my car recently was also put through its paces. Fearing the toll-collecting disaster that happened last time I was in Illinois and Indiana, I asked about the particulars at one of the tollbooths I stopped at. The teller there said that Easy Pass is compatible with I-Pass now. That’s a great convenience, to be sure. I took her at her word and used the I-Pass lanes. That was a tremendous convenience, even though something about the roadway architecture causes my GPS to register the toll plazas as left exits, leading to some confusing directions. I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to come home to a big pile of toll bills when I get home though. Here’s hoping it all works out.
A somewhat later arrival than planned made for a shorter visit than I’d anticipated, but that’s fine. Thanks to the modified itinerary I had a second chance at this destination after the con. My Navy friend was settled in enough by that point to drop by for a visit and hang out with me and my high school friend for a bit. I wasn’t sure how that meeting would go, seeing as we’re talking about two rather different social spheres here, but it went quite well. We’re all of similar sentiment and sensibilities, so we got along quite well. I even found out that we all play Hearthstone, so we got to do that together. Games of various sorts filled in the rest of that day and the next, with going out for meals in-between. We played the old standbys of Munchkin and Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and also some Monty Python Fluxx. I didn’t care for that last one too much, actually. I like Fluxx, but Monty Python fans are rabid practically by definition, so the game wanted a lot of knowledge from me that I didn’t have to give thanks to the many years separating me from my last viewings of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and Spamalot, the only pythonesque things I’ve ever seen.
Lastly, we all went out and saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I figured I’d give it a look because I hear that the Twitbook and the Facetube and whatnot are all abuzz about it. Really, if not for all the positive word-of-mouth I wouldn’t have had any inclination to see it. The trailers make it look like a whole lot more incongruous fantasy nonsense wrapped in insubstantial spectacle and special effects. I don’t know what’s more offensive, that filmmakers believe that flash and glamor are the only things that we’ll get people to see a movie, or that they are not entirely incorrect in that assertion. In any case, GotG was a pleasant surprise in many respects. They made a lot of really solid casting decisions overall. I don’t know how necessary it was to bring in Vin Diesel to say “I am Groot.” Sixteen times, but elsewhere they did a fairly good job. The choice of the Wreck-it Ralph/Stepbrothers guy for the well-meaning security guard was excellent, and Glenn Close found a good fit in her military commander role. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in a role that wasn’t soul-rendingly evil.
Judging by the title and trailers, I was expecting this to be some more samey, bland, big-goddamn-heroes, stalwart savior of the land stuff that I’ve seen a million times. Granted, the ragtag group of adventurers isn’t a new concept either, but they did it very well in this one. My favorite scene was when our heroes had been imprisoned and the jailers were going through their dossiers. The warden commented “What a bunch of assholes.” Which nicely encapsulated the group dynamic, really. The perennial favorite, and not just among furry circles, was Rocket Raccoon, and I can easily see why. He brought that grounding element of realism and practicality to the more hammy and clichéd scenes, keeping me from tiring of the tropes and making me stay invested in the movie. All around it was a really fun experience, and I’d highly recommend the movie.
The next day I got up at sonofabitch o’clock in the morning to be obnoxiously early for my flight, as one must in these trying times. I suppose I can credit the Navy with making getting up really early a great deal easier. Though I still take issue with their methods and believe that the final benefit was in no way worth what I endured. In any case, I got to the airport and got my car parked in what I thought was good time, but it would appear that I underestimated the needlessly bewildering design of the Cincinnati airport. I’ve never seen critical services arranged with such a vast vertical separation between them. The floor I came in on had nothing of use that I could find, and after wandering around enough I saw the security checkpoint one floor above, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out a way to get up there other than taking the escalator down a floor, and then taking the two-floor superescalator up again.
Oh, and in all this time I never came across a single goddamn baggage check counter. Usually you can’t not find those things. I still don’t know where they hid them and it’s a mystery I may never solve. By then I was pressed for time, so instead of doing something brash and unreasonable like asking for directions, I just took my checked bag through the checkpoint and to the departure gate, where my keen intuition told me that my plane would be. Bitch about air travel all you want (I know I will later), but they do take care of you if you just have a little patience and tact. All I had to do was go up to the gate and tell them I fucked up and would they please help. I was fully expecting to pay extra, but since I’d paid the baggage fee already they had no problem just tossing it in the hold and sending me on my way.
Speaking of fees though, holy mother of Christ are they in love with fees at Frontier Airlines! Checked AND carry-on bag fees, fees for snacks, a fee to choose the seat you want, oh and did I mention that you get bag fees in both directions when you buy round-trip tickets? I bought these tickets based on the fact that it was a direct flight and was only moderately more expensive than getting routed through the dark side of the moon like Delta and Southwest wanted me to. Nearly $100 in fees later I’m beginning to regret that decision. They’re fuckin’ snooty about it, too. I had one carry on and one checked bag, both of which were assessed fees that were charged to my credit card as “excess baggage”. How is ONE bag “excess”? Tricky bastards. Whatever, I still got to the location of my next furry con though, and on a plane with foxes painted on the wings, no less. Nevir came to pick me up at the airport since I’d managed to land just before he had to go in to work. Of course that meant that he ferried me to a rather empty house. That was fine by me, as I had just gotten up really early and time-traveled a bit, so I was in need of a little time to reset. A shower and a nap later I was starting to feel and perhaps even resemble a human being again.
Casa Nevir did not stay empty particularly long, as there was in fact quite a crowd living there. Lots of hasty introductions that I wasn’t too on top of in my hazy state. I remember probably half of the five or six names I was meant to learn, which is actually pretty good given my name-recognition track record. It was most assuredly a furry household, lots of activity and somewhat nerdy swag all about. There was also a large black and white striped lizard quietly pattering about the living room, periodically startling me by licking my ankles. He eventually got stuck behind a bookshelf and ceased to trouble me. He was back there a long time, but I’m sure he’s fine. Interesting pet though, to be sure. And like everyone else in the house, he has a Furaffinity page.
I was mostly uninvolved in the departure hullaballoo that the next morning brought. Ryoken, Nevir, Arashiin, and Vaisz all had a great deal of shit-get-togethering to do. I on the other hand, was ready to travel at a moment’s notice, seeing as I was already traveling. I did get a little behind thanks to some complacency born of hearing “Okay we’re leaving in a few minutes.” Every ten minutes for an hour or two. We still got underway in good time though. Not that I was particularly worried about it. I knew practically no one at this con, so I figured I’d be at a loss for a way to fill in the time before the con started. I’m not often wrong thanks to my expansive skillset and impeccable judgment, and it is even more seldom that I am glad to have been mistaken. And as it turned out, almost first thing on arrival something to occupy my time with all but slapped me in the face.
And you'll have to wait until next time to find out exactly what that was because once again the heft of my prose has broken FA's brain. The exciting conclusion, also known as "the part of the con journal that actually talks about the convention" happens to be right here.
I got to add a second entry to my list of Tiny Dogs I’ve Met That Weren’t Unrepentant Assholes. They’d gotten a Dachshund recently and it was also at an extremely high-energy age. Everything she did was full-throttle weaponized adorableness. She would zip all around as fast as her comically short legs would carry her at the slightest provocation and was constantly clamoring for attention. She knew that jumping up on the couch was a great way to get my attention, and her attempts to make the leap were quite reliably entertaining. In the end though, she got into my suitcase and chewed up my good belt, so I’ll call it a wash.
We never did manage to come to a consensus on which movie to see, but the one big event that really did work out was laser tag. They have unlimited play for $12 available on Thursday, so we got to have a good long session of that. We got our money’s worth, certainly, playing for several hours to our utter exhaustion. I suppose my next Incredibly Short List would have to be physical activity that I enjoy, so I’ll add laser tag on there right underneath bounce castles and above… I can’t think of another example actually, so I’ll just leave it at that.
It’s always such a stark contrast to visit this guy, what with his family and his two jobs to support that family, he’s always got something going on. Even when he’s doing everything he can to spare some time, I still find myself sitting around at his place using his X-Box to watch Youtube videos on his big screen TV. Not a bad position to be in, certainly, but also not what I came there to do. I didn’t exactly keep tabs on what time was spent doing what exactly, but I had enough time there to finish Crash Course World History and get all the way through American History too. So yeah, I had a bit of time to myself. I guess all the sitting around and doing nothing is appropriate, seeing as I’ve been doing a lot of that these days.
After that I was off to Ace’s party. That was something of an odd scenario, as I was at a gathering of several dozen people, of whom I knew precisely one. Of course that matches the con dynamic pretty well. The people that I know ratio at a convention is usually about 1:400, so when looked at from that perspective this was actually a much less burdensome situation. I made out pretty well there, overall. I managed to burn up an entire day without really noticing, so I could safely say that it was a good time. Ace’s friends are a pretty even mix of furries and gearheads, both pretty easy groups to get along with, even if I have very little in common with the latter. One of them brought a Corvette Stingray with them, and on numerous occasions they would literally say “Hey, let’s go look at the Corvette some more!” and they would all go giddily flock around it to fawn over their idol for another ten minutes. Didn’t really get that at all, but then we got drunk and played volleyball with a comically large inflatable ball, so that I understood and we all got along again.
Two fursuiters got properly decked out and added a little life to the party. Tiggy and Doctor Fox were both excited to have a chance to bask in the adulation of the crowd. Tiggy made the very generous but possibly irresponsible decision to let some of the drunk girls borrow his head, the resulting hilarity was well worth the risk. Strange how generous I am in assessing risk when someone else anted up for it. I was a fair bit warm even though I was just wearing my human disguise, so I greatly admired the resilience of the performers. I sat for a while next to each of them pointing a big box fan at them, since I felt bad for them and I wasn’t doing much else useful. Doctor Fox mumbled some exasperated gratitude as he leaned into the stream of air. I sat and chatted with him for a little while as he recovered. It was a nice chance to get to know him a bit and… wait, are we holding hands? Ah well, whatever. It’s in fursuit, it doesn’t count. For some reason that only would’ve been weird if he’d lacked claws and had the correct number of fingers.
I’ll have to add that one to the bookjacket of my memoir. “You know, if not for the big cartoon animal costume that would’ve been really awkward.”
The Town of Carol Stream certainly knows how to throw a welcome home bash for a veteran, I’ll give them that. The whole yard was lined with little American flags along the curb, which of course everyone knocked over when they were getting out of their cars, but you know, good thought. We got a visit from the Red Bull Beetle, bringing refreshments for those of us dissatisfied with their inability to hear their blood pounding in their ears at all times. The two Red Bull girls parked in the spot that I had recently vacated when I noticed that it was next to a hydrant. No one was particularly worried about it as the police presence in the sleepy little town was scant at best. And then of course eight police cruisers and a couple fire trucks showed up.
Like I said, this place really knows how to welcome someone home. It was all for Ace’s dramatic and very temporary return to his roost. That was a real unexpected treat. We did lots of photos with the whole squad, did competitive breathalyzers and got pictures of us being thrown into the back of a squad car. You know, all the things one usually does when they encounter the police in a context other than having just broken the law. And for the record, yes, one of the officers did tell the Red Bull girls to move their car. I was just blown away by that whole production. I get a few free drinks at the American Legion now and then, but damn do these guys put on a show. I suppose it’s fitting that my and Ace’s respective welcomes mirror our respective enthusiasm about the Navy.
Speaking of the Navy, Ace took on the mantle of the time-honored tradition of forgetting that your tolerance ebbs somewhat when you spend three months at sea without drinking a drop. I got to sit back and watch the most entertaining progression of him going through happy drunk, silly drunk, emotional weepy drunk, and holy-shit-what-did-I-just-do-to-myself projectile vomiting drunk. Yee-Haw! Anyways, he’d asked if I’d like to come with him to autocross the next morning and a concert that afternoon and I’d said that I’d take him up on it, even if it now looked like he’d be offline for at least a day, if not two. We managed to stop him just short of hospital drunk, so he was not in the best spirits. Though he certainly had the best of spirits in him.
Even though I was relatively certain that the next day would just be me saying my farewells to a friend doing his best washed-up corpse impression, I elected to stay the night there. I’d been there a lot longer than I’d planned to, and that would have me arriving in Ohio between midnight and one in the morning. Seeing as my friend in Oxford had to work the next day, I’d presume he would rather that I not do that. It got me out of renting a room and it gave me the chance to say goodbye in a way that Ace actually had some statistically significant chance of remembering, so I went for it. I even got a mattress instead of a couch by virtue of its intended users already passing out in other locations. They also had a mixed-breed small dog of more typical small dog demeanor, but he was tolerable for the most part outside of waking me up at odd hours and his excruciating habit of eating my leg hairs while I was still wearing them.
In any case, the next day Ace was still throwing up which was… kind of impressive, actually. I took that as my confirmation that he wasn’t going anywhere today and got ready to leave. I was in no particular hurry, mind, but I was surprised to see that he’d actually gotten himself together enough to head out to lunch. He even felt like going to the concert afterwards. Apparently staying drunk through the night had enabled him to stave off what ought to have been quite a crippling hangover. A feat that only professional drunks can pull off with any reliability. We rounded up a couple of his old friends and headed out to a fair that was in town for the weekend.
The band that he’d taken us there to see was a local operation called 7th Heaven. A pretty solid group of traveling minstrels, really. It’s nice to hear a band with some good fundamentals. Diction, tone, and musicality, all very good. You don’t see that often enough these days. Performance has gotten to be too much about fancy effects and stage spectacle, the actual good music part of the performance has gotten left behind. The best was yet to come though, as after their opening set they got to the 30 Songs in 30 Minutes Challenge, which is very much what its title would suggest it would be. They segue through the best parts of thirty old classics far faster than should be possible. I’d thought that it would be a silly gimmick, but the whole thing was extremely well put together, and the way that they made all those different styles of music mesh together smoothly was quite impressive. They even did plenty of songs that I knew, so I found myself singing along at a number of points. It was enough to catch the attention of the band, it would seem, because I got one of their albums when they were handing out free ones to first-timers. The heat had withered us by the end though, and so we took our leave.
On the way home, Ace thought that he might check in on how the autocross event was going. Even though he couldn’t compete on account of his innards still being pickled that morning, he knew a few people there, so it was worth visiting. With this inspiration came the noteworthy complication that he didn’t know how to get to the event from where we were. You’d think that getting to the point where we could see it from the highway would be the hard part, but that’s not how the American highway system works. I was content to sit back and let this slapstick play out at first, after all, what use would I be? I did end up helping some in the end, as I brought to the table some useful skills like reading roadsigns and recognizing places that we’ve been before in our search. In any case, we made it and got to see the fancy obstacle course that they had set up in a big parking lot of a stadium.
I’ve likely mentioned before my profound indifference to motorsports, so it was fair to say that my enthusiasm for this event was lukewarm at best, tepid even. It may be a bit hypocritical of me given how subdued most of my hobbies are, but ‘Yeah! Racecar, go fast!’ isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. Still, it was at the very least somewhat interesting to be able to watch the cars executing some pretty difficult maneuvers from so close by. This course was a lot more about control and handling than speed, with sharp corners and tight spaces featured heavily throughout. Tiggy had enough runs left for each of us to take a ride, and I’ll admit to feeling just a little bit of excitement at that prospect. After one run though, he said that having a passenger was throwing off his weight balance and he wouldn’t be able to take anyone else. And like the small child that I often emulate with my behavior, being denied something made me really want it. Even though I don’t really know what they’re on about most of the time, I’ve found gearheads to be a congenial and sociable bunch, so I went for it. I threw on a helmet and walked up to one of the cars to ask the driver for a ride. She seemed flattered that I was impressed by her machine and how she used it, so she said that I could hop in.
Going through that course was most assuredly worth doing once. There’s a lot of exhilaration to maneuvering at speed that you don’t get from simply going really fast. There’s tension and excitement, the ever present threat of knocking a cone over and feeling the shame that comes with even the slightest of errors. It’s a pretty good time altogether. The things that they do with these cars are also just damned impressive. They have these obstacles called garages that are roughly the size of two parking spaces arranged lengthwise. They have small openings at opposite ends of the long sides, necessitating their navigation by weaving through the thing almost sideways. Some of these things I couldn’t navigate at any speed, let alone racing speeds, and indeed, garages are impossible to traverse without going fast enough to swing the back wheels around and drift through the turn.
Regardless of what I think of car culture in general, there’s always a certain amount of fun to be had in watching someone that’s really good at what they do. That made it well worth the price of admission. And given that the price of admission was signing a waiver absolving them of liability if I injured myself doing this, debasing myself a little in front of a stranger and bullshitting my way through some gearhead talk while we waited for our turn, I’d say this decision had quite a hefty profit margin on it. Of course once I got back my true colors showed again. There was more gearhead talk among Ace and his friends that I was woefully unprepared for. I did indeed talk to the driver for quite some time, and my audience found it inconceivable that I wouldn’t have picked up an extensive dossier on the car’s design, performance capabilities and vital statistics in that time. If it’s just a little idle back-and-forth, I can sound like I know what I’m talking about with just about any subject. That’s something that you learn in the Navy quite quickly, as it’s far more useful than actually knowing what you’re talking about when your supervisors also don’t understand your job. When confronted with a direct question like what kind of suspension the car had or what the cylinder displacement is, it’s kind of hard to sneak around that question. Hell, I couldn’t even get past the easy ones.
“So, which car were you in? The Bel Air?”
“The one with the girl in it.”
“Yeah, but what kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know. It was the orange convertible that Claire was driving.”
“You learned her name but not the model of car you were in at the time?”
“Yes. I believe that my priorities were well in order, thank you very much.”
This sounds like a setup for a ‘one of the guys’ sort of joke, but that falls kind of flat given that I was the only person in our group more interested in women than cars.
After that we all went to Buffalo Wild Wings to fuel up before we parted ways again. They have Strongbow there, so I had a couple of them. The way everyone else was visibly sickened by the mere presence of an alcoholic beverage was quite a reliable source of amusement. I’d forgotten how much fun day-afters can be when you were once again the responsible one. I’d paced myself and stopped drinking early in anticipation of needing to drive out the previous night, so I got to lord my unpoisoned gullet and functioning brain over the rest of those assembled. Hey, ya gotta savor the little things.
After that I was on the road again. Once more quite an uneventful trip. I’m beginning to wonder when my luck will run out and I’ll have an ill-fated trip fraught with disaster, but for now these have been nice. The worst thing that happened was my new radio transmitter widget started to lose out to a local station. I’m thoroughly impressed with how long it took that to happen. It made it through a whole audiobook on the way in, so I’m very happy with that purchase. The remote is a little irritating to use, but I usually just tell it to go and leave it alone for a couple hours, so that never really comes up. The other fancy technical machine that I added to my car recently was also put through its paces. Fearing the toll-collecting disaster that happened last time I was in Illinois and Indiana, I asked about the particulars at one of the tollbooths I stopped at. The teller there said that Easy Pass is compatible with I-Pass now. That’s a great convenience, to be sure. I took her at her word and used the I-Pass lanes. That was a tremendous convenience, even though something about the roadway architecture causes my GPS to register the toll plazas as left exits, leading to some confusing directions. I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to come home to a big pile of toll bills when I get home though. Here’s hoping it all works out.
A somewhat later arrival than planned made for a shorter visit than I’d anticipated, but that’s fine. Thanks to the modified itinerary I had a second chance at this destination after the con. My Navy friend was settled in enough by that point to drop by for a visit and hang out with me and my high school friend for a bit. I wasn’t sure how that meeting would go, seeing as we’re talking about two rather different social spheres here, but it went quite well. We’re all of similar sentiment and sensibilities, so we got along quite well. I even found out that we all play Hearthstone, so we got to do that together. Games of various sorts filled in the rest of that day and the next, with going out for meals in-between. We played the old standbys of Munchkin and Betrayal at the House on the Hill, and also some Monty Python Fluxx. I didn’t care for that last one too much, actually. I like Fluxx, but Monty Python fans are rabid practically by definition, so the game wanted a lot of knowledge from me that I didn’t have to give thanks to the many years separating me from my last viewings of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and Spamalot, the only pythonesque things I’ve ever seen.
Lastly, we all went out and saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I figured I’d give it a look because I hear that the Twitbook and the Facetube and whatnot are all abuzz about it. Really, if not for all the positive word-of-mouth I wouldn’t have had any inclination to see it. The trailers make it look like a whole lot more incongruous fantasy nonsense wrapped in insubstantial spectacle and special effects. I don’t know what’s more offensive, that filmmakers believe that flash and glamor are the only things that we’ll get people to see a movie, or that they are not entirely incorrect in that assertion. In any case, GotG was a pleasant surprise in many respects. They made a lot of really solid casting decisions overall. I don’t know how necessary it was to bring in Vin Diesel to say “I am Groot.” Sixteen times, but elsewhere they did a fairly good job. The choice of the Wreck-it Ralph/Stepbrothers guy for the well-meaning security guard was excellent, and Glenn Close found a good fit in her military commander role. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her in a role that wasn’t soul-rendingly evil.
Judging by the title and trailers, I was expecting this to be some more samey, bland, big-goddamn-heroes, stalwart savior of the land stuff that I’ve seen a million times. Granted, the ragtag group of adventurers isn’t a new concept either, but they did it very well in this one. My favorite scene was when our heroes had been imprisoned and the jailers were going through their dossiers. The warden commented “What a bunch of assholes.” Which nicely encapsulated the group dynamic, really. The perennial favorite, and not just among furry circles, was Rocket Raccoon, and I can easily see why. He brought that grounding element of realism and practicality to the more hammy and clichéd scenes, keeping me from tiring of the tropes and making me stay invested in the movie. All around it was a really fun experience, and I’d highly recommend the movie.
The next day I got up at sonofabitch o’clock in the morning to be obnoxiously early for my flight, as one must in these trying times. I suppose I can credit the Navy with making getting up really early a great deal easier. Though I still take issue with their methods and believe that the final benefit was in no way worth what I endured. In any case, I got to the airport and got my car parked in what I thought was good time, but it would appear that I underestimated the needlessly bewildering design of the Cincinnati airport. I’ve never seen critical services arranged with such a vast vertical separation between them. The floor I came in on had nothing of use that I could find, and after wandering around enough I saw the security checkpoint one floor above, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out a way to get up there other than taking the escalator down a floor, and then taking the two-floor superescalator up again.
Oh, and in all this time I never came across a single goddamn baggage check counter. Usually you can’t not find those things. I still don’t know where they hid them and it’s a mystery I may never solve. By then I was pressed for time, so instead of doing something brash and unreasonable like asking for directions, I just took my checked bag through the checkpoint and to the departure gate, where my keen intuition told me that my plane would be. Bitch about air travel all you want (I know I will later), but they do take care of you if you just have a little patience and tact. All I had to do was go up to the gate and tell them I fucked up and would they please help. I was fully expecting to pay extra, but since I’d paid the baggage fee already they had no problem just tossing it in the hold and sending me on my way.
Speaking of fees though, holy mother of Christ are they in love with fees at Frontier Airlines! Checked AND carry-on bag fees, fees for snacks, a fee to choose the seat you want, oh and did I mention that you get bag fees in both directions when you buy round-trip tickets? I bought these tickets based on the fact that it was a direct flight and was only moderately more expensive than getting routed through the dark side of the moon like Delta and Southwest wanted me to. Nearly $100 in fees later I’m beginning to regret that decision. They’re fuckin’ snooty about it, too. I had one carry on and one checked bag, both of which were assessed fees that were charged to my credit card as “excess baggage”. How is ONE bag “excess”? Tricky bastards. Whatever, I still got to the location of my next furry con though, and on a plane with foxes painted on the wings, no less. Nevir came to pick me up at the airport since I’d managed to land just before he had to go in to work. Of course that meant that he ferried me to a rather empty house. That was fine by me, as I had just gotten up really early and time-traveled a bit, so I was in need of a little time to reset. A shower and a nap later I was starting to feel and perhaps even resemble a human being again.
Casa Nevir did not stay empty particularly long, as there was in fact quite a crowd living there. Lots of hasty introductions that I wasn’t too on top of in my hazy state. I remember probably half of the five or six names I was meant to learn, which is actually pretty good given my name-recognition track record. It was most assuredly a furry household, lots of activity and somewhat nerdy swag all about. There was also a large black and white striped lizard quietly pattering about the living room, periodically startling me by licking my ankles. He eventually got stuck behind a bookshelf and ceased to trouble me. He was back there a long time, but I’m sure he’s fine. Interesting pet though, to be sure. And like everyone else in the house, he has a Furaffinity page.
I was mostly uninvolved in the departure hullaballoo that the next morning brought. Ryoken, Nevir, Arashiin, and Vaisz all had a great deal of shit-get-togethering to do. I on the other hand, was ready to travel at a moment’s notice, seeing as I was already traveling. I did get a little behind thanks to some complacency born of hearing “Okay we’re leaving in a few minutes.” Every ten minutes for an hour or two. We still got underway in good time though. Not that I was particularly worried about it. I knew practically no one at this con, so I figured I’d be at a loss for a way to fill in the time before the con started. I’m not often wrong thanks to my expansive skillset and impeccable judgment, and it is even more seldom that I am glad to have been mistaken. And as it turned out, almost first thing on arrival something to occupy my time with all but slapped me in the face.
And you'll have to wait until next time to find out exactly what that was because once again the heft of my prose has broken FA's brain. The exciting conclusion, also known as "the part of the con journal that actually talks about the convention" happens to be right here.
Rocky Mountain Fur Con Meme
General | Posted 11 years agoAwright, so quick recap for those of you who didn't survive all the way to the end of the Anthrocon II: A Good Day to Anthocon Harder journal. I hung out with 
Nevir and 
Ryoken at Anthrocon, who mentioned that they lived in Denver and were planning on attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con, conveniently also in Denver. I talked about how I would be traveling to Chicago for 
AceFox27's going away party in a few weeks, which is within arm's reach of Denver if your arms happen to be made of commercial passenger aircraft. And we all live in the house that Jack built. So the wondertwins said that they'd be happy to host me at their bungalow in the gap between attending the party and attending the convention, O'Hare and Denver both being major commuter airport hubs it would be insultingly easy to fly between them and I should have it made in the shade. Can't wait to hear how I screw this up? Well fortunately you don't have to! Meet me down in the next paragraph.
So, I have a number of contacts in the Ohio River Valley that I thought I might bring into this, partly because they never visit and I'll only see them if I take the initiative and partly because a straight shot to Chicago by car would take more than 10 hours. So I had the brilliant plan of bringing the total number of destinations and people involved in this trip up to five and six, respectively. That went about as well as you'd think it would, going screwy in ways I never could've conceived. So, initially I'd meant to leave my ancestral home in western New York and head to Canton, OH to meet up with an old Navy buddy. Then I'd hit up the party in Chicago, probably sleep over at his place, then come back down to Garrett, IL to stay with my best friend from high school for a few days before my flight out of Chicago. A little aerial pirouette and one furry convention later I'd be back in Chicago. I could then proceed to the University of Misleadingly Named Locations, Miami College in Oxford, OH, and from there to home. A solid plan, I'd just have to get in touch with everyone along the way and make sure all the logistics came out okay. Easy! I'm glad that made those connections early because precisely none of those driving destinations were okay with my plan.
My friend in Canton informed me that he would cease being in Canton at the end of this month because he was moving to attend none other than Miami College in Oxford. Ya can't make this stuff up. Anyways, "that'll save time" I naively thought as I called my contact in Oxford to see if I could combine the two destinations into one. Turns out that he is leaving Oxford early in August because Miami College has taught him everything that it can about confusing Google Maps with baffling street addresses. So he will shortly not be in his present location as well. In Chicago they're also in the process of moving (hence why I'm going out there in the first place) and wouldn't be able to put me up for any noteworthy length of time. And of course my friend in Garrett works two jobs to support the two new women in his life (He has a wife and a daughter. Why, what did you think I meant?) so he was unavailable during the time I'd be wanting to bed down in Indiana. All this made both my ground and flight travel plans infeasible in a dozen different ways. Oh, and did I mention that all of these people operate on entirely different communication frequencies? I hear from Ryoken mostly through FA, Nevir and my friend from Oxford I have on my cell, the guy in Garrett is on Facebook (sometimes), I communicate with Canton through the Steam network.
So yeah, I had a bunch of dates and locations and travel times written down, and set my mind to the task of figuring out a vacation that was phrased a lot like an extremely aggressive SAT question. It was about this time that I got a letter from my college telling me that I made the Dean's List for last semester. Bolstered with the knowledge that I'm at least smart enough to be extremely good at colleging, I took on my new challenge. Canton is right out, no contact there anymore and certainly no reason to go to Canton without anyone in town there. The second-closest destination was Garrett, a trifling eight hours by car. My window of opportunity opens early there though, so by leaving sooner I can make that destination work. That puts me just 3.5 hours away from the party just outside Chicago, but I no longer have the time to spread my wings and fly there, thanks to the ultimatum from Oxford. So, after the party I'll have to find a nearby hotel so that I can be fresh for the drive to Oxford the next day. I'll get to be there for the last of my friend's tenure at Miami College and probably be unwittingly roped into helping him move but whatever it's been a long time since I've done anything useful. The problem then being that I'm much too far out for a back-and-forth to Chicago again to make any sense, so I had to give up my dream of cheap, simple direct flights in exchange for the expensive and dauntingly counterintuitive less ideal flights out of the less ideal but nearby Cincinnati. This means waking up my contacts in Denver at ass O'clock in the morning to come rescue me from the airport. My understanding of the topography out there is that the Denver terminal is not particularly near the actual-populated-city part of Denver, but I'm sure that my hosts there were aware of this when they generously offered to come and retrieve me once they flew in. I do hate putting them out like this, but they were literally the only portion of my itinerary with any flexibility in it. Speaking of inflexible pigeonholing, after I'm done playing with people in brightly colored animal costumes over the weekend, there's another poorly-timed flight back to Cincinnati to be flown. I'll be back on the ground far too late to consider taking on the nine or so hours of driving that I have remaining before I'm back home again, so I'll head back to Oxford to find that my previous friend there has been handily replaced by another one. I can visit with him for some indeterminate period and get some by then desperately needed rest before embarking on my journey home. And then once I get home I have about three days before I have to pack up and head back to college. Which is going to be a whole other disaster in itself, I'm sure. Yay.
In any case, this new grand solution of mine is at least physically possible if not particularly simple or convenient, and should still allow me to hit all the wickets I'd meant to at the outset. I've not the vaguest idea of what I'll actually be doing at any of these disparate and variegated locations (oh, I guess I've moved onto the vocabulary and reading comprehension section of the SAT now) because for some reason the bulk of my available processing power has been devoted to communications and figuring out exactly how to put myself in the correct locations at the available times. I'm sure I'll think of something. And even if I don't think of something though, I'll be with friends, and that's what really counts. Hell, the whole trip is pretty much leapfrogging between my academic, Navy and furry social circles, which overlap in such wonderful ways in Acefox's case. So, for the first time in awhile, I'm sure everything will be fine. Now then, onward, to adventure!
Since my last con was just a few weeks ago, I'm just going to list the stuff that has changed since I posted my Anthrocon Meme, namely, the details of the convention itself.
Where are you staying?
nevir and ryoken's pad, and presumably their room at the con if they live far enough away to merit one. Those two put up with me quite well for some reason.
What day are you getting there?
The morning of the 6th. Which is a Wednesday, I think. Calendars are hard.
How are you traveling?
See above. If any of that mess works, that's how I'll be getting there.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Tough call. I've never been to this con before, nor do I know too many people near the geographic center of the nation. We'll see how it goes.
Are there any panels or events you might be attending?
This is another tough one to answer. The RMFC website is pretty vague on what their programming actually is, so I don't really know. It's listed that they have a writing track, but I've checked with the usual crew and none of them are on it. That'll still be something to check out though.
Nevir and 
Ryoken at Anthrocon, who mentioned that they lived in Denver and were planning on attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con, conveniently also in Denver. I talked about how I would be traveling to Chicago for 
AceFox27's going away party in a few weeks, which is within arm's reach of Denver if your arms happen to be made of commercial passenger aircraft. And we all live in the house that Jack built. So the wondertwins said that they'd be happy to host me at their bungalow in the gap between attending the party and attending the convention, O'Hare and Denver both being major commuter airport hubs it would be insultingly easy to fly between them and I should have it made in the shade. Can't wait to hear how I screw this up? Well fortunately you don't have to! Meet me down in the next paragraph.So, I have a number of contacts in the Ohio River Valley that I thought I might bring into this, partly because they never visit and I'll only see them if I take the initiative and partly because a straight shot to Chicago by car would take more than 10 hours. So I had the brilliant plan of bringing the total number of destinations and people involved in this trip up to five and six, respectively. That went about as well as you'd think it would, going screwy in ways I never could've conceived. So, initially I'd meant to leave my ancestral home in western New York and head to Canton, OH to meet up with an old Navy buddy. Then I'd hit up the party in Chicago, probably sleep over at his place, then come back down to Garrett, IL to stay with my best friend from high school for a few days before my flight out of Chicago. A little aerial pirouette and one furry convention later I'd be back in Chicago. I could then proceed to the University of Misleadingly Named Locations, Miami College in Oxford, OH, and from there to home. A solid plan, I'd just have to get in touch with everyone along the way and make sure all the logistics came out okay. Easy! I'm glad that made those connections early because precisely none of those driving destinations were okay with my plan.
My friend in Canton informed me that he would cease being in Canton at the end of this month because he was moving to attend none other than Miami College in Oxford. Ya can't make this stuff up. Anyways, "that'll save time" I naively thought as I called my contact in Oxford to see if I could combine the two destinations into one. Turns out that he is leaving Oxford early in August because Miami College has taught him everything that it can about confusing Google Maps with baffling street addresses. So he will shortly not be in his present location as well. In Chicago they're also in the process of moving (hence why I'm going out there in the first place) and wouldn't be able to put me up for any noteworthy length of time. And of course my friend in Garrett works two jobs to support the two new women in his life (He has a wife and a daughter. Why, what did you think I meant?) so he was unavailable during the time I'd be wanting to bed down in Indiana. All this made both my ground and flight travel plans infeasible in a dozen different ways. Oh, and did I mention that all of these people operate on entirely different communication frequencies? I hear from Ryoken mostly through FA, Nevir and my friend from Oxford I have on my cell, the guy in Garrett is on Facebook (sometimes), I communicate with Canton through the Steam network.
So yeah, I had a bunch of dates and locations and travel times written down, and set my mind to the task of figuring out a vacation that was phrased a lot like an extremely aggressive SAT question. It was about this time that I got a letter from my college telling me that I made the Dean's List for last semester. Bolstered with the knowledge that I'm at least smart enough to be extremely good at colleging, I took on my new challenge. Canton is right out, no contact there anymore and certainly no reason to go to Canton without anyone in town there. The second-closest destination was Garrett, a trifling eight hours by car. My window of opportunity opens early there though, so by leaving sooner I can make that destination work. That puts me just 3.5 hours away from the party just outside Chicago, but I no longer have the time to spread my wings and fly there, thanks to the ultimatum from Oxford. So, after the party I'll have to find a nearby hotel so that I can be fresh for the drive to Oxford the next day. I'll get to be there for the last of my friend's tenure at Miami College and probably be unwittingly roped into helping him move but whatever it's been a long time since I've done anything useful. The problem then being that I'm much too far out for a back-and-forth to Chicago again to make any sense, so I had to give up my dream of cheap, simple direct flights in exchange for the expensive and dauntingly counterintuitive less ideal flights out of the less ideal but nearby Cincinnati. This means waking up my contacts in Denver at ass O'clock in the morning to come rescue me from the airport. My understanding of the topography out there is that the Denver terminal is not particularly near the actual-populated-city part of Denver, but I'm sure that my hosts there were aware of this when they generously offered to come and retrieve me once they flew in. I do hate putting them out like this, but they were literally the only portion of my itinerary with any flexibility in it. Speaking of inflexible pigeonholing, after I'm done playing with people in brightly colored animal costumes over the weekend, there's another poorly-timed flight back to Cincinnati to be flown. I'll be back on the ground far too late to consider taking on the nine or so hours of driving that I have remaining before I'm back home again, so I'll head back to Oxford to find that my previous friend there has been handily replaced by another one. I can visit with him for some indeterminate period and get some by then desperately needed rest before embarking on my journey home. And then once I get home I have about three days before I have to pack up and head back to college. Which is going to be a whole other disaster in itself, I'm sure. Yay.
In any case, this new grand solution of mine is at least physically possible if not particularly simple or convenient, and should still allow me to hit all the wickets I'd meant to at the outset. I've not the vaguest idea of what I'll actually be doing at any of these disparate and variegated locations (oh, I guess I've moved onto the vocabulary and reading comprehension section of the SAT now) because for some reason the bulk of my available processing power has been devoted to communications and figuring out exactly how to put myself in the correct locations at the available times. I'm sure I'll think of something. And even if I don't think of something though, I'll be with friends, and that's what really counts. Hell, the whole trip is pretty much leapfrogging between my academic, Navy and furry social circles, which overlap in such wonderful ways in Acefox's case. So, for the first time in awhile, I'm sure everything will be fine. Now then, onward, to adventure!
Since my last con was just a few weeks ago, I'm just going to list the stuff that has changed since I posted my Anthrocon Meme, namely, the details of the convention itself.
Where are you staying?
nevir and ryoken's pad, and presumably their room at the con if they live far enough away to merit one. Those two put up with me quite well for some reason.What day are you getting there?
The morning of the 6th. Which is a Wednesday, I think. Calendars are hard.
How are you traveling?
See above. If any of that mess works, that's how I'll be getting there.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Tough call. I've never been to this con before, nor do I know too many people near the geographic center of the nation. We'll see how it goes.
Are there any panels or events you might be attending?
This is another tough one to answer. The RMFC website is pretty vague on what their programming actually is, so I don't really know. It's listed that they have a writing track, but I've checked with the usual crew and none of them are on it. That'll still be something to check out though.
Post-AC adventures
General | Posted 11 years agoWe now return you to your regularly scheduled senseless rambling already in progress. Be sure to check out Part One if you missed it.
My plan was to drive until I was too tired to continue and then stop some place for the night. I made it to Wilkes-Barre, much further than I thought I would. That’s not to say the plan went off without a hitch though. Most places that I went into looked at me like my hair was on fire when I said that I was trying to book a room without a reservation. Did that stop being a thing at some point? When did people stop doing that? I’ve always been of a mind to just go to the place I’m closest to when I need sleep, and I never had the feeling that I was alone in that regard. There are obviously people still doing it, as I went to three different places that were sold out of singles. Such a strange thing. This must be how Lucius feels when he journeys to Not-Texas and finds that everything is radically different for no apparent reason and people take twenty minutes to try and wrap their head around why he’s ironing a sopping wet pair of jeans and treating this operation as if it’s normal behavior.
After hearing “Oh, well you can book a double for $149.” for the third time I decided to check out a Motel 6 that I’d spied from across the street. I know that place doesn’t have the best reputation, but I don’t need a lot of frills and services if I’m just going to sleep there. I did end up deciding against it after I drove there though. I made a couple circuits around the perimeter and for the life of me I couldn’t tell if the place was abandoned or not. It was a moot point though, because either it was and I couldn’t stay there, or it wasn’t and I really didn’t want to. If that place actually was open for business the best I could expect from it was just getting robbed, with the worst being somewhere between asbestos poisoning and an attack by vengeful spirits.
I did finally manage to find a Best Western on the outskirts of town that at least had a king room open. That I could justify booking for just me. They asked if I’d stayed at a Best Western before and I didn’t think I had so I said no, but they disagreed, oddly enough. Apparently I’d stayed at one five years ago and they kept track of that for unknown and presumably sinister reasons. Seriously though, why they needed to know that never once became relevant. I’m not part of anyone’s ultra deluxe silver platinum crystal chalice of opulence mega rewards club, nor do I have any interest in being in one. I just don’t travel enough to justify that and again, I value my protocol of “closest to the place I got tired” lodging selection. I’d hate to have to only stay at one particular franchise.
In any case, I got into my room without further difficulty and got to bed. I actually had a great deal of trouble sleeping, which I was at an utter loss to explain given that I ought to have been in very desperate need of sleep by then. Still, I made out okay and was on my way again. I made it to Casa Luxie in good time and started my adventure there. I don’t think I’ll go day by day on this part because it’s not as relevant and damned if I can’t keep any of those days straight anymore regardless. That’s another disadvantage of going for a visit right after a con, I suppose. You’re having trouble keeping yourself together and don’t really want to do much of anything for several days. Not the best mindset to be in when you’ve still got traveling to do. I still managed to have quite a good time though. After I got settled in we watched Brazil get mercilessly teabagged by Germany in the World Cup for a couple hours. When I was gone for a few minutes to do laundry and Luxie said that there were two goals while I was away, I wondered what sport we were watching.
First up was New York City. I’d never been there that I recall, which surprises a lot of people since I’ve lived in New York State for many years. Of course, that usually stems from a misunderstanding of the state’s geography. I bet there are lots of people who are a five hour drive away from NYC that haven’t been there. And of course that five hour figure is under ideal traffic conditions, which haven’t existed in the city ever since the invention of the automobile. Driving isn’t the way to get to that city anyway, so we were fortunate to be near a train station that could get us there. I’ve never had much occasion to ride trains, but it seems to be a pleasant enough experience. I suppose they have their niche in those handful of situations wherein they actually are the best travel option. Usually they’re at a notable time disadvantage, but skipping the city traffic and not having to find parking are invaluable advantages at our destination, so that worked out great.
The Empire State Building was the first thing we went to. It was heavily commercialized, as one might expect for a place that’s so famous. It’s kept up quite nicely, as befits a building whose main business is people dropping in to have a look around. It did feel kind of sterile and impersonal being shepherded around through the narrow visitors’ accessways. Following one long string of velvet-roped corridors this way and that was not what I had in mind for the visit, really. I was also baffled by how the sign for the bathrooms would always lead you to one that was way on the other side of the concourse instead of a conveniently located one. Very strange. I suppose it’s a necessity to put through the volume of people that the place does on a daily basis. It was certainly worth doing though. Great views and architecture and all that. It’s something that one ought to do once.
The tickets for the Empire State Building came with free passes to a harbor cruise. I liked that idea, and the price was right, so we went for it. By boat is actually a great way to see the city. Most skyscrapers are hard to see from up close, and the buildings are too densely packed to see much of anything from street level. The waterways are nice and clear, and many of the things one might wish to sightsee at are conveniently quite close to the waterfront. A nice experience in all. I do like riding around on the deck of a ship, something that I got a staggering lack of opportunities to do when I was in the navy. The parts of the ship that I spent much of my time in were quite short on sea air and sunlight, tending to resemble factories and cheap trailers more than they did a ship. So that was a nice reminder of why I did actually like the water at one point.
I’d really had my heart set on seeing the Book of Mormon. It had been out for some time, so I was thinking that it wouldn’t be too hard to get seats for it. More proof that I have never done this, advance tickets were actually something in the $240 range. Most of the other shows that held any interest were priced similarly. Apparently the discounts are pretty deep if you buy them same day and just take whatever is left, so we went with that. They wouldn’t be the best seats, probably, but it’s Broadway. They don’t have any bad seats. Rather slim pickings when we got there though. Lots of things I’d seen already or had never heard of. I’d no desire to see Cats or Les Miserables again, but I recalled Avenue Q as being a lot of fun when I saw it last, and decided that I could put up with it again. For $55 apiece I’d say it was still a pretty good option.
We thought that we might fill the gap before showtime by going to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum, but when we got there the next planetarium show wasn’t for several hours. So we settled on just getting food and being comfortably early to the show and just having that be that for the day. We found a little sportsbar pub thing that seemed homey enough. It was packed to the gills with Argentina fans, so I’m glad the game went the way it did. That place could have gotten ugly otherwise. There was another oddly named drink that I was tempted to try there. Angry Orchard plus Fireball Whisky yielding a concoction with the dubious moniker of “Angry Balls”. Tempting as it was, they had a house cider that I’d never heard of, so I went with that.
The show was every bit as entertaining and wonderfully audacious as I remember it being. Certainly worth seeing a second time. It was a really nice and laid back theater too. They let us bring drinks in with us, and even offered a free service where they’d bring the drink right to your seat. I’m a bit dubious about what a good value that was, since mixed drinks cost $11 anyways, but it was a good gesture I guess.
After the show we met some of Luxie’s local friends and went to some little café that served nothing but tiny pies. They were delicious little pies, mind. Almost good enough to make up for the slap in the face that was paying $7 for one, or the fact that it was raining in there because they’d neglected to consider the meteorological complications of running the air conditioner with the door wide open all day. Ah well, you’ve got to expect the cost stuff I suppose. Everyone that’s in New York is trying to make a profit and also sustain the opulent and comically expensive enterprise known as ‘living in New York City’. So yeah, very true sentiment that it’s a nice place to visit, but I can’t stay there for very long without my wallet succumbing to exsanguination.
The next big item on the list was a trip to Sandy Hook so that we could hit the beach. I figured that since we were headed in that direction we might also hit up Lion King, since we know that his door is always open. I’ve always thought of New Jersey as a rather small state that the interstate highway system has been engineered to force as many people to drive through as possible, so I was under the impression that traversing it would be rather simple. This proved to not be the case, with Cape May and Lion King being about two hours past our ultimate target. Still, I thought that it would be worth going, especially given that Luxie and LK had never had the occasion to encounter each other within the meatspace, so that made the trip worth it I think.
The unexpected driving time expenditure didn’t leave us a lot of time to do a whole lot, but I think the three of us made a pretty good team there, so we really didn’t need anything fancy. Luxie and LK got along like they’d been hanging out together for years, so I may have patted myself on the back a little for helping to arrange that. We ate dinner at a nice Greek place, sat around a campfire and talked long into the night. A good visit, if a short one. We were on our way the next morning.
I’d been doing much of the driving so far because we’d taken my car. Luxie brought tunes though, and that was a big contribution. He’s got a much more sophisticated transmitter for playing music in the car than I do, and it’s a beauty of a machine. It actually worked nearly the whole way, and on a not-particularly-low-traffic frequency as well. I’ve really liked my iTrip, but I’m finding myself having to stop very frequently to find an empty station that I can transmit on if I’m in a heavily populated area. I just thought that it was the way things were and dealt with it. I don’t know why it never occurred to me how much more powerful a transmitter you could run from a 12V source than a 3V one. I ordered one as soon as we got back. With luck, it’ll arrive before my next trip and I can take it for a spin.
Anyways, I let Luxie take a turn at the wheel because he actually knows Sandy Hook. I’d never been there before, and I was assuming that the roadways would be an incomprehensible stygian pit with no escape. What I found when we got there was indeed convoluted and baffling, but for entirely different reasons. Now, I give Texas a lot of shit for doing a lot of things radically different for no logical reason, as if they were trying to show off that they don’t really need this cumbersome mantle of statehood and could do their own thing if they really wanted like a listless college dropout explaining the grandiose plan that will finally get him out of his mother’s basement, but at least Texas is screwy in a lot of charmingly benign ways that don’t really affect one’s affairs in the state. New Jersey is a different story.
I’ve discussed how most of their business comes from people who are unfairly shunted down the trap-filled causeway of the New Jersey Turnpike by frustrating iniquities in this nation’s ground transport infrastructure, so this fact makes it all the more baffling that New Jersey would be so openly hostile towards the people that are occasionally forced to be there. If practical obligation is the only thing that gets people into your state, might you want to… not be insufferable dickwads to them? That they might return at some point of their own volition? Yeah, too much to ask. I know.
I’ll speak firstly of a legal catastrofuck that I was reminded of on our way to the beach. It is illegal for a non-professional-gas-pumper to dispense gasoline into a car in New Jersey. Why? Because fuck you for thinking you’re smart enough to pump your own gas, twit! Or so I was forced to presume at the time. I did some research on the subject because apparently I really love being pissed off, and to that end, I think that I’ll share my conclusions on the subject. So, in the states of New Jersey and Oregon, you are not allowed to pump your own gas. Why this is the case is a question people have been asking for quite some time, as evidenced by the mounds of answers that I found in my cursory search of these fine internets. This article from Mental Floss attributes it to both states just not trusting you to fill up your car with sweet, sweet explosion nectar without going full John McClane on that gas station’s ass and blowing the place to smithereens.
As a result, gas station attendants have to go through a safety training course designed with nothing else in mind than seeing to it that the arthritic 75-year-old who's currently entering his sixth decade in the gas pumping game doesn't accidentally set you ablaze while you wait in your vehicle. Because that always makes for just the worst gas station trip ever, am I right? The one where you're just trying to enjoy your day when some lug nut accidentally sets himself on fire? Actually, the safety argument did probably hold some water back before measures were put in place that made pumping gas a less explosion-laden experience. Of course, those measures started showing up as early as the 1940s, and self-service stations started becoming the law of the land shortly thereafter ... except in Oregon and New Jersey.
It's hard for me to imagine that this boils down to anything other than money. Obviously, a lot of jobs would be lost if the bans were lifted, but I doubt it's the gas-pumping jobs people are worried about preserving. Especially not gas station owners. Additional training probably means paying more and all sorts of other hassles they'd prefer to eliminate if they could. No, I imagine the answer lies somewhere in the framework needed at the state level to keep a stupid law like this in place. That red tape and hassle probably keeps food on a lot of tables in those states, and somehow, they've managed to successfully argue for their existence for decades now. Of course, state law means state agencies. In Oregon, which I looked at because their stupid laws are at least easy to research unlike New Jersey, things apparently run through the Cardlock program, which is funded through license and customer fees. In other words, repealing these laws would result in gas stations no longer having to pay money to the state. While it's definitely a bullshit law, the real victims here appear to be the gas and oil companies. If that's the case, I care a lot less.
Fortunately for the part of my psyche that doesn’t want my anger to be quelled or rationalized, our arrival at the beach provided me with a brand new example of why I ought to despise this state. We got to the gates leading into the park, which were closed, and we were turned around because the park was full. Yeah, wouldn’t have figured that out on my own, jackass. Probably because it wouldn’t have been true, given the steady stream of cars leaving the place. I think my new name for New Jersey will be the “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard” state, because apparently this is not an isolated incident, here or anywhere else in the state. The beach closes daily for that reason, as do the two other things in New Jersey that people actually want to go to. What kind of freak is going around saying “Oh, we’ve got something that people actually like in New Jersey? Well close that shit and tell them to go home!” Once again, I did some rage-research, because I’d really hate to be this pissed off without a good reason.
I do believe that I mentioned blue laws once already in a different thing that I was frustrated about. The fact that I don’t remember clearly is a disquieting testament to how unreasonably long this journal is becoming. In any case, blue laws are legal measures enacted to restrict the sale of certain items at certain times. Like how you can't buy liquor on Sundays in some states. These tend to be laws enacted back when people took their religion seriously. Like Puritans or whatever. That party-rocking group gets the blame for Minnesota's blue laws, which used to ban everything from working to sex to making loud noises on Sunday. So be prepared for a slow business day if you’re a really loud prostitute in Minnesota. In most cases, common sense prevailed, and these measures were overturned at various points throughout history. Bans on car and liquor sales remain though. Because that's what the Puritans wanted, obviously.
Several states in the Northeast, including Maine, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, still observe shopping restrictions from the Puritan days, but no one in that region puts blue laws to more insane use than New Jersey. Yeah, bet you thought I’d gotten off-topic didn’t you? My indignant rage never forgets. Specifically I’m speaking about Paramus, New Jersey, which was once ranked the 21st best place to live ... in New Jersey. To be fair though, Newark didn’t even make the list. That seems like a fairly low showing, considering that Paramus is in the heart of Bergen County, which happens to be the most visited shopping destination in the state. Even better, Paramus itself is home to the biggest malls in the county. So, within that retail kingdom, Paramus is king. And they fucking act like it.
As you've probably gathered, blue laws are the problem. Bergen County has lots of them, but none are as restrictive as what Paramus makes people deal with. Essentially, on Sundays in Paramus, you can't buy anything. ANYTHING. Unless you need it to live, pretty much. The words used are "worldly employment," if that gives you any idea of what kind of things you can't do. There are a few exceptions. You can still buy food and medications. Just because it's a law intended to serve one specific religion doesn't mean it's not flexible. Hey, there's even an exclusion for cigarettes, because religious people are sometimes huge hypocrites.
No booze, though. No booze, no clothes, no shoes, no video games or Scooby Doo-themed decks of playing cards... no "worldly" fun, basically. It's that word that makes this seem like a law driven by dedication to Jesus, but it's definitely not. The real problem is traffic. Because it's such a heavily visited shopping destination, Bergen County in general is plagued with traffic jams on a daily basis. They don't keep their blue laws on the books to respect the Lord; they keep them on the books so you stay the fuck out of Paramus for at least one day each week.
Does that sound dickish to you? I agree! Though I will reluctantly admit to seeing some of the logic in it now that I’ve taken this closer look. It's not like they aren't giving anything up by asking for a day of solitude each week. Did you see the part where I said Paramus is the biggest shopping destination in the state? People would spend a lot of money there on Sundays if they could, probably on a wide variety of things. Nevertheless, voters in Paramus have shot down every attempt to overturn the blue laws and have vowed to do so from now until the end of time. See, some things in life really are more important than money. It just so happens that you staying the fuck out of town for a day is one of those things. Good for them, I guess. We agree, actually. I want to be in New Jersey exactly as much as they want me to be there. None at all.
I do recall once having a point to all this… ah yes that’s right, the beach trip. Which, despite my hating everything about everything forever, actually went quite well. The big sales hook (hah!) of this beach was that it was clothing-optional. That was something I’d never experienced before, so I was glad to have the chance. The first thing that struck me about the beach was why is this parking lot in a different fucking zipcode? Must you ruin EVERYTHING, New Jersey? But really though, the first relevant thing that struck me after I’d crossed the tremendous expanse of forsaken blasted lands that led to an actual beach was what a complete non-issue it was that most people were naked. A surprise, though in hindsight it really shouldn’t have been.
I suppose that’s rather the point, really. Seeing as being outside naked is a very much anti-non-issue anywhere else. I don’t know what I was expecting, necessarily, but the environment was very welcoming and relaxed. I guess I should have expected that, as that’s all the place is. It’s just a beach that people hang out at, with the minor distinction that you can take off all your clothes without getting arrested. A pretty nice setup in all. In due time I slipped into the local attire and commenced relaxing. I even brought one of the cans of hard cider that Lucius gave me. I do hope he’ll appreciate the fact that his gift was most thoroughly enjoyed in the most relaxed and easygoing circumstances possible.
Part of the selection methodology for this particular place and time was that the NJFurs were having a meetup then and there. I knew none of them, and for that matter, neither did Luxie. I’ve had good experiences with little furmeets in the past though, so I was all for it. Much as I tend to spew hatred and bile about New Jersey at the slightest provocation, it really is home to a lot of great folks. Though I didn’t retain any names (I never do anyway. I’m only good at cons because people wear nametags.), I had quite a positive impression of the group. You’d think that meeting a bunch of new people whilst either or both of you lack clothes would be awkward, but that actually went quite smoothly. Once again, total non-issue and I was worried for nothing. A tremendously refreshing feeling, really.
We got along quite well as we lounged in the sun and dipped in the ocean at our leisure. I found one guy who worked at FurTheMore and plans to staff again next year, so I’ll probably be seeing him again, whoever he is. Time moved quite quickly, as it seemed like just a brief moment before the sun was dipping notably in the sky. By the time we had retired to a little Italian restaurant for dinner it was nearly dark. Of course that had a lot to do with the driving delays brought on by the fact that left turns are illegal there GODDAMNIT NEW JERSEY! Is making sense illegal too? In any case, we were served entirely too much heavy, succulent food, so you know, a very authentic Italian experience. I was fortunate in that I ordered a lobster dish, the expense of which prevents them from trying to bury me in my meal. Of course that order was also motivated by the fact that lobster ravioli was something I’d never even heard of, let alone attempted to consume. It was a very delicious journey of discovery though.
Eventually we were all sufficiently stuffed and made our way to the exits. I stuck with my old tradition of driving until I was too tired to drive anymore and then handed it off to Luxie. He knew the roads close to home better than I did anyway. Of course that confidence led to him traveling much faster than I would’ve been when we were joined by a deer on our little drive. That worked out just fine for all involved, though. Certainly woke me up, that’s for sure. Did I mention that I just had my brakes fixed? Anyways, we were both alive if quite exhausted when we returned.
I had planned to leave the next morning, but I was again reminded of the advantages of driving myself everywhere and being on my own schedule when “Aw fuck it” began to look like a very attractive option. So I spent one more lazy day at Luxie’s before I was on my way again. There, now that I’ve finally gotten through all the wrap up for this con and trip to visit friends, I can get back to my preparation for my next con and trip to visit friends in a week!
Yes, during Anthrocon it came to my attention that opportunity is once again beating down my door. A little background here, then. My old ship is coming back from deployment at the end of this month, and right after that an old friend of mine, Ace, is getting transferred to San Diego. I haven’t seen him since I got out of the navy, and now that there will be a country between us I’m even less likely to have the chance to hang out with him in the future. He’s having something of a going away party at the start of August out near Chicago, so I was planning on attending that. At AC, Nevir informed me that he lives in Denver and would be happy to host me should I be interested in attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con the week after the party. That actually works out pretty well for what I had planned. There’s a dozen planes a day going from Chicago to Denver, so I should be able to find a quick and easy direct flight without any trouble.
As for filling in the in-between time, I actually have plenty of options. Well, I had plenty of options. I thought I had plenty of options. Well, I thought that I had some options and it turns out that I had some different, entirely unexpected options. It’s complicated, let’s back up a second. I have old friends from high school in Oxford, Ohio and Garrett, Indiana, and a navy buddy who lives in Canton, Ohio. I’d planned to visit all of them in some permutation along the way, but the intel that I got back from them has cinched all my hastily-made plans into some very confusing knots. My contact in Garrett has given me nothing but static. Unanswered messages and promises to call later, nothing useful. That’s wearing on me because I have plane tickets to book. It’s an easy flight, sure, but we’re getting close to crunch time here. Availability is going to drop off and cost is going to skyrocket as we get closer. I’m going to have to just go for it if I don’t hear from him soon.
Now, the complicated part. I talked to my friend in Canton, who told me that he plans to shortly cease being in Canton so I won’t be able to visit him there. He’s moving out to attend Miami College, in Oxford, Ohio. (Ohio has a thing about naming stuff after non-Ohio places.) That just so happens to be the same college that my friend from Oxford is going to. Or rather was going to. When I called him, he told me that he’s done now and is planning to move away from Oxford during that time period. So this just went from dropping in on a few friends along the way to trying to hit a bunch of literally moving targets. This trip is going to be a complete mess. I have no idea how I’m going to handle all this. For once I think the furry convention will be the least insane part of the journey!
So yeah, those are all the things that happened. Congratulations on your endurance if you actually read both of the journals that this little escapade took to describe. See ya next time!
My plan was to drive until I was too tired to continue and then stop some place for the night. I made it to Wilkes-Barre, much further than I thought I would. That’s not to say the plan went off without a hitch though. Most places that I went into looked at me like my hair was on fire when I said that I was trying to book a room without a reservation. Did that stop being a thing at some point? When did people stop doing that? I’ve always been of a mind to just go to the place I’m closest to when I need sleep, and I never had the feeling that I was alone in that regard. There are obviously people still doing it, as I went to three different places that were sold out of singles. Such a strange thing. This must be how Lucius feels when he journeys to Not-Texas and finds that everything is radically different for no apparent reason and people take twenty minutes to try and wrap their head around why he’s ironing a sopping wet pair of jeans and treating this operation as if it’s normal behavior.
After hearing “Oh, well you can book a double for $149.” for the third time I decided to check out a Motel 6 that I’d spied from across the street. I know that place doesn’t have the best reputation, but I don’t need a lot of frills and services if I’m just going to sleep there. I did end up deciding against it after I drove there though. I made a couple circuits around the perimeter and for the life of me I couldn’t tell if the place was abandoned or not. It was a moot point though, because either it was and I couldn’t stay there, or it wasn’t and I really didn’t want to. If that place actually was open for business the best I could expect from it was just getting robbed, with the worst being somewhere between asbestos poisoning and an attack by vengeful spirits.
I did finally manage to find a Best Western on the outskirts of town that at least had a king room open. That I could justify booking for just me. They asked if I’d stayed at a Best Western before and I didn’t think I had so I said no, but they disagreed, oddly enough. Apparently I’d stayed at one five years ago and they kept track of that for unknown and presumably sinister reasons. Seriously though, why they needed to know that never once became relevant. I’m not part of anyone’s ultra deluxe silver platinum crystal chalice of opulence mega rewards club, nor do I have any interest in being in one. I just don’t travel enough to justify that and again, I value my protocol of “closest to the place I got tired” lodging selection. I’d hate to have to only stay at one particular franchise.
In any case, I got into my room without further difficulty and got to bed. I actually had a great deal of trouble sleeping, which I was at an utter loss to explain given that I ought to have been in very desperate need of sleep by then. Still, I made out okay and was on my way again. I made it to Casa Luxie in good time and started my adventure there. I don’t think I’ll go day by day on this part because it’s not as relevant and damned if I can’t keep any of those days straight anymore regardless. That’s another disadvantage of going for a visit right after a con, I suppose. You’re having trouble keeping yourself together and don’t really want to do much of anything for several days. Not the best mindset to be in when you’ve still got traveling to do. I still managed to have quite a good time though. After I got settled in we watched Brazil get mercilessly teabagged by Germany in the World Cup for a couple hours. When I was gone for a few minutes to do laundry and Luxie said that there were two goals while I was away, I wondered what sport we were watching.
First up was New York City. I’d never been there that I recall, which surprises a lot of people since I’ve lived in New York State for many years. Of course, that usually stems from a misunderstanding of the state’s geography. I bet there are lots of people who are a five hour drive away from NYC that haven’t been there. And of course that five hour figure is under ideal traffic conditions, which haven’t existed in the city ever since the invention of the automobile. Driving isn’t the way to get to that city anyway, so we were fortunate to be near a train station that could get us there. I’ve never had much occasion to ride trains, but it seems to be a pleasant enough experience. I suppose they have their niche in those handful of situations wherein they actually are the best travel option. Usually they’re at a notable time disadvantage, but skipping the city traffic and not having to find parking are invaluable advantages at our destination, so that worked out great.
The Empire State Building was the first thing we went to. It was heavily commercialized, as one might expect for a place that’s so famous. It’s kept up quite nicely, as befits a building whose main business is people dropping in to have a look around. It did feel kind of sterile and impersonal being shepherded around through the narrow visitors’ accessways. Following one long string of velvet-roped corridors this way and that was not what I had in mind for the visit, really. I was also baffled by how the sign for the bathrooms would always lead you to one that was way on the other side of the concourse instead of a conveniently located one. Very strange. I suppose it’s a necessity to put through the volume of people that the place does on a daily basis. It was certainly worth doing though. Great views and architecture and all that. It’s something that one ought to do once.
The tickets for the Empire State Building came with free passes to a harbor cruise. I liked that idea, and the price was right, so we went for it. By boat is actually a great way to see the city. Most skyscrapers are hard to see from up close, and the buildings are too densely packed to see much of anything from street level. The waterways are nice and clear, and many of the things one might wish to sightsee at are conveniently quite close to the waterfront. A nice experience in all. I do like riding around on the deck of a ship, something that I got a staggering lack of opportunities to do when I was in the navy. The parts of the ship that I spent much of my time in were quite short on sea air and sunlight, tending to resemble factories and cheap trailers more than they did a ship. So that was a nice reminder of why I did actually like the water at one point.
I’d really had my heart set on seeing the Book of Mormon. It had been out for some time, so I was thinking that it wouldn’t be too hard to get seats for it. More proof that I have never done this, advance tickets were actually something in the $240 range. Most of the other shows that held any interest were priced similarly. Apparently the discounts are pretty deep if you buy them same day and just take whatever is left, so we went with that. They wouldn’t be the best seats, probably, but it’s Broadway. They don’t have any bad seats. Rather slim pickings when we got there though. Lots of things I’d seen already or had never heard of. I’d no desire to see Cats or Les Miserables again, but I recalled Avenue Q as being a lot of fun when I saw it last, and decided that I could put up with it again. For $55 apiece I’d say it was still a pretty good option.
We thought that we might fill the gap before showtime by going to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum, but when we got there the next planetarium show wasn’t for several hours. So we settled on just getting food and being comfortably early to the show and just having that be that for the day. We found a little sportsbar pub thing that seemed homey enough. It was packed to the gills with Argentina fans, so I’m glad the game went the way it did. That place could have gotten ugly otherwise. There was another oddly named drink that I was tempted to try there. Angry Orchard plus Fireball Whisky yielding a concoction with the dubious moniker of “Angry Balls”. Tempting as it was, they had a house cider that I’d never heard of, so I went with that.
The show was every bit as entertaining and wonderfully audacious as I remember it being. Certainly worth seeing a second time. It was a really nice and laid back theater too. They let us bring drinks in with us, and even offered a free service where they’d bring the drink right to your seat. I’m a bit dubious about what a good value that was, since mixed drinks cost $11 anyways, but it was a good gesture I guess.
After the show we met some of Luxie’s local friends and went to some little café that served nothing but tiny pies. They were delicious little pies, mind. Almost good enough to make up for the slap in the face that was paying $7 for one, or the fact that it was raining in there because they’d neglected to consider the meteorological complications of running the air conditioner with the door wide open all day. Ah well, you’ve got to expect the cost stuff I suppose. Everyone that’s in New York is trying to make a profit and also sustain the opulent and comically expensive enterprise known as ‘living in New York City’. So yeah, very true sentiment that it’s a nice place to visit, but I can’t stay there for very long without my wallet succumbing to exsanguination.
The next big item on the list was a trip to Sandy Hook so that we could hit the beach. I figured that since we were headed in that direction we might also hit up Lion King, since we know that his door is always open. I’ve always thought of New Jersey as a rather small state that the interstate highway system has been engineered to force as many people to drive through as possible, so I was under the impression that traversing it would be rather simple. This proved to not be the case, with Cape May and Lion King being about two hours past our ultimate target. Still, I thought that it would be worth going, especially given that Luxie and LK had never had the occasion to encounter each other within the meatspace, so that made the trip worth it I think.
The unexpected driving time expenditure didn’t leave us a lot of time to do a whole lot, but I think the three of us made a pretty good team there, so we really didn’t need anything fancy. Luxie and LK got along like they’d been hanging out together for years, so I may have patted myself on the back a little for helping to arrange that. We ate dinner at a nice Greek place, sat around a campfire and talked long into the night. A good visit, if a short one. We were on our way the next morning.
I’d been doing much of the driving so far because we’d taken my car. Luxie brought tunes though, and that was a big contribution. He’s got a much more sophisticated transmitter for playing music in the car than I do, and it’s a beauty of a machine. It actually worked nearly the whole way, and on a not-particularly-low-traffic frequency as well. I’ve really liked my iTrip, but I’m finding myself having to stop very frequently to find an empty station that I can transmit on if I’m in a heavily populated area. I just thought that it was the way things were and dealt with it. I don’t know why it never occurred to me how much more powerful a transmitter you could run from a 12V source than a 3V one. I ordered one as soon as we got back. With luck, it’ll arrive before my next trip and I can take it for a spin.
Anyways, I let Luxie take a turn at the wheel because he actually knows Sandy Hook. I’d never been there before, and I was assuming that the roadways would be an incomprehensible stygian pit with no escape. What I found when we got there was indeed convoluted and baffling, but for entirely different reasons. Now, I give Texas a lot of shit for doing a lot of things radically different for no logical reason, as if they were trying to show off that they don’t really need this cumbersome mantle of statehood and could do their own thing if they really wanted like a listless college dropout explaining the grandiose plan that will finally get him out of his mother’s basement, but at least Texas is screwy in a lot of charmingly benign ways that don’t really affect one’s affairs in the state. New Jersey is a different story.
I’ve discussed how most of their business comes from people who are unfairly shunted down the trap-filled causeway of the New Jersey Turnpike by frustrating iniquities in this nation’s ground transport infrastructure, so this fact makes it all the more baffling that New Jersey would be so openly hostile towards the people that are occasionally forced to be there. If practical obligation is the only thing that gets people into your state, might you want to… not be insufferable dickwads to them? That they might return at some point of their own volition? Yeah, too much to ask. I know.
I’ll speak firstly of a legal catastrofuck that I was reminded of on our way to the beach. It is illegal for a non-professional-gas-pumper to dispense gasoline into a car in New Jersey. Why? Because fuck you for thinking you’re smart enough to pump your own gas, twit! Or so I was forced to presume at the time. I did some research on the subject because apparently I really love being pissed off, and to that end, I think that I’ll share my conclusions on the subject. So, in the states of New Jersey and Oregon, you are not allowed to pump your own gas. Why this is the case is a question people have been asking for quite some time, as evidenced by the mounds of answers that I found in my cursory search of these fine internets. This article from Mental Floss attributes it to both states just not trusting you to fill up your car with sweet, sweet explosion nectar without going full John McClane on that gas station’s ass and blowing the place to smithereens.
As a result, gas station attendants have to go through a safety training course designed with nothing else in mind than seeing to it that the arthritic 75-year-old who's currently entering his sixth decade in the gas pumping game doesn't accidentally set you ablaze while you wait in your vehicle. Because that always makes for just the worst gas station trip ever, am I right? The one where you're just trying to enjoy your day when some lug nut accidentally sets himself on fire? Actually, the safety argument did probably hold some water back before measures were put in place that made pumping gas a less explosion-laden experience. Of course, those measures started showing up as early as the 1940s, and self-service stations started becoming the law of the land shortly thereafter ... except in Oregon and New Jersey.
It's hard for me to imagine that this boils down to anything other than money. Obviously, a lot of jobs would be lost if the bans were lifted, but I doubt it's the gas-pumping jobs people are worried about preserving. Especially not gas station owners. Additional training probably means paying more and all sorts of other hassles they'd prefer to eliminate if they could. No, I imagine the answer lies somewhere in the framework needed at the state level to keep a stupid law like this in place. That red tape and hassle probably keeps food on a lot of tables in those states, and somehow, they've managed to successfully argue for their existence for decades now. Of course, state law means state agencies. In Oregon, which I looked at because their stupid laws are at least easy to research unlike New Jersey, things apparently run through the Cardlock program, which is funded through license and customer fees. In other words, repealing these laws would result in gas stations no longer having to pay money to the state. While it's definitely a bullshit law, the real victims here appear to be the gas and oil companies. If that's the case, I care a lot less.
Fortunately for the part of my psyche that doesn’t want my anger to be quelled or rationalized, our arrival at the beach provided me with a brand new example of why I ought to despise this state. We got to the gates leading into the park, which were closed, and we were turned around because the park was full. Yeah, wouldn’t have figured that out on my own, jackass. Probably because it wouldn’t have been true, given the steady stream of cars leaving the place. I think my new name for New Jersey will be the “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard” state, because apparently this is not an isolated incident, here or anywhere else in the state. The beach closes daily for that reason, as do the two other things in New Jersey that people actually want to go to. What kind of freak is going around saying “Oh, we’ve got something that people actually like in New Jersey? Well close that shit and tell them to go home!” Once again, I did some rage-research, because I’d really hate to be this pissed off without a good reason.
I do believe that I mentioned blue laws once already in a different thing that I was frustrated about. The fact that I don’t remember clearly is a disquieting testament to how unreasonably long this journal is becoming. In any case, blue laws are legal measures enacted to restrict the sale of certain items at certain times. Like how you can't buy liquor on Sundays in some states. These tend to be laws enacted back when people took their religion seriously. Like Puritans or whatever. That party-rocking group gets the blame for Minnesota's blue laws, which used to ban everything from working to sex to making loud noises on Sunday. So be prepared for a slow business day if you’re a really loud prostitute in Minnesota. In most cases, common sense prevailed, and these measures were overturned at various points throughout history. Bans on car and liquor sales remain though. Because that's what the Puritans wanted, obviously.
Several states in the Northeast, including Maine, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, still observe shopping restrictions from the Puritan days, but no one in that region puts blue laws to more insane use than New Jersey. Yeah, bet you thought I’d gotten off-topic didn’t you? My indignant rage never forgets. Specifically I’m speaking about Paramus, New Jersey, which was once ranked the 21st best place to live ... in New Jersey. To be fair though, Newark didn’t even make the list. That seems like a fairly low showing, considering that Paramus is in the heart of Bergen County, which happens to be the most visited shopping destination in the state. Even better, Paramus itself is home to the biggest malls in the county. So, within that retail kingdom, Paramus is king. And they fucking act like it.
As you've probably gathered, blue laws are the problem. Bergen County has lots of them, but none are as restrictive as what Paramus makes people deal with. Essentially, on Sundays in Paramus, you can't buy anything. ANYTHING. Unless you need it to live, pretty much. The words used are "worldly employment," if that gives you any idea of what kind of things you can't do. There are a few exceptions. You can still buy food and medications. Just because it's a law intended to serve one specific religion doesn't mean it's not flexible. Hey, there's even an exclusion for cigarettes, because religious people are sometimes huge hypocrites.
No booze, though. No booze, no clothes, no shoes, no video games or Scooby Doo-themed decks of playing cards... no "worldly" fun, basically. It's that word that makes this seem like a law driven by dedication to Jesus, but it's definitely not. The real problem is traffic. Because it's such a heavily visited shopping destination, Bergen County in general is plagued with traffic jams on a daily basis. They don't keep their blue laws on the books to respect the Lord; they keep them on the books so you stay the fuck out of Paramus for at least one day each week.
Does that sound dickish to you? I agree! Though I will reluctantly admit to seeing some of the logic in it now that I’ve taken this closer look. It's not like they aren't giving anything up by asking for a day of solitude each week. Did you see the part where I said Paramus is the biggest shopping destination in the state? People would spend a lot of money there on Sundays if they could, probably on a wide variety of things. Nevertheless, voters in Paramus have shot down every attempt to overturn the blue laws and have vowed to do so from now until the end of time. See, some things in life really are more important than money. It just so happens that you staying the fuck out of town for a day is one of those things. Good for them, I guess. We agree, actually. I want to be in New Jersey exactly as much as they want me to be there. None at all.
I do recall once having a point to all this… ah yes that’s right, the beach trip. Which, despite my hating everything about everything forever, actually went quite well. The big sales hook (hah!) of this beach was that it was clothing-optional. That was something I’d never experienced before, so I was glad to have the chance. The first thing that struck me about the beach was why is this parking lot in a different fucking zipcode? Must you ruin EVERYTHING, New Jersey? But really though, the first relevant thing that struck me after I’d crossed the tremendous expanse of forsaken blasted lands that led to an actual beach was what a complete non-issue it was that most people were naked. A surprise, though in hindsight it really shouldn’t have been.
I suppose that’s rather the point, really. Seeing as being outside naked is a very much anti-non-issue anywhere else. I don’t know what I was expecting, necessarily, but the environment was very welcoming and relaxed. I guess I should have expected that, as that’s all the place is. It’s just a beach that people hang out at, with the minor distinction that you can take off all your clothes without getting arrested. A pretty nice setup in all. In due time I slipped into the local attire and commenced relaxing. I even brought one of the cans of hard cider that Lucius gave me. I do hope he’ll appreciate the fact that his gift was most thoroughly enjoyed in the most relaxed and easygoing circumstances possible.
Part of the selection methodology for this particular place and time was that the NJFurs were having a meetup then and there. I knew none of them, and for that matter, neither did Luxie. I’ve had good experiences with little furmeets in the past though, so I was all for it. Much as I tend to spew hatred and bile about New Jersey at the slightest provocation, it really is home to a lot of great folks. Though I didn’t retain any names (I never do anyway. I’m only good at cons because people wear nametags.), I had quite a positive impression of the group. You’d think that meeting a bunch of new people whilst either or both of you lack clothes would be awkward, but that actually went quite smoothly. Once again, total non-issue and I was worried for nothing. A tremendously refreshing feeling, really.
We got along quite well as we lounged in the sun and dipped in the ocean at our leisure. I found one guy who worked at FurTheMore and plans to staff again next year, so I’ll probably be seeing him again, whoever he is. Time moved quite quickly, as it seemed like just a brief moment before the sun was dipping notably in the sky. By the time we had retired to a little Italian restaurant for dinner it was nearly dark. Of course that had a lot to do with the driving delays brought on by the fact that left turns are illegal there GODDAMNIT NEW JERSEY! Is making sense illegal too? In any case, we were served entirely too much heavy, succulent food, so you know, a very authentic Italian experience. I was fortunate in that I ordered a lobster dish, the expense of which prevents them from trying to bury me in my meal. Of course that order was also motivated by the fact that lobster ravioli was something I’d never even heard of, let alone attempted to consume. It was a very delicious journey of discovery though.
Eventually we were all sufficiently stuffed and made our way to the exits. I stuck with my old tradition of driving until I was too tired to drive anymore and then handed it off to Luxie. He knew the roads close to home better than I did anyway. Of course that confidence led to him traveling much faster than I would’ve been when we were joined by a deer on our little drive. That worked out just fine for all involved, though. Certainly woke me up, that’s for sure. Did I mention that I just had my brakes fixed? Anyways, we were both alive if quite exhausted when we returned.
I had planned to leave the next morning, but I was again reminded of the advantages of driving myself everywhere and being on my own schedule when “Aw fuck it” began to look like a very attractive option. So I spent one more lazy day at Luxie’s before I was on my way again. There, now that I’ve finally gotten through all the wrap up for this con and trip to visit friends, I can get back to my preparation for my next con and trip to visit friends in a week!
Yes, during Anthrocon it came to my attention that opportunity is once again beating down my door. A little background here, then. My old ship is coming back from deployment at the end of this month, and right after that an old friend of mine, Ace, is getting transferred to San Diego. I haven’t seen him since I got out of the navy, and now that there will be a country between us I’m even less likely to have the chance to hang out with him in the future. He’s having something of a going away party at the start of August out near Chicago, so I was planning on attending that. At AC, Nevir informed me that he lives in Denver and would be happy to host me should I be interested in attending Rocky Mountain Fur Con the week after the party. That actually works out pretty well for what I had planned. There’s a dozen planes a day going from Chicago to Denver, so I should be able to find a quick and easy direct flight without any trouble.
As for filling in the in-between time, I actually have plenty of options. Well, I had plenty of options. I thought I had plenty of options. Well, I thought that I had some options and it turns out that I had some different, entirely unexpected options. It’s complicated, let’s back up a second. I have old friends from high school in Oxford, Ohio and Garrett, Indiana, and a navy buddy who lives in Canton, Ohio. I’d planned to visit all of them in some permutation along the way, but the intel that I got back from them has cinched all my hastily-made plans into some very confusing knots. My contact in Garrett has given me nothing but static. Unanswered messages and promises to call later, nothing useful. That’s wearing on me because I have plane tickets to book. It’s an easy flight, sure, but we’re getting close to crunch time here. Availability is going to drop off and cost is going to skyrocket as we get closer. I’m going to have to just go for it if I don’t hear from him soon.
Now, the complicated part. I talked to my friend in Canton, who told me that he plans to shortly cease being in Canton so I won’t be able to visit him there. He’s moving out to attend Miami College, in Oxford, Ohio. (Ohio has a thing about naming stuff after non-Ohio places.) That just so happens to be the same college that my friend from Oxford is going to. Or rather was going to. When I called him, he told me that he’s done now and is planning to move away from Oxford during that time period. So this just went from dropping in on a few friends along the way to trying to hit a bunch of literally moving targets. This trip is going to be a complete mess. I have no idea how I’m going to handle all this. For once I think the furry convention will be the least insane part of the journey!
So yeah, those are all the things that happened. Congratulations on your endurance if you actually read both of the journals that this little escapade took to describe. See ya next time!
More Anthrocon than your body can handle
General | Posted 11 years agoAwright, so the TL;DR version is that Anthrocon was amazing and I met a ton of cool people and also things happened. Also I’m going to Rocky Mountain Fur Con. Yeah, I was surprised when I found that out, too.
In theory, tacking travel and a few visits with friends onto the end of a furry con trip is a great idea. In the practical sense though, particularly the necessity of writing a con report afterwards, it leaves me woefully behind schedule, gormlessly squinting at a calendar wondering what in the name of unholy fuck happened to the last two weeks of my life. In order to forcibly extricate some sense of order out of what, up until this point, was a mostly functional memory system, I’m going to forego my traditional narrative structure and try to break things down day-by-day, at least for the con, as those days tend to have an alarmingly high event density per unit time. The divisions will coincide with where I actually managed to get sleep, as that frequently happened after midnight, making the divisions of actual calendar days far less meaningful. So here we go then. Now, what day was July second?
Wednesday:
I woke up a fair bit earlier than I expected to, must’ve been all that nothing I’ve been doing lately leaving me so well rested all the time. So I got a plenty early start around 10:00. The drive itself was pretty uneventful. I did hit a bird, which was something I’d never done before. It would be a stretch to call that an achievement though. The early start meant that I beat most everyone I knew there by a sizable margin. That meant that there wasn’t a whole lot to do for the day. I did explore Pittsburgh a bit on foot and got a reminder of why I don’t explore Pittsburgh on foot very much. The machine shop that caught on fire a few decades ago and no one has bothered to either fix or destroy since that time very nicely encapsulates the general mood of the place. I think that sort of thing might be a part of why Pittsburgh puts up with us with a smile on their face. I do believe that they rather welcome all the money we spend here.
I ran into Garcanno in the lobby. He’s an old friend from back in Virginia. It’s been awhile, so it was nice to see him again and catch up a bit. Of course right then my phone battery decided to die and I didn’t yet have a room to go to in order to charge it. I had to run off to solve that as this was probably the most critical juncture for me to actually have it working, what with trying to coordinate the meeting up of multiple people. The whole thing made me feel pretty stupid, as this sort of thing is usually not a problem, but certain inevitabilities are reached when you don’t charge your phone for like a week and then use it a whole bunch.
In any case, I did eventually meet up with LanHao, who was graciously hosting me at his room. I’d eaten on the way because I’ve learned that arriving hungry is a pretty unpleasant experience. Still, I had a drink with him while he fueled up at the Sharper Edge. The cool thing about restaurants with an expansive menu of fancy beers is that they usually have a good cider selection also. Now, there will be 2 ciders compared to 200 beers, but at this point I consider “a good cider selection” to be “anything above zero varieties and actually having them in stock” so they get a pretty solid approval with five different flavors. Four of which I tried over the course of the weekend.
I checked on Lucius for a status report and found out that he was in Cleveland for some reason. Firstly, ew. Secondly, that is not how you get from Texas to Pittsburgh at all. Not even a little bit. It got a little clearer after he’d mentioned that he was in Minnesota for some other unknown, presumably sinister reason. He said that he’d come across Sweet Apple Acres on his journey and bought some cider for me. I would never have pegged the Ohio River Valley as the location of Equestria, but I guess that works.
My first adventure with Lucius started before he even got there, as my next report from him brought a fresh round of confusion about his location. He professed to be taking Rt. 76 East towards Pittsburgh, while the exit numbers he was giving me showed him on 76E moving away from Pittsburgh. He had gotten from the west side of Pittsburgh to the east side whilst having skipped that all-important step of actually going to Pittsburgh. Important life lesson, kids: a road with signs listing the distance to a given city may not necessarily lead to that city; as we both learned. I the easy way, and Lucius the hard way.
“You went past it.”
“I went past an entire city?”
“Yeah. It’s a pretty big city too. I’d say ‘you can’t miss it’ but that assertion has just been empirically disproven.”
So yeah, that was a thing. I managed to direct him in using some of the selection of roads that actually do enter Pittsburgh. Thanks to my skilled ground-traffic-controller skills he managed to actually find us and I was able to head down and lead him up to the room. With that and the latent addition of carandaenor the gang was all there. It was a first Anthrocon for both Lucius and Fox (the incomparably creative nickname of my other roommate. Turns out his legal last name actually is “Fox” so that saves time I guess). Fox’s parents were wary of us furry sorts, and seemed to be petrified that their son would end up in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. LanHao was quick to point out that all the room’s other occupants were prior military, and all of us had security clearance of Secret or higher. Since we’d all undergone extensive background checks, that meant that fox was technically the most dangerous person in the room. I guess that helped him sleep at night, as the rest of us were forever waking him up in the morning so that he could get down to the Dealer’s Den early enough. We each took a turn playing alarm clock for him, actually.
Thursday:
Badge pickup went well. I had the rare luxury of pre-registering, conferring the indescribably valuable benefit of truncating the line by about 1000-fold. I waited behind precisely one person and then I was on my way. And really that was the only con-related thing I did the whole time. This was another very quiet day. I’ve always heard people talk up how great it was to arrive stupid early to the con, but I’d never really seen the appeal. I walked through the Zoo a few times, but found very little of interest. I guess I just don’t have enough friends for this sort of pre-con hanging out to really be worth anything. Without ever really deciding or intending to, I set about rectifying that.
I never would’ve guessed what a valuable connection LanHao would be, though I had previously noted that he casts a pretty wide net in terms of social circles. The other four people that he’d helped secure a room for were introduced to me presently. To my delight that crowd included CatMonkShiro and Lunarkeys, an artist and prolific commissioner, respectively, both of whom I’ve been a huge fan of for quite some time. I’d unknowingly been placed right next to a great big pow-wow of very enthusiastic Transformation fans, all of whom I got along with famously. Rounding out the assortment were Rekzar and Cobalt_K, a writer/commissioner and comic artist, in that order, whom I’d never met or heard of before, but they were every bit as awesome as the former pair. Yes, I’m convinced that everyone in that room was of equal awesomeness, each more equal than the last.
In any case, we somehow managed to collect together this whole two-room assortment and head down to the Sharper Edge for dinner. The indomitable collection of archery-related terms Arrowquivershaft also made his way down to join us and round out the group. He seemed interesting and was one of those rare few whose existence had not escaped my notice until right then. Quiet though, I do wish I’d had a chance to get to know him a little better. A good time was had by all and the periods that weren’t spent in frantic, disorganized efforts to get everyone’s name straight were filled with very lively and entertaining conversation. I’m given to understand that at various points throughout the con my words ended up being twiddled on the Twitters, so I guess I said a few things of merit.
We got back to our collective rooms and partook of a cake that I forget the reasoning behind. Someone’s birthday, most likely, given the My Little Pony candles that were scattered across it. I cared not for its origins though. It was delicious and moist and most assuredly not a lie, so I excused its dark past. We quickly arrived at the conclusion, though, that our present procedure of tearing the cake apart by hand and shoving it in the general vector of our faces was not what one would call sustainable, particularly given that we were trying not to make a catastrophic mess of the very nice hotel rooms we were in. I believe that I’ve made prior mention of the Omni’s palatial awesomeness the other times I’ve stayed there, and this trip was no exception. Granted it meant that there was rather a necessity to stack the rooms pretty heavily to make it affordable, but we do that anyway. May as well quad-up in a really nice hotel room rather than being stacked like cordwood in the Westin.
Regardless, we decided that some cutlery was in order, so a handful of us piled into the little rental car that had ferried Lucius here. I had shotgun due to what I presume was some skillful manipulation of the arcane rules that govern such things, and lined up across the back were Rekzar, LunarKeys and Cobalt. Why exactly we needed five people to go to Wal Mart and buy forks is unclear, but it was certainly a trip worth going on. It was easily the most awesome disaster I’ve ever been a part of.
Now then, this is a scene that deserves to be set. At the helm, we have Lucius, an operator only just now becoming familiar with the car he’s driving and who managed to miss the entire city of Pittsburgh on the way in. In the back is our navigator, Cobalt, who has a similarly tentative grasp of the smartphone he was meant to be directing us with. I didn’t have much interest in the actual destination and was directing my efforts more towards reminding Lucius that traffic laws exist. Rekzar, like the rest of us, had no idea what the fuck with regards to the layout of the city of Pittsburgh, but he often chimed in with helpful observations like the number of times we’d crossed the same river on the way (three. The final count was three). Lunarkeys was relatively quiet and appeared to be pretending that either he or all of us did not exist. I would’ve much preferred his fantasy to the cruel reality that was this expedition that the Donner Party would’ve called ‘poorly planned’ and probably also ‘well marbled, if a bit stringy’.
I kid though, in all reality this was, like many furry events, a very entertaining disaster. I could give a point-by-point account, but that would take several thousand more words and probably still not properly do the event justice. I will instead present a couple key snippets that typify the experience and let you extrapolate that to the 45 minutes that it took to traverse the 11 miles to the store. These are all actual quotes from that harrowing journey.
Lucius:
Woah look, it’s the firehouse from Ghostbusters!
Check out this drunk guy dancing across the crosswalk in front of us. I’m gonna honk at ‘em.
This is way more fun than I ever thought that being hopelessly lost could be.
Bucephalus:
Yeah I’m pretty sure that ‘mugging’ is this town’s number one industry.
I don’t know how to more clearly convey to you what ‘No Turn On Red’ means!
No keep going. That exit is clearly a trap.
I don’t think this area has paper plates. Though if you want to score some heroin I think I saw a guy that could help you out.
How did you make it so convincingly sound like you knew what you were supposed to do right before you tried to go in the wrong direction down that divided highway?
Cobalt: (our illustrious navigator if you’ll recall)
According to my map we are… drifting slowly sideways across the median.
(When asked “Where are we?”) I don’t know. And I actually haven’t known for awhile now.
Sorry, sorry! I tried to tell you but I forgot the word for left!
Wait, give me a minute. It looks like the Wal Mart moved.
Yeah. Whatever you’re filling in the blanks with there, it was crazier than that. It is a truly incomparable experience to see the road in front of you drop off entirely and then find that you’re headed down the steepest grade you’ve ever seen along a one way road. And of course right about the time that you realize stopping or turning around are laughable impossibilities, you see headlights coming towards you. Now, we’d gone backwards on a one way street at another point in the trip, and so all of us were pretty sure that we were going to die, or at the very least be held criminally liable for the large amount of damage that was about to happen, but that was somehow not the case and the approaching truck actually fit past us when there was clearly no room for that to happen by some form of strange demon magic. And then of course this sheer cliff face dumped us straight into a highway where we were once again reminded of our mortality but still somehow not introduced to it.
Against all odds, we arrived at the Wal Mart that we sought. Cobalt apologizing profusely, Rekzar suffering from oxygen deprivation due to uncontrollable nervous laughter, me mocking Lucius relentlessly (so essentially no change from normal), Lucius somehow having the time of his life, and LunarKeys looking like he severely regretted deciding to come with us, and also every decision he’s made in his life up until that point. One thing that all of us had failed to consider was our location. I don’t know what to call this particular region. It’s pretty much everything east of the Mississippi River not including the Ohio River Valley and New England, that part of the country. The characteristic that typifies this region is what has led me to refer to it as the “everything is closed all the time so fuck you” region. You know, the type of areas that are wallpapered with blue laws of seemingly random nature and indeterminate purpose where entire towns shut down when the hot-sky-ball stops showing its face. The idea of Wal Marts having hours was completely foreign to me until I visited this awful fetid crater that convenience forgot. Where I come from, Wal Mart is open Christmas Day, and during power outages, and during any natural disaster less severe than a hail of flaming meteors.
The reason that this particular inconvenience suddenly became relevant is that our travel delays put us beyond the draconian restrictions placed on this store’s operating times, meaning that we made our harrowing sojourn for no reason. After convincing LunarKeys not to kill himself/all of us, we set to thinking of an alternate solution. We settled on a gas station. It only had an outside chance of containing paper plates and such, but it was the only thing that might actually be open, so it beat out literally every public institution within reach. The nearby gas station did indeed have paper plates. No forks, but we were willing to take any victory we could get at that point. It was about half-past tomorrow by the time we got back to our rooms, and we all hit the sack with a comforting sense that the next day would be the start of the con and couldn’t possibly be a bigger fiasco than this short trip to the store had been. So you know, progress!
Friday:
The first day of the actual con started with a writing panel because of course it did, and also because the first writing panel actually started before the con did, because that’s how writing track rolls. Calm, thoughtful, slow paced, just what I want first thing in the morning. I was surprised to see sponsors with us in the drooling proletariat line trying to get into the Opening Ceremonies, but I guess them’s the breaks sometimes. I think that Anthrocon is becoming a victim of its own success in that respect. Sponsors are starting to lose privileges because there’s just so darn many of them. The line isn’t a big deal, though. The Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom can fit the entirety of the convention, so it’s not like you won’t get a seat if you show up late. The ceremony was quite reliably entertaining as usual. It featured a flock of penguins, which in this venue isn’t really a surprise, actually. After that I retreated back into the writing room because nothing was open yet at that point anyway.
It was a worthwhile trip though, as the extra time at the end gave me a chance to chat with Ianus Wolf a bit. It was nice to catch up with him some as I don’t often get a chance to, despite the unreasonable amount of time I spend at the panels he hosts. The content of that little chat was actually quite noteworthy. I’d asked him to look over my in-progress novel a while ago and he had in fact taken a look. He really did seem to like it even though he’d only had the chance to give it a cursory glance. What was much more interesting was the remarks that this led to. He told me that he saw me often at these panels and heard from me quite frequently at them. It was nice to hear that my input was appreciated, and I thought that would be the end of it, but then he alluded to the fact that they’re always looking for extra hands to help out and it would be nice if they had some fresh blood in the writing track. Wait, do what? Like… I could be up there talking to people about writing, with people there to listen to me talk about writing? Well hot damn, that would be awesome! I wouldn’t have to raise my hand to talk anymore!
I guess he must’ve really liked my novel because he got through just a few pages of it and then asked me if I’d like to host a writing panel. I think I’ll call that my first professional endorsement. Unlike everyone else who lines the table up there in front of the panel I have no publishing credits, but this sounds like a really exciting opportunity and I’m most certainly going to take him up on it. I just hope they don’t put me up there next to Kyell Gold. Not only is he a prolific and famous author but he’s also pretty awesome at every other aspect of humanity and I would feel like such a piece of shit if I were up there sitting next to him as if to imply that I had any business at all being up there on his level. Still, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. So, I guess that’s another con that I’m potentially a part of. This is happening with alarming frequency these days. Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep being awesome everywhere, despite the risks.
After my apparent recruitment came a panel that was named some obfuscating German word, the actual purpose of which I couldn’t fathom nor figure out by attending it. I’m just calling it the “Make MCA Hogarth laugh” panel, because I spent the entire time doing exactly that. A good time was had by all, really, lack of structure or direction be damned! After that it was back to writing panels. I had to prepare to be at the helm of one soon, after all.
I’d made contact with Namelessimp earlier. She said that she and Lord Grey were planning on going to Uncle Kage’s Story Hour. They wanted to get there unreasonably early, which normally I’d be against, but I got to hang out with them for a while, which I was all for. Even though sitting on the floor quickly got old, I’m glad that I went for it. I love having the chance to meet someone that I’m a fan of, and Impy was very friendly. I’d gotten the impression that we’d probably get along well in person and it was lovely to be proven right. Impy looked to be handling her first con pretty well. She was quite a bit more collected that I was in her position, and she even sketched a quick mugshot of me just because and that’s awesome. I really wish I could do things like that for people because it always feels like I don’t have much to offer anyone, particularly when I have such generous friends.
In any case, Kage did not disappoint. His unique perspectives and prose are always a joy to behold. He’s everything that I could ever hope to be as a storyteller, and obviously quite a personality. Lucius told me about this really cool guy in a labcoat that he talked to earlier, and you’ll never guess who it was. Nor did he, actually. Kage is just that sort of person, really. You’d never guess that he’s someone important just talking to him out of context. It kinda makes me feel bad, because I tend to act like I’m someone important when I most certainly have no reason to.
After that I wedged in some time to meet up with Nevir and Ryoken, two of the rare sort of friends that I’d actually met in person before this con. I had no idea how good of a friend I had in them until I met up with them in the lobby and they came bearing gifts. Ryoken has a printing and laminating operation going now, and so they decided to surprise me by making a very stylish screen-printed version of my badge. A fantastic idea, really. I’d been wearing my janky old computer printout badge for a very long time, so I know that I’ll get a lot of use out of this fancy new one. The second thing that I suddenly found in my hands was even more astonishing. It was a laminate sheet, Lucite or Plexiglas maybe, on which was printed an artwork that was itself a gift from Ryoken some time ago. I was truly blown away by this. It’s quite rare that I am speechless, and this case was no exception, but that’s just because it’s a con so nothing ever slows down for a second. So though I kept talking and greeting and catching up, I knew that I wasn’t ever going to come up with any appropriate expression of gratitude for this.
I’ve always been amazed by the generosity and selflessness of the furry fandom. Yeah sure there’s plenty of moaning in FA journals and “emergency commissions” but that’s online shenanigans. In person, even the people I’ve known who have next to nothing have often been eager to share and support each other. I lost track of how many drinks were bought for me. I even got a whole meal covered by someone who I just met who had no guarantee that we’d ever meet again. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything like that anywhere else and I doubt that I ever will.
I’m not exactly sure how to roll from sentimentality like that straight into the late night sexy writing panel, but I’m keeping to the actual course of events and that’s how cons go. That roller coaster is half the fun of a con though, so you’ll just have to deal with my lack of proper segues as time goes on. I’d heard that the late, late panel last year was a blast, so I was really excited to be attending this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. There’s a lot of effort put into maintaining the content restrictions of the daytime panels. I mean, it’s a group of furries. Conversation is pretty much guaranteed to head in certain directions after a while. Having to work to keep our thoughts and words on the straight and narrow all day makes the “anything goes” panels very cathartic. And of course the crazier and more offensive a subject is, the more fun it is to talk about.
The panelists included both Rukis and Kyell Gold, making for a heck of an atmosphere with their collected wit and charm. It was good to see Rukis again. We chatted a lot last time and it’s always nice to keep up with someone, especially when that someone is a luminary of sorts. Rukis is a published author and extremely prolific artist, so she can speak intelligently on a tremendous wealth of subjects. Despite the severe strain and sleep-depravation that she operates under at cons, she remains quite cheerful and personable, always a joy to be around. We talked long into the night, and the next morning, which just so happens to be when the next event was. I’m sure I got some sleep in there though, probably.
Saturday:
In the morning I asked LanHao if we could switch beds for the next night because Lucius responds to all stimuli capable of waking him up as if he were being repeatedly tazed. While his spirited collisions with the opposite wall were quite reliably entertaining, I was rather concerned that he’d catch the edge of the windowsill and leave some teeth there one of these times. In any case, we did manage to get up in time for the obnoxiously early MilFur breakfast. Apparently we weren’t quite as early as our contemporaries though, and all the big tables had been filled, leaving us to sit just vaguely near all the other attendees, rather defeating the purpose of eating with them, I suppose, but we were there, we may as well eat.
The strain was showing from having the large volume of people come there all at once. The wait was pretty long and it was quite rare to hear from our waitress at all. A waiter who was serving a table near ours checked in on us a few times because he’d seen how long we’d been sitting there before we even got silverware. He couldn’t really take our order or anything rash like that though, because we weren’t in his zone or whatever. Waitstaff are such strangely territorial creatures. Patience did eventually see us to some food. Not overly appetizing, but it probably was the healthiest thing that I ate all week. Their menu was absolutely smothered in health buzzwords, so apparently at some point someone put a certain amount of thought into making this cuisine a little less toxic than average. When I noted that the people at the nearby table under the purview of the friendly-and-attentive-but-not-ours waiter had paid their check and cashed out already, and even had their dishes cleared away by the time our food arrived, I was officially rather impressed. He appeared to be under no less stress, and yet he was kicking all kinds of ass at his job. It was quite reassuring to see that there was some work getting done around here.
I actually gave him a tip because I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen such enthusiasm and dedication in a server. If I wanted to be really vindictive about it I would’ve pointed out to our waitress that I gave half her tip to someone else, but I didn’t see any need. I was trying to be nice. (For once). He was taken aback and grateful in the same breath, as one might expect. What wasn’t so easy to predict was that he, like so many in the crowd at the con, was an artist. Apparently he’s just as skilled and enthusiastic with paint as he is his day job. Since he was so gracious and friendly to us, I guess I’ll take a second to link his website, http://www.randylandpittsburgh.com/. It’s the least I can do. I guess sometimes you meet really great people at cons even when you’re not trying or expecting to. Such a wonderful way to start the day. At some point I found a chance to have a quick drink with Lion King and Mooncat before my next event. I really would’ve liked to stay longer, but I had other events to be at. Never a dull moment as they say.
I saw a familiar name on the staff listing in the con book, so my next stop was to check that out. Archai had gotten himself drafted into the photography shop this year. The con provides free fursuit photos to all attendees, so business was quite heavy at their little operation. I’m glad that I got there early in the morning when the vast majority of potential customers had yet to even begin to blearily stumble out of bed. I’ve not the best sense for photography, but a big chunk of the job was animal control, and that part of it I tend to be pretty good at. Shepherding people where they needed to be, making sure they looked good for the picture and getting them the information that they would need to find their photos online, it all seemed pretty straightforward to me. While I was visiting I thought I’d help out a bit once I got the hang of it, since I do hate being in the way. After a few minutes Archai noticed with some mild surprise that I was pretty much doing his job for him.
“Wow, you train up fast.”
He was right, of course, but that hadn’t really occurred to me before. I suppose I will reluctantly credit the Navy with that particular adaptation. There were a lot of sink-or-swim acquisitions of new skills during my tour. You get thrown unexpectedly into a lot of new situations and just expected to figure shit out on your own. I guess I still have some of that mentality with me. Perhaps that was a part of what made me so attractive to the Furthemore staff. It’s nice to know that I can still be productive once in a while. I’d better keep that stuff under wraps though. The last thing that I need is to get staff-kidnapped by Anthrocon. Much as I love the con, I run myself into the ground just attending it. I likely wouldn’t survive trying to staff it.
So, while I was working at this little photography operation I got a chance to catch up with Archai a little bit. If you don’t remember him from my last adventure, he was the guy from RainFurrest who recognized me by my badge and told me what a big fan of my writing he was. That is literally the only time that has ever happened, so he still holds a special place in my heart. I believe he was working to cement that location, as I won’t soon forget what we talked about. I’d asked him to look over my novel and give a few remarks on it. I’d let the matter drop when I didn’t hear back from him, but apparently it had been weighing on his mind. I was vexed and more than a little bit flattered by his reasoning. Apparently he’d been trying to write some feedback, but felt that his opinions of my work wouldn’t do justice to it. Anything he could say would be an insult. I insisted that this wasn’t the case, but he seemed quite convinced of it. So I suppose I’m just going to have to take it as a hefty compliment that the quality of my writing just intimidated someone out of critiquing it.
From there it was onto the always-entertaining fursuit parade, some more writing panels, and then back to the Westin for the Brony panel. It was quite well attended and looked to be a somewhat happening place. Hasbro’s ever-expanding contingent of lawyer-droids have placed some rather befuddling restrictions on what the content of the panel could be though. Video clips, even of entirely fan-made works, were on the verboten list. That greatly concerned me, as that sort of thing is usually a sizable portion, if not a majority of an average Brony panel. Right then though, I got a ping from Azure letting me know his location. I was anxious to see him again, and when he said that Zsisron was with him, that sealed the deal. Those two guys are the unstoppable juggernauts of the hypnosis community, so I really was anxious to see Bluedude, and meet Zsisron. I ducked out of the panel reluctantly, but Lucius assured me that it was pretty disappointing, so I’m glad I went with the option to go hang out with some really cool artists at the zoo.
After hanging out with artists at the zoo came… hanging out with a whole crapton more artists at the zoo, actually. I’d been there just in time for the transformation art jam. A big gathering of folks who are all about things turning into other things. I’ve been a little uneasy about art jams in the past. I feel like I don’t really have a place in one, what with my complete inability to art at things. I still stopped by though, because I saw someone I wanted to talk to. I met Angrboda at Anthrocon two years ago, and in a story far too insane for it to be made up, she introduced me to Zenzi, an RPI alumni, who subsequently wrote one of the recommendation letters that got me into college. I wanted to let her know that this strange sequence of events had worked out very much to my favor and that the girl dressed as a cow that I met at a furry convention had indeed helped to secure my higher education.
I had meant to drop in really quickly and leave this talented group to their business, but I sat down at their table and got to talking and… never stopped, really. More people crowded around as the art jam got into full swing, so many that at one point I was too crowded in to leave even if I wanted to. I got to sit and chat with Nyomi, Therian, Gilpanda, Taki, the whole crew from our room, and dozens of others. Later on Abe E Seedy came by and I checked another important luminary off my list. Also it took me years but I figured out that his username is just the alphabet. That tricky bastard. In any case, I’m a big fan of his and I’d actually been trying to find him for some time. Little did I know that I just had to find a place to strategically plop myself down and he’d come to me! I had a marvelous time watching all these great people do their work, and they put up with me admirably well. A big group wanted to go out for drinks afterwards, and how could I say no?
Hanging out at the bar was a somewhat less crowded and more easygoing way to get to know all these people that I’d been admiring from a distance. It’s always fun to chat with people you share interests with, and even more so with furries, as certain entirely unique things come up quite regularly that you’d never find anywhere else. The bar we were at had some Anthrocon themed specialty drinks, and the simple act of two of us ordering the same one led to this exchange.
“And what can I do for you?”
“Yiff me berry hard.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Yep, that happened. It was actually a pretty good drink. I didn’t order it just for the comedic value. It was hard cider with a shot or raspberry vodka. Sounded like something right up my alley. So much so that I had two of them. I was really relaxed by the end of that, probably because I’d had the equivalent of four drinks in a rather short span, but I handled myself pretty well. I saw Anyare on the way out and let her know how amazing her art is in what I’m really hoping was an articulate and non-creepy way. After that it was back to the zoo to check out a card game that Angrboda has been developing. It’s pretty much Card’s Against Humanity except a thousand times more awful because furries. It’s called “I Can’t Fap to This”. It follows the format of ‘Whoonu’ just with sexual kinks instead of innocuous subjects. Basically the cards all have things that you’d find in an FA keyword search and when it’s your turn everyone picks the one that they think you’re into. You rank them by how hot they make you and everyone learns way more about you than they ever probably wanted to know. It’s a very interesting experience to get all that stuff out in the open. Naturally Angrboda had something of an advantage because a lot of us were there because we were into what she’s into, but that just adds to the fun, really. As she puts it “If you like what I draw then that means that we’re into the same shit and we should totally hang out.”
We finally wound down and went our separate ways, mainly due to just outright exhaustion all across the board. As I walked back to the room I was starting to feel guilty about how I was about to wake everyone up at 1AM when I got back to head to bed. And of course when I got there the room was empty. I guess that means that everyone was having plenty of fun. The whole crew was there next door though, with the last-minute addition of Daom. So I went and hung out with them for a while, playing some Betrayal at the House on the Hill, a very interesting horror-themed strategy game. It’s one of those tabletop games that seems overcomplicated and takes some time to get into but is absolutely worth playing. The complexity means that you’re playing a radically different game every time. Very interesting.
What I was oblivious to for far too long was a very real suspenseful crisis happening a bit closer to home. Lucius called and asked if I’d like to join him down at the Sharper Edge for a drink. I hated to refuse, but I was in the middle of a great game and was pretty set on staying in by then. I didn’t want to get too far from a bed if at all possible. The message that I didn’t get was that this was some kind of coded distress signal. Went right over my head of course, since we hadn’t decided on a secret “I’m being mugged but can’t tell you that over the phone” code. I suppose we should have, given that I consistently fail to understand Lucius when he’s actually trying to say the thing that he’s trying to say.
Apparently Lucius had been out drinking and someone came up and got real friendly with him, buying him lots of drinks and such. Fortunately he wasn’t too drunk to recognize his new buddy’s efforts to lead him away from populated areas as a trap. When covert signaling failed, he went with the less elegant but much more effective “get outside and run away really fast” technique. It did indeed work, but left me playing Siri again to get Lucius back to the room from who-knows-where. Still, it ended well. An encounter you can run away from might not be as good as one you can walk away from, but it’s a lot better than one you can’t. I’m glad he was okay.
For those keeping score at home, Saturday at 01:30 I went to bed, at 07:00 I got up and my next encounter with a bed was at 03:30 on Sunday. And this is what I do to relax, apparently.
Sunday:
After a mercifully late morning I got down to the convention center to try my hand at Charades Impossible, wherein they torture fursuiters by giving them inhumanely difficult things to pantomime. It would appear that my level of exertion was actually rather subdued in comparison to the general populous, as very few people could manage to turn out at the crack of 10:30. Still, it was a really fun show. The small crowd made it a pretty relaxed atmosphere and it meant that I actually got a chance to go up on stage and cluelessly belt out a slurry of random words while some poor tiger tried to silently prompt me to say “The Battle of Trafalgar”.
Sunday was much less densely packed in terms of events (again, mercifully), so I headed back to see if there was anything going on at the room. I got back just in time for a spirited round of Munchkin. Great game. It mercilessly lampoons all the different tropes and clichés from Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and most every other nerd game. This is another one where the out of context quotes actually describe the event better than a full account.
*rolls dice* “Four! I’ve successfully evaded the chicken.”
“I’ve changed race a dozen times and become an elf more times than there are elf cards in the deck. What the hell is going on?”
“Broad Sword: Can only be equipped by women. … Pfffff-”
“ALL rules end with ‘Unless you don’t get caught doing it’.”
*flips card revealing a monster* “I got crabs.” “Oh yeah? Well I use this to steal your crabs!”
“There’s only one ability actually called ‘backstab’ but really just about every card that’s not armor or a monster is also backstab.”
So yeah, it’s certainly a uniquely absurd experience. Right at home in a furry con, really. After that it was another trip to the zoo to hang out with Angrboda and her crew from last night some more. Bluedude said that he was in the neighborhood so I invited him over to our table. Apparently he rolls deep because he brought like four other people over with him. I felt like the middle of a Venn diagram because none of these two groups knew each other and I’d just sort of unintentionally mashed them together. Still, it was nice that I could get people to come to me. I had a brief little “dance puppets, dance!” moment as we mingled a bit.
Time moved pretty quickly in that span, apparently. Soon Ang had to leave, and the end of the con had crept up on me before I knew it. I said my farewells to Bluedude and snuck off to one more panel. This was one that I felt I really had to check out, as it was something new and innovative. They pretty much did a writing version of Whose Line is it Anyway? They got a bunch of authors together and asked for suggestions from the audience. “Give me a genre, a species, a profession and a major life event!” and then they’d come up with a story on the spot that was “A crime drama about a ferret nurse who wins the lottery”. What really cinched it was the fact that they brought in a sketch artist to draw up the stories on a big easel as they were being composed. As you might’ve guessed, the results were pretty entertaining. A porcupine dangling on a rope from a flying houseboat, a high-stakes darts tournament to uncover the secret of the sidewinder snakes, all very good stuff. I suppose the only thing that I could say against it was that a scheduling problem led it to overlap with the closing ceremonies, which of course I then missed.
And then, just like that, the con was over. I’ve actually never had the privilege of witnessing the proper end of a con. I’ve always been under some manner of time pressure. Now being well and truly on my own schedule was something of a novel experience. A little bit of a letdown, wandering about and trying to figure out who hadn’t left yet. Worth doing though, certainly. Leaving pre-emptively was always kind of a void wherein I wondered what I was missing. At least with a chance to let the con wind down, I could actually get to the point where I felt like leaving before I had to leave.
I managed to get together with my neighbors from the Omni for dinner. We all had a good laugh about the custom boxes of goldfish crackers that showed up for LunarKeys in the interim. Apparently you can get Goldfish crackers with a personal photo and message on the box. So what were they to use but a picture of LunarKeys trapped in a box of Goldfish? In any case, we made it back down to the Sharper Edge for some food. It was a quiet meal, as a lot of the crowd had dissipated by then. A welcome relief to be sure. Rekzar couldn’t hide his indignation as we compared notes about our respective con experiences. He noticed the conspicuous wealth of name-dropping present in the summary of my weekend and felt compelled to comment rather candidly on it.
“What the hell man? How do you know everyone? It doesn’t make any sense.”
It hadn’t really occurred to me as being unusual. I’ve never really thought of myself as being popular or well-connected, but I guess in certain circles I know some people. I don’t really try to network or anything like that. I guess it’s just because I’m not shy about approaching people whose work I’m a fan of or who I recognize from the internet. I think it was explained to me best by one of the targets of my fan worship last year.
“You don’t want anything from me. Yeah sure, you’re here because you like my art, but never once have you asked for any, in fact it hardly even comes up in conversation. Yeah, lots of people know me and recognize me, but you wanted to spend some time here and get to know me. That’s not the kind of attention that I get very often.”
I think that attitude is common among artists, and that might be what makes my encounters so favorable with them even though I have hardly any sort of a following to speak of and could hardly call myself one of their peers. That’s not a bad spot to be in, really. I’d be glad to be just a friendly guy that lots of interesting people know and hang out with. This con was another very social one, probably even more so than last year. I don’t even want to go through the list of events that I missed in favor of spending time with people, but I think that it was time well spent.
I dropped by the zoo a couple more times, at first finding nothing of interest, but I’m glad that I kept at it because later on a few blips on the radar appeared. I got to see Clementine, who I’d somehow managed to miss throughout the rest of the con, and also to sit and chat some more with Wolflynx at a table that conveniently also contained Yawg, so I gave a quick shout out to him as well. My phrasing was “Hey, you’re Yawg, right? The founder of International Renamon Appreciation Day?” He said that he really appreciated that particular call-out. He said that he thought “Yes, now I have truly made my mark on the world.” Astonishingly enough it was actually still Sunday by the time I went back to the Omni to play some more games and decompress. Lucius came back from his visit to the Kellogg Ranch just in time to crash with us. I’m told that he had a simply magical time, as any visitor there does.
Monday:
Some running out of steam was evident all across the board, but fortunately there was nothing that required our attention urgently thanks to the Omni’s mercifully late check-out time. Those of us who remained went out for lunch before we had to head out. I came to realize that I was the one in the group with the most intact higher brain functions and soon became de-facto decision maker for when such scenarios called for it. Everyone else was pretty out of it. Once again, a sampling:
“Oh shit, this is alcoholic.” “Yeah, when I ordered a ‘Hard Root Beer’ and you said that you’d like one too, what did you think that meant?” So I got two root beers. ^_^
“Alright, let me review real quick. What did you order?” “I don’t remember.” That was Lucius, who had given the waiter his order last, literally seconds before that question was asked, and had not the vaguest idea what he himself had just said.
Fox was quiet and a little disengaged and LunarKeys was dazed and looking like he was cursing everything that’s ever happened to him ever, but I think that those states are just the respective default settings of those two; as ‘quiet bewilderment’ is for Lucius and ‘worldly cynicism’ is for LanHao. If my records here are anything to go by, my default state is ‘judgmental observation’. Oh well, they’re all entertaining and useful in their own ways. In any case, we survived that meal and were on our way. Goodbyes were short and simple. Once again I was reminded of what a gift it is to get to the point of actually wanting to leave before heading out. Lucius made a similar observation regarding our departure. He made numerous mentions of what a novelty it was that he wasn’t dreading the trip home for once. Instead of a return to drudgery, he had his own house with a friendly dog and adorable baby goats to return to. I think that’s a big part of what makes parting a little easier.
Once again the length of my prose broke FA, so click here for the thrilling conclusion if you'd like to hear about my adventures after the con.
In theory, tacking travel and a few visits with friends onto the end of a furry con trip is a great idea. In the practical sense though, particularly the necessity of writing a con report afterwards, it leaves me woefully behind schedule, gormlessly squinting at a calendar wondering what in the name of unholy fuck happened to the last two weeks of my life. In order to forcibly extricate some sense of order out of what, up until this point, was a mostly functional memory system, I’m going to forego my traditional narrative structure and try to break things down day-by-day, at least for the con, as those days tend to have an alarmingly high event density per unit time. The divisions will coincide with where I actually managed to get sleep, as that frequently happened after midnight, making the divisions of actual calendar days far less meaningful. So here we go then. Now, what day was July second?
Wednesday:
I woke up a fair bit earlier than I expected to, must’ve been all that nothing I’ve been doing lately leaving me so well rested all the time. So I got a plenty early start around 10:00. The drive itself was pretty uneventful. I did hit a bird, which was something I’d never done before. It would be a stretch to call that an achievement though. The early start meant that I beat most everyone I knew there by a sizable margin. That meant that there wasn’t a whole lot to do for the day. I did explore Pittsburgh a bit on foot and got a reminder of why I don’t explore Pittsburgh on foot very much. The machine shop that caught on fire a few decades ago and no one has bothered to either fix or destroy since that time very nicely encapsulates the general mood of the place. I think that sort of thing might be a part of why Pittsburgh puts up with us with a smile on their face. I do believe that they rather welcome all the money we spend here.
I ran into Garcanno in the lobby. He’s an old friend from back in Virginia. It’s been awhile, so it was nice to see him again and catch up a bit. Of course right then my phone battery decided to die and I didn’t yet have a room to go to in order to charge it. I had to run off to solve that as this was probably the most critical juncture for me to actually have it working, what with trying to coordinate the meeting up of multiple people. The whole thing made me feel pretty stupid, as this sort of thing is usually not a problem, but certain inevitabilities are reached when you don’t charge your phone for like a week and then use it a whole bunch.
In any case, I did eventually meet up with LanHao, who was graciously hosting me at his room. I’d eaten on the way because I’ve learned that arriving hungry is a pretty unpleasant experience. Still, I had a drink with him while he fueled up at the Sharper Edge. The cool thing about restaurants with an expansive menu of fancy beers is that they usually have a good cider selection also. Now, there will be 2 ciders compared to 200 beers, but at this point I consider “a good cider selection” to be “anything above zero varieties and actually having them in stock” so they get a pretty solid approval with five different flavors. Four of which I tried over the course of the weekend.
I checked on Lucius for a status report and found out that he was in Cleveland for some reason. Firstly, ew. Secondly, that is not how you get from Texas to Pittsburgh at all. Not even a little bit. It got a little clearer after he’d mentioned that he was in Minnesota for some other unknown, presumably sinister reason. He said that he’d come across Sweet Apple Acres on his journey and bought some cider for me. I would never have pegged the Ohio River Valley as the location of Equestria, but I guess that works.
My first adventure with Lucius started before he even got there, as my next report from him brought a fresh round of confusion about his location. He professed to be taking Rt. 76 East towards Pittsburgh, while the exit numbers he was giving me showed him on 76E moving away from Pittsburgh. He had gotten from the west side of Pittsburgh to the east side whilst having skipped that all-important step of actually going to Pittsburgh. Important life lesson, kids: a road with signs listing the distance to a given city may not necessarily lead to that city; as we both learned. I the easy way, and Lucius the hard way.
“You went past it.”
“I went past an entire city?”
“Yeah. It’s a pretty big city too. I’d say ‘you can’t miss it’ but that assertion has just been empirically disproven.”
So yeah, that was a thing. I managed to direct him in using some of the selection of roads that actually do enter Pittsburgh. Thanks to my skilled ground-traffic-controller skills he managed to actually find us and I was able to head down and lead him up to the room. With that and the latent addition of carandaenor the gang was all there. It was a first Anthrocon for both Lucius and Fox (the incomparably creative nickname of my other roommate. Turns out his legal last name actually is “Fox” so that saves time I guess). Fox’s parents were wary of us furry sorts, and seemed to be petrified that their son would end up in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. LanHao was quick to point out that all the room’s other occupants were prior military, and all of us had security clearance of Secret or higher. Since we’d all undergone extensive background checks, that meant that fox was technically the most dangerous person in the room. I guess that helped him sleep at night, as the rest of us were forever waking him up in the morning so that he could get down to the Dealer’s Den early enough. We each took a turn playing alarm clock for him, actually.
Thursday:
Badge pickup went well. I had the rare luxury of pre-registering, conferring the indescribably valuable benefit of truncating the line by about 1000-fold. I waited behind precisely one person and then I was on my way. And really that was the only con-related thing I did the whole time. This was another very quiet day. I’ve always heard people talk up how great it was to arrive stupid early to the con, but I’d never really seen the appeal. I walked through the Zoo a few times, but found very little of interest. I guess I just don’t have enough friends for this sort of pre-con hanging out to really be worth anything. Without ever really deciding or intending to, I set about rectifying that.
I never would’ve guessed what a valuable connection LanHao would be, though I had previously noted that he casts a pretty wide net in terms of social circles. The other four people that he’d helped secure a room for were introduced to me presently. To my delight that crowd included CatMonkShiro and Lunarkeys, an artist and prolific commissioner, respectively, both of whom I’ve been a huge fan of for quite some time. I’d unknowingly been placed right next to a great big pow-wow of very enthusiastic Transformation fans, all of whom I got along with famously. Rounding out the assortment were Rekzar and Cobalt_K, a writer/commissioner and comic artist, in that order, whom I’d never met or heard of before, but they were every bit as awesome as the former pair. Yes, I’m convinced that everyone in that room was of equal awesomeness, each more equal than the last.
In any case, we somehow managed to collect together this whole two-room assortment and head down to the Sharper Edge for dinner. The indomitable collection of archery-related terms Arrowquivershaft also made his way down to join us and round out the group. He seemed interesting and was one of those rare few whose existence had not escaped my notice until right then. Quiet though, I do wish I’d had a chance to get to know him a little better. A good time was had by all and the periods that weren’t spent in frantic, disorganized efforts to get everyone’s name straight were filled with very lively and entertaining conversation. I’m given to understand that at various points throughout the con my words ended up being twiddled on the Twitters, so I guess I said a few things of merit.
We got back to our collective rooms and partook of a cake that I forget the reasoning behind. Someone’s birthday, most likely, given the My Little Pony candles that were scattered across it. I cared not for its origins though. It was delicious and moist and most assuredly not a lie, so I excused its dark past. We quickly arrived at the conclusion, though, that our present procedure of tearing the cake apart by hand and shoving it in the general vector of our faces was not what one would call sustainable, particularly given that we were trying not to make a catastrophic mess of the very nice hotel rooms we were in. I believe that I’ve made prior mention of the Omni’s palatial awesomeness the other times I’ve stayed there, and this trip was no exception. Granted it meant that there was rather a necessity to stack the rooms pretty heavily to make it affordable, but we do that anyway. May as well quad-up in a really nice hotel room rather than being stacked like cordwood in the Westin.
Regardless, we decided that some cutlery was in order, so a handful of us piled into the little rental car that had ferried Lucius here. I had shotgun due to what I presume was some skillful manipulation of the arcane rules that govern such things, and lined up across the back were Rekzar, LunarKeys and Cobalt. Why exactly we needed five people to go to Wal Mart and buy forks is unclear, but it was certainly a trip worth going on. It was easily the most awesome disaster I’ve ever been a part of.
Now then, this is a scene that deserves to be set. At the helm, we have Lucius, an operator only just now becoming familiar with the car he’s driving and who managed to miss the entire city of Pittsburgh on the way in. In the back is our navigator, Cobalt, who has a similarly tentative grasp of the smartphone he was meant to be directing us with. I didn’t have much interest in the actual destination and was directing my efforts more towards reminding Lucius that traffic laws exist. Rekzar, like the rest of us, had no idea what the fuck with regards to the layout of the city of Pittsburgh, but he often chimed in with helpful observations like the number of times we’d crossed the same river on the way (three. The final count was three). Lunarkeys was relatively quiet and appeared to be pretending that either he or all of us did not exist. I would’ve much preferred his fantasy to the cruel reality that was this expedition that the Donner Party would’ve called ‘poorly planned’ and probably also ‘well marbled, if a bit stringy’.
I kid though, in all reality this was, like many furry events, a very entertaining disaster. I could give a point-by-point account, but that would take several thousand more words and probably still not properly do the event justice. I will instead present a couple key snippets that typify the experience and let you extrapolate that to the 45 minutes that it took to traverse the 11 miles to the store. These are all actual quotes from that harrowing journey.
Lucius:
Woah look, it’s the firehouse from Ghostbusters!
Check out this drunk guy dancing across the crosswalk in front of us. I’m gonna honk at ‘em.
This is way more fun than I ever thought that being hopelessly lost could be.
Bucephalus:
Yeah I’m pretty sure that ‘mugging’ is this town’s number one industry.
I don’t know how to more clearly convey to you what ‘No Turn On Red’ means!
No keep going. That exit is clearly a trap.
I don’t think this area has paper plates. Though if you want to score some heroin I think I saw a guy that could help you out.
How did you make it so convincingly sound like you knew what you were supposed to do right before you tried to go in the wrong direction down that divided highway?
Cobalt: (our illustrious navigator if you’ll recall)
According to my map we are… drifting slowly sideways across the median.
(When asked “Where are we?”) I don’t know. And I actually haven’t known for awhile now.
Sorry, sorry! I tried to tell you but I forgot the word for left!
Wait, give me a minute. It looks like the Wal Mart moved.
Yeah. Whatever you’re filling in the blanks with there, it was crazier than that. It is a truly incomparable experience to see the road in front of you drop off entirely and then find that you’re headed down the steepest grade you’ve ever seen along a one way road. And of course right about the time that you realize stopping or turning around are laughable impossibilities, you see headlights coming towards you. Now, we’d gone backwards on a one way street at another point in the trip, and so all of us were pretty sure that we were going to die, or at the very least be held criminally liable for the large amount of damage that was about to happen, but that was somehow not the case and the approaching truck actually fit past us when there was clearly no room for that to happen by some form of strange demon magic. And then of course this sheer cliff face dumped us straight into a highway where we were once again reminded of our mortality but still somehow not introduced to it.
Against all odds, we arrived at the Wal Mart that we sought. Cobalt apologizing profusely, Rekzar suffering from oxygen deprivation due to uncontrollable nervous laughter, me mocking Lucius relentlessly (so essentially no change from normal), Lucius somehow having the time of his life, and LunarKeys looking like he severely regretted deciding to come with us, and also every decision he’s made in his life up until that point. One thing that all of us had failed to consider was our location. I don’t know what to call this particular region. It’s pretty much everything east of the Mississippi River not including the Ohio River Valley and New England, that part of the country. The characteristic that typifies this region is what has led me to refer to it as the “everything is closed all the time so fuck you” region. You know, the type of areas that are wallpapered with blue laws of seemingly random nature and indeterminate purpose where entire towns shut down when the hot-sky-ball stops showing its face. The idea of Wal Marts having hours was completely foreign to me until I visited this awful fetid crater that convenience forgot. Where I come from, Wal Mart is open Christmas Day, and during power outages, and during any natural disaster less severe than a hail of flaming meteors.
The reason that this particular inconvenience suddenly became relevant is that our travel delays put us beyond the draconian restrictions placed on this store’s operating times, meaning that we made our harrowing sojourn for no reason. After convincing LunarKeys not to kill himself/all of us, we set to thinking of an alternate solution. We settled on a gas station. It only had an outside chance of containing paper plates and such, but it was the only thing that might actually be open, so it beat out literally every public institution within reach. The nearby gas station did indeed have paper plates. No forks, but we were willing to take any victory we could get at that point. It was about half-past tomorrow by the time we got back to our rooms, and we all hit the sack with a comforting sense that the next day would be the start of the con and couldn’t possibly be a bigger fiasco than this short trip to the store had been. So you know, progress!
Friday:
The first day of the actual con started with a writing panel because of course it did, and also because the first writing panel actually started before the con did, because that’s how writing track rolls. Calm, thoughtful, slow paced, just what I want first thing in the morning. I was surprised to see sponsors with us in the drooling proletariat line trying to get into the Opening Ceremonies, but I guess them’s the breaks sometimes. I think that Anthrocon is becoming a victim of its own success in that respect. Sponsors are starting to lose privileges because there’s just so darn many of them. The line isn’t a big deal, though. The Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom can fit the entirety of the convention, so it’s not like you won’t get a seat if you show up late. The ceremony was quite reliably entertaining as usual. It featured a flock of penguins, which in this venue isn’t really a surprise, actually. After that I retreated back into the writing room because nothing was open yet at that point anyway.
It was a worthwhile trip though, as the extra time at the end gave me a chance to chat with Ianus Wolf a bit. It was nice to catch up with him some as I don’t often get a chance to, despite the unreasonable amount of time I spend at the panels he hosts. The content of that little chat was actually quite noteworthy. I’d asked him to look over my in-progress novel a while ago and he had in fact taken a look. He really did seem to like it even though he’d only had the chance to give it a cursory glance. What was much more interesting was the remarks that this led to. He told me that he saw me often at these panels and heard from me quite frequently at them. It was nice to hear that my input was appreciated, and I thought that would be the end of it, but then he alluded to the fact that they’re always looking for extra hands to help out and it would be nice if they had some fresh blood in the writing track. Wait, do what? Like… I could be up there talking to people about writing, with people there to listen to me talk about writing? Well hot damn, that would be awesome! I wouldn’t have to raise my hand to talk anymore!
I guess he must’ve really liked my novel because he got through just a few pages of it and then asked me if I’d like to host a writing panel. I think I’ll call that my first professional endorsement. Unlike everyone else who lines the table up there in front of the panel I have no publishing credits, but this sounds like a really exciting opportunity and I’m most certainly going to take him up on it. I just hope they don’t put me up there next to Kyell Gold. Not only is he a prolific and famous author but he’s also pretty awesome at every other aspect of humanity and I would feel like such a piece of shit if I were up there sitting next to him as if to imply that I had any business at all being up there on his level. Still, it’s a risk I’m willing to take. So, I guess that’s another con that I’m potentially a part of. This is happening with alarming frequency these days. Oh well, I guess I’ll just keep being awesome everywhere, despite the risks.
After my apparent recruitment came a panel that was named some obfuscating German word, the actual purpose of which I couldn’t fathom nor figure out by attending it. I’m just calling it the “Make MCA Hogarth laugh” panel, because I spent the entire time doing exactly that. A good time was had by all, really, lack of structure or direction be damned! After that it was back to writing panels. I had to prepare to be at the helm of one soon, after all.
I’d made contact with Namelessimp earlier. She said that she and Lord Grey were planning on going to Uncle Kage’s Story Hour. They wanted to get there unreasonably early, which normally I’d be against, but I got to hang out with them for a while, which I was all for. Even though sitting on the floor quickly got old, I’m glad that I went for it. I love having the chance to meet someone that I’m a fan of, and Impy was very friendly. I’d gotten the impression that we’d probably get along well in person and it was lovely to be proven right. Impy looked to be handling her first con pretty well. She was quite a bit more collected that I was in her position, and she even sketched a quick mugshot of me just because and that’s awesome. I really wish I could do things like that for people because it always feels like I don’t have much to offer anyone, particularly when I have such generous friends.
In any case, Kage did not disappoint. His unique perspectives and prose are always a joy to behold. He’s everything that I could ever hope to be as a storyteller, and obviously quite a personality. Lucius told me about this really cool guy in a labcoat that he talked to earlier, and you’ll never guess who it was. Nor did he, actually. Kage is just that sort of person, really. You’d never guess that he’s someone important just talking to him out of context. It kinda makes me feel bad, because I tend to act like I’m someone important when I most certainly have no reason to.
After that I wedged in some time to meet up with Nevir and Ryoken, two of the rare sort of friends that I’d actually met in person before this con. I had no idea how good of a friend I had in them until I met up with them in the lobby and they came bearing gifts. Ryoken has a printing and laminating operation going now, and so they decided to surprise me by making a very stylish screen-printed version of my badge. A fantastic idea, really. I’d been wearing my janky old computer printout badge for a very long time, so I know that I’ll get a lot of use out of this fancy new one. The second thing that I suddenly found in my hands was even more astonishing. It was a laminate sheet, Lucite or Plexiglas maybe, on which was printed an artwork that was itself a gift from Ryoken some time ago. I was truly blown away by this. It’s quite rare that I am speechless, and this case was no exception, but that’s just because it’s a con so nothing ever slows down for a second. So though I kept talking and greeting and catching up, I knew that I wasn’t ever going to come up with any appropriate expression of gratitude for this.
I’ve always been amazed by the generosity and selflessness of the furry fandom. Yeah sure there’s plenty of moaning in FA journals and “emergency commissions” but that’s online shenanigans. In person, even the people I’ve known who have next to nothing have often been eager to share and support each other. I lost track of how many drinks were bought for me. I even got a whole meal covered by someone who I just met who had no guarantee that we’d ever meet again. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything like that anywhere else and I doubt that I ever will.
I’m not exactly sure how to roll from sentimentality like that straight into the late night sexy writing panel, but I’m keeping to the actual course of events and that’s how cons go. That roller coaster is half the fun of a con though, so you’ll just have to deal with my lack of proper segues as time goes on. I’d heard that the late, late panel last year was a blast, so I was really excited to be attending this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. There’s a lot of effort put into maintaining the content restrictions of the daytime panels. I mean, it’s a group of furries. Conversation is pretty much guaranteed to head in certain directions after a while. Having to work to keep our thoughts and words on the straight and narrow all day makes the “anything goes” panels very cathartic. And of course the crazier and more offensive a subject is, the more fun it is to talk about.
The panelists included both Rukis and Kyell Gold, making for a heck of an atmosphere with their collected wit and charm. It was good to see Rukis again. We chatted a lot last time and it’s always nice to keep up with someone, especially when that someone is a luminary of sorts. Rukis is a published author and extremely prolific artist, so she can speak intelligently on a tremendous wealth of subjects. Despite the severe strain and sleep-depravation that she operates under at cons, she remains quite cheerful and personable, always a joy to be around. We talked long into the night, and the next morning, which just so happens to be when the next event was. I’m sure I got some sleep in there though, probably.
Saturday:
In the morning I asked LanHao if we could switch beds for the next night because Lucius responds to all stimuli capable of waking him up as if he were being repeatedly tazed. While his spirited collisions with the opposite wall were quite reliably entertaining, I was rather concerned that he’d catch the edge of the windowsill and leave some teeth there one of these times. In any case, we did manage to get up in time for the obnoxiously early MilFur breakfast. Apparently we weren’t quite as early as our contemporaries though, and all the big tables had been filled, leaving us to sit just vaguely near all the other attendees, rather defeating the purpose of eating with them, I suppose, but we were there, we may as well eat.
The strain was showing from having the large volume of people come there all at once. The wait was pretty long and it was quite rare to hear from our waitress at all. A waiter who was serving a table near ours checked in on us a few times because he’d seen how long we’d been sitting there before we even got silverware. He couldn’t really take our order or anything rash like that though, because we weren’t in his zone or whatever. Waitstaff are such strangely territorial creatures. Patience did eventually see us to some food. Not overly appetizing, but it probably was the healthiest thing that I ate all week. Their menu was absolutely smothered in health buzzwords, so apparently at some point someone put a certain amount of thought into making this cuisine a little less toxic than average. When I noted that the people at the nearby table under the purview of the friendly-and-attentive-but-not-ours waiter had paid their check and cashed out already, and even had their dishes cleared away by the time our food arrived, I was officially rather impressed. He appeared to be under no less stress, and yet he was kicking all kinds of ass at his job. It was quite reassuring to see that there was some work getting done around here.
I actually gave him a tip because I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen such enthusiasm and dedication in a server. If I wanted to be really vindictive about it I would’ve pointed out to our waitress that I gave half her tip to someone else, but I didn’t see any need. I was trying to be nice. (For once). He was taken aback and grateful in the same breath, as one might expect. What wasn’t so easy to predict was that he, like so many in the crowd at the con, was an artist. Apparently he’s just as skilled and enthusiastic with paint as he is his day job. Since he was so gracious and friendly to us, I guess I’ll take a second to link his website, http://www.randylandpittsburgh.com/. It’s the least I can do. I guess sometimes you meet really great people at cons even when you’re not trying or expecting to. Such a wonderful way to start the day. At some point I found a chance to have a quick drink with Lion King and Mooncat before my next event. I really would’ve liked to stay longer, but I had other events to be at. Never a dull moment as they say.
I saw a familiar name on the staff listing in the con book, so my next stop was to check that out. Archai had gotten himself drafted into the photography shop this year. The con provides free fursuit photos to all attendees, so business was quite heavy at their little operation. I’m glad that I got there early in the morning when the vast majority of potential customers had yet to even begin to blearily stumble out of bed. I’ve not the best sense for photography, but a big chunk of the job was animal control, and that part of it I tend to be pretty good at. Shepherding people where they needed to be, making sure they looked good for the picture and getting them the information that they would need to find their photos online, it all seemed pretty straightforward to me. While I was visiting I thought I’d help out a bit once I got the hang of it, since I do hate being in the way. After a few minutes Archai noticed with some mild surprise that I was pretty much doing his job for him.
“Wow, you train up fast.”
He was right, of course, but that hadn’t really occurred to me before. I suppose I will reluctantly credit the Navy with that particular adaptation. There were a lot of sink-or-swim acquisitions of new skills during my tour. You get thrown unexpectedly into a lot of new situations and just expected to figure shit out on your own. I guess I still have some of that mentality with me. Perhaps that was a part of what made me so attractive to the Furthemore staff. It’s nice to know that I can still be productive once in a while. I’d better keep that stuff under wraps though. The last thing that I need is to get staff-kidnapped by Anthrocon. Much as I love the con, I run myself into the ground just attending it. I likely wouldn’t survive trying to staff it.
So, while I was working at this little photography operation I got a chance to catch up with Archai a little bit. If you don’t remember him from my last adventure, he was the guy from RainFurrest who recognized me by my badge and told me what a big fan of my writing he was. That is literally the only time that has ever happened, so he still holds a special place in my heart. I believe he was working to cement that location, as I won’t soon forget what we talked about. I’d asked him to look over my novel and give a few remarks on it. I’d let the matter drop when I didn’t hear back from him, but apparently it had been weighing on his mind. I was vexed and more than a little bit flattered by his reasoning. Apparently he’d been trying to write some feedback, but felt that his opinions of my work wouldn’t do justice to it. Anything he could say would be an insult. I insisted that this wasn’t the case, but he seemed quite convinced of it. So I suppose I’m just going to have to take it as a hefty compliment that the quality of my writing just intimidated someone out of critiquing it.
From there it was onto the always-entertaining fursuit parade, some more writing panels, and then back to the Westin for the Brony panel. It was quite well attended and looked to be a somewhat happening place. Hasbro’s ever-expanding contingent of lawyer-droids have placed some rather befuddling restrictions on what the content of the panel could be though. Video clips, even of entirely fan-made works, were on the verboten list. That greatly concerned me, as that sort of thing is usually a sizable portion, if not a majority of an average Brony panel. Right then though, I got a ping from Azure letting me know his location. I was anxious to see him again, and when he said that Zsisron was with him, that sealed the deal. Those two guys are the unstoppable juggernauts of the hypnosis community, so I really was anxious to see Bluedude, and meet Zsisron. I ducked out of the panel reluctantly, but Lucius assured me that it was pretty disappointing, so I’m glad I went with the option to go hang out with some really cool artists at the zoo.
After hanging out with artists at the zoo came… hanging out with a whole crapton more artists at the zoo, actually. I’d been there just in time for the transformation art jam. A big gathering of folks who are all about things turning into other things. I’ve been a little uneasy about art jams in the past. I feel like I don’t really have a place in one, what with my complete inability to art at things. I still stopped by though, because I saw someone I wanted to talk to. I met Angrboda at Anthrocon two years ago, and in a story far too insane for it to be made up, she introduced me to Zenzi, an RPI alumni, who subsequently wrote one of the recommendation letters that got me into college. I wanted to let her know that this strange sequence of events had worked out very much to my favor and that the girl dressed as a cow that I met at a furry convention had indeed helped to secure my higher education.
I had meant to drop in really quickly and leave this talented group to their business, but I sat down at their table and got to talking and… never stopped, really. More people crowded around as the art jam got into full swing, so many that at one point I was too crowded in to leave even if I wanted to. I got to sit and chat with Nyomi, Therian, Gilpanda, Taki, the whole crew from our room, and dozens of others. Later on Abe E Seedy came by and I checked another important luminary off my list. Also it took me years but I figured out that his username is just the alphabet. That tricky bastard. In any case, I’m a big fan of his and I’d actually been trying to find him for some time. Little did I know that I just had to find a place to strategically plop myself down and he’d come to me! I had a marvelous time watching all these great people do their work, and they put up with me admirably well. A big group wanted to go out for drinks afterwards, and how could I say no?
Hanging out at the bar was a somewhat less crowded and more easygoing way to get to know all these people that I’d been admiring from a distance. It’s always fun to chat with people you share interests with, and even more so with furries, as certain entirely unique things come up quite regularly that you’d never find anywhere else. The bar we were at had some Anthrocon themed specialty drinks, and the simple act of two of us ordering the same one led to this exchange.
“And what can I do for you?”
“Yiff me berry hard.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Yep, that happened. It was actually a pretty good drink. I didn’t order it just for the comedic value. It was hard cider with a shot or raspberry vodka. Sounded like something right up my alley. So much so that I had two of them. I was really relaxed by the end of that, probably because I’d had the equivalent of four drinks in a rather short span, but I handled myself pretty well. I saw Anyare on the way out and let her know how amazing her art is in what I’m really hoping was an articulate and non-creepy way. After that it was back to the zoo to check out a card game that Angrboda has been developing. It’s pretty much Card’s Against Humanity except a thousand times more awful because furries. It’s called “I Can’t Fap to This”. It follows the format of ‘Whoonu’ just with sexual kinks instead of innocuous subjects. Basically the cards all have things that you’d find in an FA keyword search and when it’s your turn everyone picks the one that they think you’re into. You rank them by how hot they make you and everyone learns way more about you than they ever probably wanted to know. It’s a very interesting experience to get all that stuff out in the open. Naturally Angrboda had something of an advantage because a lot of us were there because we were into what she’s into, but that just adds to the fun, really. As she puts it “If you like what I draw then that means that we’re into the same shit and we should totally hang out.”
We finally wound down and went our separate ways, mainly due to just outright exhaustion all across the board. As I walked back to the room I was starting to feel guilty about how I was about to wake everyone up at 1AM when I got back to head to bed. And of course when I got there the room was empty. I guess that means that everyone was having plenty of fun. The whole crew was there next door though, with the last-minute addition of Daom. So I went and hung out with them for a while, playing some Betrayal at the House on the Hill, a very interesting horror-themed strategy game. It’s one of those tabletop games that seems overcomplicated and takes some time to get into but is absolutely worth playing. The complexity means that you’re playing a radically different game every time. Very interesting.
What I was oblivious to for far too long was a very real suspenseful crisis happening a bit closer to home. Lucius called and asked if I’d like to join him down at the Sharper Edge for a drink. I hated to refuse, but I was in the middle of a great game and was pretty set on staying in by then. I didn’t want to get too far from a bed if at all possible. The message that I didn’t get was that this was some kind of coded distress signal. Went right over my head of course, since we hadn’t decided on a secret “I’m being mugged but can’t tell you that over the phone” code. I suppose we should have, given that I consistently fail to understand Lucius when he’s actually trying to say the thing that he’s trying to say.
Apparently Lucius had been out drinking and someone came up and got real friendly with him, buying him lots of drinks and such. Fortunately he wasn’t too drunk to recognize his new buddy’s efforts to lead him away from populated areas as a trap. When covert signaling failed, he went with the less elegant but much more effective “get outside and run away really fast” technique. It did indeed work, but left me playing Siri again to get Lucius back to the room from who-knows-where. Still, it ended well. An encounter you can run away from might not be as good as one you can walk away from, but it’s a lot better than one you can’t. I’m glad he was okay.
For those keeping score at home, Saturday at 01:30 I went to bed, at 07:00 I got up and my next encounter with a bed was at 03:30 on Sunday. And this is what I do to relax, apparently.
Sunday:
After a mercifully late morning I got down to the convention center to try my hand at Charades Impossible, wherein they torture fursuiters by giving them inhumanely difficult things to pantomime. It would appear that my level of exertion was actually rather subdued in comparison to the general populous, as very few people could manage to turn out at the crack of 10:30. Still, it was a really fun show. The small crowd made it a pretty relaxed atmosphere and it meant that I actually got a chance to go up on stage and cluelessly belt out a slurry of random words while some poor tiger tried to silently prompt me to say “The Battle of Trafalgar”.
Sunday was much less densely packed in terms of events (again, mercifully), so I headed back to see if there was anything going on at the room. I got back just in time for a spirited round of Munchkin. Great game. It mercilessly lampoons all the different tropes and clichés from Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and most every other nerd game. This is another one where the out of context quotes actually describe the event better than a full account.
*rolls dice* “Four! I’ve successfully evaded the chicken.”
“I’ve changed race a dozen times and become an elf more times than there are elf cards in the deck. What the hell is going on?”
“Broad Sword: Can only be equipped by women. … Pfffff-”
“ALL rules end with ‘Unless you don’t get caught doing it’.”
*flips card revealing a monster* “I got crabs.” “Oh yeah? Well I use this to steal your crabs!”
“There’s only one ability actually called ‘backstab’ but really just about every card that’s not armor or a monster is also backstab.”
So yeah, it’s certainly a uniquely absurd experience. Right at home in a furry con, really. After that it was another trip to the zoo to hang out with Angrboda and her crew from last night some more. Bluedude said that he was in the neighborhood so I invited him over to our table. Apparently he rolls deep because he brought like four other people over with him. I felt like the middle of a Venn diagram because none of these two groups knew each other and I’d just sort of unintentionally mashed them together. Still, it was nice that I could get people to come to me. I had a brief little “dance puppets, dance!” moment as we mingled a bit.
Time moved pretty quickly in that span, apparently. Soon Ang had to leave, and the end of the con had crept up on me before I knew it. I said my farewells to Bluedude and snuck off to one more panel. This was one that I felt I really had to check out, as it was something new and innovative. They pretty much did a writing version of Whose Line is it Anyway? They got a bunch of authors together and asked for suggestions from the audience. “Give me a genre, a species, a profession and a major life event!” and then they’d come up with a story on the spot that was “A crime drama about a ferret nurse who wins the lottery”. What really cinched it was the fact that they brought in a sketch artist to draw up the stories on a big easel as they were being composed. As you might’ve guessed, the results were pretty entertaining. A porcupine dangling on a rope from a flying houseboat, a high-stakes darts tournament to uncover the secret of the sidewinder snakes, all very good stuff. I suppose the only thing that I could say against it was that a scheduling problem led it to overlap with the closing ceremonies, which of course I then missed.
And then, just like that, the con was over. I’ve actually never had the privilege of witnessing the proper end of a con. I’ve always been under some manner of time pressure. Now being well and truly on my own schedule was something of a novel experience. A little bit of a letdown, wandering about and trying to figure out who hadn’t left yet. Worth doing though, certainly. Leaving pre-emptively was always kind of a void wherein I wondered what I was missing. At least with a chance to let the con wind down, I could actually get to the point where I felt like leaving before I had to leave.
I managed to get together with my neighbors from the Omni for dinner. We all had a good laugh about the custom boxes of goldfish crackers that showed up for LunarKeys in the interim. Apparently you can get Goldfish crackers with a personal photo and message on the box. So what were they to use but a picture of LunarKeys trapped in a box of Goldfish? In any case, we made it back down to the Sharper Edge for some food. It was a quiet meal, as a lot of the crowd had dissipated by then. A welcome relief to be sure. Rekzar couldn’t hide his indignation as we compared notes about our respective con experiences. He noticed the conspicuous wealth of name-dropping present in the summary of my weekend and felt compelled to comment rather candidly on it.
“What the hell man? How do you know everyone? It doesn’t make any sense.”
It hadn’t really occurred to me as being unusual. I’ve never really thought of myself as being popular or well-connected, but I guess in certain circles I know some people. I don’t really try to network or anything like that. I guess it’s just because I’m not shy about approaching people whose work I’m a fan of or who I recognize from the internet. I think it was explained to me best by one of the targets of my fan worship last year.
“You don’t want anything from me. Yeah sure, you’re here because you like my art, but never once have you asked for any, in fact it hardly even comes up in conversation. Yeah, lots of people know me and recognize me, but you wanted to spend some time here and get to know me. That’s not the kind of attention that I get very often.”
I think that attitude is common among artists, and that might be what makes my encounters so favorable with them even though I have hardly any sort of a following to speak of and could hardly call myself one of their peers. That’s not a bad spot to be in, really. I’d be glad to be just a friendly guy that lots of interesting people know and hang out with. This con was another very social one, probably even more so than last year. I don’t even want to go through the list of events that I missed in favor of spending time with people, but I think that it was time well spent.
I dropped by the zoo a couple more times, at first finding nothing of interest, but I’m glad that I kept at it because later on a few blips on the radar appeared. I got to see Clementine, who I’d somehow managed to miss throughout the rest of the con, and also to sit and chat some more with Wolflynx at a table that conveniently also contained Yawg, so I gave a quick shout out to him as well. My phrasing was “Hey, you’re Yawg, right? The founder of International Renamon Appreciation Day?” He said that he really appreciated that particular call-out. He said that he thought “Yes, now I have truly made my mark on the world.” Astonishingly enough it was actually still Sunday by the time I went back to the Omni to play some more games and decompress. Lucius came back from his visit to the Kellogg Ranch just in time to crash with us. I’m told that he had a simply magical time, as any visitor there does.
Monday:
Some running out of steam was evident all across the board, but fortunately there was nothing that required our attention urgently thanks to the Omni’s mercifully late check-out time. Those of us who remained went out for lunch before we had to head out. I came to realize that I was the one in the group with the most intact higher brain functions and soon became de-facto decision maker for when such scenarios called for it. Everyone else was pretty out of it. Once again, a sampling:
“Oh shit, this is alcoholic.” “Yeah, when I ordered a ‘Hard Root Beer’ and you said that you’d like one too, what did you think that meant?” So I got two root beers. ^_^
“Alright, let me review real quick. What did you order?” “I don’t remember.” That was Lucius, who had given the waiter his order last, literally seconds before that question was asked, and had not the vaguest idea what he himself had just said.
Fox was quiet and a little disengaged and LunarKeys was dazed and looking like he was cursing everything that’s ever happened to him ever, but I think that those states are just the respective default settings of those two; as ‘quiet bewilderment’ is for Lucius and ‘worldly cynicism’ is for LanHao. If my records here are anything to go by, my default state is ‘judgmental observation’. Oh well, they’re all entertaining and useful in their own ways. In any case, we survived that meal and were on our way. Goodbyes were short and simple. Once again I was reminded of what a gift it is to get to the point of actually wanting to leave before heading out. Lucius made a similar observation regarding our departure. He made numerous mentions of what a novelty it was that he wasn’t dreading the trip home for once. Instead of a return to drudgery, he had his own house with a friendly dog and adorable baby goats to return to. I think that’s a big part of what makes parting a little easier.
Once again the length of my prose broke FA, so click here for the thrilling conclusion if you'd like to hear about my adventures after the con.
The Return of Anthrocon's Revenge: The Reckoning
General | Posted 11 years agoOkay, I am now certain that I will be attending the Anthrocons. Almost two weeks in advance, that's a much earlier commitment than normal, now that I no longer have to worry about that whole “having a job” nonsense complicating my schedule. So now I suppose comes that part where I answer a lengthy bevvy of questions that I've answered many times before but I feel compelled to repost them because telling you to just look at my old journals makes me feel like I'm telling you to do research and research is lame. Bearing that in mind, here we go again.
Where are you staying?
The Omnitrix.
What day are you getting there?
Wednesday. It's a bit of a long trip for me, so probably sometime in the afternoon.
How are you traveling?
My car. It's looking pretty shabby these days, but it still has a 3-0 accident record. Meaning that it defeated all other cars involved.
Who are you rooming with?
Lanhao has a room that he's divvying up between four of us. One of his friends and one of mine round out the set.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone I meet there that I know. I'm sure the three or four of us will have a wonderful time. I'm hoping to run into
namelessimp because we've gotten along quite well online and I really want to meet her. I have a friend who has never been to a furry con before driving up from Texas for this, so I might be supervising him from time to time. Can't spend too much time together or people will think we're dating. <_<
How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels or events you might be attending?
Any given writing panel has about a 40% chance of having me in it. Offhand, the stuff that I'm going to try and be at includes: The MilFur breakfast, Transfurmations, The Brony Panel, Fursuit Games, Fursuit Dance, Furry Feud, Whose Lion is it Anyway, and Charades Impossible.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I know that doesn't really narrow it down but that's what I got. I'm not in the Navy anymore, so you can't go by the crew-cut anymore. You might catch me wearing my bright red Vibram FiveFingers. (The shoes with toes) This is the only venue where they aren't the most ridiculous article of clothing in the room. I'll be bringing my AppleJack T-shirt, as well as my FurThe'More T-shirt. I'll probably also wear my FurThe'More staff badge because swag. Here's an updated photo.
Will you be suiting?
If end up in a suit, then sure! Seeing as I don't own a suit though, that possibility seems remote.
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
Sure, if you want something that would go at auction for "Free" or less.
Do you do badges?
Well I like to be open-minded. But only if the badge is consenting.
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2". After the Navy made me learn to stand up straight, I realized that I'm actually kinda tall.
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English? My ears work if your mouth works.
Can I touch you?
Stop! Collaborate and listen. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
How can I find you?
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. I'll try to have my badge on at all times. Just picture that with a white background. All my badges say 'Bucephalus' or 'Beau', so be looking for that.
Can I visit your room?
It's not my room, so that's not entirely my call. Case-by-case on that I guess.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Food, swag, whatever it is, being a gift makes it ten times better. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
How long are you going?
Arriving Wednesday, leaving Monday. I have a very open schedule. I could potentially stay longer if some reason to do so comes up, but Sunday night is the last night I have a room for, so leaving after that is a safe bet.
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.) I go by my FA name, Bucephalus, in person. That's what I registered for as a badge name. Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I made that name years and years ago, before the idea of meeting other furries in person had ever occurred to me, so I realize it's an unpronounceable lummox. So usually I just go with "Beau" to make it easier. If you're close enough to me "Hey you!" will probably work. Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
What/where will you be eating?
Food/at places. I usually forget to eat sometimes at conventions, so by all means invite me for a meal. Remember, there are children starving in Africa, so we've got to eat all this food before they can get to it!
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
If you believe that my image is of merit for some reason then yeah, sure. Don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online. Linking it by my username is fine. Just bear in mind that I have no "good side" and my hair is always doing something weird.
How old are you?
One quarter century as of yesterday.
Are you Taken?
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you. Also of note, I am straight. I never mentioned that in a meme before, but people always seem shocked to find out.
What suits will you have?
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I hug or snuggle with you?
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. What am I here to do if not hug some of the awesome, life-sized teddy bears? If you're not in suit, well... case-by-case I guess. Ten-second rule if I just met you, K?
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. Let's not go putting labels on people here. Especially using alarmist, hyperbolic terms like "nice". I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
Are you cliquey?
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day. It's not hard to get into my inner-circle, trust me. I have several people I've only met once or twice at cons that I consider friends.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you?
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. I meet more people in the course of a con than total for the whole rest of the year, so do forgive me if I'm a bit overwhelmed.
Do you have an artist table?
No, my table prefers musical theater. I might be hanging out at the FurThe'More table though. I hear that it's going to exist.
Do you like parties?
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
Can I hang out with you?
Totally! I'd love to do whatever it is we're doing with you. Whoever you are and wherever it is we're doing that. I'm not much for details, ya see.
If I approach you, will you chat with me?
Depends on your approach. If you get your landing gear down and locked, manage your angle of attack and extend your ailerons then you should be clear to land.
How many furry conventions have you attended?
Six, to my own utter disbelief. AC x2, FTM x2, MFF, and RainFurrest.
Can I look in your sketchbook?
Yes, but it's imaginary.
Can I draw in your sketchbook?
If you have a good imagination.
Where are you staying?
The Omnitrix.
What day are you getting there?
Wednesday. It's a bit of a long trip for me, so probably sometime in the afternoon.
How are you traveling?
My car. It's looking pretty shabby these days, but it still has a 3-0 accident record. Meaning that it defeated all other cars involved.
Who are you rooming with?
Lanhao has a room that he's divvying up between four of us. One of his friends and one of mine round out the set.Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone I meet there that I know. I'm sure the three or four of us will have a wonderful time. I'm hoping to run into
namelessimp because we've gotten along quite well online and I really want to meet her. I have a friend who has never been to a furry con before driving up from Texas for this, so I might be supervising him from time to time. Can't spend too much time together or people will think we're dating. <_<How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels or events you might be attending?
Any given writing panel has about a 40% chance of having me in it. Offhand, the stuff that I'm going to try and be at includes: The MilFur breakfast, Transfurmations, The Brony Panel, Fursuit Games, Fursuit Dance, Furry Feud, Whose Lion is it Anyway, and Charades Impossible.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I know that doesn't really narrow it down but that's what I got. I'm not in the Navy anymore, so you can't go by the crew-cut anymore. You might catch me wearing my bright red Vibram FiveFingers. (The shoes with toes) This is the only venue where they aren't the most ridiculous article of clothing in the room. I'll be bringing my AppleJack T-shirt, as well as my FurThe'More T-shirt. I'll probably also wear my FurThe'More staff badge because swag. Here's an updated photo.
Will you be suiting?
If end up in a suit, then sure! Seeing as I don't own a suit though, that possibility seems remote.
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
Sure, if you want something that would go at auction for "Free" or less.
Do you do badges?
Well I like to be open-minded. But only if the badge is consenting.
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2". After the Navy made me learn to stand up straight, I realized that I'm actually kinda tall.
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English? My ears work if your mouth works.
Can I touch you?
Stop! Collaborate and listen. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
How can I find you?
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. I'll try to have my badge on at all times. Just picture that with a white background. All my badges say 'Bucephalus' or 'Beau', so be looking for that.
Can I visit your room?
It's not my room, so that's not entirely my call. Case-by-case on that I guess.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Food, swag, whatever it is, being a gift makes it ten times better. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
How long are you going?
Arriving Wednesday, leaving Monday. I have a very open schedule. I could potentially stay longer if some reason to do so comes up, but Sunday night is the last night I have a room for, so leaving after that is a safe bet.
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.) I go by my FA name, Bucephalus, in person. That's what I registered for as a badge name. Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I made that name years and years ago, before the idea of meeting other furries in person had ever occurred to me, so I realize it's an unpronounceable lummox. So usually I just go with "Beau" to make it easier. If you're close enough to me "Hey you!" will probably work. Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
What/where will you be eating?
Food/at places. I usually forget to eat sometimes at conventions, so by all means invite me for a meal. Remember, there are children starving in Africa, so we've got to eat all this food before they can get to it!
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
If you believe that my image is of merit for some reason then yeah, sure. Don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online. Linking it by my username is fine. Just bear in mind that I have no "good side" and my hair is always doing something weird.
How old are you?
One quarter century as of yesterday.
Are you Taken?
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you. Also of note, I am straight. I never mentioned that in a meme before, but people always seem shocked to find out.
What suits will you have?
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I hug or snuggle with you?
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. What am I here to do if not hug some of the awesome, life-sized teddy bears? If you're not in suit, well... case-by-case I guess. Ten-second rule if I just met you, K?
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. Let's not go putting labels on people here. Especially using alarmist, hyperbolic terms like "nice". I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
Are you cliquey?
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day. It's not hard to get into my inner-circle, trust me. I have several people I've only met once or twice at cons that I consider friends.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you?
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. I meet more people in the course of a con than total for the whole rest of the year, so do forgive me if I'm a bit overwhelmed.
Do you have an artist table?
No, my table prefers musical theater. I might be hanging out at the FurThe'More table though. I hear that it's going to exist.
Do you like parties?
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
Can I hang out with you?
Totally! I'd love to do whatever it is we're doing with you. Whoever you are and wherever it is we're doing that. I'm not much for details, ya see.
If I approach you, will you chat with me?
Depends on your approach. If you get your landing gear down and locked, manage your angle of attack and extend your ailerons then you should be clear to land.
How many furry conventions have you attended?
Six, to my own utter disbelief. AC x2, FTM x2, MFF, and RainFurrest.
Can I look in your sketchbook?
Yes, but it's imaginary.
Can I draw in your sketchbook?
If you have a good imagination.
The most profound song I've heard in years...
General | Posted 11 years agoWas sung my magical cartoon ponies. The finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was a week ago, and I still can't get over it. This episode pretty much blew anything I've seen in the past from My Little Pony out of the water. From a very intense villain, to a twisting story, to being beautifully storyboarded and animated, to absolutely God-like songs and score, to an all-out DBZ-style fighting sequence. This season has been different in many ways, including it's overarching continuity. While the majority of the season had fairly individual and "slice of life" episodes, Meghan McCarthy and her team have managed to interweave an overarching plot into them, making almost seemingly unrelated episodes come together. It was fantastic watching all of the callbacks and references to events and characters from this season, and how those individual moments each contributed to something much larger.
This episode had hands-down some of the best music of the series, both songs and score. Daniel Ingram only provides two songs for this two-parter, but they surely fill the void of 10 songs. From the princesses, including Luna (EEEHEEHEE!!), singing a song which I can only describe as everything I've already described it as and more, to the impressive finale song, Ingram, Steffan Andrews, and their team absolutely nailed it. And I simply cannot forget the music which takes up the majority of the episode: William Anderson's superb score, some of his best work! I wasn't sure if he would top his score from the season 4 premiere , but he delivered and then some. Not only did he hit on all of the reoccurring themes throughout the season, but he streamlined and embellished them so much it was amazing.
You'll Play Your Part is still something I just can't get over. A lot of songs have a hook in the chorus to pull you in, but this entire song is a hook. I can't get it out of my head and I hope it never leaves! We start out with some well-needed singing from Twilight as she explains how she feels. Complementing a great tune here is some fantastic acoustic guitar, quickly adding some strings and glockenspiel in the background. The song continues to build and add more instruments as Twilight sings, including more percussion, woodwinds, and choir.
After the second verse, Celestia joins in, singing for the second time since last season's finale, and Nicole Oliver's voice is just as amazing as ever. The backing track here resembles "Celestia's Ballad" from season 3's finale quite a bit. Next, the fandom explodes as Luna gets her first-ever singing part in the series, and who better to sing for her than Rarity's singing voice Kazumi Evans. Evans does a superb job here differentiating this singing from Rarity's, which is not easy. Cadance joins in, singing for the first time since "A Canterlot Wedding." The backing track builds adding the full orchestra in by the time we get to the chorus.
And holy crap the chorus. These harmonies are simply God-like. The three singers here just nail it. The backing track perfectly adjusts, adding a moving yet upbeat rhythm to the song. And can I say that Britt McKillip's part in the second bridge is absolutely beautiful. I didn't think Ingram and Andrews could top the first chorus, but as we get to it for the second and final time, he manages to add so much emotion to it via a key change and some great brass. I won't lie, the final chorus made me tear up multiple times, it was that emotionally strong.
I think I've calmed down enough to talk about this one intelligently, and I feel I should, as examining it fully is the only way to truly do justice to it. I can't talk about anything else until I talk about the opening song. In fact, I may never talk about anything else. Ever.
If you don't want to watch the whole episode, I've linked just the song in question here. In either case, you should definitely have this remix playing in the background as you read this.
Trying to learn and sing along with that song has given me a whole new appreciation for the musical director. I thought that Daniel Ingram had outdone himself with Find the Music in You, but it's becoming all the more clear that he put a tremendous amount of thought into this one as well. I noticed that the singers each use somewhat different registers, making it difficult for me to choose an octave. I obviously don't have much usable range in the octave it's sung in, but one-down or two-down is a tough call. It was in picking apart the different voice parts to figure out which octave to use for each that I made a startling discovery.
The composer went to such trouble to keep the characters' voices distinct and unique in the composition, and it shows through beautifully. Princess Celestia's phrases usually end with a large downward interval where a slight pitch increase would fit the pattern better. She defies expectation, sometimes to the extent of going in the opposite direction of the backing chords. Princess Luna ends her phrases more conventionally, with a building progression of a large downward interval, a small downward interval, hold, and then a small rise. Cadence splits the difference, getting the melody for the most part, and she always gets the sustained notes and thus has the decision as to whether or not to resolve the chord. The thing that really put this one over the top though, was that each singer keeps her distinct 'voice' as they move through into the bridge and the chorus. Celestia and Luna's parts sound counterintuitive because they were already singing the harmonics that match Cadence's before the three of them were even singing together! That is profound and brilliant and if it took me about 200 takes to figure it out then it was damn well thought out.
That opening song was amazingly poignant to me specifically, that's part of what made it so compelling, but I think that everyone has encountered a great deal of the concepts that it dealt with. Personally I could go through pretty much the entirety of Twilight's part line-by-line and point out exactly how each line applies to me. In fact, I think I will.
It isn't that I'm ungrateful
For all the things that I've earned
I've done many great things with my life. Things I never thought that I'd do, and which still amaze me. I've been very fortunate, and I find these days that the harder I work, the more fortunate I become. The strides I've taken thus far have been wonderful, and I never take for granted what I was given, and the value of what my efforts have wrought.
For all the journeys I have taken
All the lessons that I have learned
I've come a long way, changing and learning all the while. I'd hardly recognize myself if I were to meet me from just five years ago. The only equal of my gains in technical expertise is what I have learned of life and the world, and myself. The biggest thing I've come across, of course, is how much I have left to learn.
But I wonder where I'm going now
What my role is meant to be
YES. It is unfathomable to me that I could've come so far and yet still not know where all this is leading, what it all means. This potential that I have can do much, but what do I do with it? What should I choose?
I don't know how to travel
To a future that I can't see
I have learned so much, I understand so many things, and yet when I look at the road ahead, I am blind. Hell, I could write a second verse to this song just based on that!
How can I reach tomorrow,
when I can only see today?
I have no map to follow,
no light to guide my way.
I have my wings, I wear this crown
I'm a princess, this is true
I have labored long and hard to earn my own wings and alicorn magic. Their potential is great, but...
But it's still unclear to me
Just what I am meant to do
How am I to use it? I know only that wasting this potential would be a crime, but potential is just energy. It has no form or will or direction. That burden falls on my shoulders, and I feel like it is one I'm not ready to bear.
I want to have a purpose
Want to do all that I can
I can do a lot, probably. But WHAT?
I want to make a contribution
I want to be part of the plan
What is it? What is this thing out there that the world needs me to do?
Your destiny's uncertain
And that's sometimes hard to take
A tremendous understatement, but it shows that Celestia really understands where I'm coming from.
But it will become much clearer
With every new choice you make
Maybe... maybe it's not all one big thing. Perhaps destiny is just a long string of little things. You only see it when you add up all the little steps at the end. Perhaps it's only at the culmination of each little step that what they were leading up to becomes clear.
Patience is never easy
I understand wanting more
Apparently humility is not a lesson lost on the royal family. This one is another staggering understatement. Wanting more certainly isn't a bad thing. It is that drive that propels us forward into the darkness. Even if we are scared and don't know what may become of us. One thing is certain. In order to get somewhere, you have to want to get there first.
I know how hard it is to wait
To spread out your wings and soar
That's one of the most striking things about transitioning into the adult world. You're no longer assessed and rewarded in a very strict and regimented way. The fruits of your labors may take years to mature, with no encouragement whatsoever in the interim. It's a shock to many that early on, your salary and benefits often have very little to do with how hard you work. That's just not how business works. Salary is about leverage. How much are you worth to the company? How much do you cost to replace? Do you have better offers elsewhere? People in the real world don't reward you trying really hard and doing a good job. They reward results. And those results can take a long damn time to achieve. Not just twice as long as you think. Not even ten times as long as you think. Your ambitions with take hundreds or thousands of times as much effort as you expect, and the reward very well may still fall short of your expectations.
But you stand here for a reason
You're gifted and you are strong
Damn straight. A lot of people couldn't have done what I have. And a lot of people who could have, decided not to. That puts me in a pretty exclusive group.
That crown is upon your head because
You belong
Out of all the people that might've ended up where I am, only I am here, only I actually went through it. I belong here, because for better or for worse, I earned the position I am in.
Know that your time is coming soon
As the sun rises, so does the moon
As love finds a place in every heart
You are a princess, you'll play your part
Perhaps not any time soon. But that time IS coming. Sooner than I think, maybe? Only time will tell.
We understand you wanting more
A chance to shine, a chance to soar
And if that chance doesn't come to me, then I'll make my own!
Soon will come the day it turns around
If only I had your confidence, Cadence. But if you believe it so strongly, then perhaps I do too. Just a little.
Know that your time is coming soon
As the sun rises, so does the moon
As love finds a place in every heart
You are a princess, you'll play your part!
This episode had hands-down some of the best music of the series, both songs and score. Daniel Ingram only provides two songs for this two-parter, but they surely fill the void of 10 songs. From the princesses, including Luna (EEEHEEHEE!!), singing a song which I can only describe as everything I've already described it as and more, to the impressive finale song, Ingram, Steffan Andrews, and their team absolutely nailed it. And I simply cannot forget the music which takes up the majority of the episode: William Anderson's superb score, some of his best work! I wasn't sure if he would top his score from the season 4 premiere , but he delivered and then some. Not only did he hit on all of the reoccurring themes throughout the season, but he streamlined and embellished them so much it was amazing.
You'll Play Your Part is still something I just can't get over. A lot of songs have a hook in the chorus to pull you in, but this entire song is a hook. I can't get it out of my head and I hope it never leaves! We start out with some well-needed singing from Twilight as she explains how she feels. Complementing a great tune here is some fantastic acoustic guitar, quickly adding some strings and glockenspiel in the background. The song continues to build and add more instruments as Twilight sings, including more percussion, woodwinds, and choir.
After the second verse, Celestia joins in, singing for the second time since last season's finale, and Nicole Oliver's voice is just as amazing as ever. The backing track here resembles "Celestia's Ballad" from season 3's finale quite a bit. Next, the fandom explodes as Luna gets her first-ever singing part in the series, and who better to sing for her than Rarity's singing voice Kazumi Evans. Evans does a superb job here differentiating this singing from Rarity's, which is not easy. Cadance joins in, singing for the first time since "A Canterlot Wedding." The backing track builds adding the full orchestra in by the time we get to the chorus.
And holy crap the chorus. These harmonies are simply God-like. The three singers here just nail it. The backing track perfectly adjusts, adding a moving yet upbeat rhythm to the song. And can I say that Britt McKillip's part in the second bridge is absolutely beautiful. I didn't think Ingram and Andrews could top the first chorus, but as we get to it for the second and final time, he manages to add so much emotion to it via a key change and some great brass. I won't lie, the final chorus made me tear up multiple times, it was that emotionally strong.
I think I've calmed down enough to talk about this one intelligently, and I feel I should, as examining it fully is the only way to truly do justice to it. I can't talk about anything else until I talk about the opening song. In fact, I may never talk about anything else. Ever.
If you don't want to watch the whole episode, I've linked just the song in question here. In either case, you should definitely have this remix playing in the background as you read this.
Trying to learn and sing along with that song has given me a whole new appreciation for the musical director. I thought that Daniel Ingram had outdone himself with Find the Music in You, but it's becoming all the more clear that he put a tremendous amount of thought into this one as well. I noticed that the singers each use somewhat different registers, making it difficult for me to choose an octave. I obviously don't have much usable range in the octave it's sung in, but one-down or two-down is a tough call. It was in picking apart the different voice parts to figure out which octave to use for each that I made a startling discovery.
The composer went to such trouble to keep the characters' voices distinct and unique in the composition, and it shows through beautifully. Princess Celestia's phrases usually end with a large downward interval where a slight pitch increase would fit the pattern better. She defies expectation, sometimes to the extent of going in the opposite direction of the backing chords. Princess Luna ends her phrases more conventionally, with a building progression of a large downward interval, a small downward interval, hold, and then a small rise. Cadence splits the difference, getting the melody for the most part, and she always gets the sustained notes and thus has the decision as to whether or not to resolve the chord. The thing that really put this one over the top though, was that each singer keeps her distinct 'voice' as they move through into the bridge and the chorus. Celestia and Luna's parts sound counterintuitive because they were already singing the harmonics that match Cadence's before the three of them were even singing together! That is profound and brilliant and if it took me about 200 takes to figure it out then it was damn well thought out.
That opening song was amazingly poignant to me specifically, that's part of what made it so compelling, but I think that everyone has encountered a great deal of the concepts that it dealt with. Personally I could go through pretty much the entirety of Twilight's part line-by-line and point out exactly how each line applies to me. In fact, I think I will.
It isn't that I'm ungrateful
For all the things that I've earned
I've done many great things with my life. Things I never thought that I'd do, and which still amaze me. I've been very fortunate, and I find these days that the harder I work, the more fortunate I become. The strides I've taken thus far have been wonderful, and I never take for granted what I was given, and the value of what my efforts have wrought.
For all the journeys I have taken
All the lessons that I have learned
I've come a long way, changing and learning all the while. I'd hardly recognize myself if I were to meet me from just five years ago. The only equal of my gains in technical expertise is what I have learned of life and the world, and myself. The biggest thing I've come across, of course, is how much I have left to learn.
But I wonder where I'm going now
What my role is meant to be
YES. It is unfathomable to me that I could've come so far and yet still not know where all this is leading, what it all means. This potential that I have can do much, but what do I do with it? What should I choose?
I don't know how to travel
To a future that I can't see
I have learned so much, I understand so many things, and yet when I look at the road ahead, I am blind. Hell, I could write a second verse to this song just based on that!
How can I reach tomorrow,
when I can only see today?
I have no map to follow,
no light to guide my way.
I have my wings, I wear this crown
I'm a princess, this is true
I have labored long and hard to earn my own wings and alicorn magic. Their potential is great, but...
But it's still unclear to me
Just what I am meant to do
How am I to use it? I know only that wasting this potential would be a crime, but potential is just energy. It has no form or will or direction. That burden falls on my shoulders, and I feel like it is one I'm not ready to bear.
I want to have a purpose
Want to do all that I can
I can do a lot, probably. But WHAT?
I want to make a contribution
I want to be part of the plan
What is it? What is this thing out there that the world needs me to do?
Your destiny's uncertain
And that's sometimes hard to take
A tremendous understatement, but it shows that Celestia really understands where I'm coming from.
But it will become much clearer
With every new choice you make
Maybe... maybe it's not all one big thing. Perhaps destiny is just a long string of little things. You only see it when you add up all the little steps at the end. Perhaps it's only at the culmination of each little step that what they were leading up to becomes clear.
Patience is never easy
I understand wanting more
Apparently humility is not a lesson lost on the royal family. This one is another staggering understatement. Wanting more certainly isn't a bad thing. It is that drive that propels us forward into the darkness. Even if we are scared and don't know what may become of us. One thing is certain. In order to get somewhere, you have to want to get there first.
I know how hard it is to wait
To spread out your wings and soar
That's one of the most striking things about transitioning into the adult world. You're no longer assessed and rewarded in a very strict and regimented way. The fruits of your labors may take years to mature, with no encouragement whatsoever in the interim. It's a shock to many that early on, your salary and benefits often have very little to do with how hard you work. That's just not how business works. Salary is about leverage. How much are you worth to the company? How much do you cost to replace? Do you have better offers elsewhere? People in the real world don't reward you trying really hard and doing a good job. They reward results. And those results can take a long damn time to achieve. Not just twice as long as you think. Not even ten times as long as you think. Your ambitions with take hundreds or thousands of times as much effort as you expect, and the reward very well may still fall short of your expectations.
But you stand here for a reason
You're gifted and you are strong
Damn straight. A lot of people couldn't have done what I have. And a lot of people who could have, decided not to. That puts me in a pretty exclusive group.
That crown is upon your head because
You belong
Out of all the people that might've ended up where I am, only I am here, only I actually went through it. I belong here, because for better or for worse, I earned the position I am in.
Know that your time is coming soon
As the sun rises, so does the moon
As love finds a place in every heart
You are a princess, you'll play your part
Perhaps not any time soon. But that time IS coming. Sooner than I think, maybe? Only time will tell.
We understand you wanting more
A chance to shine, a chance to soar
And if that chance doesn't come to me, then I'll make my own!
Soon will come the day it turns around
If only I had your confidence, Cadence. But if you believe it so strongly, then perhaps I do too. Just a little.
Know that your time is coming soon
As the sun rises, so does the moon
As love finds a place in every heart
You are a princess, you'll play your part!
The journal for horrible people
General | Posted 11 years agoGotta do another short one because my giant-ass con journal is eating my page. So here's a video!
https://youtu.be/z2_8cfVpXbo
I laughed uproariously and then hated myself afterwords.
https://youtu.be/z2_8cfVpXbo
I laughed uproariously and then hated myself afterwords.
Furthe'More 2014 Report: They like me. They really like me!
General | Posted 11 years agoSuper-late con journal is super late like always. Man, this will really disappoint the six people who actually read these.
Okay, so... the convention that I did. That was like, a thing that happened, and I was there. It's been awhile, but I'm talking about it now because this week has been a murder-gauntlet of stuff I have to do. Hell, there are things that I should be doing right at this very moment instead of talking about this furry con, but I've put school first all week. It's time to reminisce about the Spring Break that I spent working even harder than I do at school. Wait... what? I got something wrong there. Let's review.
I made a much-needed trip home to briefly visit and drop off junk I didn't need and pick up some things I did need but forgot. This was my first time collegeing so I didn't have the best idea what the optimal equipment loadout was. The heat was out in my bedroom, but it wasn't that awfully cold outside so I decided that I'd tough it out for a few days rather than suffer through the process of trying to fix it. The whole time I was there the news networks were plastered with dire predictions of the coming tide of winter's fury. Given my travel plans they were at least a little bit disquieting, but I didn't dwell on them too much. The media loves to blow such things out of proportion. Like all news stories, the weather just isn't interesting unless it's trying to kill you. I thought that their predictions were ludicrous, as it had been mid-fifties all week. I barely needed a jacket.
Well, perhaps I should've had a bit more faith in the local networks because on Wednesday we totally got suckerpunched by a vicious, apocalyptic thunderblizzard. We got 16" total accumulation that day, with winds gusting up to 45MPH. It was that wind that really made life difficult right then. The snow would blow right back out into the roads every time we pushed it out of the way, giving bare pavement a very short half-life as the day went on. We hunkered down for the day, along with a large portion of the rest of the state, and did our best to weather the storm. Naturally the wind was quite effectively tearing through the walls of the old homestead, to the point where I could light a candle and watch the flame dance excitedly from all the icy chill that was sneaking in all over the place. My room became thoroughly inhospitable and I took refuge on the couch that night.
The morning brought only moderate improvements to the road conditions, so I left a bit later than I had planned. Of course my planned departure time had been "whenever I wake up" so it's not like I disrupted a delicately crafted timetable or anything. I just wanted to be plenty early to help with setup at the con. In any case, things settled down a bit as the morning went on and conditions eventually got to the point where it seemed like not such a bad idea to head out. Of course naturally I had to stop in to say goodbye to my grandmother before I headed out, before her driveway was plowed. Technically I could've driven in, but that wasn't even a risk of getting my car stuck. My car would have absolutely gotten stuck and I'd be in an even worse predicament than before. So I braved the nearly knee-deep snow in the driveway in just my sneakers. I hadn't brought my boots back from college with me because the forecast back then didn't contain "ridiculous frozen donkey-punch" yet. The things I do for family... and cookies. She always bakes a batch of cookies right before I leave. Totally worth having wet feet for most of the trip.
The roads were actually just a bit worse than I thought they'd be. School was closed again, and I've found that school being in session is a big factor that lights a fire under our snowplow drivers. So with no threat of a busload of children careening into a ditch to motivate them, the town's snowmovers were slacking a bit. Still, it was a bit late to turn back, and it really wasn't all that dangerous to drive. The aggressive cold snap that accompanied Snowtorious B.I.G. meant that it was too cold for the roads to be icy. "Too cold for ice" is a tough concept for folks from temperate regions to wrap their heat-addled brains around, so I'll break it down a bit. Basically, the snow has to melt before it can refreeze as ice, so the biggest ice dangers happen when the temperature is close to freezing. When it plunges into the mid-teens and stays there, the snow stays in its innocuous, fluffy white form, painting the land in delightful, radiant white and hardly trying to kill anyone at all. As long as I kept my speed under control I was fine. Had this been a universal affair it would've lengthened the trip considerably, but it would appear that the storm's vengeful wrath was extremely focused on one area in particular, as it was only an hour or so before I drove out of its fallout zone. By the time I got to Baltimore there was hardly any snow on the ground at all, even in lawns and areas that I assume they don't plow unless Maryland is much weirder than I thought.
It would seem that my concern for the timetable was poorly founded, as even arriving at mid-afternoon I managed to get there earlier than anyone with that coveted "Knows what the fuck is going on" demographic. Still, I found a good group to hang out with in the Dealer's Den and managed to get my bearings there. About the time that they broke for lunch I got the message that one of my roommates had arrived, so I went out to meet him. If they accomplish nothing else practical, fursuits are certainly quite useful in providing identifying marks for finding someone you've never met in a crowded hotel lobby. Let's see six foot, stocky build... dressed as a raccoon. Okay, I can probably find this guy. When I met
Diezelraccoon, he had just gotten suited up, so he was keen to hang out a bit. That was fine by me, so we socialized for awhile. He's part of the school of thought that you should never talk in suit, so I can't say we got to know each other much. Though I did learn that he's a dirty cheater in that respect. Whenever there was information that he needed to get to someone, he would text it to me so that I could tell them. A breach of etiquette to be sure, but hey, it keeps the magic alive.
By the time I got moved into the room, the much-anticipated WTF-is-happening-knowers had begun to set up shop in Con-Ops, so I got to meet the people whom I was to be working with/for. Number one on the list was
KibaYoukai, who was in charge of volunteer coordination, and also everything. Since the fortuitous timing of Spring Break had left me with ample time on the front end, I had made the decision to volunteer at the con this year. Doing work at a con had always been unthinkable before then. Back when I was in the Navy I had to fight three gorgons just to earn the time off to attend the con, be damned if I was going to spend some of that hard-won leisure time doing more work. It all seemed to come together this time, though.
Furthe'More was certainly the right con for it. I always come back from AnthroCon on my hands and knees from going full-throttle for 5+ days and there's never a moment to spare during any of it. That's the only con I'd ever been to more than once, so I really didn't have many attractive opportunities to help out. I certainly didn't want to be staff. I'd hate having responsibilities and obligations levied on top of me, keeping me from the fun stuff. I really did want to help out though. Even though I could barely spare the day and a half that I spent attending Fur the'More last year from my tight schedule, I still managed to have a wonderful time within those confines. I was very impressed with how smoothly the con went and how well everything was run, particularly being in its inaugural year. The con is a lot slower-paced, so I actually could count on a bit of downtime that I might offer up for the greater good. Volunteering is really nice like that. You're not obligated to anything, you just offer up whatever time you can spare and don't have much to do during anyway, and they're happy for whatever time you can give. It seemed like a great setup to me, and a good way to get my feet wet with this sort of thing. So I went for it.
My first task was getting everything together in registration. I'd always heard about the badge machines being temperamental, but they worked flawlessly. If anything it was the iPads that we were using as Point-of-Sale terminals that gave us a lot of grief. Anyways, I for a long time I was part of the assembly line that was loading badges, maps, schedules, coupons and whatever other swag was associated with any given attendee's registration into the convelopes that everyone gets when they register. It's one of those tasks that's rocky the first few dozen times, but the next 300 go quite smoothly. It would've gone a lot more smoothly if I hadn't gotten stuck with the schedules. I never would've guessed it, but getting a full size sheet of paper into a manila envelope is the most arduous, bafflingly difficult task in history. I obviously didn't want it to get all bent and wrinkled up, but there was just no way that paper was going in there smoothly, especially with a badge and a few other knicknacks already in there. We should have started with the schedules, but we'd gotten the 'I Love Lucy' style conveyor belt setup all put together already, so it was too late to change things. I was forever saddled with the task of gingerly slipping in paper after paper and feeling a little more stupid after each attempt. I just had to push through it with dogged persistence and- HAH! I'm just kidding I pushed it off on someone else as soon as somebody new showed up. That really was a valid solution though. I gave them just the schedule out of my selection of convelope-stuffing items I was responsible for. With an entire person devoted to just that one Sisyphean frustration exercise, the workflow smoothed out nicely and we got everything together okay.
I spent the rest of that evening as a line-wrangler for the newly-established pre-registration desk. Not a super glamorous task. You're basically telling people to stay out of the way repeatedly and giving the same set of information to everyone who comes by there. It can be fun if you make it fun though. It's a lot of facetime with a lot of different people, so you can change it up a little to keep it from wearing on you. Phrase the statement differently every time you say it. "Radiant crystal dragon Jesus-level sponsor-types on the left here, subservient, milling peons on the right!" Or get a little creative with the right-of-way enforcement. "I'm going to start walking back and forth in a straight line in the middle of the hallway here. If I collide with you, that means you need to step back and leave some room for people to walk through here." And just in general make light of it so that waiting in line isn't such a slog. "Yes, right now the sponsor-and-other-highly-enviable-people-of-means pre-registration line is actually longer than the drooling proletariat line. Personally I blame: [global warming, sunspots, the inherent flaws of capitalism, nuclear proliferation, ninjas, Dick Cheney, continental drift, quantum entanglement, that little Linux penguin, etc.]". (Oh yes, little penguin, I'm onto you.)
And then one of my big volunteer benefits kicked in. I had a dinner engagement to get to, so I said "Okay, I've gotta go." and then I left. It was just that easy! I knew that I'd be coming back to work some more, because it really did make the time go fast, and it felt great to be involved in making the con come alive. At dinner, Diezel and I got to explain to our waitress just what in God's name was going on at this hotel all of a sudden. I suppose that's a benefit of looking like a normal person most of the time. I'm still pretty approachable when people need questions answered. That sort of thing used to bother me, but I've lately realized that it's actually kind of nice to be a part of furry PR. Dr. Conway preaches often that you ought not have any reason to be embarrassed about your connection to the fandom, and every year I realize more and more how right he is. You're talking about something that you're enthusiastic about, something that you love doing and something that enriches your life by your involvement in it. Is it not completely natural that you'd be excited to share this with other people? Indeed so. And with that, I took to what I knew would be my only chance at a full night's sleep with great enthusiasm. We packed the room tight, as per tradition, so this was the only night that I was guaranteed my own bed. Be damned if I wasn't going to capitalize on that.
Friday morning I was back at registration, as that place obviously gets hit pretty hard the first day out. It was a lot more badge and convelope juggling, but more on a case-by-case basis, so you actually had time to think once in awhile. I found it was important to pay attention during those spots when you didn't have something to do right that second. If you kept your eyes and ears open, you could learn every part of the process pretty well just through osmosis, so you could step in for someone that had to run off for something or other. Which was inevitable, really. It happened all the time. Everyone stays pretty busy around there. Once again we got the process ironed out pretty quickly and got the badges flying like pros. It was a good time, actually. One of the reasons that I'd been reluctant to accept the gig in registration was that I've always been a technical sort. I was never very good with customer service positions, in fact I've tried to avoid them where I can. It went alright though, despite all that. I think it's just because furries are an inordinately friendly demographic.
I took a break to watch the opening ceremonies, and then I was back to doing whatever was needed. Perhaps I asked for it by saying "wherever you need me", but I did get bounced around a lot after that. Apparently security has a great deal of use for pawns that they can pick up and place wherever they are needed at the time. Dealers' Den, Artist's Alley, the panel room hallway downstairs, the all needed someone there to check badges, keep hallways clear (sigh), keep people from getting lost and sundry items like that. Downstairs we had to keep people away from the part of the building that had been rented out by another outfit for the weekend. It was a meeting of The International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. I wish I was making that up but I'd come up with something far less absurd if that was a fiction of mine. Apparently they were some kind of religious masonic order that had a youth outreach program, so you know, really not the best place for furries to be wandering into.
In any case, I got to do a whole bunch of standing around in various places watching the convention go on around me. I often made light of the task by referring to it as "animal control". It certainly wasn't all bad. I met
pearlyfox while doing that and we really hit it off, hanging out a lot as the con went on. I got to field a lot of questions in that security role, and that was a nice introduction to the kind of groupthink that goes on in the staff. No one knows everything, but everybody knows who to ask about whatever subject, so information moves quite freely. I also made a rather disquieting realization during all that idle time. "Giving out information and directions, guarding access to certain areas, standing in one place all day talking to people that pass by, enforcing the rules, only being interacted with when the attendees need something... dear God, I'm an NPC!"
Day one was kind of light on events, so I was actually glad for all the different things I had occupying my time. Still, I took my dinner break because I, like so many congoers, can let things like eating and sleeping get away from me if I don't keep track of them properly. I got to eat with
Hengstolfthesolf and catch up with him some. I hadn't seen him since I left Virginia, so it was nice to get caught up a little on the goings-on with my old furry group. It was a relatively quiet evening after that, and I thought that I'd take some time off by attending a panel. And by "taking time off" I actually mean "working at that panel" because apparently once I get rolling on this volunteer stuff I just can't be stopped. There was a writing panel about the use of dark and difficult topics like death, childhood trauma, abuse and racism in fiction. Because of that content it had an age restriction and thus there was a fair deal of tapdancing to do to make it all legal. I couldn't even check IDs myself. We had to have a centralized authority do it and issue wristbands like a nightclub. Maryland apparently has some rather draconian restrictions on such things. In any case, I was in a good position to help out, because I was planning to attend the panel anyway, so I could just sit close to the door while I was there. That way I could sucker-punch any underage kids that were trying to get in. Or maybe that wasn't the right way to handle that... In any case, age restrictions got enforced like nobody's business.
That was a really great panel. Tough topics like that can really bring a lot of meaning to a story, and can also be disastrous if mishandled. They don't get talked about enough though because of their tendency to offend or make people uncomfortable. Making a panel specifically for topics like that was a brilliant idea. It was great because they framed it very clearly as a safe place for open discussion. The ground rules were clear that no one would be criticized for what topics that they brought up. If you didn’t want to talk or hear about what was being discussed, you were free to leave. It was really a very liberating environment, and the group just ran with it.
As the panel wore on into the night, it actually became a lot less about the writing and it just became a group of people talking about the issues. It was almost inevitable, really. It's one thing to talk about how to make your werebears relatable characters, but when you talk about big REAL issues like abusive relationships, religious persecution, and institutionalized racism, you're going to stir up some strong opinions. What I didn't count on was that exploring those different opinions and perspectives would be utterly fascinating. We weren't just fiddling around with our characters in a little fantasy world, we had real people, telling stories of their actual lives that pertained to the topic, and a lot of those stories were really quite compelling.
And in a twist so off-the-wall I wish I could've written a better one if I tried, the night ended with all of us laughing hysterically about racism. I won't go into details because I'm not in my safety bubble anymore, but it was an extremely cathartic experience. And really, that's how things like this get fought. There is a certain comic absurdity to the way race relations are handled, even by people who mean well, and it's not going to change until people stop being afraid to talk about the subject. It'll never get any better until someone is willing to call bullshit on the things that are wrong with the world. For a little while that night, I was in a place where I, as a white man, could use the N-word without bursting into flames. That's the kind of thing that makes me passionate about writing, because if I could ever get these kinds of ideas down onto paper in a way that resonates with other people, I could change the world.
I had meant to throw on a borrowed fursuit and march in the parade, but I wasn't feeling up to it after the night I'd had. My novice status really shows through when I'm fursuiting, and I wear down easily. It was actually very nice fursuiting weather, so I might've managed it, but I'm happy I went with the safer option. I still wanted to see the parade of course, so volunteering to supervise it was a natural choice. I was very impressed with the turnout. Corralling them all at the end of the parade for the photo was a hell of a job, and we had to move them around a bit to find an area big enough to get them all in the shot. After that there were some good events going on, so I took a long break from all the volunteer work to go to a writing panel, fursuit charades and the dance competition.
The highlight of the dance-off was a comely young German Shepherd named "Halla" played by
sheppymomma that absolutely lit up the floor with her evocative bellydancing routine. It was so amazing to hear such a drastically different style of music and see a very unconventional style of dancing amidst all the techno, dub-step and modern stuff. The judges apparently favored her originality too, as she won first place. After that I managed to meet up with a few of my old Virginia friends and we all went out to "whatever place isn't choked with a massive line", which ended up being Chipotle. Even that place was packed and we ended up eating outside. It had been a warm evening, and I was the only one wary enough of the capricious March weather to wear a coat. I felt foolish for bringing it, for about 20 minutes until the sun went down and it became the best idea ever had by anyone.
After I got back to the con it was animal control again for awhile. In the evening things quiet down a bit, so that stint wasn't nearly as interesting. The benefit was though, that they opened the Sponsor Lounge up for volunteers during that time. So I got to take a shot at all the fancy grub to be had in there. They said that they had Miller Light on tap, so I figured I’d have a beer. After asking for “a beer” a pitcher was deposited on the table in front of me without further comment. Free of charge. Yeah, I liked their style in the Sponsor Lounge. It took me a fair amount of time to get through all that free food and beer. Did I mention that “free” is my favorite flavor? But I found some interesting people to talk to while I was making my way through that challenge, so that was all good. The people who buy higher membership levels to support the con are a very good group, and it’s nice to hang out with them once in awhile. They’re just as passionate about helping out the con as the volunteers, they just express it in different ways.
After that it was time for a sexy writing panel. Since the topics were racy and inappropriate, I was there as a bouncer again. Fine by me. It lets me charge time spent talking about how to describe furries bumping uglies as volunteer hours. I met
shadowsFox there and got a chance to talk to him. He has a brightly colored fursuit with glowy green accents and radiation trifoils and the whole deal, so I'd always wanted to ask him if that was just a gimmick or if he was really involved with nuclear power. It turns out that he actually does work at a nuclear power plant. Brunswick I think. So that gave us something to talk about besides writing smut, which is an admittedly fun subject. He thought that I was nuts for going to college when I had plenty enough work experience to get a job right off the block. I'd heard before that experience outweighs degrees when you're trying to get an operator job. I'm going to stick to my guns though. I'm sure that "both" also has a lot of pull as far as landing a job is concerned, and free college is a tough offer to turn down.
There was another even later, even sexier writing panel, but I elected not to work that one. I really wanted to get to sleep for one, but I had also been invited (and subsequently begged shamelessly) to attend the dance by pearlyfox, so I allowed a little time for it. We actually had a pretty good time. I flopped around like an idiot about as I'd expected to, but it was fun, which I hadn't predicted. I burnt myself out pretty fast, but I was still very glad that I gave it a try. The big disadvantage was that despite my very firm knowledge that I was exhausted and quite sleep-deprived, I was way too jazzed from the dance to go to bed. Seeing as it was half-past tomorrow I went to the only game in town, the deviant writing panel from whence I had departed the hour before. We talked long into the wee hours of the morning and a good time was had by all.
After a much quieter night, I embarked on the con's final day. I knew that this day was going to be cut short, as I had a long drive ahead of me, and despite the temperate weather, there was much snow and stormy unpleasantness in the forecast. I wasn't going to mess around this time. The last time it was 50 degrees out and they said we were about to get spin-kicked by a Yeti that totally happened. I wasn't about to take that risk, especially with class on Monday. Sunday was super-stacked with writing panels, and the last one ended at 3:00, so I began to make preparations to be underway by then. My host at the hotel room was easily in his 18th hour of nursing a crippling hangover, but I managed to get him lucid enough to say my goodbyes and pay my share of the room cost.
Of particular interest that day was the Writing Technologies and formatting panel. I learned a lot of useful tricks there that I'll be sure to put to good use. Having taken only very sparse formal instruction in writing, there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the technical and practical ends of the process. I took careful notes, and I'm certain they will be of substantial benefit to me should I ever scare up the time to do some serious writing again. I was a bit worried about
thegneech's writing panel, as I'd gone to meet him at his Dealer's table the day prior and he reacted with complete bafflement when I mentioned it. "I have a panel? Oh... I have a few calls to make, I think." It must have all gotten sorted out in the end, as he was indeed in attendance and had lots of very interesting things to say. Creating villains is a pivotal and very nuanced process. Tremendously interesting to talk about. Unfortunately, it was also the last thing I had a chance to talk about.
I'd met a number of really great people on the Furthe'More staff, and so I wanted to give proper goodbyes to at the very least the ones I had worked closely with. I was thinking that this would be a quick affair, so ultimately I suppose I'm glad that I budgeted in a good amount of time into my departure schedule. Very soon after it got around that I was departing though, I got snagged.
kitdrago wanted to speak with me, I was told. I'd actually never met the Convention Chairman face to face, nor did I plan to, really. The big cheese has stuff to do and I'm happy to stay out of his way. I know that volunteers work in the background and I was okay with that. I was thinking that he just wanted to rectify the fact that we'd never even shook hands before I took off. When we finally did meet, he handed me, of all things, a con badge. Ah, a custom con badge. Nice keepsake, that's pretty thoughtful. Of course, keepsakes seldom have inflammatory phrases like "Staff Inductee" printed on them. ... What? No seriously what am I looking at right now?
Tradition was to call out this sort of news by surprise during the closing ceremonies and drag the victim/recipient up on stage to be publicly presented with their accolade with no prior notice. Apparently I'd put pressure on them by leaving early. I will certainly say that I was no less surprised than I would've been had the scenario gone as intended. I'm a writer by trade, if you hadn't noticed, so it's actually quite rare for me to be at a loss for words. Despite the lack of a large audience, this was undoubtedly such an occasion. This was my first time volunteering, and I'd never really given any thought to or bothered to learn about what goes into running a convention. I had expected to suck at this. Maybe work my way up to "competent" through trial and error by the end, and come out of it having found a good use for my downtime if nothing else. I didn't expect to be a great volunteer, and certainly not the BEST volunteer, as my new certificate states. I couldn't believe all this recognition I was getting all of a sudden. I was banking on cashing in my hours for a free t-shirt and hitting the road. I had a wonderful time working at this con. As such I would've been perfectly happy just taking my leave at the end. To hear that though, to be told "We really appreciate what you've done, and we want you to be a part of this convention." That's really something else.
I had to go back around and say several more, truly proper farewells after that. Seeing as we'd never met, I'm guessing Kit didn't make this decision on his own, and that I had the people that I worked with/for to thank for this amazing new honor, and opportunity. It was so amazing to hear it in ConOps when it was starting to get around that I was top volunteer. They needed to record what department I was with for the award, and that actually sparked a debate.
“I think we had him listed under marketplace.”
“Well, he was with ops most of the time.”
“Yeah but he spent like a whole day doing registration.”
“No, he was with security.”
“Wrong. He’s programming. In fact, he’s mine specifically, in programming. I’m contracting him out as my private code enforcement officer.”
Everyone wanted me. I never could’ve imagined that something like that would happen.
It was heartwrenching then, both that I had to leave, and that the future is so uncertain. I only came down this time because Furthe'More lined up perfectly with Spring Break. The date is changing next year, so I may not be able to spare all the time that I did next time around. Had the convention fallen on a normal weekend I probably wouldn't have gone. Of course, my new appointment changes things. I'll be back next year. No doubt. Even if just the weekend really is all I can spare. Here's hoping the calendar gods still have some mercy left in them though.
The fates conspiring to keep me from leaving the con yet again, after I had finished all that, who should come by to visit my room but
glennjam! I'd spotted him earlier but I didn't have time right then to chat. I was just thinking what a bummer it was that I never got to talk to him when he showed up. Keep in mind that this was entirely coincidence. He was visiting someone else who was staying in that room, but it was still a lovely opportunity to fanboy all over someone who does/commissions a lot of really great art. When I told him that I was a huge fan of his he was like "Wut? Nuuu U lie!" and I was like "Nu is not lies! Serrus fan R seriuse."
We got to talk for awhile about the contact we'd had on FA previously. I was delighted to hear that he'd read some of my stories. In the part where I'd expected to be saying a hasty goodbye, Glenn said "You know
bluedude is here too. Would you like to meet him?" O.O Yes! ALL of the yes. So Glenn took me right to him and made me regret even more that I was out of time and had to go. Bluedude was a great guy and it was fantastic to meet him. He, like so many people, had heard of me before but didn't recognize my username because I have a stupid, counterintuitive username. Once we got that worked out though he was very nice to talk to. It's always great to meet up with someone of common interests. Hopefully I'll be able to pick them out of a crowd now and we can meet at another convention and spend some more significant amount of time together.
So, after a lengthy and... profoundly moving delay, I was on the road. The feared snow never materialized, but I'd come to find out that was because I'd outrun it. Baltimore actually did get hit pretty hard that night. One thing I'd failed to account for was the price difference between cutting through mid-Pennsylvania and driving up the coast. The route coming from home is out west quite a fair bit, but driving up to Troy is pretty much a straight shot north, sending me through some very densely populated, and extremely greedy areas. Troy to home cost me nothing because it was a weekend. Home to Baltimore cost me nothing because Pennsylvania is chill as fuck. Baltimore to Troy cost me $27.70. And you bet your ass I kept track! My disbelief wouldn't let me do anything else. Thanks for visiting Maryland. That'll be four dollars! Welcome to Delaware, that'll be six dollars! Fucking psychotic. I spent more on tolls than on fuel during that leg of the trip. And that's including the tip I gave to the gas station attendant. And another thing, gas station attendants. That was a thing that I encountered. On my drive. In America. Presumably not inside a displaced time bubble. It was a heck of a thing. I didn't know what to tip him. About the same as I tip my milkman or stagecoach driver or other non-existent service professionals? I gave him three dollars because that was all the $1 bills I had left by then. Not that you'd know that looking at my passenger's seat by the time I crossed the border into New York. I ended up with NINE of them because some cheeky bastard gave me six ones instead of a five and a one. I also accrued $1.20 in change. I started off ill-equipped to give exact change, and of course ended with superhuman change-giving abilities. The toll to get off the New York thruway was $6.65, and I was actually rather excited about that. "Oh, it is so ON! I hope you need nine nickels because you're getting ALL THE NICKELS!"
I do decry New Jersey for their outrageous tolls and terrifying anachronisms and too many other things to list, but on their roads they have places. to. fucking. be. Sure traffic got heavy a few times, but there was unanimous agreement that this was no reason not to continue barreling along at breakneck speeds. Being 18 inches from the car in front of you is just motivation to pay extra close attention. I was in the right lane doing 75 and was getting just blown by all the time. It was magnificent. I went 90 a couple times and it really wasn't an imposition. It's a rather surreal feeling to be going gratuitously fast and be just kind of matching traffic flow. 85 was just barely fast enough to merit using the left lane, and even then I got people backed up behind me after awhile. Now, if paying $35 a mile got me the ability to drive like this everywhere I probably wouldn't complain so much about paying tolls. Seeing as it doesn't, I'm going to go back to complaining about tolls.
Even given all the Fast and the Furious shenanigans that were going on out on the open road, by FAR the most dangerous thing I did in New Jersey was go through the tollbooths. These places are equipped for volume, which is good, but it's a death trap if you're not familiar with the system. I was in the left lane because this was during one of my 'holy shit I can go as fast as I want' phases and I saw in front of me twelve toll lanes. The problem is that the small and vague labels that I had to get close to in order to read were quite misleading. A dollar symbol isn’t cash. It actually means "coins only-exact change" something that I was not equipped for yet. Could I have given $3.35 exactly to a person? Probably. Did I have the couple dozen coins necessary for a basket transaction? Absolutely not. The big issue was that the left-to right sequence of the booths was EasyPass, EasyPass, Coin, Coin, Coin, Truck, EasyPass, EasyPass, EasyPass, actual tollbooths. So I had eight lanes to traverse in a very short period. The smart thing to do would be just blow through one of the lanes in front of me and take the chance on the license plate picture widget the have on those and getting mailed a bill. Then take the whole thing as a learning experience. So naturally I cut across several lanes perpendicularly and almost died because the real tollbooths had a line built up in front of them so I couldn't pull into those lanes immediately. You know, like the sensible adult that I'm told I am.
So obviously by the time I made it back into New York I was thoroughly sick of this whole toll business. I knew that New York rest stops usually have EasyPasses for sale. I'd never traveled enough to merit getting one before, but after this extended rolling disaster I figured it would be worth it. I haven't put it to use yet, mainly because by the time I had it in my hands I'd achieved small change critical mass and I didn't need it. I'll get it going one of these days, though; the next time I have some traveling to do. I hope they don't mind if you wait a couple months before activating it. As much as I hate fiddling with cash, I’m surprised it took me this long to finally get one. Mainly my sticking point on the device is that they use it to track your car without your knowledge or consent. I’ve mitigated that by leaving it in my desk for the moment.
In any case, I survived that whole exchange, surprisingly enough, and made it back to college a little after midnight. I was complete wreck in Engineering Statics that morning at 8:00 AM, so I'm glad that I pushed to leave when I did. Had I given into the temptation to stay for the Closing Ceremonies I could've gotten tangled up in the snow, and I would've gotten in at 3 or 4 AM instead. I managed a good score on my Statics exam two days after my return, and I think a big part of that is that I'd left myself with a mostly salvageable situation by managing my time well. Being responsible is really boring, but sometimes it's nice to get a reminder of why it's a good idea to turn down some opportunities because they may not be the best thing for you in the long run. I really do worry about how the timing of next year's con is going to work out, but there's really nothing for it. It's a year away, and a lot could change in that time. Really the only solution is to just wait it out and figure something out when I get there.
So, final thoughts on Furthe'More 2014. A couple of the people that I was with complained that the con was boring and didn't have anything fun. Sure it's a little quieter than most cons, but I think that's a nice change of pace. It's one of the things that lets me actually make it to the con and get everything that I do get out of it even on a tight schedule. I know that I'm going to come back from it still as a useful, functioning human being, so I can schedule around it a lot closer, rather than needing to leave time on the end for a hospital visit like I need to with Anthrocon.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with Furthe'More. If you think it's too subdued, then maybe this con just isn't meant for you. Yeah, in an ideal world we'd be trying to attract as many people from as many demographics as possible, but really, every con does have a target audience. This con’s lacking in rampant binge drinking and crazy room parties is actually what makes it attractive to a lot of people. I like it because I go to cons to socialize and go to panels and events. I didn't have any alcohol beyond the little bit that was offered to me on a couple occasions (and a whole pitcher of beer butitwasfreethatdoesn'tcount) and I had an awesome time. I loved attending FTM last year, I loved volunteering this year, and if I can find a way to spare the time I think I'll take them up on their offer to join the staff next year.
Yes, if your ideal con is getting sozzled and trashing a hotel room with insane late night parties, FTM is the wrong place for you. There are plenty of people who like the fact that we keep things under control, and the con is there to cater to them, because there are TONS of cons were you can just get shitfaced and bender the weekend away. I found that a lot of the complaints about the con were along the lines of "They wouldn't let me [irresponsible thing they shouldn't have been doing anyway]." But there were plenty of people who really appreciated the fact that we could reign in everyone's behavior and not have the place turn into Delta fraternity from Animal House. There was one person who absolutely loved this year's con to death for exactly that reason, and they phrased it very well. Here's an excerpt:
The feel of the con is small and intimate, and the staff was so damn welcoming and kind! Never lose that! There are lots of big cons out there, and plenty of jerks, but not enough smaller ones that are actually laid back and fun! No long lines, waiting for elevators, crowded hallways, etc. The hotel space was perfect for finding friends and fursuiting, and you guys have a lot of really unique, entertaining events. Fur The More is definitely something special.
Your EMT's and Security made me feel safe, and allowed me to have a great time. Please DO NOT listen to the people who say your staffing measures are 'too much'. Remember, the only people who feel uncomfortable around trained professionals and security are assholes who want to break the rules. And those aren't people you want at your con.
And last but not least, the Staff. You know, a con is only as good as the people who make it happen. They're the heart of what they create. If a con is run by an incompetent egomaniac, then it draws like-minded attendees and it has a really horrible "feel". When I was at Fur The More I felt like I was among friends. Every person I met, from Staff to Attendee, was welcoming and friendly. That's why I love your con, and that's why I'll be back.
I guess what I'm saying is what some might call 'problems' are part of Furthe'More's mission statement. Maybe that means that some people are just not compatible with this con, and that's okay. We have a growing audience of great folks who are really put off by the "non-stop drug-fueled rave party" theme that a lot of cons have. We just want to relax a little, and if that's not your thing then you have plenty of other options. I guess what I'm saying is that some of the things people dislike about the con are not going to change. They’re differences of opinion, not problems. But that's okay. There's a con out there for everyone. If you like big crowds, commerce and getting lots of swag, go to Anthrocon. If you like not remembering what you did half the con and spending the other half of it nursing a debilitating hangover, go to Furry Weekend Atlanta. If you like good entertainment and a variety of events, go to Midwest Fur Fest. And if you like disappointment and baffling, pervasive inefficiency, go to Rainfurrest. See? A con for everyone!
Okay, onto the footnotes:
I debuted my new labcoat at this con and it was a smash-hit. Dozens of people commented on it. I would've thought the patch would be too small to be noticed so readily, but just about everyone picked up on it. A squirrel who was walking by during the fursuit parade started squeaking the Portal theme as he passed. It was so popular that I wore it throughout the con. The sewing and logistics for the new duds were done by
torakiyoshi because he is a good friend who wants me to be happy.
Having extra pockets was actually very useful as I scrambled around doing various things. Volunteering necessitates a certain measure of organization and time management, difficult things to maintain at a convention. So having only one thing to grab that has all the essentials in/attached to it was very useful. The labcoat became a big distinguishing feature that people readily identified me by. I think I might get a white collared shirt and a bow tie to go with it one of these days.
SilverPalth confessed to me "Every time you walk into ConOps I think that you're Uncle Kage." Which was quite flattering, to be honest. I had processed a Special Guest badge for the Good Doctor early on, so I was anticipating seeing him again this year, but I guess he couldn't make it.
I'm not usually much for buying lots of swag at cons, but I came away with some this time. I gave the vendor the chewing out of her life for not having Applejack, but I still came away from her booth with this one because look at it. AHHH it's adorable!
Okay, so... the convention that I did. That was like, a thing that happened, and I was there. It's been awhile, but I'm talking about it now because this week has been a murder-gauntlet of stuff I have to do. Hell, there are things that I should be doing right at this very moment instead of talking about this furry con, but I've put school first all week. It's time to reminisce about the Spring Break that I spent working even harder than I do at school. Wait... what? I got something wrong there. Let's review.
I made a much-needed trip home to briefly visit and drop off junk I didn't need and pick up some things I did need but forgot. This was my first time collegeing so I didn't have the best idea what the optimal equipment loadout was. The heat was out in my bedroom, but it wasn't that awfully cold outside so I decided that I'd tough it out for a few days rather than suffer through the process of trying to fix it. The whole time I was there the news networks were plastered with dire predictions of the coming tide of winter's fury. Given my travel plans they were at least a little bit disquieting, but I didn't dwell on them too much. The media loves to blow such things out of proportion. Like all news stories, the weather just isn't interesting unless it's trying to kill you. I thought that their predictions were ludicrous, as it had been mid-fifties all week. I barely needed a jacket.
Well, perhaps I should've had a bit more faith in the local networks because on Wednesday we totally got suckerpunched by a vicious, apocalyptic thunderblizzard. We got 16" total accumulation that day, with winds gusting up to 45MPH. It was that wind that really made life difficult right then. The snow would blow right back out into the roads every time we pushed it out of the way, giving bare pavement a very short half-life as the day went on. We hunkered down for the day, along with a large portion of the rest of the state, and did our best to weather the storm. Naturally the wind was quite effectively tearing through the walls of the old homestead, to the point where I could light a candle and watch the flame dance excitedly from all the icy chill that was sneaking in all over the place. My room became thoroughly inhospitable and I took refuge on the couch that night.
The morning brought only moderate improvements to the road conditions, so I left a bit later than I had planned. Of course my planned departure time had been "whenever I wake up" so it's not like I disrupted a delicately crafted timetable or anything. I just wanted to be plenty early to help with setup at the con. In any case, things settled down a bit as the morning went on and conditions eventually got to the point where it seemed like not such a bad idea to head out. Of course naturally I had to stop in to say goodbye to my grandmother before I headed out, before her driveway was plowed. Technically I could've driven in, but that wasn't even a risk of getting my car stuck. My car would have absolutely gotten stuck and I'd be in an even worse predicament than before. So I braved the nearly knee-deep snow in the driveway in just my sneakers. I hadn't brought my boots back from college with me because the forecast back then didn't contain "ridiculous frozen donkey-punch" yet. The things I do for family... and cookies. She always bakes a batch of cookies right before I leave. Totally worth having wet feet for most of the trip.
The roads were actually just a bit worse than I thought they'd be. School was closed again, and I've found that school being in session is a big factor that lights a fire under our snowplow drivers. So with no threat of a busload of children careening into a ditch to motivate them, the town's snowmovers were slacking a bit. Still, it was a bit late to turn back, and it really wasn't all that dangerous to drive. The aggressive cold snap that accompanied Snowtorious B.I.G. meant that it was too cold for the roads to be icy. "Too cold for ice" is a tough concept for folks from temperate regions to wrap their heat-addled brains around, so I'll break it down a bit. Basically, the snow has to melt before it can refreeze as ice, so the biggest ice dangers happen when the temperature is close to freezing. When it plunges into the mid-teens and stays there, the snow stays in its innocuous, fluffy white form, painting the land in delightful, radiant white and hardly trying to kill anyone at all. As long as I kept my speed under control I was fine. Had this been a universal affair it would've lengthened the trip considerably, but it would appear that the storm's vengeful wrath was extremely focused on one area in particular, as it was only an hour or so before I drove out of its fallout zone. By the time I got to Baltimore there was hardly any snow on the ground at all, even in lawns and areas that I assume they don't plow unless Maryland is much weirder than I thought.
It would seem that my concern for the timetable was poorly founded, as even arriving at mid-afternoon I managed to get there earlier than anyone with that coveted "Knows what the fuck is going on" demographic. Still, I found a good group to hang out with in the Dealer's Den and managed to get my bearings there. About the time that they broke for lunch I got the message that one of my roommates had arrived, so I went out to meet him. If they accomplish nothing else practical, fursuits are certainly quite useful in providing identifying marks for finding someone you've never met in a crowded hotel lobby. Let's see six foot, stocky build... dressed as a raccoon. Okay, I can probably find this guy. When I met
Diezelraccoon, he had just gotten suited up, so he was keen to hang out a bit. That was fine by me, so we socialized for awhile. He's part of the school of thought that you should never talk in suit, so I can't say we got to know each other much. Though I did learn that he's a dirty cheater in that respect. Whenever there was information that he needed to get to someone, he would text it to me so that I could tell them. A breach of etiquette to be sure, but hey, it keeps the magic alive.By the time I got moved into the room, the much-anticipated WTF-is-happening-knowers had begun to set up shop in Con-Ops, so I got to meet the people whom I was to be working with/for. Number one on the list was
KibaYoukai, who was in charge of volunteer coordination, and also everything. Since the fortuitous timing of Spring Break had left me with ample time on the front end, I had made the decision to volunteer at the con this year. Doing work at a con had always been unthinkable before then. Back when I was in the Navy I had to fight three gorgons just to earn the time off to attend the con, be damned if I was going to spend some of that hard-won leisure time doing more work. It all seemed to come together this time, though. Furthe'More was certainly the right con for it. I always come back from AnthroCon on my hands and knees from going full-throttle for 5+ days and there's never a moment to spare during any of it. That's the only con I'd ever been to more than once, so I really didn't have many attractive opportunities to help out. I certainly didn't want to be staff. I'd hate having responsibilities and obligations levied on top of me, keeping me from the fun stuff. I really did want to help out though. Even though I could barely spare the day and a half that I spent attending Fur the'More last year from my tight schedule, I still managed to have a wonderful time within those confines. I was very impressed with how smoothly the con went and how well everything was run, particularly being in its inaugural year. The con is a lot slower-paced, so I actually could count on a bit of downtime that I might offer up for the greater good. Volunteering is really nice like that. You're not obligated to anything, you just offer up whatever time you can spare and don't have much to do during anyway, and they're happy for whatever time you can give. It seemed like a great setup to me, and a good way to get my feet wet with this sort of thing. So I went for it.
My first task was getting everything together in registration. I'd always heard about the badge machines being temperamental, but they worked flawlessly. If anything it was the iPads that we were using as Point-of-Sale terminals that gave us a lot of grief. Anyways, I for a long time I was part of the assembly line that was loading badges, maps, schedules, coupons and whatever other swag was associated with any given attendee's registration into the convelopes that everyone gets when they register. It's one of those tasks that's rocky the first few dozen times, but the next 300 go quite smoothly. It would've gone a lot more smoothly if I hadn't gotten stuck with the schedules. I never would've guessed it, but getting a full size sheet of paper into a manila envelope is the most arduous, bafflingly difficult task in history. I obviously didn't want it to get all bent and wrinkled up, but there was just no way that paper was going in there smoothly, especially with a badge and a few other knicknacks already in there. We should have started with the schedules, but we'd gotten the 'I Love Lucy' style conveyor belt setup all put together already, so it was too late to change things. I was forever saddled with the task of gingerly slipping in paper after paper and feeling a little more stupid after each attempt. I just had to push through it with dogged persistence and- HAH! I'm just kidding I pushed it off on someone else as soon as somebody new showed up. That really was a valid solution though. I gave them just the schedule out of my selection of convelope-stuffing items I was responsible for. With an entire person devoted to just that one Sisyphean frustration exercise, the workflow smoothed out nicely and we got everything together okay.
I spent the rest of that evening as a line-wrangler for the newly-established pre-registration desk. Not a super glamorous task. You're basically telling people to stay out of the way repeatedly and giving the same set of information to everyone who comes by there. It can be fun if you make it fun though. It's a lot of facetime with a lot of different people, so you can change it up a little to keep it from wearing on you. Phrase the statement differently every time you say it. "Radiant crystal dragon Jesus-level sponsor-types on the left here, subservient, milling peons on the right!" Or get a little creative with the right-of-way enforcement. "I'm going to start walking back and forth in a straight line in the middle of the hallway here. If I collide with you, that means you need to step back and leave some room for people to walk through here." And just in general make light of it so that waiting in line isn't such a slog. "Yes, right now the sponsor-and-other-highly-enviable-people-of-means pre-registration line is actually longer than the drooling proletariat line. Personally I blame: [global warming, sunspots, the inherent flaws of capitalism, nuclear proliferation, ninjas, Dick Cheney, continental drift, quantum entanglement, that little Linux penguin, etc.]". (Oh yes, little penguin, I'm onto you.)
And then one of my big volunteer benefits kicked in. I had a dinner engagement to get to, so I said "Okay, I've gotta go." and then I left. It was just that easy! I knew that I'd be coming back to work some more, because it really did make the time go fast, and it felt great to be involved in making the con come alive. At dinner, Diezel and I got to explain to our waitress just what in God's name was going on at this hotel all of a sudden. I suppose that's a benefit of looking like a normal person most of the time. I'm still pretty approachable when people need questions answered. That sort of thing used to bother me, but I've lately realized that it's actually kind of nice to be a part of furry PR. Dr. Conway preaches often that you ought not have any reason to be embarrassed about your connection to the fandom, and every year I realize more and more how right he is. You're talking about something that you're enthusiastic about, something that you love doing and something that enriches your life by your involvement in it. Is it not completely natural that you'd be excited to share this with other people? Indeed so. And with that, I took to what I knew would be my only chance at a full night's sleep with great enthusiasm. We packed the room tight, as per tradition, so this was the only night that I was guaranteed my own bed. Be damned if I wasn't going to capitalize on that.
Friday morning I was back at registration, as that place obviously gets hit pretty hard the first day out. It was a lot more badge and convelope juggling, but more on a case-by-case basis, so you actually had time to think once in awhile. I found it was important to pay attention during those spots when you didn't have something to do right that second. If you kept your eyes and ears open, you could learn every part of the process pretty well just through osmosis, so you could step in for someone that had to run off for something or other. Which was inevitable, really. It happened all the time. Everyone stays pretty busy around there. Once again we got the process ironed out pretty quickly and got the badges flying like pros. It was a good time, actually. One of the reasons that I'd been reluctant to accept the gig in registration was that I've always been a technical sort. I was never very good with customer service positions, in fact I've tried to avoid them where I can. It went alright though, despite all that. I think it's just because furries are an inordinately friendly demographic.
I took a break to watch the opening ceremonies, and then I was back to doing whatever was needed. Perhaps I asked for it by saying "wherever you need me", but I did get bounced around a lot after that. Apparently security has a great deal of use for pawns that they can pick up and place wherever they are needed at the time. Dealers' Den, Artist's Alley, the panel room hallway downstairs, the all needed someone there to check badges, keep hallways clear (sigh), keep people from getting lost and sundry items like that. Downstairs we had to keep people away from the part of the building that had been rented out by another outfit for the weekend. It was a meeting of The International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. I wish I was making that up but I'd come up with something far less absurd if that was a fiction of mine. Apparently they were some kind of religious masonic order that had a youth outreach program, so you know, really not the best place for furries to be wandering into.
In any case, I got to do a whole bunch of standing around in various places watching the convention go on around me. I often made light of the task by referring to it as "animal control". It certainly wasn't all bad. I met
pearlyfox while doing that and we really hit it off, hanging out a lot as the con went on. I got to field a lot of questions in that security role, and that was a nice introduction to the kind of groupthink that goes on in the staff. No one knows everything, but everybody knows who to ask about whatever subject, so information moves quite freely. I also made a rather disquieting realization during all that idle time. "Giving out information and directions, guarding access to certain areas, standing in one place all day talking to people that pass by, enforcing the rules, only being interacted with when the attendees need something... dear God, I'm an NPC!"Day one was kind of light on events, so I was actually glad for all the different things I had occupying my time. Still, I took my dinner break because I, like so many congoers, can let things like eating and sleeping get away from me if I don't keep track of them properly. I got to eat with
Hengstolfthesolf and catch up with him some. I hadn't seen him since I left Virginia, so it was nice to get caught up a little on the goings-on with my old furry group. It was a relatively quiet evening after that, and I thought that I'd take some time off by attending a panel. And by "taking time off" I actually mean "working at that panel" because apparently once I get rolling on this volunteer stuff I just can't be stopped. There was a writing panel about the use of dark and difficult topics like death, childhood trauma, abuse and racism in fiction. Because of that content it had an age restriction and thus there was a fair deal of tapdancing to do to make it all legal. I couldn't even check IDs myself. We had to have a centralized authority do it and issue wristbands like a nightclub. Maryland apparently has some rather draconian restrictions on such things. In any case, I was in a good position to help out, because I was planning to attend the panel anyway, so I could just sit close to the door while I was there. That way I could sucker-punch any underage kids that were trying to get in. Or maybe that wasn't the right way to handle that... In any case, age restrictions got enforced like nobody's business.That was a really great panel. Tough topics like that can really bring a lot of meaning to a story, and can also be disastrous if mishandled. They don't get talked about enough though because of their tendency to offend or make people uncomfortable. Making a panel specifically for topics like that was a brilliant idea. It was great because they framed it very clearly as a safe place for open discussion. The ground rules were clear that no one would be criticized for what topics that they brought up. If you didn’t want to talk or hear about what was being discussed, you were free to leave. It was really a very liberating environment, and the group just ran with it.
As the panel wore on into the night, it actually became a lot less about the writing and it just became a group of people talking about the issues. It was almost inevitable, really. It's one thing to talk about how to make your werebears relatable characters, but when you talk about big REAL issues like abusive relationships, religious persecution, and institutionalized racism, you're going to stir up some strong opinions. What I didn't count on was that exploring those different opinions and perspectives would be utterly fascinating. We weren't just fiddling around with our characters in a little fantasy world, we had real people, telling stories of their actual lives that pertained to the topic, and a lot of those stories were really quite compelling.
And in a twist so off-the-wall I wish I could've written a better one if I tried, the night ended with all of us laughing hysterically about racism. I won't go into details because I'm not in my safety bubble anymore, but it was an extremely cathartic experience. And really, that's how things like this get fought. There is a certain comic absurdity to the way race relations are handled, even by people who mean well, and it's not going to change until people stop being afraid to talk about the subject. It'll never get any better until someone is willing to call bullshit on the things that are wrong with the world. For a little while that night, I was in a place where I, as a white man, could use the N-word without bursting into flames. That's the kind of thing that makes me passionate about writing, because if I could ever get these kinds of ideas down onto paper in a way that resonates with other people, I could change the world.
I had meant to throw on a borrowed fursuit and march in the parade, but I wasn't feeling up to it after the night I'd had. My novice status really shows through when I'm fursuiting, and I wear down easily. It was actually very nice fursuiting weather, so I might've managed it, but I'm happy I went with the safer option. I still wanted to see the parade of course, so volunteering to supervise it was a natural choice. I was very impressed with the turnout. Corralling them all at the end of the parade for the photo was a hell of a job, and we had to move them around a bit to find an area big enough to get them all in the shot. After that there were some good events going on, so I took a long break from all the volunteer work to go to a writing panel, fursuit charades and the dance competition.
The highlight of the dance-off was a comely young German Shepherd named "Halla" played by
sheppymomma that absolutely lit up the floor with her evocative bellydancing routine. It was so amazing to hear such a drastically different style of music and see a very unconventional style of dancing amidst all the techno, dub-step and modern stuff. The judges apparently favored her originality too, as she won first place. After that I managed to meet up with a few of my old Virginia friends and we all went out to "whatever place isn't choked with a massive line", which ended up being Chipotle. Even that place was packed and we ended up eating outside. It had been a warm evening, and I was the only one wary enough of the capricious March weather to wear a coat. I felt foolish for bringing it, for about 20 minutes until the sun went down and it became the best idea ever had by anyone. After I got back to the con it was animal control again for awhile. In the evening things quiet down a bit, so that stint wasn't nearly as interesting. The benefit was though, that they opened the Sponsor Lounge up for volunteers during that time. So I got to take a shot at all the fancy grub to be had in there. They said that they had Miller Light on tap, so I figured I’d have a beer. After asking for “a beer” a pitcher was deposited on the table in front of me without further comment. Free of charge. Yeah, I liked their style in the Sponsor Lounge. It took me a fair amount of time to get through all that free food and beer. Did I mention that “free” is my favorite flavor? But I found some interesting people to talk to while I was making my way through that challenge, so that was all good. The people who buy higher membership levels to support the con are a very good group, and it’s nice to hang out with them once in awhile. They’re just as passionate about helping out the con as the volunteers, they just express it in different ways.
After that it was time for a sexy writing panel. Since the topics were racy and inappropriate, I was there as a bouncer again. Fine by me. It lets me charge time spent talking about how to describe furries bumping uglies as volunteer hours. I met
shadowsFox there and got a chance to talk to him. He has a brightly colored fursuit with glowy green accents and radiation trifoils and the whole deal, so I'd always wanted to ask him if that was just a gimmick or if he was really involved with nuclear power. It turns out that he actually does work at a nuclear power plant. Brunswick I think. So that gave us something to talk about besides writing smut, which is an admittedly fun subject. He thought that I was nuts for going to college when I had plenty enough work experience to get a job right off the block. I'd heard before that experience outweighs degrees when you're trying to get an operator job. I'm going to stick to my guns though. I'm sure that "both" also has a lot of pull as far as landing a job is concerned, and free college is a tough offer to turn down. There was another even later, even sexier writing panel, but I elected not to work that one. I really wanted to get to sleep for one, but I had also been invited (and subsequently begged shamelessly) to attend the dance by
pearlyfox, so I allowed a little time for it. We actually had a pretty good time. I flopped around like an idiot about as I'd expected to, but it was fun, which I hadn't predicted. I burnt myself out pretty fast, but I was still very glad that I gave it a try. The big disadvantage was that despite my very firm knowledge that I was exhausted and quite sleep-deprived, I was way too jazzed from the dance to go to bed. Seeing as it was half-past tomorrow I went to the only game in town, the deviant writing panel from whence I had departed the hour before. We talked long into the wee hours of the morning and a good time was had by all.After a much quieter night, I embarked on the con's final day. I knew that this day was going to be cut short, as I had a long drive ahead of me, and despite the temperate weather, there was much snow and stormy unpleasantness in the forecast. I wasn't going to mess around this time. The last time it was 50 degrees out and they said we were about to get spin-kicked by a Yeti that totally happened. I wasn't about to take that risk, especially with class on Monday. Sunday was super-stacked with writing panels, and the last one ended at 3:00, so I began to make preparations to be underway by then. My host at the hotel room was easily in his 18th hour of nursing a crippling hangover, but I managed to get him lucid enough to say my goodbyes and pay my share of the room cost.
Of particular interest that day was the Writing Technologies and formatting panel. I learned a lot of useful tricks there that I'll be sure to put to good use. Having taken only very sparse formal instruction in writing, there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the technical and practical ends of the process. I took careful notes, and I'm certain they will be of substantial benefit to me should I ever scare up the time to do some serious writing again. I was a bit worried about
thegneech's writing panel, as I'd gone to meet him at his Dealer's table the day prior and he reacted with complete bafflement when I mentioned it. "I have a panel? Oh... I have a few calls to make, I think." It must have all gotten sorted out in the end, as he was indeed in attendance and had lots of very interesting things to say. Creating villains is a pivotal and very nuanced process. Tremendously interesting to talk about. Unfortunately, it was also the last thing I had a chance to talk about.I'd met a number of really great people on the Furthe'More staff, and so I wanted to give proper goodbyes to at the very least the ones I had worked closely with. I was thinking that this would be a quick affair, so ultimately I suppose I'm glad that I budgeted in a good amount of time into my departure schedule. Very soon after it got around that I was departing though, I got snagged.
kitdrago wanted to speak with me, I was told. I'd actually never met the Convention Chairman face to face, nor did I plan to, really. The big cheese has stuff to do and I'm happy to stay out of his way. I know that volunteers work in the background and I was okay with that. I was thinking that he just wanted to rectify the fact that we'd never even shook hands before I took off. When we finally did meet, he handed me, of all things, a con badge. Ah, a custom con badge. Nice keepsake, that's pretty thoughtful. Of course, keepsakes seldom have inflammatory phrases like "Staff Inductee" printed on them. ... What? No seriously what am I looking at right now?Tradition was to call out this sort of news by surprise during the closing ceremonies and drag the victim/recipient up on stage to be publicly presented with their accolade with no prior notice. Apparently I'd put pressure on them by leaving early. I will certainly say that I was no less surprised than I would've been had the scenario gone as intended. I'm a writer by trade, if you hadn't noticed, so it's actually quite rare for me to be at a loss for words. Despite the lack of a large audience, this was undoubtedly such an occasion. This was my first time volunteering, and I'd never really given any thought to or bothered to learn about what goes into running a convention. I had expected to suck at this. Maybe work my way up to "competent" through trial and error by the end, and come out of it having found a good use for my downtime if nothing else. I didn't expect to be a great volunteer, and certainly not the BEST volunteer, as my new certificate states. I couldn't believe all this recognition I was getting all of a sudden. I was banking on cashing in my hours for a free t-shirt and hitting the road. I had a wonderful time working at this con. As such I would've been perfectly happy just taking my leave at the end. To hear that though, to be told "We really appreciate what you've done, and we want you to be a part of this convention." That's really something else.
I had to go back around and say several more, truly proper farewells after that. Seeing as we'd never met, I'm guessing Kit didn't make this decision on his own, and that I had the people that I worked with/for to thank for this amazing new honor, and opportunity. It was so amazing to hear it in ConOps when it was starting to get around that I was top volunteer. They needed to record what department I was with for the award, and that actually sparked a debate.
“I think we had him listed under marketplace.”
“Well, he was with ops most of the time.”
“Yeah but he spent like a whole day doing registration.”
“No, he was with security.”
“Wrong. He’s programming. In fact, he’s mine specifically, in programming. I’m contracting him out as my private code enforcement officer.”
Everyone wanted me. I never could’ve imagined that something like that would happen.
It was heartwrenching then, both that I had to leave, and that the future is so uncertain. I only came down this time because Furthe'More lined up perfectly with Spring Break. The date is changing next year, so I may not be able to spare all the time that I did next time around. Had the convention fallen on a normal weekend I probably wouldn't have gone. Of course, my new appointment changes things. I'll be back next year. No doubt. Even if just the weekend really is all I can spare. Here's hoping the calendar gods still have some mercy left in them though.
The fates conspiring to keep me from leaving the con yet again, after I had finished all that, who should come by to visit my room but
glennjam! I'd spotted him earlier but I didn't have time right then to chat. I was just thinking what a bummer it was that I never got to talk to him when he showed up. Keep in mind that this was entirely coincidence. He was visiting someone else who was staying in that room, but it was still a lovely opportunity to fanboy all over someone who does/commissions a lot of really great art. When I told him that I was a huge fan of his he was like "Wut? Nuuu U lie!" and I was like "Nu is not lies! Serrus fan R seriuse." We got to talk for awhile about the contact we'd had on FA previously. I was delighted to hear that he'd read some of my stories. In the part where I'd expected to be saying a hasty goodbye, Glenn said "You know
bluedude is here too. Would you like to meet him?" O.O Yes! ALL of the yes. So Glenn took me right to him and made me regret even more that I was out of time and had to go. Bluedude was a great guy and it was fantastic to meet him. He, like so many people, had heard of me before but didn't recognize my username because I have a stupid, counterintuitive username. Once we got that worked out though he was very nice to talk to. It's always great to meet up with someone of common interests. Hopefully I'll be able to pick them out of a crowd now and we can meet at another convention and spend some more significant amount of time together.So, after a lengthy and... profoundly moving delay, I was on the road. The feared snow never materialized, but I'd come to find out that was because I'd outrun it. Baltimore actually did get hit pretty hard that night. One thing I'd failed to account for was the price difference between cutting through mid-Pennsylvania and driving up the coast. The route coming from home is out west quite a fair bit, but driving up to Troy is pretty much a straight shot north, sending me through some very densely populated, and extremely greedy areas. Troy to home cost me nothing because it was a weekend. Home to Baltimore cost me nothing because Pennsylvania is chill as fuck. Baltimore to Troy cost me $27.70. And you bet your ass I kept track! My disbelief wouldn't let me do anything else. Thanks for visiting Maryland. That'll be four dollars! Welcome to Delaware, that'll be six dollars! Fucking psychotic. I spent more on tolls than on fuel during that leg of the trip. And that's including the tip I gave to the gas station attendant. And another thing, gas station attendants. That was a thing that I encountered. On my drive. In America. Presumably not inside a displaced time bubble. It was a heck of a thing. I didn't know what to tip him. About the same as I tip my milkman or stagecoach driver or other non-existent service professionals? I gave him three dollars because that was all the $1 bills I had left by then. Not that you'd know that looking at my passenger's seat by the time I crossed the border into New York. I ended up with NINE of them because some cheeky bastard gave me six ones instead of a five and a one. I also accrued $1.20 in change. I started off ill-equipped to give exact change, and of course ended with superhuman change-giving abilities. The toll to get off the New York thruway was $6.65, and I was actually rather excited about that. "Oh, it is so ON! I hope you need nine nickels because you're getting ALL THE NICKELS!"
I do decry New Jersey for their outrageous tolls and terrifying anachronisms and too many other things to list, but on their roads they have places. to. fucking. be. Sure traffic got heavy a few times, but there was unanimous agreement that this was no reason not to continue barreling along at breakneck speeds. Being 18 inches from the car in front of you is just motivation to pay extra close attention. I was in the right lane doing 75 and was getting just blown by all the time. It was magnificent. I went 90 a couple times and it really wasn't an imposition. It's a rather surreal feeling to be going gratuitously fast and be just kind of matching traffic flow. 85 was just barely fast enough to merit using the left lane, and even then I got people backed up behind me after awhile. Now, if paying $35 a mile got me the ability to drive like this everywhere I probably wouldn't complain so much about paying tolls. Seeing as it doesn't, I'm going to go back to complaining about tolls.
Even given all the Fast and the Furious shenanigans that were going on out on the open road, by FAR the most dangerous thing I did in New Jersey was go through the tollbooths. These places are equipped for volume, which is good, but it's a death trap if you're not familiar with the system. I was in the left lane because this was during one of my 'holy shit I can go as fast as I want' phases and I saw in front of me twelve toll lanes. The problem is that the small and vague labels that I had to get close to in order to read were quite misleading. A dollar symbol isn’t cash. It actually means "coins only-exact change" something that I was not equipped for yet. Could I have given $3.35 exactly to a person? Probably. Did I have the couple dozen coins necessary for a basket transaction? Absolutely not. The big issue was that the left-to right sequence of the booths was EasyPass, EasyPass, Coin, Coin, Coin, Truck, EasyPass, EasyPass, EasyPass, actual tollbooths. So I had eight lanes to traverse in a very short period. The smart thing to do would be just blow through one of the lanes in front of me and take the chance on the license plate picture widget the have on those and getting mailed a bill. Then take the whole thing as a learning experience. So naturally I cut across several lanes perpendicularly and almost died because the real tollbooths had a line built up in front of them so I couldn't pull into those lanes immediately. You know, like the sensible adult that I'm told I am.
So obviously by the time I made it back into New York I was thoroughly sick of this whole toll business. I knew that New York rest stops usually have EasyPasses for sale. I'd never traveled enough to merit getting one before, but after this extended rolling disaster I figured it would be worth it. I haven't put it to use yet, mainly because by the time I had it in my hands I'd achieved small change critical mass and I didn't need it. I'll get it going one of these days, though; the next time I have some traveling to do. I hope they don't mind if you wait a couple months before activating it. As much as I hate fiddling with cash, I’m surprised it took me this long to finally get one. Mainly my sticking point on the device is that they use it to track your car without your knowledge or consent. I’ve mitigated that by leaving it in my desk for the moment.
In any case, I survived that whole exchange, surprisingly enough, and made it back to college a little after midnight. I was complete wreck in Engineering Statics that morning at 8:00 AM, so I'm glad that I pushed to leave when I did. Had I given into the temptation to stay for the Closing Ceremonies I could've gotten tangled up in the snow, and I would've gotten in at 3 or 4 AM instead. I managed a good score on my Statics exam two days after my return, and I think a big part of that is that I'd left myself with a mostly salvageable situation by managing my time well. Being responsible is really boring, but sometimes it's nice to get a reminder of why it's a good idea to turn down some opportunities because they may not be the best thing for you in the long run. I really do worry about how the timing of next year's con is going to work out, but there's really nothing for it. It's a year away, and a lot could change in that time. Really the only solution is to just wait it out and figure something out when I get there.
So, final thoughts on Furthe'More 2014. A couple of the people that I was with complained that the con was boring and didn't have anything fun. Sure it's a little quieter than most cons, but I think that's a nice change of pace. It's one of the things that lets me actually make it to the con and get everything that I do get out of it even on a tight schedule. I know that I'm going to come back from it still as a useful, functioning human being, so I can schedule around it a lot closer, rather than needing to leave time on the end for a hospital visit like I need to with Anthrocon.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with Furthe'More. If you think it's too subdued, then maybe this con just isn't meant for you. Yeah, in an ideal world we'd be trying to attract as many people from as many demographics as possible, but really, every con does have a target audience. This con’s lacking in rampant binge drinking and crazy room parties is actually what makes it attractive to a lot of people. I like it because I go to cons to socialize and go to panels and events. I didn't have any alcohol beyond the little bit that was offered to me on a couple occasions (and a whole pitcher of beer butitwasfreethatdoesn'tcount) and I had an awesome time. I loved attending FTM last year, I loved volunteering this year, and if I can find a way to spare the time I think I'll take them up on their offer to join the staff next year.
Yes, if your ideal con is getting sozzled and trashing a hotel room with insane late night parties, FTM is the wrong place for you. There are plenty of people who like the fact that we keep things under control, and the con is there to cater to them, because there are TONS of cons were you can just get shitfaced and bender the weekend away. I found that a lot of the complaints about the con were along the lines of "They wouldn't let me [irresponsible thing they shouldn't have been doing anyway]." But there were plenty of people who really appreciated the fact that we could reign in everyone's behavior and not have the place turn into Delta fraternity from Animal House. There was one person who absolutely loved this year's con to death for exactly that reason, and they phrased it very well. Here's an excerpt:
The feel of the con is small and intimate, and the staff was so damn welcoming and kind! Never lose that! There are lots of big cons out there, and plenty of jerks, but not enough smaller ones that are actually laid back and fun! No long lines, waiting for elevators, crowded hallways, etc. The hotel space was perfect for finding friends and fursuiting, and you guys have a lot of really unique, entertaining events. Fur The More is definitely something special.
Your EMT's and Security made me feel safe, and allowed me to have a great time. Please DO NOT listen to the people who say your staffing measures are 'too much'. Remember, the only people who feel uncomfortable around trained professionals and security are assholes who want to break the rules. And those aren't people you want at your con.
And last but not least, the Staff. You know, a con is only as good as the people who make it happen. They're the heart of what they create. If a con is run by an incompetent egomaniac, then it draws like-minded attendees and it has a really horrible "feel". When I was at Fur The More I felt like I was among friends. Every person I met, from Staff to Attendee, was welcoming and friendly. That's why I love your con, and that's why I'll be back.
I guess what I'm saying is what some might call 'problems' are part of Furthe'More's mission statement. Maybe that means that some people are just not compatible with this con, and that's okay. We have a growing audience of great folks who are really put off by the "non-stop drug-fueled rave party" theme that a lot of cons have. We just want to relax a little, and if that's not your thing then you have plenty of other options. I guess what I'm saying is that some of the things people dislike about the con are not going to change. They’re differences of opinion, not problems. But that's okay. There's a con out there for everyone. If you like big crowds, commerce and getting lots of swag, go to Anthrocon. If you like not remembering what you did half the con and spending the other half of it nursing a debilitating hangover, go to Furry Weekend Atlanta. If you like good entertainment and a variety of events, go to Midwest Fur Fest. And if you like disappointment and baffling, pervasive inefficiency, go to Rainfurrest. See? A con for everyone!
Okay, onto the footnotes:
I debuted my new labcoat at this con and it was a smash-hit. Dozens of people commented on it. I would've thought the patch would be too small to be noticed so readily, but just about everyone picked up on it. A squirrel who was walking by during the fursuit parade started squeaking the Portal theme as he passed. It was so popular that I wore it throughout the con. The sewing and logistics for the new duds were done by
torakiyoshi because he is a good friend who wants me to be happy.Having extra pockets was actually very useful as I scrambled around doing various things. Volunteering necessitates a certain measure of organization and time management, difficult things to maintain at a convention. So having only one thing to grab that has all the essentials in/attached to it was very useful. The labcoat became a big distinguishing feature that people readily identified me by. I think I might get a white collared shirt and a bow tie to go with it one of these days.
SilverPalth confessed to me "Every time you walk into ConOps I think that you're Uncle Kage." Which was quite flattering, to be honest. I had processed a Special Guest badge for the Good Doctor early on, so I was anticipating seeing him again this year, but I guess he couldn't make it.I'm not usually much for buying lots of swag at cons, but I came away with some this time. I gave the vendor the chewing out of her life for not having Applejack, but I still came away from her booth with this one because look at it. AHHH it's adorable!
Furthe'more
General | Posted 12 years agoJust a quick note to let everyone know that I'll be attending Furthe'more in March. It's being held during Spring Break, so there should be very little standing in my way of going. 
sciggles said that she had an open space in her room, so I've asked about it. I haven't heard back from her on that yet, but with luck I'll be able to stay with her for the weekend. I ought to be there from Thursday to Sunday. For all the other details that normally go in con memes, you can just check an old one as none of the pertinent details have really changed. And really, trying to meet someone based on a vague physical description has an overwhelming failure rate, I've found. If you're going to be in town and you want to meet up, just note or e-mail or skype or something at me and then we can exchange phone numbers and get it worked out like that.
They put on a great con in their inaugural year, so I have high hopes for this one. I may even volunteer, since I no longer have the crippling time-constraints that I had when I was in the Navy.
sciggles said that she had an open space in her room, so I've asked about it. I haven't heard back from her on that yet, but with luck I'll be able to stay with her for the weekend. I ought to be there from Thursday to Sunday. For all the other details that normally go in con memes, you can just check an old one as none of the pertinent details have really changed. And really, trying to meet someone based on a vague physical description has an overwhelming failure rate, I've found. If you're going to be in town and you want to meet up, just note or e-mail or skype or something at me and then we can exchange phone numbers and get it worked out like that.They put on a great con in their inaugural year, so I have high hopes for this one. I may even volunteer, since I no longer have the crippling time-constraints that I had when I was in the Navy.
Moving right along
General | Posted 12 years agoThis one's mainly a "Giant-ass con journal has been taking up too much space for too long" journal, but I suppose an update wouldn't be out of the question. A lot of people are starting to prod me for things that they'd like to do one last time before I leave for college. I suppose that these requests come from them having a much better grasp of the passage of time than I do, as I somehow regarded this event as distant until someone asked about its timing and "next week" left my mouth in the course of the answer. I've most certainly wasted enough time here at home, and it ought to be time to move on, but it still feels like I blew through this time quite fast. That I did so without accomplishing anything of note is still more disturbing. Regardless, my cross words directed at the calendar won't really slow its progress any. Slogging through VA paperwork may make it seem like I've slowed time significantly, but I can't hold of that day for much longer.
I'd also like to apologize for what a slug I've been lately. You'll have to excuse my poor showmanship just in general. Having people watching me and being at all interested in what I do is a rather recent development that I have no experience with, so you'll have to bear with me. I've been unemployed for four months now, and I've very much noticed how profoundly lazy I've gotten. I've traveled the country, visited old friends, went to several furry conventions, worked on my novel some, but in all it's been a lot of sitting around surfing the internet. And I've noticed that my "surfing the internet" time is starting to be made up of a progressively larger fraction of furry porn as time goes on.
It's so odd. I don't do anywhere near as much writing as I used to, even though I CONSTANTLY wished I had more time to write when I was working all the time. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me, but I've noticed it in more cases than just my own. I think people work best under mild amounts of pressure and limited time. I'm no psychologist, but I'm sure there's a reason for it. I guess if you're not out there, doing work, interacting with people, getting stuff done, then that motivation engine just kind of breaks down and you don't feel like doing anything. I think it's that limited opportunities force you to take advantage of them. If I'm under pressure, then I don't know when the next chance I'll have to do something fun is, so I'll make the most of it. When time is unrestricted, then you just fall into this endless stream of "I'll do it later"s. Really fun and rewarding things actually do tend to take a fair amount of effort, so without that pressure, it tends to just be potato chips and youtube.
So in any case, I'll be going to college soon. Whether the new sense of motivation brings more content, or the new oppressive timecrunch brings less is anyone's guess. Things will be different though, and change is good.
I'd also like to apologize for what a slug I've been lately. You'll have to excuse my poor showmanship just in general. Having people watching me and being at all interested in what I do is a rather recent development that I have no experience with, so you'll have to bear with me. I've been unemployed for four months now, and I've very much noticed how profoundly lazy I've gotten. I've traveled the country, visited old friends, went to several furry conventions, worked on my novel some, but in all it's been a lot of sitting around surfing the internet. And I've noticed that my "surfing the internet" time is starting to be made up of a progressively larger fraction of furry porn as time goes on.
It's so odd. I don't do anywhere near as much writing as I used to, even though I CONSTANTLY wished I had more time to write when I was working all the time. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me, but I've noticed it in more cases than just my own. I think people work best under mild amounts of pressure and limited time. I'm no psychologist, but I'm sure there's a reason for it. I guess if you're not out there, doing work, interacting with people, getting stuff done, then that motivation engine just kind of breaks down and you don't feel like doing anything. I think it's that limited opportunities force you to take advantage of them. If I'm under pressure, then I don't know when the next chance I'll have to do something fun is, so I'll make the most of it. When time is unrestricted, then you just fall into this endless stream of "I'll do it later"s. Really fun and rewarding things actually do tend to take a fair amount of effort, so without that pressure, it tends to just be potato chips and youtube.
So in any case, I'll be going to college soon. Whether the new sense of motivation brings more content, or the new oppressive timecrunch brings less is anyone's guess. Things will be different though, and change is good.
The Good: Attending MFF
General | Posted 12 years agoAnd now the dramatic conclusion of my con MFF report. Also known as the part where I actually ARRIVE at the con.
I got the con off to a roaring start by entrenching myself deeply into the convention hall's truly baffling parking garage. Seriously, that complex looks like it lost a game of some sort of civil engineer Russian Roulette. I started off by following Fumei and a few of his friends out of the garage and into the main hotel, since they seemed like they might know what they were doing whereas I most assuredly did not. Since the walk to the con hotel was quite lengthy and complex, the group in front of me eventually did become aware that I was stalking them, so we chatted a bit on the way, and eventually made it to the promised land.
Right then. The first thing on my mind was that I had likely been completely hung out to dry by
kimbaquartez who had said that I could room with him, and with whom I had been unsuccessfully trying to make contact for several days at this point. This left me effectively homeless, with a ticking clock attached to the "not have to freeze to death trying to sleep in your car" challenge. I did the sensible thing for once and declared this joker a total loss, immediately beginning to beg for a room from people that I knew.
It was in this effort that I immediately encountered a distressing lack of people that I knew. At RainFurrest it was understandable, because RF is on the other side of the country and is a bafflingly mismanaged convention that no one sensible goes to. But even at an ostensibly good and well-attended con I was having trouble. I found a few friends from my old furry group in Virginia whom I was happy to see, but as usual for them their rooms were stuffed to the gills. I was beginning to feel just a little uneasy when I ran into
LionKingCMSL who said that I was welcome to sleep on his floor if it came down to it. It very soon came down to it, but knowing that his door was open freed me up to have a little fun as the convention started to get up to speed. I was rather upset at ending up in this imposition, but honestly rooming with someone I'd never met in person really should've struck me as more fishy than it did, and I suppose you can only take so many leaps of faith before you fall.
Now then, if you've been paying attention I do hope you'll soon note that my critique of the con is much less negative than that of its location and the punishing gauntlet needed to arrive there, and if you haven't been paying attention well then WAKE THE HELL UP I'm doing a thing here. In any case, I went to a pub to eat with
bluepawzwolf and catch up with what's been happening in Virginia since my departure. After that I hit the convention floor and managed one Hail Mary pass of a chance encounter. Rahne Kallon is someone who I have been trying to meet for a very long time. Meeting him was not just a convention goal, mind. It was was an important, very personal life goal for me to see him in person someday. And to show why that is I'm going to have to tell the whole story behind it.
Many years ago, when I was just starting out in the Navy,
rahne and I came into contact online and rather hit it off. After awhile, he asked if I could look over one of his stories and let him know my remarks. I did, and in my zeal to help him fix up the piece I was... quite harsh and insensitive with my criticism, unnecessarily so. He was hurt and offended, and was hardly shy about giving me a piece of his mind on the subject. Several pieces, in fact. I probably could've assembled his mind in its entirety from the pieces that I got. I felt awful about having said such insulting things about something he had worked hard on and took such pride in. I tried all I could think of to make up for that, but he just didn't want to hear from me anymore. Soon I saw no alternative but to respect that, even though the silence between us was the most excruciating thing yet.
I'm glad that I had the sense to just back off when he wanted me to, as that's probably all that kept him from simply blocking my FA and never speaking to me again. As it was, he came around after a few months and said that he wasn't mad anymore, and that he'd revised his story, partly because the way I had torn it apart had alerted him to the problems with it. He found a sensible and much less boorish writing mentor and was able to polish up the story very nicely with his help. The walls were down by then, but it was never the same between us. Not like it was before.
It would be years before the possibility of attending a furry convention would even enter my mind, but even as that time my paramount thought about the whole affair was "Someday I'm going to find this guy in person. I'm going to let him know what an angel he was for putting up with me. I am going to make this right." Of course, it being very important to me didn't really make it any easier. Rahne is one of the biggest jack-of-all trades I've ever seen. He's a skilled voice actor, a fursuiter and fursuit dancer, a Disc Jockey, a writer, and a prolific art commissioner. He's very popular and very busy at conventions. While that makes him hard enough to find on its own, in reality you have to add that to the fact that I had never even seen his face before, and he wasn't in any mood to talk to me most of the time. I usually didn't hear back from him if I tried to get in touch, and I was very hesitant to bring up the subject of choosing a place to meet to ensure that we could actually find each other. I guess I was just afraid that he would tell me to stay the hell away from him, as he had every right to do.
It was that stupid fear that led me to miss him entirely at RainFurrest. The one time I saw him he was on his way to the fursuit dance competition, and by checking the time, I knew that I would make him late for it if I held him up at all. I would've been just sick with disappointment if I let him slip by me again at this con. Someday I'd run out of chances and I couldn't let that happen. So when I recognized his fursuit in the hotel lobby I went straight up to him immediately. This was my shot. Once the dances started and the convention got into full swing he would be as good as gone. I had resolved to at least let him know who I was, tell him that I'm very sorry, and if necessary, take my much-deserved slug in the face. I even thought about taking my glasses off to be ready for that. At least fursuit paws would limit the damage he could do.
I went up to him, got his attention and introduced myself. He lifted my con badge up so that he could read it and he looked at it for much longer than I would've thought necessary. It had been a long time since all that unpleasant business had gone down online. Five years by my reckoning. There was a chance he didn't even remember me at all, not really all that bad of an outcome, all things considered. I couldn't even look at him as I silently hoped that this was the case and I could be on my way. As such I was quite unprepared for what happened in the instant after my badge fell back down to my chest. The ancient, drunken flying tackle-hug jutsu he then employed in that moment sent me straight to the floor, muffled adulations coming from the orange dingo sprawled out over top of me as he squeezed my chest enthusiastically. I'd swear that I saw his tail wag.
He was glad that I was there and that I had come to find him. He was sorry that he had missed me at RainFurrest and most of all he was sorry that he'd blown up at me all those years ago. I told him that I was sorry too, stubbornly insisting that I was in the wrong. I told him that he was a wonderful person and that I've never been more happy to meet someone. There was another fursuiter with him; I would've given anything to see the expression on his face while he was watching all this. I'm glad this was at a furry con, otherwise the two of us rolling around on the floor in the middle of a crowded hotel lobby shouting excitedly and laughing like idiots would've looked rather out of place. As it was it probably didn't even make the top ten for most unusual things going on at that moment. It was a wonderful and very cathartic experience, better than I ever dared to hope.
Naturally, he was still Rahne, so he had not another moment to spare. I'd already gotten more from him than I ever would've thought to ask for, so I said a quick farewell and let him on his way. If that was all I did at this con, the trip would've been worth it. Of course, that wasn't all I did that con, so I had reasons to dash off just as Rahne did. I got to go to a socializing panel in which
Doryuu talked about overcoming his crippling shyness. I pretty much laughed in his face. If he ever overcame crippling shyness then he must've wound up a roundhouse and totally overcame its face off because these days he's probably the biggest attention whore I know. Him calling himself shy means either Doryuu is a dirty liar, or perhaps that there's hope for us all. I'm still kinda leaning towards option one.
Next up was Uncle Kage's Science, Pseudoscience, and Outright Crap. I had seen that one before, so I was going to skip it in favor of ponies, but I'd heard that it had been lengthened and updated with new content and a powerpoint. At FurThe'More where I had seen it, had been the first time he had given the panel, so I was pretty keen to see the improvements. I'd like to repeat that for emphasis. Kage made me choose a PowerPoint Presentation on material I had already seen, over magical ponies. He is truly a powerful figure. That, and I was pretty sure that he wouldn't burn up the whole 90 minutes he was blocked off for, so I could still sneak off for ponies at the end.
The presentation was interesting, and it was indeed much better structured and with a great deal more content. As a man of science, Kage had a lot to say on the subject of fake science. He also has an excellent stage presence that makes just about anything he says interesting. Some of his more remarkable points were attacking the idea that pseudoscientific ideas and stake oil peddlers weren't really hurting anyone. Sure, people were losing money, but let's face it. If you're dumb enough to think that wearing a little bar magnet on your wrist is going to cure diseases then someone was going to take your money eventually anyway. It's far from harmless though. Not all bullshit remedies are sugar pills. The most dangerous ones actually DO contain what they purport to.
The ones that exploit the fact that "natural" is seen as a synonym for "healthy and safe" are troublesome. He brought up cases of "natural" pregnancy supplements causing crippling birth defects, or even miscarriages. Many of the substances used in herbal products are blood-thinners, and have been linked to dozens of deaths during surgery via exsanguination because their clotting mechanism in compromised. The misinformation can even hamper the efforts of the real health professionals trying to undo this damage. Because the herbal and homeopathic "medicine" peddlers have so skillfully disassociated themselves from the evil pharmaceutical companies, real doctors can't get critical information that they need to save lives. When asked "What drugs are you taking?" people will leave out all the "natural" bullshit they've been sold on because they don't believe it's a drug and thus couldn't possibly have any negative consequences like say... death, when combined with actual medicine that a legitimate professional was trying to use to treat them.
He was good at getting everyone riled up, but also very sensible about where to have everyone direct their ire. We can't be mad at the people who fall for this. The swindlers they were duped by are experts in the art of sounding legitimate and selling useless, potentially dangerous crap for a premium. The fool does damage, but there is no malice on the part of the fool. He doesn't know any better. The malice, the evil, and the true potential for devastation is on the part of the fraud. He knows that what he is selling is crap. If he were dumb enough to believe his own claims he'd never have the cunning needed to get rich selling fake treatments. You can't blame the unknowing for hurting himself, but you sure as hell can blame someone who knows better and is using that knowledge to defraud, sicken, and kill people.
Kage offered us an out during the Q n A, so I beat feet out to catch the latter half of Rondie and Roffie's Pony Hour. This was the only pony event that I really wanted to go to, mainly because of the panelists. One of them is
ArofaTamahn, the author of The Night the Magic Died, a pony fan comic that I've very much enjoyed. The other was his sister, 
AgentElrond, a real horse artist and enthusiast. Meaning that she is an artist and has an affinity for horses, not that she herself is a real horse. I'm really at a loss for a clearer way to phrase that though. The combination of real and cartoo was a really interesting premise, and thanks to growing up in a family of horse enthusiasts, I had plenty to offer to both sides of the discussion.
I got a chance to talk with the two of them for a little while as they packed up and headed out. We walked and talked because we were all on our way to Uncle Kage's Story Hour. It was a pleasant surprise that they could both correctly pronounce and identify the origin of my badge name. Gotta love equine enthusiasts for that. Of course, "ArofaTamahn" would've gotten an earful if he'd tried to tell me I had a difficult username. Formalities aside, I had to establish how our paths had crossed before. Not too hard, actually.
"Remember that guy that left like a three-page comment defending Celestia's nature on page 78?"
"Yeah, I remember that guy."
"I'm that guy."
"Oh! You're that guy!"
So we got along pretty well and watched the story hour together. Since I always come to see it, a lot of the stories I had heard already, but it's still fun to watch Kage do pretty much anything, and again it was kind of a way to watch his creative process at work as he refined the stories he was telling. I caught up with the pair again at the Con Suite, a place that I went to just to figure out what it was all about. I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I saw there. It was pretty much a general purpose lounge like the Zoo at Anthrocon, but with some charming additions. They had food there, a fact which surprised me. I've never been to a con where they offered free food and I was overjoyed to find it there. It was nothing stellar, really. There were chili dogs one day and tacos the next, lots of snacks and a soda fountain too. Hardly hauté cuisine, but the price was right and it certainly fit the bill for "Oh shit I have to do ALL THE THINGS but I haven't eaten all day I need to shove something in my mouth really quick before the next thing what do I do?!"
The tables were also covered with table-length reams of paper, so that creative types could do arts to the tables they were eating and/or socializing upon. Agent Elrond sketched out a large and finely detailed rendition of a Pegasus. I had Roffie ink it in cerulean blue sharpie and there were crayons available, so I colored it like Rainbow Dash when she wasn't paying attention. She got back, looked at the blue flying pony, sighed, and penned in a cutie mark. I'm glad that she was a good sport about it. I was glad for the chance to chat with Roffie some more. He was interested to hear more about my... unique perspectives on pony canon, and it was nice to have a chance to hear about the line of thinking that had motivated him to take his comic in the direction he did. It was difficult for him to talk about without dumping a bunch of spoilers on me, but it was a fun conversation nonetheless.
From there I proceeded to creepily stalk those two for the rest of the con. Not on purpose, but seriously though, I ran into them a disproportionate number of times. I had a couple good friends there that I only managed to run into once. I'm thinking it was the tophat that just made Roffie easier to spot. I noticed a few others being worn, and also the correlation that no one ever wore a tophat without muttonchops, but it was still quite distinctive of him. Anyway, there were a few interesting events in the late night, but LK had called by then, so securing shelter for the night became the priority. Staying up stupid late the first night is a bad move anyway. Some people say they can power through a con without any sleep just fine. They're either lying or their brain chemistry differs vastly from mine. When I got to the Westin I was simply staggered by the parking fees there. $35 a night, and losing your stub will cost you $200. Damn, I could illegally park on the sidewalk for less than that. Fortunately LK is a super-platinum crystal dragon Jesus rewards club member, so my parking was validated for free since he didn't have a car there. In any case, I had established that sleep is good. As such I flopped onto the floor without further comment.
Despite resting well, I still managed to miss the Military/Graymuzzle/Chakat breakfast. I do usually try quite hard to make it to those, but missing one was not a huge surprise. When you get together a big group of military, veterans, old people and also chakats for whatever reason, the combination is a recipe for quite an early event. I wasn't too broken up about it, as this turned out to be quite a busy day. I still got to talk to the Milfurs' host,
cmdrkitsune, regardless, because I went to his panel next. He had some interesting things to say about the interplay between one's furry and regular lives. It was of great interest to me as I'm still in the "and ne'er the twain shall meet" school of thought on that issue.
I managed to drop in for the fursuit parade for a very interesting showing. Robot mechs, a furry zombie, lots of pirates to suit the con's theme, all sorts of interesting stuff there. Sometimes I think that there are hundreds of people who only suit in the parade, because there are tons of suits that I see there and nowhere else. I also dropped in at the charity auction for awhile to watch Telephone, i/e
ino89777 being unbearably cute. He has the only squeaker that truly adds something to the performance rather than just being annoying. Whatever he uses, he has an astonishing versatility with it. He dropped in on a conversation I was having before the auction started and it was just the most darling thing ever.
"I've just been so busy. I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to visit the Artists' Alley or Dealers' Den."
"Chirp! Chirrrup-kip?"
"I know, right? You see? This guy understands."
"Ki-chip, purrur. Churrip!"
"You know, that's a good idea. I'll try that out."
"Churrup, chup!"
"Yeah, see ya later, Telephone."
The best part was that everyone with me thought I knew and could understand Telephone. In reality, we'd never met before and I had no idea what he was saying, if anything. I was at the auction long enough to watch LK buy way more than he could handle like he usually does, and then I was off to the Quitting the Fandom panel. It was a satirical presentation about online drama that was framed as an instructional presentation about how to quit the fandom. Apparently I was not the only one amused by the idea, as the room was stuffed to the rafters with people. The panel's organization was on par with an average bus crash, but it remained a delightful romp.
Next up was Uncle Kage's Becoming the Storyteller panel. An event that I was excited about, even if Dr. Conway himself was rather not. Apparently he had been goaded into doing this panel and had absolutely no material prepared. Though he was quick to establish this fact, he came up with a good amount of very informative material on how he does what he does. His closer was: "Well I've run out of things to talk about that I can come up with off the top of my head. I'm sorry if I've managed to burn up only... oh! 52 minutes, well that's not bad at all actually. Any questions?"
I caught the tail end of Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind, a cryptically named sketch show that was... interesting. I won't really pass judgment since I only saw part of the show, but I will say that the performers were wonderfully eccentric, enthusiastic and quite into it, much like their audience. Next I went to one of the con's quite rare writing panels, finding that I was actually rather bored by it. Maybe I'm just used to the usual crew of Ianus Wolf and Alfor Alto, or perhaps I've just finally reached saturation on such things. The latter case would free up a great deal of time, so that wouldn't really be such a bad thing. In any case, I ducked out of it to go to the Furry Variety Show.
The open mic that they had was actually quite interesting. Everyone that went up on stage got at least a few laughs, and some of them were actually quite good. The surprise was that 2 Gryphon and FoxAmoore were both on hand to give advice to all the aspiring performers. The atmosphere bolstered my confidence enough that I came up with a quick set and a story to tell and hopped in line to take the stage myself. Unfortunately there was just too much enthusiasm from the crowd and too little time. We had to clear out before my number came up. Next time I'll be quicker to volunteer.
And of course the night ended with Whose Lion is it Anyway? the improv comedy show whose popularity knows no bounds. Every year they've outgrown their room until this year they got the main presentation hall and managed to fill it just past halfway with over 230 people. Great, dirty-minded fun was had by all long into the night. ... and the next morning. I started the long walk over to the Westin at around 2 in the morning. It was just bitter cold. I brought my gore-tex Navy jacket, which has always been enough any place I've been, but I was still cold. It actually started to be painful in spots after awhile. I was worried that I had gone soft until I met some Canadian furs the next day who also remarked on it being rather cold, so I felt better about that.
The last day was a quiet one. I slept in a lot for some reason, and made it down to the Den, Alley, and Art Show to poke around a bit. I found
hbruton there and finally got my Anubis bookmark. She'd been sold out of them the last two times I've visited her shop at other cons. She said that she can't keep them on the shelf. Obviously Anubis' followers are a savvy and well-read bunch. The fursuit dance competition was up next. It had the same problem as RF did with the temporary dancefloor set up in the middle of the room with the crowd huddled around it on the floor. They handled it well though. The room was actually big enough for the event and there was the astonishing revelation of a safety radius around the dancefloor. They had the really brilliant idea to have novice and veteran categories, so that they could skim down the number of finalists while still having it be accessible to new talent.
I'm glad I budgeted in a little time before the closing ceremonies to wander about a bit more, because the decrease in activity made it a lot easier to find some of the people I was looking for and hang out with them for awhile. Among those I visited and was quite happy I was able to run into:
and I made sure to go to the closing ceremonies and step up at the end to let the staff know what a fantastic job they had done. The con had its pitfalls, programming was a bit sparse and the panel rooms often didn't communicate with hotel staff well, but it was extraordinarily well run overall. I was never waiting in line or waiting for logistical delays of any sort. MFF is absolutely smooth as butter from a management standpoint.
In any case, the next day began my sojourn home. After ferrying LK to the train station, I took a route that went over a bridge to leave Illinois because for one it took me out of Illinois with the least possible driving in Illinois, and also because I knew the bridge would have a real toll payment system. One that gave me back six ones and eight quarters as change because fuckyouthat'swhy, but at least that prepared me for any potential outdated change-munching robots I had failed to evade. At my stop to visit with a friend in Canton I had to struggle through the Illinois online toll pay system to settle the matter of the backlog in excess of a hundred cents worth of tolls that I owed them. And lo and behold I discovered the true motive behind the crippling inefficiencies I encountered on my way in.
The site is jam-packed with fees and is deliberately impossible to use in order to suck more money out of you. Apparently I needed the exact location, date and time, and six-digit serial number of the exact toll station machine, of the missed tolls. And if you just so happened to be missing any of those pieces of information, like say you just so happened to be trying to navigate alone to some place you've never heard of in a state you've never been before, or you had no idea that you were going to need this information because absolutely nowhere does it say that you were going to need it, or because you were struggling to maintain your self control because the very existence of such a system in the middle of an ostensibly developed nation made explosive vandalism and chain-homicide seem like the only reasonable options, WELL then... I guess we'll just go ahead and charge you for the maximum that we are legally allowed to charge you. Which I was bizarrely okay with, really, as paying them five times what I rightfully owed was the quickest way to just get on with my life and not have to worry about their horseshit anymore. It all makes an excellent case for changing the state motto of Illinois to: "Fine! Here's your goddamn money just let me leave!"
My friend in Canton is a big gamer, so we did a lot of that while I was staying at his place. We played a very interesting card game called Dominion that I may ask for when Christmas comes around. He also helped me sharpen up my League of Legends skill quite a bit in between my comically unsuccessful attempts to befriend his dog. He said just to ignore her and she would eventually get used to me. Have you ever tried to ignore a dog? That's an extremely difficult thing to do for a dog lover like me. Apparently my friend knew what he was talking about though, because every time I looked at her, made a hand motion that could be interpreted as vaguely in her direction, or in any way acknowledged that she existed she would bark at me for a solid minute. I'm not used to that.
Now that I think of it though, maybe my experience with dogs has been sheltered. Over the years I've lived with and around breeds including boxer, border collie, Labrador, golden retriever, husky, pit bull, Brittany spaniel and beagle. It seems like a huge variety, but all those dogs have an attitude towards new people that's something along the lines of: "ERMEHGOOOREDILOVEYOUINSTANTLYWE'REBESTFRIENDSNAO AH LICK YAH FAAAACE!" so I'm a bit inexperienced with the less trusting breeds. This one was one of those ridiculous mad-lib breeds that I can never remember correctly. The name fit together like [Obscure European nation] [job that dogs have] [synonym for dog/actual breed name], like Welsh Herding Hound or Andorran Hunting Terrier or whatever. The Kennel Club is just out of control these days.
I hated to cut my visit so short, but I had to get moving to stay ahead of a snowstorm that was going to blow in that afternoon. If I got caught in it, I could be delayed a couple days and potentially miss thanksgiving. As I drove, I found out that apparently "afternoon" meant 12:15. It wasn't a ton of snow, but it certainly makes it a lot more stressful when you're running low on fuel and you're going past nothing but bullshit exits where the services are not even remotely near the highway. Ohio seems to like those. I also fell into a much more clever "let's bilk money from the people who are trying to drive through here" trap in Ohio.
Apparently they like to throw random little chunks of 55MPH zones in the middle of their three-lane, completely unobstructed interstate highways where the limit has no business being that low. And of course cops hang out 20 yards past those signs waiting for someone to miss one so that they can make their contribution to the state government budget. And naturally that contribution is inflated notably when they hear that you're headed back to a far-away home that you won't return from to contest a ticket. Whatever. There's a reason that car insurance companies are the only institution that cares if you have speeding tickets, because everyone else knows that speed limits and red light cameras are a source of revenue and not actual laws. And seeing as this is my third lifetime speeding ticket, (the other two fines, both for superior offenses, added up to less than this one) I don't think that they can very well claim that I'm out there trying to turn their roads into a lawless Thunderdome on a regular basis. I can take this hit. My insurance will get stupid cheap when I turn 25 anyway.
This just reaffirms why I love Pennsylvania. It has one bigass toll road that's perfectly convenient to drive on, and if you're not using the turnpike you can just drive willy-nilly all over the state without ever giving them a cent. In all the times I've driven across that state (Usually doing about 85) I don't think I've once even seen a cop with a radar gun. Do the roads immediately descend into a state of anarchic bloodsport? No, because people have places to be and they're happy to quietly make their way there without causing any trouble because the state they're in doesn't see the need to constantly harass them for money. The temperament and safety of a state's roads doesn't come from how well-patrolled they are. That comes from the mentality of the state and the skill of its civil engineers, and when both of those don't include "let's build a money-trap!" the state turns out quite well.
In any case, I got home safe and spent the next week doing holiday stuff and writing another unreasonably long con journal. To reiterate though, Ohio saddled me with a $330 speeding ticket and I still preferred it to Illinois. Fuck Illinois. Fuck it so much.
I got the con off to a roaring start by entrenching myself deeply into the convention hall's truly baffling parking garage. Seriously, that complex looks like it lost a game of some sort of civil engineer Russian Roulette. I started off by following Fumei and a few of his friends out of the garage and into the main hotel, since they seemed like they might know what they were doing whereas I most assuredly did not. Since the walk to the con hotel was quite lengthy and complex, the group in front of me eventually did become aware that I was stalking them, so we chatted a bit on the way, and eventually made it to the promised land.
Right then. The first thing on my mind was that I had likely been completely hung out to dry by
kimbaquartez who had said that I could room with him, and with whom I had been unsuccessfully trying to make contact for several days at this point. This left me effectively homeless, with a ticking clock attached to the "not have to freeze to death trying to sleep in your car" challenge. I did the sensible thing for once and declared this joker a total loss, immediately beginning to beg for a room from people that I knew. It was in this effort that I immediately encountered a distressing lack of people that I knew. At RainFurrest it was understandable, because RF is on the other side of the country and is a bafflingly mismanaged convention that no one sensible goes to. But even at an ostensibly good and well-attended con I was having trouble. I found a few friends from my old furry group in Virginia whom I was happy to see, but as usual for them their rooms were stuffed to the gills. I was beginning to feel just a little uneasy when I ran into
LionKingCMSL who said that I was welcome to sleep on his floor if it came down to it. It very soon came down to it, but knowing that his door was open freed me up to have a little fun as the convention started to get up to speed. I was rather upset at ending up in this imposition, but honestly rooming with someone I'd never met in person really should've struck me as more fishy than it did, and I suppose you can only take so many leaps of faith before you fall. Now then, if you've been paying attention I do hope you'll soon note that my critique of the con is much less negative than that of its location and the punishing gauntlet needed to arrive there, and if you haven't been paying attention well then WAKE THE HELL UP I'm doing a thing here. In any case, I went to a pub to eat with
bluepawzwolf and catch up with what's been happening in Virginia since my departure. After that I hit the convention floor and managed one Hail Mary pass of a chance encounter. Rahne Kallon is someone who I have been trying to meet for a very long time. Meeting him was not just a convention goal, mind. It was was an important, very personal life goal for me to see him in person someday. And to show why that is I'm going to have to tell the whole story behind it. Many years ago, when I was just starting out in the Navy,
rahne and I came into contact online and rather hit it off. After awhile, he asked if I could look over one of his stories and let him know my remarks. I did, and in my zeal to help him fix up the piece I was... quite harsh and insensitive with my criticism, unnecessarily so. He was hurt and offended, and was hardly shy about giving me a piece of his mind on the subject. Several pieces, in fact. I probably could've assembled his mind in its entirety from the pieces that I got. I felt awful about having said such insulting things about something he had worked hard on and took such pride in. I tried all I could think of to make up for that, but he just didn't want to hear from me anymore. Soon I saw no alternative but to respect that, even though the silence between us was the most excruciating thing yet. I'm glad that I had the sense to just back off when he wanted me to, as that's probably all that kept him from simply blocking my FA and never speaking to me again. As it was, he came around after a few months and said that he wasn't mad anymore, and that he'd revised his story, partly because the way I had torn it apart had alerted him to the problems with it. He found a sensible and much less boorish writing mentor and was able to polish up the story very nicely with his help. The walls were down by then, but it was never the same between us. Not like it was before.
It would be years before the possibility of attending a furry convention would even enter my mind, but even as that time my paramount thought about the whole affair was "Someday I'm going to find this guy in person. I'm going to let him know what an angel he was for putting up with me. I am going to make this right." Of course, it being very important to me didn't really make it any easier. Rahne is one of the biggest jack-of-all trades I've ever seen. He's a skilled voice actor, a fursuiter and fursuit dancer, a Disc Jockey, a writer, and a prolific art commissioner. He's very popular and very busy at conventions. While that makes him hard enough to find on its own, in reality you have to add that to the fact that I had never even seen his face before, and he wasn't in any mood to talk to me most of the time. I usually didn't hear back from him if I tried to get in touch, and I was very hesitant to bring up the subject of choosing a place to meet to ensure that we could actually find each other. I guess I was just afraid that he would tell me to stay the hell away from him, as he had every right to do.
It was that stupid fear that led me to miss him entirely at RainFurrest. The one time I saw him he was on his way to the fursuit dance competition, and by checking the time, I knew that I would make him late for it if I held him up at all. I would've been just sick with disappointment if I let him slip by me again at this con. Someday I'd run out of chances and I couldn't let that happen. So when I recognized his fursuit in the hotel lobby I went straight up to him immediately. This was my shot. Once the dances started and the convention got into full swing he would be as good as gone. I had resolved to at least let him know who I was, tell him that I'm very sorry, and if necessary, take my much-deserved slug in the face. I even thought about taking my glasses off to be ready for that. At least fursuit paws would limit the damage he could do.
I went up to him, got his attention and introduced myself. He lifted my con badge up so that he could read it and he looked at it for much longer than I would've thought necessary. It had been a long time since all that unpleasant business had gone down online. Five years by my reckoning. There was a chance he didn't even remember me at all, not really all that bad of an outcome, all things considered. I couldn't even look at him as I silently hoped that this was the case and I could be on my way. As such I was quite unprepared for what happened in the instant after my badge fell back down to my chest. The ancient, drunken flying tackle-hug jutsu he then employed in that moment sent me straight to the floor, muffled adulations coming from the orange dingo sprawled out over top of me as he squeezed my chest enthusiastically. I'd swear that I saw his tail wag.
He was glad that I was there and that I had come to find him. He was sorry that he had missed me at RainFurrest and most of all he was sorry that he'd blown up at me all those years ago. I told him that I was sorry too, stubbornly insisting that I was in the wrong. I told him that he was a wonderful person and that I've never been more happy to meet someone. There was another fursuiter with him; I would've given anything to see the expression on his face while he was watching all this. I'm glad this was at a furry con, otherwise the two of us rolling around on the floor in the middle of a crowded hotel lobby shouting excitedly and laughing like idiots would've looked rather out of place. As it was it probably didn't even make the top ten for most unusual things going on at that moment. It was a wonderful and very cathartic experience, better than I ever dared to hope.
Naturally, he was still Rahne, so he had not another moment to spare. I'd already gotten more from him than I ever would've thought to ask for, so I said a quick farewell and let him on his way. If that was all I did at this con, the trip would've been worth it. Of course, that wasn't all I did that con, so I had reasons to dash off just as Rahne did. I got to go to a socializing panel in which
Doryuu talked about overcoming his crippling shyness. I pretty much laughed in his face. If he ever overcame crippling shyness then he must've wound up a roundhouse and totally overcame its face off because these days he's probably the biggest attention whore I know. Him calling himself shy means either Doryuu is a dirty liar, or perhaps that there's hope for us all. I'm still kinda leaning towards option one. Next up was Uncle Kage's Science, Pseudoscience, and Outright Crap. I had seen that one before, so I was going to skip it in favor of ponies, but I'd heard that it had been lengthened and updated with new content and a powerpoint. At FurThe'More where I had seen it, had been the first time he had given the panel, so I was pretty keen to see the improvements. I'd like to repeat that for emphasis. Kage made me choose a PowerPoint Presentation on material I had already seen, over magical ponies. He is truly a powerful figure. That, and I was pretty sure that he wouldn't burn up the whole 90 minutes he was blocked off for, so I could still sneak off for ponies at the end.
The presentation was interesting, and it was indeed much better structured and with a great deal more content. As a man of science, Kage had a lot to say on the subject of fake science. He also has an excellent stage presence that makes just about anything he says interesting. Some of his more remarkable points were attacking the idea that pseudoscientific ideas and stake oil peddlers weren't really hurting anyone. Sure, people were losing money, but let's face it. If you're dumb enough to think that wearing a little bar magnet on your wrist is going to cure diseases then someone was going to take your money eventually anyway. It's far from harmless though. Not all bullshit remedies are sugar pills. The most dangerous ones actually DO contain what they purport to.
The ones that exploit the fact that "natural" is seen as a synonym for "healthy and safe" are troublesome. He brought up cases of "natural" pregnancy supplements causing crippling birth defects, or even miscarriages. Many of the substances used in herbal products are blood-thinners, and have been linked to dozens of deaths during surgery via exsanguination because their clotting mechanism in compromised. The misinformation can even hamper the efforts of the real health professionals trying to undo this damage. Because the herbal and homeopathic "medicine" peddlers have so skillfully disassociated themselves from the evil pharmaceutical companies, real doctors can't get critical information that they need to save lives. When asked "What drugs are you taking?" people will leave out all the "natural" bullshit they've been sold on because they don't believe it's a drug and thus couldn't possibly have any negative consequences like say... death, when combined with actual medicine that a legitimate professional was trying to use to treat them.
He was good at getting everyone riled up, but also very sensible about where to have everyone direct their ire. We can't be mad at the people who fall for this. The swindlers they were duped by are experts in the art of sounding legitimate and selling useless, potentially dangerous crap for a premium. The fool does damage, but there is no malice on the part of the fool. He doesn't know any better. The malice, the evil, and the true potential for devastation is on the part of the fraud. He knows that what he is selling is crap. If he were dumb enough to believe his own claims he'd never have the cunning needed to get rich selling fake treatments. You can't blame the unknowing for hurting himself, but you sure as hell can blame someone who knows better and is using that knowledge to defraud, sicken, and kill people.
Kage offered us an out during the Q n A, so I beat feet out to catch the latter half of Rondie and Roffie's Pony Hour. This was the only pony event that I really wanted to go to, mainly because of the panelists. One of them is
ArofaTamahn, the author of The Night the Magic Died, a pony fan comic that I've very much enjoyed. The other was his sister, 
AgentElrond, a real horse artist and enthusiast. Meaning that she is an artist and has an affinity for horses, not that she herself is a real horse. I'm really at a loss for a clearer way to phrase that though. The combination of real and cartoo was a really interesting premise, and thanks to growing up in a family of horse enthusiasts, I had plenty to offer to both sides of the discussion. I got a chance to talk with the two of them for a little while as they packed up and headed out. We walked and talked because we were all on our way to Uncle Kage's Story Hour. It was a pleasant surprise that they could both correctly pronounce and identify the origin of my badge name. Gotta love equine enthusiasts for that. Of course, "ArofaTamahn" would've gotten an earful if he'd tried to tell me I had a difficult username. Formalities aside, I had to establish how our paths had crossed before. Not too hard, actually.
"Remember that guy that left like a three-page comment defending Celestia's nature on page 78?"
"Yeah, I remember that guy."
"I'm that guy."
"Oh! You're that guy!"
So we got along pretty well and watched the story hour together. Since I always come to see it, a lot of the stories I had heard already, but it's still fun to watch Kage do pretty much anything, and again it was kind of a way to watch his creative process at work as he refined the stories he was telling. I caught up with the pair again at the Con Suite, a place that I went to just to figure out what it was all about. I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I saw there. It was pretty much a general purpose lounge like the Zoo at Anthrocon, but with some charming additions. They had food there, a fact which surprised me. I've never been to a con where they offered free food and I was overjoyed to find it there. It was nothing stellar, really. There were chili dogs one day and tacos the next, lots of snacks and a soda fountain too. Hardly hauté cuisine, but the price was right and it certainly fit the bill for "Oh shit I have to do ALL THE THINGS but I haven't eaten all day I need to shove something in my mouth really quick before the next thing what do I do?!"
The tables were also covered with table-length reams of paper, so that creative types could do arts to the tables they were eating and/or socializing upon. Agent Elrond sketched out a large and finely detailed rendition of a Pegasus. I had Roffie ink it in cerulean blue sharpie and there were crayons available, so I colored it like Rainbow Dash when she wasn't paying attention. She got back, looked at the blue flying pony, sighed, and penned in a cutie mark. I'm glad that she was a good sport about it. I was glad for the chance to chat with Roffie some more. He was interested to hear more about my... unique perspectives on pony canon, and it was nice to have a chance to hear about the line of thinking that had motivated him to take his comic in the direction he did. It was difficult for him to talk about without dumping a bunch of spoilers on me, but it was a fun conversation nonetheless.
From there I proceeded to creepily stalk those two for the rest of the con. Not on purpose, but seriously though, I ran into them a disproportionate number of times. I had a couple good friends there that I only managed to run into once. I'm thinking it was the tophat that just made Roffie easier to spot. I noticed a few others being worn, and also the correlation that no one ever wore a tophat without muttonchops, but it was still quite distinctive of him. Anyway, there were a few interesting events in the late night, but LK had called by then, so securing shelter for the night became the priority. Staying up stupid late the first night is a bad move anyway. Some people say they can power through a con without any sleep just fine. They're either lying or their brain chemistry differs vastly from mine. When I got to the Westin I was simply staggered by the parking fees there. $35 a night, and losing your stub will cost you $200. Damn, I could illegally park on the sidewalk for less than that. Fortunately LK is a super-platinum crystal dragon Jesus rewards club member, so my parking was validated for free since he didn't have a car there. In any case, I had established that sleep is good. As such I flopped onto the floor without further comment.
Despite resting well, I still managed to miss the Military/Graymuzzle/Chakat breakfast. I do usually try quite hard to make it to those, but missing one was not a huge surprise. When you get together a big group of military, veterans, old people and also chakats for whatever reason, the combination is a recipe for quite an early event. I wasn't too broken up about it, as this turned out to be quite a busy day. I still got to talk to the Milfurs' host,
cmdrkitsune, regardless, because I went to his panel next. He had some interesting things to say about the interplay between one's furry and regular lives. It was of great interest to me as I'm still in the "and ne'er the twain shall meet" school of thought on that issue. I managed to drop in for the fursuit parade for a very interesting showing. Robot mechs, a furry zombie, lots of pirates to suit the con's theme, all sorts of interesting stuff there. Sometimes I think that there are hundreds of people who only suit in the parade, because there are tons of suits that I see there and nowhere else. I also dropped in at the charity auction for awhile to watch Telephone, i/e
ino89777 being unbearably cute. He has the only squeaker that truly adds something to the performance rather than just being annoying. Whatever he uses, he has an astonishing versatility with it. He dropped in on a conversation I was having before the auction started and it was just the most darling thing ever. "I've just been so busy. I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to visit the Artists' Alley or Dealers' Den."
"Chirp! Chirrrup-kip?"
"I know, right? You see? This guy understands."
"Ki-chip, purrur. Churrip!"
"You know, that's a good idea. I'll try that out."
"Churrup, chup!"
"Yeah, see ya later, Telephone."
The best part was that everyone with me thought I knew and could understand Telephone. In reality, we'd never met before and I had no idea what he was saying, if anything. I was at the auction long enough to watch LK buy way more than he could handle like he usually does, and then I was off to the Quitting the Fandom panel. It was a satirical presentation about online drama that was framed as an instructional presentation about how to quit the fandom. Apparently I was not the only one amused by the idea, as the room was stuffed to the rafters with people. The panel's organization was on par with an average bus crash, but it remained a delightful romp.
Next up was Uncle Kage's Becoming the Storyteller panel. An event that I was excited about, even if Dr. Conway himself was rather not. Apparently he had been goaded into doing this panel and had absolutely no material prepared. Though he was quick to establish this fact, he came up with a good amount of very informative material on how he does what he does. His closer was: "Well I've run out of things to talk about that I can come up with off the top of my head. I'm sorry if I've managed to burn up only... oh! 52 minutes, well that's not bad at all actually. Any questions?"
I caught the tail end of Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind, a cryptically named sketch show that was... interesting. I won't really pass judgment since I only saw part of the show, but I will say that the performers were wonderfully eccentric, enthusiastic and quite into it, much like their audience. Next I went to one of the con's quite rare writing panels, finding that I was actually rather bored by it. Maybe I'm just used to the usual crew of Ianus Wolf and Alfor Alto, or perhaps I've just finally reached saturation on such things. The latter case would free up a great deal of time, so that wouldn't really be such a bad thing. In any case, I ducked out of it to go to the Furry Variety Show.
The open mic that they had was actually quite interesting. Everyone that went up on stage got at least a few laughs, and some of them were actually quite good. The surprise was that 2 Gryphon and FoxAmoore were both on hand to give advice to all the aspiring performers. The atmosphere bolstered my confidence enough that I came up with a quick set and a story to tell and hopped in line to take the stage myself. Unfortunately there was just too much enthusiasm from the crowd and too little time. We had to clear out before my number came up. Next time I'll be quicker to volunteer.
And of course the night ended with Whose Lion is it Anyway? the improv comedy show whose popularity knows no bounds. Every year they've outgrown their room until this year they got the main presentation hall and managed to fill it just past halfway with over 230 people. Great, dirty-minded fun was had by all long into the night. ... and the next morning. I started the long walk over to the Westin at around 2 in the morning. It was just bitter cold. I brought my gore-tex Navy jacket, which has always been enough any place I've been, but I was still cold. It actually started to be painful in spots after awhile. I was worried that I had gone soft until I met some Canadian furs the next day who also remarked on it being rather cold, so I felt better about that.
The last day was a quiet one. I slept in a lot for some reason, and made it down to the Den, Alley, and Art Show to poke around a bit. I found
hbruton there and finally got my Anubis bookmark. She'd been sold out of them the last two times I've visited her shop at other cons. She said that she can't keep them on the shelf. Obviously Anubis' followers are a savvy and well-read bunch. The fursuit dance competition was up next. It had the same problem as RF did with the temporary dancefloor set up in the middle of the room with the crowd huddled around it on the floor. They handled it well though. The room was actually big enough for the event and there was the astonishing revelation of a safety radius around the dancefloor. They had the really brilliant idea to have novice and veteran categories, so that they could skim down the number of finalists while still having it be accessible to new talent. I'm glad I budgeted in a little time before the closing ceremonies to wander about a bit more, because the decrease in activity made it a lot easier to find some of the people I was looking for and hang out with them for awhile. Among those I visited and was quite happy I was able to run into:
and I made sure to go to the closing ceremonies and step up at the end to let the staff know what a fantastic job they had done. The con had its pitfalls, programming was a bit sparse and the panel rooms often didn't communicate with hotel staff well, but it was extraordinarily well run overall. I was never waiting in line or waiting for logistical delays of any sort. MFF is absolutely smooth as butter from a management standpoint. In any case, the next day began my sojourn home. After ferrying LK to the train station, I took a route that went over a bridge to leave Illinois because for one it took me out of Illinois with the least possible driving in Illinois, and also because I knew the bridge would have a real toll payment system. One that gave me back six ones and eight quarters as change because fuckyouthat'swhy, but at least that prepared me for any potential outdated change-munching robots I had failed to evade. At my stop to visit with a friend in Canton I had to struggle through the Illinois online toll pay system to settle the matter of the backlog in excess of a hundred cents worth of tolls that I owed them. And lo and behold I discovered the true motive behind the crippling inefficiencies I encountered on my way in.
The site is jam-packed with fees and is deliberately impossible to use in order to suck more money out of you. Apparently I needed the exact location, date and time, and six-digit serial number of the exact toll station machine, of the missed tolls. And if you just so happened to be missing any of those pieces of information, like say you just so happened to be trying to navigate alone to some place you've never heard of in a state you've never been before, or you had no idea that you were going to need this information because absolutely nowhere does it say that you were going to need it, or because you were struggling to maintain your self control because the very existence of such a system in the middle of an ostensibly developed nation made explosive vandalism and chain-homicide seem like the only reasonable options, WELL then... I guess we'll just go ahead and charge you for the maximum that we are legally allowed to charge you. Which I was bizarrely okay with, really, as paying them five times what I rightfully owed was the quickest way to just get on with my life and not have to worry about their horseshit anymore. It all makes an excellent case for changing the state motto of Illinois to: "Fine! Here's your goddamn money just let me leave!"
My friend in Canton is a big gamer, so we did a lot of that while I was staying at his place. We played a very interesting card game called Dominion that I may ask for when Christmas comes around. He also helped me sharpen up my League of Legends skill quite a bit in between my comically unsuccessful attempts to befriend his dog. He said just to ignore her and she would eventually get used to me. Have you ever tried to ignore a dog? That's an extremely difficult thing to do for a dog lover like me. Apparently my friend knew what he was talking about though, because every time I looked at her, made a hand motion that could be interpreted as vaguely in her direction, or in any way acknowledged that she existed she would bark at me for a solid minute. I'm not used to that.
Now that I think of it though, maybe my experience with dogs has been sheltered. Over the years I've lived with and around breeds including boxer, border collie, Labrador, golden retriever, husky, pit bull, Brittany spaniel and beagle. It seems like a huge variety, but all those dogs have an attitude towards new people that's something along the lines of: "ERMEHGOOOREDILOVEYOUINSTANTLYWE'REBESTFRIENDSNAO AH LICK YAH FAAAACE!" so I'm a bit inexperienced with the less trusting breeds. This one was one of those ridiculous mad-lib breeds that I can never remember correctly. The name fit together like [Obscure European nation] [job that dogs have] [synonym for dog/actual breed name], like Welsh Herding Hound or Andorran Hunting Terrier or whatever. The Kennel Club is just out of control these days.
I hated to cut my visit so short, but I had to get moving to stay ahead of a snowstorm that was going to blow in that afternoon. If I got caught in it, I could be delayed a couple days and potentially miss thanksgiving. As I drove, I found out that apparently "afternoon" meant 12:15. It wasn't a ton of snow, but it certainly makes it a lot more stressful when you're running low on fuel and you're going past nothing but bullshit exits where the services are not even remotely near the highway. Ohio seems to like those. I also fell into a much more clever "let's bilk money from the people who are trying to drive through here" trap in Ohio.
Apparently they like to throw random little chunks of 55MPH zones in the middle of their three-lane, completely unobstructed interstate highways where the limit has no business being that low. And of course cops hang out 20 yards past those signs waiting for someone to miss one so that they can make their contribution to the state government budget. And naturally that contribution is inflated notably when they hear that you're headed back to a far-away home that you won't return from to contest a ticket. Whatever. There's a reason that car insurance companies are the only institution that cares if you have speeding tickets, because everyone else knows that speed limits and red light cameras are a source of revenue and not actual laws. And seeing as this is my third lifetime speeding ticket, (the other two fines, both for superior offenses, added up to less than this one) I don't think that they can very well claim that I'm out there trying to turn their roads into a lawless Thunderdome on a regular basis. I can take this hit. My insurance will get stupid cheap when I turn 25 anyway.
This just reaffirms why I love Pennsylvania. It has one bigass toll road that's perfectly convenient to drive on, and if you're not using the turnpike you can just drive willy-nilly all over the state without ever giving them a cent. In all the times I've driven across that state (Usually doing about 85) I don't think I've once even seen a cop with a radar gun. Do the roads immediately descend into a state of anarchic bloodsport? No, because people have places to be and they're happy to quietly make their way there without causing any trouble because the state they're in doesn't see the need to constantly harass them for money. The temperament and safety of a state's roads doesn't come from how well-patrolled they are. That comes from the mentality of the state and the skill of its civil engineers, and when both of those don't include "let's build a money-trap!" the state turns out quite well.
In any case, I got home safe and spent the next week doing holiday stuff and writing another unreasonably long con journal. To reiterate though, Ohio saddled me with a $330 speeding ticket and I still preferred it to Illinois. Fuck Illinois. Fuck it so much.
The Bad: Getting to MFF
General | Posted 12 years agoSince I exploded FA's journal uploader last time I'm going to try and divide up the con report more sensibly this time. This is all about my adventures en route. The actual con journal is here for those who want to skip straight to the good stuff.
---
Alright, tales from my latest adventure, then. With the first winter snows beginning to grace my homeland the week of my departure, I was worried that the weather would complicate my journey, but mercifully the skies remained clear the whole way out. I got to my first contact in Oxford in a reasonable expanse of time. It was longer than Google Maps predicted, but what trip isn't? Ohio has an interesting way of handling road construction that made things rather difficult. Namely that they declare long sections of roadway as construction zones without any apparent intent to ever work on them. With numerous and lengthy lane closures and speed restrictions, the state made itself quite difficult to traverse. It took me a while to figure out how the locals handled it. That is to say, completely ignoring the signs and proceeding unabated.
My first stop was Miami College in Oxford, Ohio. (Why are all Ohio places named after non-Ohio places?) The visit there was pretty uneventful. My friend is doing postgraduate work there as a teaching assistant. Just like at Blinn in Texas my presence at the college was completely unobtrusive thanks to my impeccable college student disguise. I got to help out in the metal shop there and put together two implacable metal demons disguised as display cases. Think IKEA bookshelves made of metal that have been disassembled and re-assembled dozens of times, without even the benefit of cryptic hieroglyphs in an instruction booklet. Their construction had always baffled all the art students that were using them. Therefore, engineering to the rescue!
It was interesting to see the difference in mentalities between us. The art guys were all worried about the shape and making the finished product look and perhaps even function like a display case. I thought to hell with the finished product if we can't even make the pieces fit together in a structurally sound way, so I focused on that. He kept asking me why I was always taking the fittings apart, and was actually rather impressed by my answer. "I can't make them work if I don't know how they work." A lot of the connectors were spring-loaded little lynchpin devices that slid out to grab a grommet in the other end of the fitting and then would pull back in when you tightened the hex screw into a slot in the side of the pin. The screw in the slot provided the force needed to bring the two fittings together and make a solid connection. Ingenious little things that got the job done eventually, but the mechanical clearance involved in there made a lot of fiddling necessary before the slot would line up with the threaded hole and the pin would turn to the right orientation in the case and so on. All that fiddling became my job, and soon we had most of a display case built.
In the course of this, work was stalled by a fumble worthy of a lighthearted spring-release family comedy film. The hex bolts don't have countersunk heads, and are thus pretty much cylindrical, making them capable of rolling across a flat surface in a straight line. A straight line happened to be the path that led underneath the partially constructed case, across the hall and then under the locked door to an office. Brilliant. My friend scolded me for taking everything apart all the time, also known as the only thing that got us this far, as he walked off to find a kindly old custodian to get us that hex bolt back with his master key. While he was away, I finished assembling the display case, missing parts be damned! What I actually did was scavenge a hex bolt from the other display case, so that I could finish the first and start on the second without encountering the need for the missing bolt for some time. Of course when my friend got back and asked how I'd completed the case without all the parts, I calmly assured him that I am a prolific architectural genius and I can build anything out of anything. I am nothing if not humble in victory.
While we were getting the second case together, a passerby that apparently had above-average spatial perception skills suggested that we assemble the case upside-down and then flip it over when we were done. That was a stupid idea, but not stupid enough that we didn't give it a shot. I was worried that it would invalidate what we learned the first go-around, but since most of my gathered intelligence had to do with irritating little fastener things that are just as obnoxious regardless of their physical orientation, that threat never materialized. In fact the new angle did make the fiddly hex bolts somewhat easier to get to, so in that it was in fact an improvement.
My friend now regrets telling me "You can play anything you want on Netflix." After seven or eight episodes of My Little Pony though, his tune has changed, if only slightly. His final take:
"Okay, fine. It's an entirely tolerable show, and it's definitely not what I thought it was. It's just that the pink one is SO ANNOYING!"
He also commented on Fluttershy's voice being hard to hear (duh), but that just made him enjoy the effects of poison joke on her all the more. He was also a big fan of Pinkie losing her voice it that one. The Ticketmaster was also a treat.
*Everyone else turns down their ticket*
"Yes! I get the ticket! I'm going to the Gala!"
"HAH! Oh my God Rainbow Dash is so awesome!"
"Pay up!"
"What?"
"I bet you'd have a favorite pony by five episodes in, this is number three, Dash-fan!"
"I... but that- it... dammit."
A good time was had by all.
After that I was off to Garret, Indiana to see my best friend from high school. I hadn't seen him since joining the Navy, and he acquired a wife and daughter in the interim, so both of us were expecting the other to have changed dramatically. And we were both kind of wrong. He was much as I remembered him, and he remarked several times about how I hadn't changed a bit, apart from not recognizing me with long hair and a beard. I was astonished to hear that he thought the Navy would completely change me and that he thought I'd become a lifer. Boy, he really was out of the loop. I believe I summarized it handily.
"When we parted ways six years ago, we were unemployed high school graduates living with our parents. You now have a wife, a child, and two jobs. I, on the other hand, am an unemployed high school graduate living with my parents. Why would I have changed?"
He joked about how he was "ahead of me" in life as a result of that.
"Uh, yeah sure. I have all the time in the world to spend here. I'm pretty much gallivanting across the country because I felt like it. I had to make a last-second schedule change to avoid getting sucker-punched by that tornado yesterday, and it was just as simple as turning the steering wheel of my car for me. You, on the other hand, had to get your wife to pawn your daughter off on her family, and take an unpaid leave of absence from your second job, just so that you can spend half your time with me while you're not working at your first job. Yeah, you have all the advantages. By the way thanks for paying your taxes so that I can go to college for free."
That shut him up. I really was disappointed that his schedule was so tight though. We spent pretty much one evening together where we actually had time enough to do something. We went to play laser tag, which was awesome. They had a promotion that day for unlimited games for $10. We played for about five hours until we could barely walk and the place closed. It's an exhilarating and intense game. A half-hour round feels like five minutes.
My hosts in Indiana made the same mistake about turning me loose on Netflix. I really thought that they would be a bit more inclined towards My Little Pony, seeing as their household actually contains someone in its target demographic and there were plenty of vapid, unredeeming cartoons played in her direction while I was there that could have easily been supplanted by the magic of Equestria. His wife was quite resistant though. She said that she didn't like it and thought that the show was "too dark". She never gave me any further reason or answerd me when I asked where she got that idea from. Where could she have? I mean, any violence is Tex Avery style and the word or even concept of death is never mentioned. You know that the ponies are mortal only because the princesses are immortal, and there are references to ponies from history that aren't around anymore. I didn't figure it out until the last day I was there when I saw Equestria Girls in their queue. That's certainly a big reason to not like that movie. It's bad PR. That movie pretty much has demonic possession and baleful mind-control, not to mention shameless, unnecessary romantic subplots, so of course any responsible parent is going to regard it with suspicion.
I never did get along well with his wife, and not solely because of the Pony thing I assure you. She wasn't intolerable, I just think our sensibilities didn't line up very well. A lot of it was just her trying obsessively, unsettlingly hard to be a good host. Asking several times about food, asking if I got my bed set up okay, asking if I wanted her to do my laundry, asking if I'd be okay in the house while they were gone, if I needed help finding anything in town, if I needed anything from the store, are you really sure you're going to be okay here while we're out? Goddamnit woman I am an adult! I have a car and a credit card. I just got out of a place where you eat what is served or you go hungry and now I have complete freedom to obtain and eat anything I want! This isn't the freaking Sims, I won't start to slowly starve to death if you leave me alone for a few hours. In fact, I'd rather you leave me alone for a few hours. It would make me much more comfortable if you would just CHILL OUT for a second. You're making me nervous and I have absolutely no obligations in the world whatsoever.
Fortunately I had the sense not to say any of those things, but it really began to worry me when I heard her say:
"What happened to the glasses? There are supposed to be six adult sized glasses and two child sized ones out on the counter and I don't know where some of them went. I need to get them back in order, help me find them."
Dear God what sort of batshit insane obsessive compulsive bear trap did I just stumble into?
Bah, whatever. I was probably just overreacting to a bad first impression. She did keep house pretty well, and after my assurances that I could handle the task, she let me use her fancy, futuristic washer and dryer. They were pretty impressive machines. Liquid Crystal displays, fancy sensors and automation, the works. The sheets I brought had been used on an air mattress on the floor previously, so I figured I'd wash them. Naturally this led to my decree:
"Yes, machine, well done. Now go forth and do my bedding!"
Maybe I was too hasty when I claimed to be a mature adult. Oh well, no more time to worry about that. Time to head to the cartoon animal convention!
MFF is a good con. Having to drive through any amount of Illinois to get there is clearly a human rights violation. They have coin-only toll stations there. I'm going to repeat that in case all the unfathomable stupidity concentrated into those words caused your brain to insert a gap in its memory transcription in order to protect itself. There were unmanned, not cash only, but COIN ONLY toll stations. There was no warning of this. No sign that said "Hey if you're going this way, you'd best visit a prior era of civilization so that you can pick up some clunky denominated metal shards because that's the only legal tender that's accepted here due to the perpetual state of martial law this area has existed in since World War I, or as they call it 'The War', because it's been a century since any information from the outside has penetrated the miasma of willful ignorance that surrounds the time-displaced hole in the fabric of existence that this region occupies." Come to think of it, it would've been very dangerous to try and read a sign of that length in a moving car. Still, a heads-up would've been nice. Something to the effect of "Persistent hobos ahead. Bring change!" would've gotten the job done.
I had a receipt with me from the Indiana tollway, a fortunate occurrence because I was forced to look at it to confirm my own sanity. Yep, there it is, a charge of $7.00 to my Visa card to pay one translocation-across-a-state's-worth of tolls; proof that such technological wonders are indeed possible in this version of Earth's timeline. Upon entering Illinois' temporal stasis field, my reliance on fantastical future space technology that we recovered from the Prothean ruins on Mars soon became a hindrance, as I found myself without the necessary crude medium of exchange that this stoic, mechanical soldier of a bygone age demanded of me. Yet I refuse to feel stupid as a result of my staunch refusal to carry change on my person, because change sucks and I will not compromise on that position.
When I visited Europe and conducted business there I thought that I had stumbled into an impossibly perfect utopian economy. Now that I've come crashing back to the desolate wastes of American commerce I no longer have any qualms with stabbing the POS with a fee when I use my charge card to buy something that costs $3, because it doesn't cost $3.00 now does it? No, $3.00 is a long-forgotten myth, a fantastical creature that only exists in the mystic paradise across the seas. It costs $3.16 or some bullcrap because of sales tax. If they want me to save them money by paying cash then they'd best make cash less of an anachronistic, crippling inconvenience to use.
I was near to a state of shock when I found that 2,4, and 3 Pounds totaled nine Pounds and ZERO PENCE; as if they'd undergone some revolutionary calculation process that involved the combining of integers. Sales tax in Europe is applied to the sale price, not the purchase total like it is here. This eliminates the large handful of shrapnel and useless slag that must accompany all cash transactions here.
I bend over backwards to avoid change because to hell with change. The way look at a traditional transaction is like this: I walk into a burger joint, hand over $2 and get my hamburger.
-Oh wait, sir. In addition to your purchase, you get this handful of woodscrews!
-But I didn't want any woodscrews. I didn't ask for them and I have no use for them.
-Sorry, sir. Company policy. I have to give you the woodscrews.
-... Fine. Damn this is going to be so inconvenient. They're just going to poke holes in my pocket and stab me when I try to get my keys.
-Oh, don't fret. Those screws are valuable! Get together several thousand of them and the hardware store will buy them for a couple dollars!
-Wait, now I have to count all these up and run an errand to the hardware store before I get anything useful out of these?
-Well if you don't want to count them all yourself the hardware store will do it for a small fee, or you can get their full value in bookscrews that are only usable at Barnes and Noble bookstores.
-So right now I have an inconvenience that will do nothing but grow until I run two errands in order to earn 20% of the cost of a book?
-Exactly!
-Whatever. Jesus, wouldn't melting down all these woodscrews yield more money in scrap redeem?
-Indeed, sir. Don't worry about it, though. Since it costs the government $241 to produce $100 worth of screws, they can't keep up like this forever!
-Well I hope the government runs out of money soon so I don't have to deal with all these screws.
-Too late! *points to a newspaper, headline reads GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN*
-And yet the screws remain.
-Enjoy your hamburger, sir!
-I'm... not hungry anymore.
Regardless, I searched my car for all the change I could come up with and threw it into the toll cyborg's vacuous, unfeeling gullet. Whatever amount it was, it was less than $1.15 because the machine didn't budge. It didn't have anything so sophisticated as a screen to tell me how much I had paid. Its only output were the green light that said "Thank you for your correct/excessive payment. No need to worry about the money you are owed if you couldn't come up with exact change. We'll just skim that off the top for you in an act of larceny so blatant that this toll station is a more obvious mechanical swindler than an Atlantic City gas station slot machine!" and the red light that said "Sorry, you have not yet deposited a sufficient amount of museum-quality defunct ancient currencies. Please search the immediate vicinity/adjacent dimensions for additional funds and try again." So in all likelihood I just paid half of the guy's toll behind me in addition to getting an unpaid toll fee.
Fuck this state. If they're going to ask for coins they had damn well better have a change machine next to the toll machine, because I only carry paper money, if that, just like EVERYONE ELSE FROM THIS CENTURY you backward, swamp-water-swilling luddite pricks! And while you're at it, you'd best put an ATM up next to the change machine for people from an even further future, or a place where a lot of muggings happen, who don't carry any cash at all. And while you're at it, you'd best update the toll stations with the capacity to accept cuneiform tablets and bartering for livestock because those are from roughly the SAME AGE OF COMMERCE AS COINS GODDAMNIT!
My other impressions of Illinois are smudged by the rage aneurisms, but the distinct memories include getting stuck waiting for a train for negative 38 minutes. (I adjusted my watch to Central Time while I was waiting.) I saw the gates raise, only to see the eight cars in front of me cross the tracks before the gates came down for another train in the opposite direction. Later I went to a Panda Express that had two measly entrees in the serving line and no chow mein or any form of chicken, and I went to a Subway that was out of ice tea. As a result of my trip there, I've determined that the only thing that Illinois doesn't suck at is painfully freezing the hairs in my moustache together.
---
Alright, tales from my latest adventure, then. With the first winter snows beginning to grace my homeland the week of my departure, I was worried that the weather would complicate my journey, but mercifully the skies remained clear the whole way out. I got to my first contact in Oxford in a reasonable expanse of time. It was longer than Google Maps predicted, but what trip isn't? Ohio has an interesting way of handling road construction that made things rather difficult. Namely that they declare long sections of roadway as construction zones without any apparent intent to ever work on them. With numerous and lengthy lane closures and speed restrictions, the state made itself quite difficult to traverse. It took me a while to figure out how the locals handled it. That is to say, completely ignoring the signs and proceeding unabated.
My first stop was Miami College in Oxford, Ohio. (Why are all Ohio places named after non-Ohio places?) The visit there was pretty uneventful. My friend is doing postgraduate work there as a teaching assistant. Just like at Blinn in Texas my presence at the college was completely unobtrusive thanks to my impeccable college student disguise. I got to help out in the metal shop there and put together two implacable metal demons disguised as display cases. Think IKEA bookshelves made of metal that have been disassembled and re-assembled dozens of times, without even the benefit of cryptic hieroglyphs in an instruction booklet. Their construction had always baffled all the art students that were using them. Therefore, engineering to the rescue!
It was interesting to see the difference in mentalities between us. The art guys were all worried about the shape and making the finished product look and perhaps even function like a display case. I thought to hell with the finished product if we can't even make the pieces fit together in a structurally sound way, so I focused on that. He kept asking me why I was always taking the fittings apart, and was actually rather impressed by my answer. "I can't make them work if I don't know how they work." A lot of the connectors were spring-loaded little lynchpin devices that slid out to grab a grommet in the other end of the fitting and then would pull back in when you tightened the hex screw into a slot in the side of the pin. The screw in the slot provided the force needed to bring the two fittings together and make a solid connection. Ingenious little things that got the job done eventually, but the mechanical clearance involved in there made a lot of fiddling necessary before the slot would line up with the threaded hole and the pin would turn to the right orientation in the case and so on. All that fiddling became my job, and soon we had most of a display case built.
In the course of this, work was stalled by a fumble worthy of a lighthearted spring-release family comedy film. The hex bolts don't have countersunk heads, and are thus pretty much cylindrical, making them capable of rolling across a flat surface in a straight line. A straight line happened to be the path that led underneath the partially constructed case, across the hall and then under the locked door to an office. Brilliant. My friend scolded me for taking everything apart all the time, also known as the only thing that got us this far, as he walked off to find a kindly old custodian to get us that hex bolt back with his master key. While he was away, I finished assembling the display case, missing parts be damned! What I actually did was scavenge a hex bolt from the other display case, so that I could finish the first and start on the second without encountering the need for the missing bolt for some time. Of course when my friend got back and asked how I'd completed the case without all the parts, I calmly assured him that I am a prolific architectural genius and I can build anything out of anything. I am nothing if not humble in victory.
While we were getting the second case together, a passerby that apparently had above-average spatial perception skills suggested that we assemble the case upside-down and then flip it over when we were done. That was a stupid idea, but not stupid enough that we didn't give it a shot. I was worried that it would invalidate what we learned the first go-around, but since most of my gathered intelligence had to do with irritating little fastener things that are just as obnoxious regardless of their physical orientation, that threat never materialized. In fact the new angle did make the fiddly hex bolts somewhat easier to get to, so in that it was in fact an improvement.
My friend now regrets telling me "You can play anything you want on Netflix." After seven or eight episodes of My Little Pony though, his tune has changed, if only slightly. His final take:
"Okay, fine. It's an entirely tolerable show, and it's definitely not what I thought it was. It's just that the pink one is SO ANNOYING!"
He also commented on Fluttershy's voice being hard to hear (duh), but that just made him enjoy the effects of poison joke on her all the more. He was also a big fan of Pinkie losing her voice it that one. The Ticketmaster was also a treat.
*Everyone else turns down their ticket*
"Yes! I get the ticket! I'm going to the Gala!"
"HAH! Oh my God Rainbow Dash is so awesome!"
"Pay up!"
"What?"
"I bet you'd have a favorite pony by five episodes in, this is number three, Dash-fan!"
"I... but that- it... dammit."
A good time was had by all.
After that I was off to Garret, Indiana to see my best friend from high school. I hadn't seen him since joining the Navy, and he acquired a wife and daughter in the interim, so both of us were expecting the other to have changed dramatically. And we were both kind of wrong. He was much as I remembered him, and he remarked several times about how I hadn't changed a bit, apart from not recognizing me with long hair and a beard. I was astonished to hear that he thought the Navy would completely change me and that he thought I'd become a lifer. Boy, he really was out of the loop. I believe I summarized it handily.
"When we parted ways six years ago, we were unemployed high school graduates living with our parents. You now have a wife, a child, and two jobs. I, on the other hand, am an unemployed high school graduate living with my parents. Why would I have changed?"
He joked about how he was "ahead of me" in life as a result of that.
"Uh, yeah sure. I have all the time in the world to spend here. I'm pretty much gallivanting across the country because I felt like it. I had to make a last-second schedule change to avoid getting sucker-punched by that tornado yesterday, and it was just as simple as turning the steering wheel of my car for me. You, on the other hand, had to get your wife to pawn your daughter off on her family, and take an unpaid leave of absence from your second job, just so that you can spend half your time with me while you're not working at your first job. Yeah, you have all the advantages. By the way thanks for paying your taxes so that I can go to college for free."
That shut him up. I really was disappointed that his schedule was so tight though. We spent pretty much one evening together where we actually had time enough to do something. We went to play laser tag, which was awesome. They had a promotion that day for unlimited games for $10. We played for about five hours until we could barely walk and the place closed. It's an exhilarating and intense game. A half-hour round feels like five minutes.
My hosts in Indiana made the same mistake about turning me loose on Netflix. I really thought that they would be a bit more inclined towards My Little Pony, seeing as their household actually contains someone in its target demographic and there were plenty of vapid, unredeeming cartoons played in her direction while I was there that could have easily been supplanted by the magic of Equestria. His wife was quite resistant though. She said that she didn't like it and thought that the show was "too dark". She never gave me any further reason or answerd me when I asked where she got that idea from. Where could she have? I mean, any violence is Tex Avery style and the word or even concept of death is never mentioned. You know that the ponies are mortal only because the princesses are immortal, and there are references to ponies from history that aren't around anymore. I didn't figure it out until the last day I was there when I saw Equestria Girls in their queue. That's certainly a big reason to not like that movie. It's bad PR. That movie pretty much has demonic possession and baleful mind-control, not to mention shameless, unnecessary romantic subplots, so of course any responsible parent is going to regard it with suspicion.
I never did get along well with his wife, and not solely because of the Pony thing I assure you. She wasn't intolerable, I just think our sensibilities didn't line up very well. A lot of it was just her trying obsessively, unsettlingly hard to be a good host. Asking several times about food, asking if I got my bed set up okay, asking if I wanted her to do my laundry, asking if I'd be okay in the house while they were gone, if I needed help finding anything in town, if I needed anything from the store, are you really sure you're going to be okay here while we're out? Goddamnit woman I am an adult! I have a car and a credit card. I just got out of a place where you eat what is served or you go hungry and now I have complete freedom to obtain and eat anything I want! This isn't the freaking Sims, I won't start to slowly starve to death if you leave me alone for a few hours. In fact, I'd rather you leave me alone for a few hours. It would make me much more comfortable if you would just CHILL OUT for a second. You're making me nervous and I have absolutely no obligations in the world whatsoever.
Fortunately I had the sense not to say any of those things, but it really began to worry me when I heard her say:
"What happened to the glasses? There are supposed to be six adult sized glasses and two child sized ones out on the counter and I don't know where some of them went. I need to get them back in order, help me find them."
Dear God what sort of batshit insane obsessive compulsive bear trap did I just stumble into?
Bah, whatever. I was probably just overreacting to a bad first impression. She did keep house pretty well, and after my assurances that I could handle the task, she let me use her fancy, futuristic washer and dryer. They were pretty impressive machines. Liquid Crystal displays, fancy sensors and automation, the works. The sheets I brought had been used on an air mattress on the floor previously, so I figured I'd wash them. Naturally this led to my decree:
"Yes, machine, well done. Now go forth and do my bedding!"
Maybe I was too hasty when I claimed to be a mature adult. Oh well, no more time to worry about that. Time to head to the cartoon animal convention!
MFF is a good con. Having to drive through any amount of Illinois to get there is clearly a human rights violation. They have coin-only toll stations there. I'm going to repeat that in case all the unfathomable stupidity concentrated into those words caused your brain to insert a gap in its memory transcription in order to protect itself. There were unmanned, not cash only, but COIN ONLY toll stations. There was no warning of this. No sign that said "Hey if you're going this way, you'd best visit a prior era of civilization so that you can pick up some clunky denominated metal shards because that's the only legal tender that's accepted here due to the perpetual state of martial law this area has existed in since World War I, or as they call it 'The War', because it's been a century since any information from the outside has penetrated the miasma of willful ignorance that surrounds the time-displaced hole in the fabric of existence that this region occupies." Come to think of it, it would've been very dangerous to try and read a sign of that length in a moving car. Still, a heads-up would've been nice. Something to the effect of "Persistent hobos ahead. Bring change!" would've gotten the job done.
I had a receipt with me from the Indiana tollway, a fortunate occurrence because I was forced to look at it to confirm my own sanity. Yep, there it is, a charge of $7.00 to my Visa card to pay one translocation-across-a-state's-worth of tolls; proof that such technological wonders are indeed possible in this version of Earth's timeline. Upon entering Illinois' temporal stasis field, my reliance on fantastical future space technology that we recovered from the Prothean ruins on Mars soon became a hindrance, as I found myself without the necessary crude medium of exchange that this stoic, mechanical soldier of a bygone age demanded of me. Yet I refuse to feel stupid as a result of my staunch refusal to carry change on my person, because change sucks and I will not compromise on that position.
When I visited Europe and conducted business there I thought that I had stumbled into an impossibly perfect utopian economy. Now that I've come crashing back to the desolate wastes of American commerce I no longer have any qualms with stabbing the POS with a fee when I use my charge card to buy something that costs $3, because it doesn't cost $3.00 now does it? No, $3.00 is a long-forgotten myth, a fantastical creature that only exists in the mystic paradise across the seas. It costs $3.16 or some bullcrap because of sales tax. If they want me to save them money by paying cash then they'd best make cash less of an anachronistic, crippling inconvenience to use.
I was near to a state of shock when I found that 2,4, and 3 Pounds totaled nine Pounds and ZERO PENCE; as if they'd undergone some revolutionary calculation process that involved the combining of integers. Sales tax in Europe is applied to the sale price, not the purchase total like it is here. This eliminates the large handful of shrapnel and useless slag that must accompany all cash transactions here.
I bend over backwards to avoid change because to hell with change. The way look at a traditional transaction is like this: I walk into a burger joint, hand over $2 and get my hamburger.
-Oh wait, sir. In addition to your purchase, you get this handful of woodscrews!
-But I didn't want any woodscrews. I didn't ask for them and I have no use for them.
-Sorry, sir. Company policy. I have to give you the woodscrews.
-... Fine. Damn this is going to be so inconvenient. They're just going to poke holes in my pocket and stab me when I try to get my keys.
-Oh, don't fret. Those screws are valuable! Get together several thousand of them and the hardware store will buy them for a couple dollars!
-Wait, now I have to count all these up and run an errand to the hardware store before I get anything useful out of these?
-Well if you don't want to count them all yourself the hardware store will do it for a small fee, or you can get their full value in bookscrews that are only usable at Barnes and Noble bookstores.
-So right now I have an inconvenience that will do nothing but grow until I run two errands in order to earn 20% of the cost of a book?
-Exactly!
-Whatever. Jesus, wouldn't melting down all these woodscrews yield more money in scrap redeem?
-Indeed, sir. Don't worry about it, though. Since it costs the government $241 to produce $100 worth of screws, they can't keep up like this forever!
-Well I hope the government runs out of money soon so I don't have to deal with all these screws.
-Too late! *points to a newspaper, headline reads GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN*
-And yet the screws remain.
-Enjoy your hamburger, sir!
-I'm... not hungry anymore.
Regardless, I searched my car for all the change I could come up with and threw it into the toll cyborg's vacuous, unfeeling gullet. Whatever amount it was, it was less than $1.15 because the machine didn't budge. It didn't have anything so sophisticated as a screen to tell me how much I had paid. Its only output were the green light that said "Thank you for your correct/excessive payment. No need to worry about the money you are owed if you couldn't come up with exact change. We'll just skim that off the top for you in an act of larceny so blatant that this toll station is a more obvious mechanical swindler than an Atlantic City gas station slot machine!" and the red light that said "Sorry, you have not yet deposited a sufficient amount of museum-quality defunct ancient currencies. Please search the immediate vicinity/adjacent dimensions for additional funds and try again." So in all likelihood I just paid half of the guy's toll behind me in addition to getting an unpaid toll fee.
Fuck this state. If they're going to ask for coins they had damn well better have a change machine next to the toll machine, because I only carry paper money, if that, just like EVERYONE ELSE FROM THIS CENTURY you backward, swamp-water-swilling luddite pricks! And while you're at it, you'd best put an ATM up next to the change machine for people from an even further future, or a place where a lot of muggings happen, who don't carry any cash at all. And while you're at it, you'd best update the toll stations with the capacity to accept cuneiform tablets and bartering for livestock because those are from roughly the SAME AGE OF COMMERCE AS COINS GODDAMNIT!
My other impressions of Illinois are smudged by the rage aneurisms, but the distinct memories include getting stuck waiting for a train for negative 38 minutes. (I adjusted my watch to Central Time while I was waiting.) I saw the gates raise, only to see the eight cars in front of me cross the tracks before the gates came down for another train in the opposite direction. Later I went to a Panda Express that had two measly entrees in the serving line and no chow mein or any form of chicken, and I went to a Subway that was out of ice tea. As a result of my trip there, I've determined that the only thing that Illinois doesn't suck at is painfully freezing the hairs in my moustache together.
MFF meme
General | Posted 12 years agoWell, a lot of people really talked up MFF when I was at RF, so I was thinking about making my way out there if I could get all my ducks in a row here at home. It's quite a drive, so I was on the fence about it for a long time. I got my college application in on time. That was a big stumbling block. kimbaquartez dropped out of the sky with a room offer, and I got in touch with some friends in the Ohio river valley who said they'd be happy to have me visit around that time, so it's looking like this trip just fell together almost of its own accord. These are my last months of freedom before I'll be off to college, so I can hardly refuse fate's urging. Therefore, meme thing!
Where are you staying?
The Westin O'Hare
When will you be arriving and leaving?
I'm not even sure what a good time to arrive is, but I plan on being there for all three days. (Nov 22-24)
Who will you be rooming with?
kimbaquartez and possibly tsumezyzco
Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor.
Will you be having a room party?
I'm sort of a guest at this room so probably not.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
What do you look like?
6'2". I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I know that doesn't really narrow it down but that's what I got.
If I approach you, will you chat with me?
Depends on your approach. If you get your landing gear down and locked, manage your angle of attack and extend your ailerons then you should be clear to land.
How many furry conventions have you attended?
Four, to my own utter disbelief.
Can I hug or snuggle with you?
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. If not, well... case-by-case I guess. Ten-second rule if I just met you, K?
How can I find you?
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. I will wear my badge though. My badge is this with a white background, laminated with the finest packing tape that your tax dollars can buy. As for where I'll be, well I don't really know myself!
Can I look in your sketchbook?
Yes, but it's imaginary.
Can I draw in your sketchbook?
If you have a good imagination.
Can I take your picture?
Okay. Just bear in mind that I have no "good side" and my hair is always doing something weird.
Do you do do free art, trades, commissions, badges?
Sure! I'm not an artist though, so "free" is about what my art would be worth...
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English?
Can I buy you drinks?
Yes! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Can I buy you gifts?
What is with these questions? Do people not like getting free stuff or something? Weirdos.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests. I tend to get pretty sociable when I'm at a con. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about. If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.)
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, enslave mankind, see some cool shows and stuff, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
Are you Taken?
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you.
What suits will you have?
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I touch you?
Stop! Hammertime. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
Are you cliquey?
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you?
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. Plus a given con leaves me with like 9000 Brazillion names to learn, so it may take me a little bit.
Do you have an artist table?
No, my table prefers musical theater.
Do you like parties?
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
kimbaquartez dropped out of the sky with a room offer, and I got in touch with some friends in the Ohio river valley who said they'd be happy to have me visit around that time, so it's looking like this trip just fell together almost of its own accord. These are my last months of freedom before I'll be off to college, so I can hardly refuse fate's urging. Therefore, meme thing!Where are you staying?
The Westin O'Hare
When will you be arriving and leaving?
I'm not even sure what a good time to arrive is, but I plan on being there for all three days. (Nov 22-24)
Who will you be rooming with?
kimbaquartez and possibly tsumezyzcoWhere will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor.
Will you be having a room party?
I'm sort of a guest at this room so probably not.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
What do you look like?
6'2". I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I know that doesn't really narrow it down but that's what I got.
If I approach you, will you chat with me?
Depends on your approach. If you get your landing gear down and locked, manage your angle of attack and extend your ailerons then you should be clear to land.
How many furry conventions have you attended?
Four, to my own utter disbelief.
Can I hug or snuggle with you?
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. If not, well... case-by-case I guess. Ten-second rule if I just met you, K?
How can I find you?
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. I will wear my badge though. My badge is this with a white background, laminated with the finest packing tape that your tax dollars can buy. As for where I'll be, well I don't really know myself!
Can I look in your sketchbook?
Yes, but it's imaginary.
Can I draw in your sketchbook?
If you have a good imagination.
Can I take your picture?
Okay. Just bear in mind that I have no "good side" and my hair is always doing something weird.
Do you do do free art, trades, commissions, badges?
Sure! I'm not an artist though, so "free" is about what my art would be worth...
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English?
Can I buy you drinks?
Yes! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Can I buy you gifts?
What is with these questions? Do people not like getting free stuff or something? Weirdos.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests. I tend to get pretty sociable when I'm at a con. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about. If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.)
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, enslave mankind, see some cool shows and stuff, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
Are you Taken?
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you.
What suits will you have?
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I touch you?
Stop! Hammertime. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
Are you cliquey?
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you?
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. Plus a given con leaves me with like 9000 Brazillion names to learn, so it may take me a little bit.
Do you have an artist table?
No, my table prefers musical theater.
Do you like parties?
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
RainFurrest Con Report Part II: Journal harder
General | Posted 12 years agoPreviously on Star Trek: Voyager...
The title of this one might be a little confusing as I already covered all the RainFurrest stuff in my last journal. For those of you still interested in hearing about the trip though, here's everything that didn't fit.
And now the conclusion:
And so once again I packed up and moved on. I flew Southwest this time. I've never had much reason to prefer one airline over another, really. I'd fly on a kite if it saved me $50. I like Southwest's style though. No baggage fees, and no assigned seating either. Much as I enjoy having a window seat, it's just quite a relief from all the waiting, hassle and inconvenience of travel when they are just like "Where's your seat? Who cares! There are 85 people and 85 seats, just sit the fuck down we've got shit to do!" Yes it's not very organized, but when every other airline organizes their boarding in the most inefficient way possible it's not like they have competition. "Hey, let's board front-to-back to put as many people in the way as we can! And then we'll board one zone at a time to concentrate the movement of people all into the same place so that 80% of the plane has no activity whatsoever and is just wasted space, and 20% of the plane is crammed with boarders all stepping on each other to clamor to their seats!" Yeah, suddenly aircraft musical chairs doesn't sound so unreasonable.
In any case, having a lot of contacts to coordinate and no concrete plan came back to bite me when I got into Austin. When I told my friend from San Antonio (Travis) that Lucius couldn't make it for a few hours after I got in, he said that he'd be able to pick me up from the airport. We met up and went to Taco Cabana. "Mexican McDonalds" as it was described to me. I'd say that analogy matches Taco Bell, and this place was a notch or two above Taco Bell. It's probably the proximity to actual Mexico that does it. In any case, it was good to touch base with him and hear what he's been up to. Of course, this meetup put us at a non-airport location that Lucius didn't know how to get to. We had only driven a few minutes away, but it was still an adventure trying to direct Lucius to us by phone. Especially when none of the three of us knew the area too well. He was eventually directed to us by a helpful hippie along the road. He informed me that his polite solicitation for directions went something like "Hey hippie! Where's Taco Cabana at?" I suppose I can't fault him for the usage, as it did get him to the desired location.
We talked it over for a moment, and decided that staying in Austin was easiest since we were there already. Travis had a smartphone, so we asked it about local brewery tours and a few other attractions. Every destination that we tried led us to something that was closed, or didn't exist and was just some random location in the middle of a nasty ghetto. Or something that was closed and in the middle of a nasty ghetto. Eventually we just went with at trip to Sixth Street where all the bars are. It worked, blunt as it was. I don't know why I bother planning things. It seems like my friends always just end up going out and drinking anyway.
Sixth Street was actually pretty nice. It really is just solid bars and restaurants all the way down, so bar-hopping on foot is actually quite practical. I'd even go so far as fun. There was such a wealth of options that it was actually possible to just keep walking until we found a bar that precisely matched my entirely unreasonable ideal bar characteristics: 1. No music blaring so loud that I can hear it clearly out in the street, and 2. No one standing outside the door yelling out the prices of drinks inside. Those are two practices I will gladly go out of my way to discourage. We all started off buying rounds alternately and got a pretty solid buzz going before our priorities diverged. I've never been or so much as claimed to be a drinker, and Lucius made it sound like he had a bit of an edge on me in that arena, but Travis was indisputably our superior. He had the most to drink and was by far the least drunk. He really didn't show it at all that I could see. I switched to water around drink six and Lucius was close behind me. I think I hit the nail on the head though with that switch. I kept getting drunker for an improbably long time after tapping out, but I never fell or puked or any of the other marks of excess. I was having fun the whole time, so I'd call it a successful night of drinking.
Travis got on this kick about finding bars with outdoor terraces, so we got to climb a whole bunch of stairs. I don't have too much baseline to make an objective conclusion about it, but maybe physical activity really does help metabolize alcohol. Travis must do this a lot, because he never slowed down for a second. Most of the night was the two of us literally chasing after him as he proceeded to wherever he was going at the time. At the point where I was really wondering why I wasn't sobering up just yet we found one of Travis' highly sought after terrace bars. We were fortunate in that this one had couches because Lucius and I both really needed a quick horizontal break to get our shit together.
Even as skewed as my perceptions were, I could tell that we had really been spending a lot of time up there. We were fortunate in that the three flights of stairs up to our present perch did seem to be repelling any other customers. We were nearly alone up there, but it must've taken a very understanding bartender to let us host our little recovery session up there for all that time. After recharging for something like an hour we started to get back to our feet. I recall that I couldn't resist breaking it down on the dance floor when Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger by Daft Punk came on the house speakers. As I was busting a move or two I remembered thinking "Goddamn, I look completely retarded." At long last a sign that I was sobering up again. A few more stops and we took our leave of the place. Travis said to let us know if we were in town again and we bid him goodnight.
We covered the distance back to Lucius' place with relative ease. I noted that once he got back onto the familiar surface streets near his place he was a lot more comfortable with the twists and turns, and set himself to seeing if he could roll the truck on a number of them. The answer? No. But I applaud his efforts. I had gotten regular updates on the status of his roughly 70% of a house leading up to my arrival, and what I found was perfectly functional in my opinion. Cold shower with no flooring in the bathroom was something of an issue, but I can deal with just about anything in the short term. The cot he had out for me was a bit precarious, but it was 3 AM and I was dead on my feet. I would've slept on the concrete by then.
Friday we had the option of dropping into San Antonio to see Travis again. It was a hell of a drive, about 3 hours under ideal conditions (which even here never happen), but I was nudged in the direction of that option by the fact that I left my jacket in Travis' car. I was quite thankful that I bought it when I was in the sopping mess that was Washington, but seeing as it got noticeably hotter whilst flying over Texas, I jettisoned it at my earliest opportunity and neglected to keep track of it past that point. I might've made too big a deal out of it, but that jacket was something I bought in Dubai while I was on deployment so there's some sentimentality attached to it, and of course it would be quite an imposition to replace it.
And so, off we went on our incredible journey. Lucius had asked me to bring along some manner of music player so that I could DJ for such inevitable long drives. I loaded a bunch of off-handed selections onto my MP3 player, about three gigabytes worth. I thought it would be overkill, but we made it through about 2/3 of the songs in the course of the trip. Our taste in songs actually matched surprisingly well. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra and String Quartet covers went over pretty well, and he was intrigued by Alestorm. He was incredulous at first when I described them as "Pirate speed metal" but he quickly learned the accuracy and true awesomeness of that descriptor. We actually swapped notes about musicians a bit after the fact. I was surprised at how long it took him to comment on it when a My Little Pony song came on. His reaction was… unique, like many of his opinions.
"Yeah what I was doing then was- what is going on? What's coming out of my radio it's like a bunch of squirrels arguing what just happened?"
We found an interesting new stretch of toll road with a speed limit of 85 MPH. That was both interesting and time-saving. We drove almost all the way through San Antonio on our way, which was a unique experience. The design of their highway interchanges looks like what you'd get if you asked an impressionist painter to design it instead of a civil engineer. We worked out a spot to meet up with Travis and then proceed on to parts unknown. Travis had this place he wanted to meet a few family members at, so we proceeded there. Not that we necessarily knew where "there" was. Again, putting our faith in the smartphone got us nowhere.
Fortunately I was co-pilot so I didn't have to worry about driving while trying to communicate with outer space and eventually got the device to cough up some valid directions. Unfortunately the bridge that it meant for us to cross was closed and our device stubbornly refused to tell us an alternate means to get there. My sarcastic suggestion of "go west for a bit and then try to find a road that crosses water at some point" ended up being not only implemented, but successfully so. We had to navigate around several more closed roads in order to end up at yet another closed road in order to arrive at the conclusion that our destination was bordered on all sides by closed roads and we'd have to walk. Apparently this "One road at a time" or "confine work to one lane" nonsense used by other states' transportation departments isn't efficient enough for Texas. It appears that there the best way to get the job done is to tear up huge swaths of roadway as if a giant had scooped the asphalt up in big swaths, leaving entire intersections and neighborhoods impassable, and then close up shop for the weekend. Git R done.
We came upon our target, an odd setup that seemed right at home in the midst of this crater. It was a courtyard of sorts, surrounded by food vendors and beer tents. We were the only ones that seemed at all perturbed by 90s platformer game style of obstacles one had to overcome to get to it, as the crowd there was quite thick. They were having an Oktoberfest promotion, so it was all things German all around. In any case, we found the group that Travis was there to see. They had Air Force and Army retirees in their number, so we had a pretty good all-branch showing there. I had once more played the naive fool and made plans for the day. I found a cinema-café nearby that I thought we might go to. I've always liked the idea of combining a restaurant and a theater so I figured we'd go for it.
We had blown a lot of time traversing the labyrinth to get to where we were, and we burned even more disentangling ourselves from the table we were at and navigating the crowd to get out of there. By the time we made it to the theater they had sold out. My folly for trying to direct this expedition into some kind of coherent direction I suppose. Who am I to tell the chips where to fall? In any case, we hadn't eaten in anticipation of doing so at the movie, and we'd already paid our covercharge back at studio Deutschland, so I suggested that we head back there. We got back there and had a big, suitably German meal and all was well. Travis kept going on and on about how he wanted to show us the River Walk, another destination of indeterminate distance that he didn't quite know how to get to. And of course he said that everything was packed this time of night, so there wouldn't be any place closer to park. That meant walking the whole way. I still went along with it as, in principle, I liked taking long walks through cities, particularly those with history to them. And of course, this city has the only part of Texas history anyone has actually heard about.
So in that decision, I underestimated a few things. My physical exhaustion at the time, how far we were from where we needed to be, the complexities of San Antonio's city design, how bloody freaking hot[i/] it stayed there at night, and Travis' ability to somehow never have any idea what the fuck despite being in the city [i]he was born in. We walked something like three or four miles, straight line distance, not counting all the turnarounds to figure out where we were going. Late at night, ill and under temperature stress are not the ideal conditions to be under while performing such an expedition. We came across a gypsy sale of sorts along the way. Nothing much of interest but they had $2 bottled water. Not something I'm normally taken in by, but right then I would've bought some $25 bottled water.
And so we plodded on, in search of some something or other the details of which I had forgotten about or never knew in the first place. That was the worst part, really. If he knew, or at the very least appeared to know what the fuck was going on, it probably wouldn't have been all that bad. Had we been making true, measurable progress I might've been able to tough it out. As it was, we had an unknown and thus possibly infinite distance to whatever our destination was, which is only slightly more motivating than endlessly walking in circles. Eventually, by accident I think, we came across an entrance to the Riverwalk. It was an interesting thing, really. The river comes through the town at about 20 feet below the current street level, so there's this open-air underground development that's sprung up around it. Had I been in a less exasperated mood, I might've enjoyed myself, and given the effort involved in getting there I rather regret having not done so.
We walked about though this rather surreal villa that looked a bit like someone had buried a shopping mall which was then gradually uncovered by water erosion. It was a bit tougher to find a good place to sit and have a drink, but that was true of San Antonio in general. I was surprised at what a fundamental difference in layout there was between the two neighboring cities. Where was sixth street? In-between 5th and 7th, you twit! How was it organized? Everything you want all in the same place. Simple, functional, brilliant. I was astonished to learn that this sensible layout butted right up against the mangled slurry of gibbering insanity that is San Antonio. There was an intersection between five roads that had about 130 degrees worth of no roads with the others jammed into the remainder of the circle. That was one of the roads that the pavement golem had chewed up and left in ruins. Not so that it could be redesigned, but so that it could be (eventually) repaved in exactly the same configuration such that this Gaelic rune shape might be preserved indefinitely. These roads look like they were planned out on MS Paint without the ability to use any of the line or shape tools. While wearing mittens.
Another bizarre phenomenon that I encountered in the city was the idea of randomly interspersing bars into residential areas. We'd be walking through a big, densely populated housing development and I'd start to wonder why until I noticed that there was a bunch of houses and then a bar all of a sudden. A bar that admittedly looked like it used to be someone's house, but still, that's just weird! Who does that? I'd heard multiple times about how, despite being the capital of Texas, Austin is nothing like the real Texas. Well I guess I must really hate the "real" Texas because I thought Austin was great!
In any case, we made our way to a restaurant that didn't have a cover charge and did have a nice looking bar. It really was a nice place to sit down, have a drink and sit down for while. Also we got to sit down at the bar after walking a really long time. I cautioned Travis against his idea of getting something to eat there. "Well, the menu doesn't list prices, and judging by how you've begged gas money from me twice already, I'm guessing that this place is a bit beyond your means." We sat around for a bit, and talked with a nice young girl who was in town for a conference. Just winding down for a bit in general. As long as our journey felt, it was only about 10:30 by the time we were talking about moving on.
I hated to be the wet blanket and ask to just leave, but there were too many variables. Now that we had wandered around underground a bit, I was certain that Travis had no idea where we were anymore, much less how to navigate us back to his car. And we had to drive back to his place. AND we had to drive from there back out into farm country where Lucius lives. No telling how long that would all take. I notice that it's often not a good thing when I'm right…
Sure enough, we wandered about with the decisiveness of an army ant in a hot frying pan for quite awhile before coming up with some manner of coherent direction. We did come across the Alamo in the course of that random diaspora, and I did look at it, but that was plenty enough for me. I was still in "get me the hell out of this city" mode. We got ourselves back onto the long trundle to the car. Turns out that it wasn't just perspective, we had actually walked a very long way to get there. We piled in and made for Travis' place, I said my last goodbyes to him and we were off into the night once more.
Of course then it was put upon Lucius to drive the three hours back to his house. I do kind of feel bad about all that. I'm sure he had just as little fun as I did, but he had to do a lot of work also. I was not handling the strain of this trip well, but I was free to spend most of the rides in a significantly reduced state of consciousness. A privilege that I took liberal advantage of. It was a combination of a number of factors that led to me being a somewhat inconsiderate guest. For one, it was stupid hot in Texas if I hadn't made mention of that already. You'd think that living in South Carolina and going on deployment to the Persian Gulf would've prepared me for that sort of thing. It's almost the opposite really. I didn't adapt particularly well at all. After getting back from the Gulf I just thought "Oh my God, fuck ever being hot again as long as I live!" And that's sort of stuck with me. Call it post-heat-stress disorder I guess. It used to be that I'd stick it out for awhile, but now that I've seen the true horror that heat can bring I just throw up my hands and give up the moment I start to sweat. Having no air conditioning in the truck was another big thing that got to me. I can't necessarily blame Lucius. I know how expensive compressors are to fix. Sometimes you can be further ahead replacing the entire car. A length that I would totally be willing to go to, but again, different priorities. Having no refuge from the heat is what really wears me down. Having to go from one cool place to another is something I'm used to, but to just bake for hours is something I apparently wasn't designed for.
It was kind of a perfect storm with the illness, too. Mursa complained a lot about chills while he was sleeping. I suppose I was in the fortunate position of chills being physically impossible since the air was near body temperature anyway. I suppose it probably did throw my thermostat out of whack though, and make me a bit more bitchy about such things. Mursa also talked about his Eustachian tubes being clogged all the time and I got that pretty bad. It made me very sensitive to pressure changes, the sort that happen on quite a frequent basis when you're in a truck that's going 85 with the windows down. It also was probably a big factor in my low tolerance for lost sleep and trudging around very hot cities with asinine street layouts.
I sneezed a lot, too. That's what really started to worry me. I experience nearly all respiratory disease as the same four symptoms. Stuffy nose, sore, throat, and fatigue. A cold is those four for a week. The flu is those four for a couple weeks. Pneumonia is those four for about a month. Mononucleosis is those for like three months. I don't know why that is, it just seems to be how my immune system is configured. I'll have to speak with the manufacturer about it. It makes it maddening to go to the doctor because I never have anything diagnostically useful to report. And then of course they prescribe bed rest and fluids. Well thank God I came to you doc! I was going to run long sprints and dehydrate myself until I felt better. You know that old saying "Exercise a fever, dehydrate a cold" right? Eventually I quit going to doctors for stuff like that. Why would I waste time and money for an exchange that's going to go pretty much like this:
"Well doc, it's the same old crap."
"Ah alright, well do the same old crap. That'll be $140."
About the time Lucius was professing his immunity to such mortal trivialities as disease pathogens was also about the time he started getting sick, so yeah, I think Rhinovirus has developed an understanding of Karma and poetic justice. So if you haven't pieced it all together yet, I got sick from sleeping in the same room as Mursa, gave it to TK when I slept in his room, and then gave it to Lucius when I slept at his place. I guess I should've listened in school when they told me that sleeping with a lot of different people would spread disease… Anyway, I haven't given it to anyone at home here and I'm pretty well over it, so at least my leg of the disease trafficking is done.
The next day we had plans in the opposite direction. My other Navy friend, John, lives near Houston to the East. His schedule was pretty tight, so he only had the weekend to spare. I had figured on spending that weekend with him and his wife and then coming back to Lucius' place since his schedule was a lot lighter later on. I managed to research a restaurant in a town called Hempstead for the handoff. It was chosen based entirely on being roughly halfway to Houston, and as we came to find out, really had no positive qualities other than that. Or any anything other than that. The place gave off that creepy ghost town vibe from all over the place. We eventually found the restaurant that I looked up online, no mean feat due to the fact that it was one of those weird "I'm gonna run this business out of my house for some reason!" places that Texas seems so fond of. I'm even more wary of that model as an eatery than a bar. I checked their hours their site, but the marquee out front said as a special today only they were closed. Just as well.
We looked about the town to come across a number of discouraging finds. Lots of buildings that were difficult to tell if they were abandoned or not. And even if they weren't, the uncertainty there was enough to discount the place. It mirrored another unique Texas paradox. The idea that no matter how desolate or completely in ruins the location is, there will be crowds of cars crawling all over the place like a swarm of insects. This must be what the world of that movie Cars must be like. Lots of empty, crumbling buildings that only serve as waypoints for the new sentient machines wandering the decayed shell of the fallen human civilization. Everywhere we went there were cars on the road, all seeming to be in a perpetual race across the huge expanses of countryside that Texas lays claim to. If there were one place in the world I thought less likely to suffer from overcrowding it would be Texas, but it seems like the design of their infrastructure is catching up with them. The philosophy of "this is the cheapest way to cover the 900 mile gap between here and the next destination" worked for awhile, but now that there are all these people around that seem to do nothing but drive their cars around, all that empty space isn't quite so empty anymore.
We found a chain Mexican restaurant that looked a bit less like a place where we'd get stabbed, and moved the meeting there. Lunch went pretty well. Lucius and I were both quite taken aback by John's astonished and excited response to hearing that Lucius farmed goats out in the country. Apparently he and his wife had been discussing getting a couple goats as pets, so I had unwittingly brought together two people that had quite a bit to talk about. When I saw the neighborhood that he lived in, I recommended that he work on getting the idea past the homeowners' association before he gets too deep in the effort. He admitted that the association has been giving him a lot of grief about stupid stuff, which in my experience, is the purpose of a homeowners' association. Once, he needed some room in the driveway to do some work on the house, so he parked his car a little ways off the driveway in the lawn for awhile. Within a few days, he got a nastygram telling him to move it. It was a certified letter even. That means that it cost them something like $7 to bitch about where he parked his car.
So I got to meet the family, which meant his wife and roughly 60% progress on a kid, and two dogs. They had a toy poodle who was terrified of everything in the world that wasn't John's wife, and an old lab mix that I was instant friends with. That's how labs are most of the time. They're everyone's friend. He insisted on playing tug-of-war with me, and who was I to refuse? We had some time to kill, and so we just about wore each other out doing that. As old as he was, I was impressed that he got me to work up a sweat.
I learned about what exactly made John's schedule so tight as we chatted and caught up on different things. He was working a strenuous full time job as a maintenance technician for an electrical outfit that sold and maintained emergency power supplies. On top of that he was going to college, which he also had to do full time in order to qualify for Montgomery GI Bill benefits. With all that, it wasn't tough to see why this was the first weekend he'd had free in a long time. Hearing about his schedule solidified my resolve to do just college whilst at college. Of course, being a new homeowner with his first free time in weeks meant that he had some work to do around the house. He said that he didn't want to impose on me, but the work needed to be done anyway and it wasn't like I would prefer sitting around doing nothing while he worked on his various tasks. Plus I let him in on a little secret. I actually do like fixing things and working with electrical gear, it was the Navy that had me pissed off the whole time he knew me.
The big item was that the septic system was misbehaving. Apparently there's an evac pump that draws liquid off the top of the septic tank to go to the drainage field. Though it baffled me, I didn't ask exactly why this was the responsibility of a pump and not… gravity, the way it is back home. I was there to troubleshoot the system, not question the design. Apparently he'd gotten a lousy turnover from the person he bought the house from, since he couldn't recall the pump ever working at full capacity. By now it was completely offline and the ground around the septic tank was getting mushy. The septic tech from the agency that installed the system was still under contract from the previous owner. When he got out there to look at it though, he just said that there was no power getting to the system. There was nothing he could do about that, so he said to call back once power was restored. That left figuring out where the electrical interruption was up to us.
He had some test equipment from work and had already done the most obvious things; checked the breaker, checked terminal voltage and connector continuity. There was definitely voltage coming out of the breaker box, but none was getting to the motor controller on the other side. There was a blown relay in the controller box, which was probably why the pump acted up before, but that wouldn't explain the lack of voltage at the input terminals. We fiddled a bit with the overhead light that came off the same underground cableway. He had installed a switch in it recently because it didn't appear to have a way to be turned off before. It really smacked of a half-baked DIY install on the part of the last guy. We were thinking that the underground cable might've been routed in series to save effort, so the new switch might've been breaking that circuit. That would mean a loss of voltage, but not a loss of circuit common on the other end.
We were both used to working with three-phase systems, so we were stuck for a way to distinguish between ground and circuit common without the ability to apply voltage for testing, or a way to get a reference ground to the multimeter. After some head-scratching and even a couple diagrams we determined that the only explanation was a break in the cable underground. We couldn't eliminate it, but we couldn't really prove it either. I doubted his ability to appropriate a time-domain reflectometer from work to narrow down the location of the break. Nor did have enough test cable to do a resistance check to look for continuity in the cable to confirm that there even was a break. Such certainty would've been nice, as it was not a pleasant conclusion. Replacing the cable meant not just digging up dirt, but destroying and re-pouring the driveway as well, since the cable ran under the concrete. The less onerous but still imperfect solution was to buy several yards worth of tough, expensive outdoor cable and run it along the ground.
Naturally the dog wandered off in the course of all this intensive troubleshooting, so we had to drop everything when John's wife came out to ask where the dog was. They took off down the street to start asking neighbors and I walked across the lawn in the other direction. It took me just a minute or two to find him and he came right over to me when I called. You know, because we're bros. We took a bit of a break inside since we were sweaty from the work out front. I lavished attention on the dog while we thought over our predicament. John was jealous that his dog preferred me. I just said that the dog must've been a good judge of character.
Back outside I was looking things over one more time to see if there was something I was missing. I followed the cableway from the breaker box down to the ground as I'd done before, vainly hoping that looking at it more thoroughly would provide me some new insight. When I was digging through the bushes, I came across a rotary switch mounted to the side of the house. I'd done plenty of dummy checks to verify John's work by that point, so I figured one more wouldn't hurt.
"John, I'm not trying to make you look stupid here, but have you checked this switch?"
"I've… never seen that switch before, actually."
"Well it's way over here and there's no reason that it would have anything to do with our problem, but it is off right now."
"Alright, I'll check input voltage at the motor controller and you hit it."
With leery anticipation, I turned the switch. Far from a simple change in voltage, I heard the pump spinning up as soon as it clicked to 'ON'. We both cried out at this Eureka revelation, with such force that his wife thought one of us had electrocuted ourselves. We had traced the wire from the breaker to the cableway that went down into the ground. That's what got us thinking that the pump controller was just like the light, no switch or cutoff, just straight wired to the breaker. But, because this is Texas and making sense is for damn Yankees, the wire didn't go down into the ground and then proceed to its destination. It went from the breaker box down into the ground, then several feet in the opposite direction along the house, and then back out of the ground up along the foundation into an innocuous and well-hidden rotary switch box, which then proceeded to its destination. That was the hangup that had us mystified the entire time.
We savored our victory as the evening wound down, and when dusk came, John busted out his new telescope that he'd hardly ever had the time to use. It was far from an ideal night for it. Lots of trees, clouds threatening, and a bizarre amount of light pollution. Lucius noticed it the night before when we were driving home, a lot of scattered white light on the horizon with no apparent source, particularly as far away from civilization as we were. It was like that again when we were using the telescope. Silhouettes were stark against the paradoxically bright sky. What is up with your skies, Texas? The only thing that I could think of was that the Moon might be really close to the horizon and might be diffusing light up into the sky.
The telescope had a really fancy stellar mapping function, but it required us to pinpoint specific stars as reference points. I could identify a handful of them even though the change in latitude threw me off. Thank God Orion was up or we would've been pretty sunk. The real problem was that though the telescope made a lot more stars visible, it was astonishingly hard to distinguish exactly which star in the viewfield was the naked-eye visible star that we were trying to use as a landmark. For whatever reason nearly all the stars through the telescope had the same apparent brightness. The cloudcover came over before we managed to get the fancy astral orienteering system aligned, but it was high time that we turn in by then anyway.
The next day started off slowly, just the way I like it. The plan had been to take the dog for a walk, but apparently our vigorous activity the previous day had pushed his old bones a bit too far. He whined when he got up and was reluctant to move. They got him some aspirin and he improved, but it was still probably best for him to stay home. Still, it was a nice day for a walk, so we went for one out in a nearby national park. Thanks to the government shutdown, it was closed. This one however, did not have the wherewithal to bar people from walking in it the way others did. So I guess technically we were trespassing or something? Well, it was the most scenic and relaxing misdemeanor that I was ever a part of.
The afternoon was padded out with some of John's calculus homework that made me realize that I really should brush up on that sort of thing before I barrel headlong into it in college. I was embarrassed that I had forgotten what a Secant was, but I'm sure everyone has experienced that feeling at some point. Later on, we went out to see Runner, Runner. It was a pretty solid movie. It was a lot like 21, just with even higher stakes and probably not based on a true story. It was immersive and dynamic, good characters too. I guess the good and the bad are both that it was quite inoffensive. They didn't really take any risks, so they ended up with a very good, but ultimately unremarkable movie.
Later on I got the tour of the house and got to look through all of John's knickknacks. He's a collector of sorts, and so everything he had in there had a story behind it. There was a near century-old book that passed through the hands of the Hoover family (as in president Hoover), a family of bronze eagles that were saved during the closure of a defunct foundry upstate, and a number of other interesting things. I was astonished to find an old-fashioned metal slide rule in there, which had the best story of all. It was a gift from a friend's father. He said that the father meant for his son to have it, but he would much rather it go to someone it would have meaning for. He said that John was the type of man that he'd rather his son had turned out as. It wasn't long after that that he died. Heavy stuff.
By then it was about time for another meetup with everyone's favorite goat farmer. This time John's wife came along. She was excited to talk shop with Lucius as well. For his part, Lucius responded to his newfound celebrity with grace and humility, being quite attentive in answering his new fans' questions. I encouraged them to keep in touch after my departure seeing as they're so coincidentally well suited for each other. In any case, we parted ways and made it back to the apparently very interesting goat farm. That night was, for once, an early one and I got an appreciable amount of sleep.
Lucius had to go in to take a test that morning, but that was all well and good. For once I didn't have plans for the day. He asked if I'd just like to hang out at the house or just like… go to college with him for some reason. I wasn't sure what I was going to do there, but I picked go to college with him for some reason. He asked a couple times if I'd be okay just wandering around the campus for awhile. I figured that I'm 24, I haven't shaved in a long time, I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I'm in a place I've never been before and I lack focus and direction. I think I'm ideally suited to blending in on a college campus. So, Lucius ran off to take that test, and I went in a different direction to do whatever it was that I thought I was doing.
It was finally something that I would call a nice day, as it had cooled off markedly during my weekend in Houston, so I was actually quite glad for the chance to walk around outside a bit. I did manage to find an ATM, which was useful, given that I'd used up most of the nearly $300 cash I'd started with, and because they seem to be a bit short on Navy Federal Credit Unions this far inland. I got to have a good long walkabout and have a look at all the different campus amenities. I was proud to have learned the place well enough in that time to give someone else directions. He had the fortune of asking about something that was 200 yards away and I had just walked past. To my credit, I did pretty much as I pleased the whole way and not once did anyone ask for my student ID or yank off my Scooby Doo villain disguise and shout "Aha! You're not a college student at all! You're just a regular unemployed, listless manchild! I knew it all along!"
My campus hike ended in the library with me sitting down and working on my novel for a bit. Before long Lucius called and we met up again, keeping the lack of direction or objective though. It was once again a time for Lucius to chauffer me through the whimsically nonsensical Texas roadway infrastructure. "Hey, ya know what's a great place for hairpin turns? Off ramps! Yeee-HAW!" I bought him a tank of gas to help defray the expense of ferrying me about like this, not that it was too much of an imposition. Texas makes it very clear that they've got all the oil down there. When we were driving by stations advertising $3.00 gas I just thought "Wow, is it 2008 already? Well I'll be damned."
The first destination I came up with when the need for such things arose was the Bluebell Creamery. I knew it was in the general area and I've heard that they do good work. There were lots of tours of the factory and merchandise to buy, but I wasn't much for all that. I grew up on a dairy farm, so I have quite a solid grasp of what's going on behind those doors, and it's not nearly as magical as you'd think it is. I was just there for the ice cream. I got a very foreboding warning while I was picking my flavor that since I didn't go on the tour my treat would cost a dollar a scoop. A dollar a scoop? A whole dollar! What kind of inhumane extortion racquet were they running in there? I bought two. Really the painful part of the ordeal was waiting in line behind a bunch of indecisive people who were apparently passing their lack of focus and poor decision-making skills down to their large flock of children. "Hmmm, can I sample that one too? Oh! That one's very sweet!" It's CAKE FLAVORED ICE CREAM! The fuck did you think it was gonna taste like? In any case, Bluebell does indeed know what they're doing, and it was absolutely worth the trip.
I remembered that Lucius had a barbeque joint that he wanted me to try, so we headed there next. It was good eats. I should try having dessert first more often. I found a great sauce there that I really wanted to take with me, but they only sold it in cheap Styrofoam containers. That wouldn't fly, so we moved on. We had run out of destinations by then, so we wandered for a bit before settling on seeing a movie. The showtimes weren't ideal, so we had a bit more time to kill before the late one. I settled on coming up with some kind of more resilient container and obtaining barbeque sauce. Wal-Mart for once failed me by lacking mason jars, but we found some at a hobby shop. I got my pint of sauce and we were still an hour or so in advance of the showing.
It might've seemed like a lot of effort to go through to get some sauce, but we had the time to spare and I really wanted to have some of this stuff. It was a mustard-based sauce. The difference between it and anything else I've ever tried with mustard in it was that this actually tasted good. For me, that was a hitherto completely unheard-of characteristic of mustard, and I wanted some verification of this being possible, if only to prove it to myself. I wanted to have some of this stuff to prove to the other, lesser forms of mustard that they were capable of so much more. I wanted something to rub in mustard's face and say "Why are you not this, mustard? Why do you exist in any other form? Why do you continue to persist in a world where this is a thing! WHY?" Yes, I entertained the idea of yelling at mustard and attempting to make it feel bad about itself. It's a very useful stand-in for more destructive forms of insanity. I'm starting to wish I got more of the stuff, actually. My mom loves it. She's used it in three dinners so far since I got back.
In any case, seeing a relatively late showing at a still-very-far-away theater was not an ideal plan for a night where we have to get up early the next morning to make my flight. Lucius wasn't sure on it, but I gambled on our ability to spot a closer theater along the way back, and that such a hypothetical theater would have more amiable showtimes. We got sort of what we were looking for as a result of my rolling the dice. They didn't have We're the Millers like I'd originally planned on, but Gravity was in a much more usable timeslot. It was a fancy 3D IMAX theater, so I figured that all the space particle-effect wizardry would be at its best there. I'm sure you all know how that went.
In any case, we made it back with enough time for at least a functional amount of sleep before I had to be to the airport. Apparently stupid-early flights are a common thing at Austin-Bergstrom, because while other airports had their checkin desks closed when I got in this early to them, Austin airport was already bustling with activity, with substantial lines at both checkin and security. I was actually starting to sweat a little about the time crunch in the security line. I'd packed the MP3 player that Lucius had suggested I bring inside a metal tin that rolls of Air Particulate Detector filter paper come in. The TSA must've thought that was a really nifty idea because they were always asking to see that thing. I think they found it more conspicuous than my propensity towards cross-country biological warfare and trafficking in unlicensed barbeque sauce.
I had the fortune of being at a terminal that was close to the security checkpoint, so I made it ten minutes in advance of boarding. A comfortable margin despite my earlier worry, but you really don't want to cut it much closer than that these days. It wasn't any too long before I was homeward bound. I really hope I never reach a point where I fly so much that the feeling of taking off in a jet aircraft becomes anything other than totally awesome. A lot of people that I meet on a plane do this sort of thing all the time and have been numbed to it such that they just sort of trudge through the process. Me? I'm always trying to get a window seat and I'm always trying to see outside because flying is really freaking cool.
I always hear people complaining about logistical problems and delays like they're the worst thing in the world. "Aw man, my takeoff was delayed by 45 minutes! Bullshit!" Oh? Oh, so you had to sit at the terminal and enjoy the free wifi for an extra 45 minutes, hm? And then what happened? Did you FLY? Did you leap from the ground in a superhuman feat that people just a few generations ago would've called freaking magic? Did you, an ordinary citizen, board one of the greatest technological achievements in the history of mankind and leap into the sky the way ancient people imagined their gods did? Did you traverse a distance in that once took several months, an entire life's savings and had a 20% mortality rate? Did all of those wonderful, miraculous things happen to you for nothing but a few weeks' pay in a matter of hours you ungrateful little shit? Where do you get off expecting absolute perfection out of the people that are pretty much already moving heaven and earth to accommodate you?
And another thing, I really hate it when people call everyone surviving a plane crash "a miracle". That implies that if not for the intervention of a higher power, everyone would've died horribly. Bullshit! Commercial airline crashes have an absolutely staggering 96% survival rate. And the crashes themselves are also mind-bogglingly rare. The Air Asiana flight that crashed in July and killed three people was all over the news. What the media tended to gloss over was that these were the first commercial airline fatality since 2001. That's over a decade of an absolutely flawless safety record. God isn't helpfully shepherding every one of those flights back to the ground. That is the result of advanced and conscientious design of the aircraft, and the hard work, training and dedication of our pilots and flightcrews. No one gets into aviation for the money, because the world is full of broke-ass jobless passengers like me who pick their flight solely on who can put the lowest number on the ticket next to the dollar symbol. People work in aviation, people fly, because they love to fly, and because they want to bring that magic to others. It's a wonderful, amazing thing and I really wish I had forms of passion other than anger with which to express it!
I got to watch a long, brilliant sunrise on my flight out. I've always cursed sunrises for happening at "Oh sweet Jesus why am I awake?" O'clock in the morning, but damned if they aren't inspiring. No poem this time, but as always I had my novel to work on. I had to look up what the big "SNJE" flag on my next boarding pass meant. "Serviced by Non-Jet Equipment". Oh boy, I'm in for an adventure! Good or bad, it's adventure time! The bad part of it is space, obviously, since it's a much smaller plane. I have a duffel as a carry-on so that wasn't too much of a problem. I got my window seat and of course this led to the curvature of the fuselage hitting me in the head and feet. Worth it though. I was willing to arrive with my body slightly curved for the view that I got. The slower, lower ride is a lot more interesting to watch. You don't get above the clouds much so there's lots to see down there and you can do things like watch the plane's shadow track along the ground. The weather wasn't as clear near Rochester, but flying through big fluffy clouds in a propeller plane is pretty cool too. And before long I was finally home.
I had a lot of recovery to do. I slept into the afternoon the day after I got back home, but I've been getting up progressively earlier as I start to collect myself. I've been playing handyman a bit here also. The washing machine has been taking hours to fill, and that didn't seem to change when I changed the line filter and even replaced the hose. Mom was talking about replacing the whole machine, and I wouldn't necessarily blame her. It's older than I am, so I could hardly say that it owes us anything at this point. It was tough to work on because I couldn't move it all that much. It acted like it wanted to fall apart if I tilted it or shoved it too hard, but I kept at it. Breaking the thing wouldn't be too big of a loss if we were getting a new one anyway. It turns out that there's a screen actually inside the water connection in the back and that had become smeared with gunk and clogged by its own rust over the years. I only had replacement filters for the hose, not the machine, and this screen looked like it might've been built in and not even meant to be replaced. I managed to pry it out of there though and just installed a second hose filter at the other end. It's working just fine now, so I guess I bought us another couple of years on that.
We've been getting a patch of the roof re-done and the guys who are doing that have a big compressor that they were using to run their nailgun to put new shingles on. The furnace is out right now, so we've got this little ceramic space heater going in the living room. I noticed that when the compressor spun up to repressurize the tank the circulating fan in the heater would slow down, a major sign that we were overloading the house's system. My Dad was at work, so I guess it was a good thing that I was there to play load dispatcher. I shut the heater off immediately. I also shutdown the computer and TV, then cutting off the surge protector that led to them. They aren't huge loads like the heater is, but they're quite sensitive to the voltage droop that can happen when you start up a powerful motor like that compressor, and every little bit helps I suppose.
Just as I was sitting down with a book and starting to think I was worried for nothing, I heard the compressor choke and go quiet, right about the time a certain segment of the house did the same. I had them unplug the compressor and I went down to look at our not-so-gracefully aging power infrastructure in the basement. All the breakers were shut, and I cycled a few open and shut that were in the dead zone with no results. Further along the wall I found a fusebox that looked like it had been through WWII, and was probably installed around that time. It held the real problem. I swapped out the fuse and we resumed work. You always get one free do-over on fuses, that's what I've learned. I figured that the fuse might've just been having a bad day since the poor thing looked like it belonged in a museum, what with all this glass and ceramic and other such ludicrously antiquated materials involved in its construction and whatnot.
The new fuse's life was tragically cut short around the 20 minute mark, and now I had a problem. Melting a new fuse meant the circuit we were on just wasn't going to put up with this nonsense and I'd have to come up with an alternative. I would've expected this sort of thing had we been idiots and plugged in into the 10 amp porch loop, but we had already made sure to find a better outlet than that, and it was indeed a 15 amp fuse that we were blowing out. That was worrying, as the house has only one accessible 20 amp loop. There were 2 20 amp fuses in the box, but one of those is hard-wired to the stove and serves no outlets. The accessible 20 amp loop was a lot more difficult to unload though, as it served things like the refrigerator and water pump, and a good portion of the ground floor, the extent of which I wasn't certain of. That, and it was something of a gamble. Despite a thorough search of the basement, not always a pleasant experience since it's dirt-floored, I was unable to turn up any spare 20 amp fuses. That meant that if we managed to blow one, we'd be sunk until I could find a hardware store/museum that stocks old school type-T screw-in diazed fuses.
The ideal spot to connect it to would be the dryer loop, a 15 amp circuit that powers only one socket. Unplug the dryer and they've got a dedicated circuit just for their monster compressor. Trouble with that one was it was past the reach of the 100 ft extension cord they already had on it. Adding another extension cord onto that probably wouldn't have helped the situation, and would've been downright dangerous even if it did work. My compromise was the 15 amp basement/aux loop. It was reachable with one cord, and much easier for me to unload. Turn the basement lights off, disconnect the sump pump, open the breaker for the furnace since it was laid up at the moment anyway, open the breaker for the garage since there's nothing vital in there, and the one for the fence transformer as well. I also opened the breaker that said "farm" because it was on that loop, and I didn't even know what that was for. That managed to net me enough room for all the requisite electrons to get through and do their duty for the rest of the day. Maybe I'll make the furnace my next project. The seasons keep on turning and soon enough the lack of heat will become a significant problem. Here's hoping that my transition from nuclear to coal-fired equipment goes as well as Mark Stanley's did.
By God, it's almost as if there was a practical purpose to all this nonsense I just burned six years doing. You'd think it would be far too specific of a scenario to apply elsewhere, but when I get home I find a decades-old electrical system being forced to do crazy acrobatics it was never designed for I can say "Stand back. I got this." I asked my Dad about all this business when he got home, namely why the load breakers weren't tuned to trip before the circuit fuses were. He said that the breaker box was a recent development and that the house's grid had been set up to use just the fuses. Mainly because practical home circuit breakers didn't quite exist yet when the house was wired. His closing comment was "I'll probably have to get the whole system replaced one of these days when I get the money together to have it done professionally. My father understood this house's wiring quite well being that he was the one who installed it, but he's not returning my calls these days." That's Dad's way of mentioning that his father died ten years ago. (Ten years to the day, in fact. Funny, that…) Heh, of course this is the man who refers to an upcoming milestone as "your mother's anniversary" and my mother herself as "first wife".
Anyway, that's the extent of my adventures to date. A lot of people I've had contact with have been talking up MFF in November, so that's something new that has made its way onto to table. I'm trying not to throw any too much time or thought at it right now because I committed myself to the idea of no more fun stuff until I get accepted into a college, or at the very least get the damned application sent out. The application process is rather poorly suited to accommodate veterans, particularly those who are attempting to apply as a sophomore transfer without ever having been to college before. I worked for a long time on the electronic application since they prefer and more quickly process online applicants, but the machine barfed a big handful of bistable transistors in my lap when I tried to feed it that "transferring in from a college that doesn't exist" line. I'm working my way through the printed process now. It's much slower going but much more forgiving when I'm forced to leave some things blank that I don't know or pieces of information that don't apply to me.
Hopefully my (eventual) commitment to this effort will pay off. It already has in a small way, with MFF plans spontaneously assembling themselves even when I had committed to not making them. I've been a part of
JackalConnection here for some time but never really thought much of it. And then a few days ago a fellow jackal I'd never spoken to before asked if I needed a place to stay at MFF. I told him I'd think about it. I guess I'll add that carrot to my list of tools to fight this insurmountable capacity to procrastinate that I've discovered since getting out. I think the fact that the Navy no longer keeps the Sword of Damocles dangling precariously over my head is the change that I'm having trouble adjusting to. "So if I don't get this completed on time, I'll… oh, be making the exact same amount of money and have even less work to do… Uh, yeah. I'll get right on that." The sudden lack of immediate reprisal for slacking has been quite jarring. It's led me to replace what I ought to be doing with a lot of stupid frivolous things, like writing a 20,000 word account of my recent vacation.
The title of this one might be a little confusing as I already covered all the RainFurrest stuff in my last journal. For those of you still interested in hearing about the trip though, here's everything that didn't fit.
And now the conclusion:
And so once again I packed up and moved on. I flew Southwest this time. I've never had much reason to prefer one airline over another, really. I'd fly on a kite if it saved me $50. I like Southwest's style though. No baggage fees, and no assigned seating either. Much as I enjoy having a window seat, it's just quite a relief from all the waiting, hassle and inconvenience of travel when they are just like "Where's your seat? Who cares! There are 85 people and 85 seats, just sit the fuck down we've got shit to do!" Yes it's not very organized, but when every other airline organizes their boarding in the most inefficient way possible it's not like they have competition. "Hey, let's board front-to-back to put as many people in the way as we can! And then we'll board one zone at a time to concentrate the movement of people all into the same place so that 80% of the plane has no activity whatsoever and is just wasted space, and 20% of the plane is crammed with boarders all stepping on each other to clamor to their seats!" Yeah, suddenly aircraft musical chairs doesn't sound so unreasonable.
In any case, having a lot of contacts to coordinate and no concrete plan came back to bite me when I got into Austin. When I told my friend from San Antonio (Travis) that Lucius couldn't make it for a few hours after I got in, he said that he'd be able to pick me up from the airport. We met up and went to Taco Cabana. "Mexican McDonalds" as it was described to me. I'd say that analogy matches Taco Bell, and this place was a notch or two above Taco Bell. It's probably the proximity to actual Mexico that does it. In any case, it was good to touch base with him and hear what he's been up to. Of course, this meetup put us at a non-airport location that Lucius didn't know how to get to. We had only driven a few minutes away, but it was still an adventure trying to direct Lucius to us by phone. Especially when none of the three of us knew the area too well. He was eventually directed to us by a helpful hippie along the road. He informed me that his polite solicitation for directions went something like "Hey hippie! Where's Taco Cabana at?" I suppose I can't fault him for the usage, as it did get him to the desired location.
We talked it over for a moment, and decided that staying in Austin was easiest since we were there already. Travis had a smartphone, so we asked it about local brewery tours and a few other attractions. Every destination that we tried led us to something that was closed, or didn't exist and was just some random location in the middle of a nasty ghetto. Or something that was closed and in the middle of a nasty ghetto. Eventually we just went with at trip to Sixth Street where all the bars are. It worked, blunt as it was. I don't know why I bother planning things. It seems like my friends always just end up going out and drinking anyway.
Sixth Street was actually pretty nice. It really is just solid bars and restaurants all the way down, so bar-hopping on foot is actually quite practical. I'd even go so far as fun. There was such a wealth of options that it was actually possible to just keep walking until we found a bar that precisely matched my entirely unreasonable ideal bar characteristics: 1. No music blaring so loud that I can hear it clearly out in the street, and 2. No one standing outside the door yelling out the prices of drinks inside. Those are two practices I will gladly go out of my way to discourage. We all started off buying rounds alternately and got a pretty solid buzz going before our priorities diverged. I've never been or so much as claimed to be a drinker, and Lucius made it sound like he had a bit of an edge on me in that arena, but Travis was indisputably our superior. He had the most to drink and was by far the least drunk. He really didn't show it at all that I could see. I switched to water around drink six and Lucius was close behind me. I think I hit the nail on the head though with that switch. I kept getting drunker for an improbably long time after tapping out, but I never fell or puked or any of the other marks of excess. I was having fun the whole time, so I'd call it a successful night of drinking.
Travis got on this kick about finding bars with outdoor terraces, so we got to climb a whole bunch of stairs. I don't have too much baseline to make an objective conclusion about it, but maybe physical activity really does help metabolize alcohol. Travis must do this a lot, because he never slowed down for a second. Most of the night was the two of us literally chasing after him as he proceeded to wherever he was going at the time. At the point where I was really wondering why I wasn't sobering up just yet we found one of Travis' highly sought after terrace bars. We were fortunate in that this one had couches because Lucius and I both really needed a quick horizontal break to get our shit together.
Even as skewed as my perceptions were, I could tell that we had really been spending a lot of time up there. We were fortunate in that the three flights of stairs up to our present perch did seem to be repelling any other customers. We were nearly alone up there, but it must've taken a very understanding bartender to let us host our little recovery session up there for all that time. After recharging for something like an hour we started to get back to our feet. I recall that I couldn't resist breaking it down on the dance floor when Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger by Daft Punk came on the house speakers. As I was busting a move or two I remembered thinking "Goddamn, I look completely retarded." At long last a sign that I was sobering up again. A few more stops and we took our leave of the place. Travis said to let us know if we were in town again and we bid him goodnight.
We covered the distance back to Lucius' place with relative ease. I noted that once he got back onto the familiar surface streets near his place he was a lot more comfortable with the twists and turns, and set himself to seeing if he could roll the truck on a number of them. The answer? No. But I applaud his efforts. I had gotten regular updates on the status of his roughly 70% of a house leading up to my arrival, and what I found was perfectly functional in my opinion. Cold shower with no flooring in the bathroom was something of an issue, but I can deal with just about anything in the short term. The cot he had out for me was a bit precarious, but it was 3 AM and I was dead on my feet. I would've slept on the concrete by then.
Friday we had the option of dropping into San Antonio to see Travis again. It was a hell of a drive, about 3 hours under ideal conditions (which even here never happen), but I was nudged in the direction of that option by the fact that I left my jacket in Travis' car. I was quite thankful that I bought it when I was in the sopping mess that was Washington, but seeing as it got noticeably hotter whilst flying over Texas, I jettisoned it at my earliest opportunity and neglected to keep track of it past that point. I might've made too big a deal out of it, but that jacket was something I bought in Dubai while I was on deployment so there's some sentimentality attached to it, and of course it would be quite an imposition to replace it.
And so, off we went on our incredible journey. Lucius had asked me to bring along some manner of music player so that I could DJ for such inevitable long drives. I loaded a bunch of off-handed selections onto my MP3 player, about three gigabytes worth. I thought it would be overkill, but we made it through about 2/3 of the songs in the course of the trip. Our taste in songs actually matched surprisingly well. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra and String Quartet covers went over pretty well, and he was intrigued by Alestorm. He was incredulous at first when I described them as "Pirate speed metal" but he quickly learned the accuracy and true awesomeness of that descriptor. We actually swapped notes about musicians a bit after the fact. I was surprised at how long it took him to comment on it when a My Little Pony song came on. His reaction was… unique, like many of his opinions.
"Yeah what I was doing then was- what is going on? What's coming out of my radio it's like a bunch of squirrels arguing what just happened?"
We found an interesting new stretch of toll road with a speed limit of 85 MPH. That was both interesting and time-saving. We drove almost all the way through San Antonio on our way, which was a unique experience. The design of their highway interchanges looks like what you'd get if you asked an impressionist painter to design it instead of a civil engineer. We worked out a spot to meet up with Travis and then proceed on to parts unknown. Travis had this place he wanted to meet a few family members at, so we proceeded there. Not that we necessarily knew where "there" was. Again, putting our faith in the smartphone got us nowhere.
Fortunately I was co-pilot so I didn't have to worry about driving while trying to communicate with outer space and eventually got the device to cough up some valid directions. Unfortunately the bridge that it meant for us to cross was closed and our device stubbornly refused to tell us an alternate means to get there. My sarcastic suggestion of "go west for a bit and then try to find a road that crosses water at some point" ended up being not only implemented, but successfully so. We had to navigate around several more closed roads in order to end up at yet another closed road in order to arrive at the conclusion that our destination was bordered on all sides by closed roads and we'd have to walk. Apparently this "One road at a time" or "confine work to one lane" nonsense used by other states' transportation departments isn't efficient enough for Texas. It appears that there the best way to get the job done is to tear up huge swaths of roadway as if a giant had scooped the asphalt up in big swaths, leaving entire intersections and neighborhoods impassable, and then close up shop for the weekend. Git R done.
We came upon our target, an odd setup that seemed right at home in the midst of this crater. It was a courtyard of sorts, surrounded by food vendors and beer tents. We were the only ones that seemed at all perturbed by 90s platformer game style of obstacles one had to overcome to get to it, as the crowd there was quite thick. They were having an Oktoberfest promotion, so it was all things German all around. In any case, we found the group that Travis was there to see. They had Air Force and Army retirees in their number, so we had a pretty good all-branch showing there. I had once more played the naive fool and made plans for the day. I found a cinema-café nearby that I thought we might go to. I've always liked the idea of combining a restaurant and a theater so I figured we'd go for it.
We had blown a lot of time traversing the labyrinth to get to where we were, and we burned even more disentangling ourselves from the table we were at and navigating the crowd to get out of there. By the time we made it to the theater they had sold out. My folly for trying to direct this expedition into some kind of coherent direction I suppose. Who am I to tell the chips where to fall? In any case, we hadn't eaten in anticipation of doing so at the movie, and we'd already paid our covercharge back at studio Deutschland, so I suggested that we head back there. We got back there and had a big, suitably German meal and all was well. Travis kept going on and on about how he wanted to show us the River Walk, another destination of indeterminate distance that he didn't quite know how to get to. And of course he said that everything was packed this time of night, so there wouldn't be any place closer to park. That meant walking the whole way. I still went along with it as, in principle, I liked taking long walks through cities, particularly those with history to them. And of course, this city has the only part of Texas history anyone has actually heard about.
So in that decision, I underestimated a few things. My physical exhaustion at the time, how far we were from where we needed to be, the complexities of San Antonio's city design, how bloody freaking hot[i/] it stayed there at night, and Travis' ability to somehow never have any idea what the fuck despite being in the city [i]he was born in. We walked something like three or four miles, straight line distance, not counting all the turnarounds to figure out where we were going. Late at night, ill and under temperature stress are not the ideal conditions to be under while performing such an expedition. We came across a gypsy sale of sorts along the way. Nothing much of interest but they had $2 bottled water. Not something I'm normally taken in by, but right then I would've bought some $25 bottled water.
And so we plodded on, in search of some something or other the details of which I had forgotten about or never knew in the first place. That was the worst part, really. If he knew, or at the very least appeared to know what the fuck was going on, it probably wouldn't have been all that bad. Had we been making true, measurable progress I might've been able to tough it out. As it was, we had an unknown and thus possibly infinite distance to whatever our destination was, which is only slightly more motivating than endlessly walking in circles. Eventually, by accident I think, we came across an entrance to the Riverwalk. It was an interesting thing, really. The river comes through the town at about 20 feet below the current street level, so there's this open-air underground development that's sprung up around it. Had I been in a less exasperated mood, I might've enjoyed myself, and given the effort involved in getting there I rather regret having not done so.
We walked about though this rather surreal villa that looked a bit like someone had buried a shopping mall which was then gradually uncovered by water erosion. It was a bit tougher to find a good place to sit and have a drink, but that was true of San Antonio in general. I was surprised at what a fundamental difference in layout there was between the two neighboring cities. Where was sixth street? In-between 5th and 7th, you twit! How was it organized? Everything you want all in the same place. Simple, functional, brilliant. I was astonished to learn that this sensible layout butted right up against the mangled slurry of gibbering insanity that is San Antonio. There was an intersection between five roads that had about 130 degrees worth of no roads with the others jammed into the remainder of the circle. That was one of the roads that the pavement golem had chewed up and left in ruins. Not so that it could be redesigned, but so that it could be (eventually) repaved in exactly the same configuration such that this Gaelic rune shape might be preserved indefinitely. These roads look like they were planned out on MS Paint without the ability to use any of the line or shape tools. While wearing mittens.
Another bizarre phenomenon that I encountered in the city was the idea of randomly interspersing bars into residential areas. We'd be walking through a big, densely populated housing development and I'd start to wonder why until I noticed that there was a bunch of houses and then a bar all of a sudden. A bar that admittedly looked like it used to be someone's house, but still, that's just weird! Who does that? I'd heard multiple times about how, despite being the capital of Texas, Austin is nothing like the real Texas. Well I guess I must really hate the "real" Texas because I thought Austin was great!
In any case, we made our way to a restaurant that didn't have a cover charge and did have a nice looking bar. It really was a nice place to sit down, have a drink and sit down for while. Also we got to sit down at the bar after walking a really long time. I cautioned Travis against his idea of getting something to eat there. "Well, the menu doesn't list prices, and judging by how you've begged gas money from me twice already, I'm guessing that this place is a bit beyond your means." We sat around for a bit, and talked with a nice young girl who was in town for a conference. Just winding down for a bit in general. As long as our journey felt, it was only about 10:30 by the time we were talking about moving on.
I hated to be the wet blanket and ask to just leave, but there were too many variables. Now that we had wandered around underground a bit, I was certain that Travis had no idea where we were anymore, much less how to navigate us back to his car. And we had to drive back to his place. AND we had to drive from there back out into farm country where Lucius lives. No telling how long that would all take. I notice that it's often not a good thing when I'm right…
Sure enough, we wandered about with the decisiveness of an army ant in a hot frying pan for quite awhile before coming up with some manner of coherent direction. We did come across the Alamo in the course of that random diaspora, and I did look at it, but that was plenty enough for me. I was still in "get me the hell out of this city" mode. We got ourselves back onto the long trundle to the car. Turns out that it wasn't just perspective, we had actually walked a very long way to get there. We piled in and made for Travis' place, I said my last goodbyes to him and we were off into the night once more.
Of course then it was put upon Lucius to drive the three hours back to his house. I do kind of feel bad about all that. I'm sure he had just as little fun as I did, but he had to do a lot of work also. I was not handling the strain of this trip well, but I was free to spend most of the rides in a significantly reduced state of consciousness. A privilege that I took liberal advantage of. It was a combination of a number of factors that led to me being a somewhat inconsiderate guest. For one, it was stupid hot in Texas if I hadn't made mention of that already. You'd think that living in South Carolina and going on deployment to the Persian Gulf would've prepared me for that sort of thing. It's almost the opposite really. I didn't adapt particularly well at all. After getting back from the Gulf I just thought "Oh my God, fuck ever being hot again as long as I live!" And that's sort of stuck with me. Call it post-heat-stress disorder I guess. It used to be that I'd stick it out for awhile, but now that I've seen the true horror that heat can bring I just throw up my hands and give up the moment I start to sweat. Having no air conditioning in the truck was another big thing that got to me. I can't necessarily blame Lucius. I know how expensive compressors are to fix. Sometimes you can be further ahead replacing the entire car. A length that I would totally be willing to go to, but again, different priorities. Having no refuge from the heat is what really wears me down. Having to go from one cool place to another is something I'm used to, but to just bake for hours is something I apparently wasn't designed for.
It was kind of a perfect storm with the illness, too. Mursa complained a lot about chills while he was sleeping. I suppose I was in the fortunate position of chills being physically impossible since the air was near body temperature anyway. I suppose it probably did throw my thermostat out of whack though, and make me a bit more bitchy about such things. Mursa also talked about his Eustachian tubes being clogged all the time and I got that pretty bad. It made me very sensitive to pressure changes, the sort that happen on quite a frequent basis when you're in a truck that's going 85 with the windows down. It also was probably a big factor in my low tolerance for lost sleep and trudging around very hot cities with asinine street layouts.
I sneezed a lot, too. That's what really started to worry me. I experience nearly all respiratory disease as the same four symptoms. Stuffy nose, sore, throat, and fatigue. A cold is those four for a week. The flu is those four for a couple weeks. Pneumonia is those four for about a month. Mononucleosis is those for like three months. I don't know why that is, it just seems to be how my immune system is configured. I'll have to speak with the manufacturer about it. It makes it maddening to go to the doctor because I never have anything diagnostically useful to report. And then of course they prescribe bed rest and fluids. Well thank God I came to you doc! I was going to run long sprints and dehydrate myself until I felt better. You know that old saying "Exercise a fever, dehydrate a cold" right? Eventually I quit going to doctors for stuff like that. Why would I waste time and money for an exchange that's going to go pretty much like this:
"Well doc, it's the same old crap."
"Ah alright, well do the same old crap. That'll be $140."
About the time Lucius was professing his immunity to such mortal trivialities as disease pathogens was also about the time he started getting sick, so yeah, I think Rhinovirus has developed an understanding of Karma and poetic justice. So if you haven't pieced it all together yet, I got sick from sleeping in the same room as Mursa, gave it to TK when I slept in his room, and then gave it to Lucius when I slept at his place. I guess I should've listened in school when they told me that sleeping with a lot of different people would spread disease… Anyway, I haven't given it to anyone at home here and I'm pretty well over it, so at least my leg of the disease trafficking is done.
The next day we had plans in the opposite direction. My other Navy friend, John, lives near Houston to the East. His schedule was pretty tight, so he only had the weekend to spare. I had figured on spending that weekend with him and his wife and then coming back to Lucius' place since his schedule was a lot lighter later on. I managed to research a restaurant in a town called Hempstead for the handoff. It was chosen based entirely on being roughly halfway to Houston, and as we came to find out, really had no positive qualities other than that. Or any anything other than that. The place gave off that creepy ghost town vibe from all over the place. We eventually found the restaurant that I looked up online, no mean feat due to the fact that it was one of those weird "I'm gonna run this business out of my house for some reason!" places that Texas seems so fond of. I'm even more wary of that model as an eatery than a bar. I checked their hours their site, but the marquee out front said as a special today only they were closed. Just as well.
We looked about the town to come across a number of discouraging finds. Lots of buildings that were difficult to tell if they were abandoned or not. And even if they weren't, the uncertainty there was enough to discount the place. It mirrored another unique Texas paradox. The idea that no matter how desolate or completely in ruins the location is, there will be crowds of cars crawling all over the place like a swarm of insects. This must be what the world of that movie Cars must be like. Lots of empty, crumbling buildings that only serve as waypoints for the new sentient machines wandering the decayed shell of the fallen human civilization. Everywhere we went there were cars on the road, all seeming to be in a perpetual race across the huge expanses of countryside that Texas lays claim to. If there were one place in the world I thought less likely to suffer from overcrowding it would be Texas, but it seems like the design of their infrastructure is catching up with them. The philosophy of "this is the cheapest way to cover the 900 mile gap between here and the next destination" worked for awhile, but now that there are all these people around that seem to do nothing but drive their cars around, all that empty space isn't quite so empty anymore.
We found a chain Mexican restaurant that looked a bit less like a place where we'd get stabbed, and moved the meeting there. Lunch went pretty well. Lucius and I were both quite taken aback by John's astonished and excited response to hearing that Lucius farmed goats out in the country. Apparently he and his wife had been discussing getting a couple goats as pets, so I had unwittingly brought together two people that had quite a bit to talk about. When I saw the neighborhood that he lived in, I recommended that he work on getting the idea past the homeowners' association before he gets too deep in the effort. He admitted that the association has been giving him a lot of grief about stupid stuff, which in my experience, is the purpose of a homeowners' association. Once, he needed some room in the driveway to do some work on the house, so he parked his car a little ways off the driveway in the lawn for awhile. Within a few days, he got a nastygram telling him to move it. It was a certified letter even. That means that it cost them something like $7 to bitch about where he parked his car.
So I got to meet the family, which meant his wife and roughly 60% progress on a kid, and two dogs. They had a toy poodle who was terrified of everything in the world that wasn't John's wife, and an old lab mix that I was instant friends with. That's how labs are most of the time. They're everyone's friend. He insisted on playing tug-of-war with me, and who was I to refuse? We had some time to kill, and so we just about wore each other out doing that. As old as he was, I was impressed that he got me to work up a sweat.
I learned about what exactly made John's schedule so tight as we chatted and caught up on different things. He was working a strenuous full time job as a maintenance technician for an electrical outfit that sold and maintained emergency power supplies. On top of that he was going to college, which he also had to do full time in order to qualify for Montgomery GI Bill benefits. With all that, it wasn't tough to see why this was the first weekend he'd had free in a long time. Hearing about his schedule solidified my resolve to do just college whilst at college. Of course, being a new homeowner with his first free time in weeks meant that he had some work to do around the house. He said that he didn't want to impose on me, but the work needed to be done anyway and it wasn't like I would prefer sitting around doing nothing while he worked on his various tasks. Plus I let him in on a little secret. I actually do like fixing things and working with electrical gear, it was the Navy that had me pissed off the whole time he knew me.
The big item was that the septic system was misbehaving. Apparently there's an evac pump that draws liquid off the top of the septic tank to go to the drainage field. Though it baffled me, I didn't ask exactly why this was the responsibility of a pump and not… gravity, the way it is back home. I was there to troubleshoot the system, not question the design. Apparently he'd gotten a lousy turnover from the person he bought the house from, since he couldn't recall the pump ever working at full capacity. By now it was completely offline and the ground around the septic tank was getting mushy. The septic tech from the agency that installed the system was still under contract from the previous owner. When he got out there to look at it though, he just said that there was no power getting to the system. There was nothing he could do about that, so he said to call back once power was restored. That left figuring out where the electrical interruption was up to us.
He had some test equipment from work and had already done the most obvious things; checked the breaker, checked terminal voltage and connector continuity. There was definitely voltage coming out of the breaker box, but none was getting to the motor controller on the other side. There was a blown relay in the controller box, which was probably why the pump acted up before, but that wouldn't explain the lack of voltage at the input terminals. We fiddled a bit with the overhead light that came off the same underground cableway. He had installed a switch in it recently because it didn't appear to have a way to be turned off before. It really smacked of a half-baked DIY install on the part of the last guy. We were thinking that the underground cable might've been routed in series to save effort, so the new switch might've been breaking that circuit. That would mean a loss of voltage, but not a loss of circuit common on the other end.
We were both used to working with three-phase systems, so we were stuck for a way to distinguish between ground and circuit common without the ability to apply voltage for testing, or a way to get a reference ground to the multimeter. After some head-scratching and even a couple diagrams we determined that the only explanation was a break in the cable underground. We couldn't eliminate it, but we couldn't really prove it either. I doubted his ability to appropriate a time-domain reflectometer from work to narrow down the location of the break. Nor did have enough test cable to do a resistance check to look for continuity in the cable to confirm that there even was a break. Such certainty would've been nice, as it was not a pleasant conclusion. Replacing the cable meant not just digging up dirt, but destroying and re-pouring the driveway as well, since the cable ran under the concrete. The less onerous but still imperfect solution was to buy several yards worth of tough, expensive outdoor cable and run it along the ground.
Naturally the dog wandered off in the course of all this intensive troubleshooting, so we had to drop everything when John's wife came out to ask where the dog was. They took off down the street to start asking neighbors and I walked across the lawn in the other direction. It took me just a minute or two to find him and he came right over to me when I called. You know, because we're bros. We took a bit of a break inside since we were sweaty from the work out front. I lavished attention on the dog while we thought over our predicament. John was jealous that his dog preferred me. I just said that the dog must've been a good judge of character.
Back outside I was looking things over one more time to see if there was something I was missing. I followed the cableway from the breaker box down to the ground as I'd done before, vainly hoping that looking at it more thoroughly would provide me some new insight. When I was digging through the bushes, I came across a rotary switch mounted to the side of the house. I'd done plenty of dummy checks to verify John's work by that point, so I figured one more wouldn't hurt.
"John, I'm not trying to make you look stupid here, but have you checked this switch?"
"I've… never seen that switch before, actually."
"Well it's way over here and there's no reason that it would have anything to do with our problem, but it is off right now."
"Alright, I'll check input voltage at the motor controller and you hit it."
With leery anticipation, I turned the switch. Far from a simple change in voltage, I heard the pump spinning up as soon as it clicked to 'ON'. We both cried out at this Eureka revelation, with such force that his wife thought one of us had electrocuted ourselves. We had traced the wire from the breaker to the cableway that went down into the ground. That's what got us thinking that the pump controller was just like the light, no switch or cutoff, just straight wired to the breaker. But, because this is Texas and making sense is for damn Yankees, the wire didn't go down into the ground and then proceed to its destination. It went from the breaker box down into the ground, then several feet in the opposite direction along the house, and then back out of the ground up along the foundation into an innocuous and well-hidden rotary switch box, which then proceeded to its destination. That was the hangup that had us mystified the entire time.
We savored our victory as the evening wound down, and when dusk came, John busted out his new telescope that he'd hardly ever had the time to use. It was far from an ideal night for it. Lots of trees, clouds threatening, and a bizarre amount of light pollution. Lucius noticed it the night before when we were driving home, a lot of scattered white light on the horizon with no apparent source, particularly as far away from civilization as we were. It was like that again when we were using the telescope. Silhouettes were stark against the paradoxically bright sky. What is up with your skies, Texas? The only thing that I could think of was that the Moon might be really close to the horizon and might be diffusing light up into the sky.
The telescope had a really fancy stellar mapping function, but it required us to pinpoint specific stars as reference points. I could identify a handful of them even though the change in latitude threw me off. Thank God Orion was up or we would've been pretty sunk. The real problem was that though the telescope made a lot more stars visible, it was astonishingly hard to distinguish exactly which star in the viewfield was the naked-eye visible star that we were trying to use as a landmark. For whatever reason nearly all the stars through the telescope had the same apparent brightness. The cloudcover came over before we managed to get the fancy astral orienteering system aligned, but it was high time that we turn in by then anyway.
The next day started off slowly, just the way I like it. The plan had been to take the dog for a walk, but apparently our vigorous activity the previous day had pushed his old bones a bit too far. He whined when he got up and was reluctant to move. They got him some aspirin and he improved, but it was still probably best for him to stay home. Still, it was a nice day for a walk, so we went for one out in a nearby national park. Thanks to the government shutdown, it was closed. This one however, did not have the wherewithal to bar people from walking in it the way others did. So I guess technically we were trespassing or something? Well, it was the most scenic and relaxing misdemeanor that I was ever a part of.
The afternoon was padded out with some of John's calculus homework that made me realize that I really should brush up on that sort of thing before I barrel headlong into it in college. I was embarrassed that I had forgotten what a Secant was, but I'm sure everyone has experienced that feeling at some point. Later on, we went out to see Runner, Runner. It was a pretty solid movie. It was a lot like 21, just with even higher stakes and probably not based on a true story. It was immersive and dynamic, good characters too. I guess the good and the bad are both that it was quite inoffensive. They didn't really take any risks, so they ended up with a very good, but ultimately unremarkable movie.
Later on I got the tour of the house and got to look through all of John's knickknacks. He's a collector of sorts, and so everything he had in there had a story behind it. There was a near century-old book that passed through the hands of the Hoover family (as in president Hoover), a family of bronze eagles that were saved during the closure of a defunct foundry upstate, and a number of other interesting things. I was astonished to find an old-fashioned metal slide rule in there, which had the best story of all. It was a gift from a friend's father. He said that the father meant for his son to have it, but he would much rather it go to someone it would have meaning for. He said that John was the type of man that he'd rather his son had turned out as. It wasn't long after that that he died. Heavy stuff.
By then it was about time for another meetup with everyone's favorite goat farmer. This time John's wife came along. She was excited to talk shop with Lucius as well. For his part, Lucius responded to his newfound celebrity with grace and humility, being quite attentive in answering his new fans' questions. I encouraged them to keep in touch after my departure seeing as they're so coincidentally well suited for each other. In any case, we parted ways and made it back to the apparently very interesting goat farm. That night was, for once, an early one and I got an appreciable amount of sleep.
Lucius had to go in to take a test that morning, but that was all well and good. For once I didn't have plans for the day. He asked if I'd just like to hang out at the house or just like… go to college with him for some reason. I wasn't sure what I was going to do there, but I picked go to college with him for some reason. He asked a couple times if I'd be okay just wandering around the campus for awhile. I figured that I'm 24, I haven't shaved in a long time, I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I'm in a place I've never been before and I lack focus and direction. I think I'm ideally suited to blending in on a college campus. So, Lucius ran off to take that test, and I went in a different direction to do whatever it was that I thought I was doing.
It was finally something that I would call a nice day, as it had cooled off markedly during my weekend in Houston, so I was actually quite glad for the chance to walk around outside a bit. I did manage to find an ATM, which was useful, given that I'd used up most of the nearly $300 cash I'd started with, and because they seem to be a bit short on Navy Federal Credit Unions this far inland. I got to have a good long walkabout and have a look at all the different campus amenities. I was proud to have learned the place well enough in that time to give someone else directions. He had the fortune of asking about something that was 200 yards away and I had just walked past. To my credit, I did pretty much as I pleased the whole way and not once did anyone ask for my student ID or yank off my Scooby Doo villain disguise and shout "Aha! You're not a college student at all! You're just a regular unemployed, listless manchild! I knew it all along!"
My campus hike ended in the library with me sitting down and working on my novel for a bit. Before long Lucius called and we met up again, keeping the lack of direction or objective though. It was once again a time for Lucius to chauffer me through the whimsically nonsensical Texas roadway infrastructure. "Hey, ya know what's a great place for hairpin turns? Off ramps! Yeee-HAW!" I bought him a tank of gas to help defray the expense of ferrying me about like this, not that it was too much of an imposition. Texas makes it very clear that they've got all the oil down there. When we were driving by stations advertising $3.00 gas I just thought "Wow, is it 2008 already? Well I'll be damned."
The first destination I came up with when the need for such things arose was the Bluebell Creamery. I knew it was in the general area and I've heard that they do good work. There were lots of tours of the factory and merchandise to buy, but I wasn't much for all that. I grew up on a dairy farm, so I have quite a solid grasp of what's going on behind those doors, and it's not nearly as magical as you'd think it is. I was just there for the ice cream. I got a very foreboding warning while I was picking my flavor that since I didn't go on the tour my treat would cost a dollar a scoop. A dollar a scoop? A whole dollar! What kind of inhumane extortion racquet were they running in there? I bought two. Really the painful part of the ordeal was waiting in line behind a bunch of indecisive people who were apparently passing their lack of focus and poor decision-making skills down to their large flock of children. "Hmmm, can I sample that one too? Oh! That one's very sweet!" It's CAKE FLAVORED ICE CREAM! The fuck did you think it was gonna taste like? In any case, Bluebell does indeed know what they're doing, and it was absolutely worth the trip.
I remembered that Lucius had a barbeque joint that he wanted me to try, so we headed there next. It was good eats. I should try having dessert first more often. I found a great sauce there that I really wanted to take with me, but they only sold it in cheap Styrofoam containers. That wouldn't fly, so we moved on. We had run out of destinations by then, so we wandered for a bit before settling on seeing a movie. The showtimes weren't ideal, so we had a bit more time to kill before the late one. I settled on coming up with some kind of more resilient container and obtaining barbeque sauce. Wal-Mart for once failed me by lacking mason jars, but we found some at a hobby shop. I got my pint of sauce and we were still an hour or so in advance of the showing.
It might've seemed like a lot of effort to go through to get some sauce, but we had the time to spare and I really wanted to have some of this stuff. It was a mustard-based sauce. The difference between it and anything else I've ever tried with mustard in it was that this actually tasted good. For me, that was a hitherto completely unheard-of characteristic of mustard, and I wanted some verification of this being possible, if only to prove it to myself. I wanted to have some of this stuff to prove to the other, lesser forms of mustard that they were capable of so much more. I wanted something to rub in mustard's face and say "Why are you not this, mustard? Why do you exist in any other form? Why do you continue to persist in a world where this is a thing! WHY?" Yes, I entertained the idea of yelling at mustard and attempting to make it feel bad about itself. It's a very useful stand-in for more destructive forms of insanity. I'm starting to wish I got more of the stuff, actually. My mom loves it. She's used it in three dinners so far since I got back.
In any case, seeing a relatively late showing at a still-very-far-away theater was not an ideal plan for a night where we have to get up early the next morning to make my flight. Lucius wasn't sure on it, but I gambled on our ability to spot a closer theater along the way back, and that such a hypothetical theater would have more amiable showtimes. We got sort of what we were looking for as a result of my rolling the dice. They didn't have We're the Millers like I'd originally planned on, but Gravity was in a much more usable timeslot. It was a fancy 3D IMAX theater, so I figured that all the space particle-effect wizardry would be at its best there. I'm sure you all know how that went.
In any case, we made it back with enough time for at least a functional amount of sleep before I had to be to the airport. Apparently stupid-early flights are a common thing at Austin-Bergstrom, because while other airports had their checkin desks closed when I got in this early to them, Austin airport was already bustling with activity, with substantial lines at both checkin and security. I was actually starting to sweat a little about the time crunch in the security line. I'd packed the MP3 player that Lucius had suggested I bring inside a metal tin that rolls of Air Particulate Detector filter paper come in. The TSA must've thought that was a really nifty idea because they were always asking to see that thing. I think they found it more conspicuous than my propensity towards cross-country biological warfare and trafficking in unlicensed barbeque sauce.
I had the fortune of being at a terminal that was close to the security checkpoint, so I made it ten minutes in advance of boarding. A comfortable margin despite my earlier worry, but you really don't want to cut it much closer than that these days. It wasn't any too long before I was homeward bound. I really hope I never reach a point where I fly so much that the feeling of taking off in a jet aircraft becomes anything other than totally awesome. A lot of people that I meet on a plane do this sort of thing all the time and have been numbed to it such that they just sort of trudge through the process. Me? I'm always trying to get a window seat and I'm always trying to see outside because flying is really freaking cool.
I always hear people complaining about logistical problems and delays like they're the worst thing in the world. "Aw man, my takeoff was delayed by 45 minutes! Bullshit!" Oh? Oh, so you had to sit at the terminal and enjoy the free wifi for an extra 45 minutes, hm? And then what happened? Did you FLY? Did you leap from the ground in a superhuman feat that people just a few generations ago would've called freaking magic? Did you, an ordinary citizen, board one of the greatest technological achievements in the history of mankind and leap into the sky the way ancient people imagined their gods did? Did you traverse a distance in that once took several months, an entire life's savings and had a 20% mortality rate? Did all of those wonderful, miraculous things happen to you for nothing but a few weeks' pay in a matter of hours you ungrateful little shit? Where do you get off expecting absolute perfection out of the people that are pretty much already moving heaven and earth to accommodate you?
And another thing, I really hate it when people call everyone surviving a plane crash "a miracle". That implies that if not for the intervention of a higher power, everyone would've died horribly. Bullshit! Commercial airline crashes have an absolutely staggering 96% survival rate. And the crashes themselves are also mind-bogglingly rare. The Air Asiana flight that crashed in July and killed three people was all over the news. What the media tended to gloss over was that these were the first commercial airline fatality since 2001. That's over a decade of an absolutely flawless safety record. God isn't helpfully shepherding every one of those flights back to the ground. That is the result of advanced and conscientious design of the aircraft, and the hard work, training and dedication of our pilots and flightcrews. No one gets into aviation for the money, because the world is full of broke-ass jobless passengers like me who pick their flight solely on who can put the lowest number on the ticket next to the dollar symbol. People work in aviation, people fly, because they love to fly, and because they want to bring that magic to others. It's a wonderful, amazing thing and I really wish I had forms of passion other than anger with which to express it!
I got to watch a long, brilliant sunrise on my flight out. I've always cursed sunrises for happening at "Oh sweet Jesus why am I awake?" O'clock in the morning, but damned if they aren't inspiring. No poem this time, but as always I had my novel to work on. I had to look up what the big "SNJE" flag on my next boarding pass meant. "Serviced by Non-Jet Equipment". Oh boy, I'm in for an adventure! Good or bad, it's adventure time! The bad part of it is space, obviously, since it's a much smaller plane. I have a duffel as a carry-on so that wasn't too much of a problem. I got my window seat and of course this led to the curvature of the fuselage hitting me in the head and feet. Worth it though. I was willing to arrive with my body slightly curved for the view that I got. The slower, lower ride is a lot more interesting to watch. You don't get above the clouds much so there's lots to see down there and you can do things like watch the plane's shadow track along the ground. The weather wasn't as clear near Rochester, but flying through big fluffy clouds in a propeller plane is pretty cool too. And before long I was finally home.
I had a lot of recovery to do. I slept into the afternoon the day after I got back home, but I've been getting up progressively earlier as I start to collect myself. I've been playing handyman a bit here also. The washing machine has been taking hours to fill, and that didn't seem to change when I changed the line filter and even replaced the hose. Mom was talking about replacing the whole machine, and I wouldn't necessarily blame her. It's older than I am, so I could hardly say that it owes us anything at this point. It was tough to work on because I couldn't move it all that much. It acted like it wanted to fall apart if I tilted it or shoved it too hard, but I kept at it. Breaking the thing wouldn't be too big of a loss if we were getting a new one anyway. It turns out that there's a screen actually inside the water connection in the back and that had become smeared with gunk and clogged by its own rust over the years. I only had replacement filters for the hose, not the machine, and this screen looked like it might've been built in and not even meant to be replaced. I managed to pry it out of there though and just installed a second hose filter at the other end. It's working just fine now, so I guess I bought us another couple of years on that.
We've been getting a patch of the roof re-done and the guys who are doing that have a big compressor that they were using to run their nailgun to put new shingles on. The furnace is out right now, so we've got this little ceramic space heater going in the living room. I noticed that when the compressor spun up to repressurize the tank the circulating fan in the heater would slow down, a major sign that we were overloading the house's system. My Dad was at work, so I guess it was a good thing that I was there to play load dispatcher. I shut the heater off immediately. I also shutdown the computer and TV, then cutting off the surge protector that led to them. They aren't huge loads like the heater is, but they're quite sensitive to the voltage droop that can happen when you start up a powerful motor like that compressor, and every little bit helps I suppose.
Just as I was sitting down with a book and starting to think I was worried for nothing, I heard the compressor choke and go quiet, right about the time a certain segment of the house did the same. I had them unplug the compressor and I went down to look at our not-so-gracefully aging power infrastructure in the basement. All the breakers were shut, and I cycled a few open and shut that were in the dead zone with no results. Further along the wall I found a fusebox that looked like it had been through WWII, and was probably installed around that time. It held the real problem. I swapped out the fuse and we resumed work. You always get one free do-over on fuses, that's what I've learned. I figured that the fuse might've just been having a bad day since the poor thing looked like it belonged in a museum, what with all this glass and ceramic and other such ludicrously antiquated materials involved in its construction and whatnot.
The new fuse's life was tragically cut short around the 20 minute mark, and now I had a problem. Melting a new fuse meant the circuit we were on just wasn't going to put up with this nonsense and I'd have to come up with an alternative. I would've expected this sort of thing had we been idiots and plugged in into the 10 amp porch loop, but we had already made sure to find a better outlet than that, and it was indeed a 15 amp fuse that we were blowing out. That was worrying, as the house has only one accessible 20 amp loop. There were 2 20 amp fuses in the box, but one of those is hard-wired to the stove and serves no outlets. The accessible 20 amp loop was a lot more difficult to unload though, as it served things like the refrigerator and water pump, and a good portion of the ground floor, the extent of which I wasn't certain of. That, and it was something of a gamble. Despite a thorough search of the basement, not always a pleasant experience since it's dirt-floored, I was unable to turn up any spare 20 amp fuses. That meant that if we managed to blow one, we'd be sunk until I could find a hardware store/museum that stocks old school type-T screw-in diazed fuses.
The ideal spot to connect it to would be the dryer loop, a 15 amp circuit that powers only one socket. Unplug the dryer and they've got a dedicated circuit just for their monster compressor. Trouble with that one was it was past the reach of the 100 ft extension cord they already had on it. Adding another extension cord onto that probably wouldn't have helped the situation, and would've been downright dangerous even if it did work. My compromise was the 15 amp basement/aux loop. It was reachable with one cord, and much easier for me to unload. Turn the basement lights off, disconnect the sump pump, open the breaker for the furnace since it was laid up at the moment anyway, open the breaker for the garage since there's nothing vital in there, and the one for the fence transformer as well. I also opened the breaker that said "farm" because it was on that loop, and I didn't even know what that was for. That managed to net me enough room for all the requisite electrons to get through and do their duty for the rest of the day. Maybe I'll make the furnace my next project. The seasons keep on turning and soon enough the lack of heat will become a significant problem. Here's hoping that my transition from nuclear to coal-fired equipment goes as well as Mark Stanley's did.
By God, it's almost as if there was a practical purpose to all this nonsense I just burned six years doing. You'd think it would be far too specific of a scenario to apply elsewhere, but when I get home I find a decades-old electrical system being forced to do crazy acrobatics it was never designed for I can say "Stand back. I got this." I asked my Dad about all this business when he got home, namely why the load breakers weren't tuned to trip before the circuit fuses were. He said that the breaker box was a recent development and that the house's grid had been set up to use just the fuses. Mainly because practical home circuit breakers didn't quite exist yet when the house was wired. His closing comment was "I'll probably have to get the whole system replaced one of these days when I get the money together to have it done professionally. My father understood this house's wiring quite well being that he was the one who installed it, but he's not returning my calls these days." That's Dad's way of mentioning that his father died ten years ago. (Ten years to the day, in fact. Funny, that…) Heh, of course this is the man who refers to an upcoming milestone as "your mother's anniversary" and my mother herself as "first wife".
Anyway, that's the extent of my adventures to date. A lot of people I've had contact with have been talking up MFF in November, so that's something new that has made its way onto to table. I'm trying not to throw any too much time or thought at it right now because I committed myself to the idea of no more fun stuff until I get accepted into a college, or at the very least get the damned application sent out. The application process is rather poorly suited to accommodate veterans, particularly those who are attempting to apply as a sophomore transfer without ever having been to college before. I worked for a long time on the electronic application since they prefer and more quickly process online applicants, but the machine barfed a big handful of bistable transistors in my lap when I tried to feed it that "transferring in from a college that doesn't exist" line. I'm working my way through the printed process now. It's much slower going but much more forgiving when I'm forced to leave some things blank that I don't know or pieces of information that don't apply to me.
Hopefully my (eventual) commitment to this effort will pay off. It already has in a small way, with MFF plans spontaneously assembling themselves even when I had committed to not making them. I've been a part of
JackalConnection here for some time but never really thought much of it. And then a few days ago a fellow jackal I'd never spoken to before asked if I needed a place to stay at MFF. I told him I'd think about it. I guess I'll add that carrot to my list of tools to fight this insurmountable capacity to procrastinate that I've discovered since getting out. I think the fact that the Navy no longer keeps the Sword of Damocles dangling precariously over my head is the change that I'm having trouble adjusting to. "So if I don't get this completed on time, I'll… oh, be making the exact same amount of money and have even less work to do… Uh, yeah. I'll get right on that." The sudden lack of immediate reprisal for slacking has been quite jarring. It's led me to replace what I ought to be doing with a lot of stupid frivolous things, like writing a 20,000 word account of my recent vacation.RainFurrest made me hate ice cream!
General | Posted 12 years agoA note to readers: This journal isn't all con report. It details the entirety of a long trip that included RainFurrest. If you want the TL;DR version that just talks about the con, skip down to the first dividing line and read through to the second.
Okay so, the stuff that happened. I'm still not entirely sure what all went down because I spent so long having no idea what was going on that I just kind of accepted it as the new norm and I'm just now catching up on all that sleep I'm told I need to survive. Alright firstly, BLAUHWAHHAAAGH! If you think it's difficult to get packed and prepared for a con, try doing it in a hurry, for a con on the side of the country you've never been to after having just moved so you have only a vague idea where all your stuff is or if you even still possess said stuff since said move was an entirely different messy and unplanned event. Oh and also you're making a $650 circumnavigation of the country by plane to try and catch up with a bunch of people some of whom you've never met before and thus have nothing to catch up with about.
That was certainly entertaining, especially to do on the clock. I'd let this con sneak up on me due to other priorities. I wanted to carve out some time to spend with my family now that I was back home with them. I had a lot of Navy paperwork to do in addition to the business of getting properly moved in at home, and getting my coverage and benefits from the VA. That stuff was rendered moot recently anyway. It's all stalled out because someone pushed the hard-reset button on the federal government. I really hope this isn't going to hamstring my ability to go to college on time. I'm doing plenty to do that on my own. Of course the day before I left there was a college fair that I'd have to go to. I mean, I didn't have to go, really. I could've just put it off the way I did with all the other college stuff I was supposed to be doing during this time. I have found amazing new depths of my procrastination ability since moving home, being free to do as I please for the first time in my life, and being informed that I'd best get started on getting rid of all this money I have lying around in the most expeditious way possible and also divest myself of this pesky new freedom with that same impetus both in one fell swoop by starting college.
In any case, the college fair was all the way up in Rochester, a little over an hour's drive under ideal conditions, which in this state actually do happen on occasion unlike other previous locales of mine. When I told my Mom about it she said that she'd like to come. Of course I wasn't going to say no, but that did add a little extra encumbrance to the trip. She had a few things to do before we could leave, so I waited around for those. I made a point of asking her if she remembered the way or if I should use GPS. She said she did, and as it turns out she was incorrect, so that cost us a little more time. We made out okay though. I had budgeted in enough time to go to Gamestop and try to pawn off an old, burnt-out X-Box 360, so I just had to cut that out of the schedule to even things up.
I got to talk to about all the schools I was interested in that were there that day. I was disappointed that there was no showing for Cornell, but there were enough schools there to make it worth the trip. I had restricted my interests to New York schools only, which my Mom disapproved of, so I shopped around a bit more than I'd intended without really having done the research necessary to do so. I really doubted that any other college would come forward with anything that could pull me away from the extra $5200 a semester I get from New York, but Penn State actually came close. I may call them back. I've been to their main campus before and it seemed like a nice place, and their representative there had a lot of right answers to the questions I was asking.
With the New York universities I had picked out beforehand, I was astonished at how many of them gave me blank/terrified looks when I asked about nuclear engineering. RIT was the biggest surprise, really only having mechanical engineering as something close to what I wanted. Rensselaer, the old favorite, came to my rescue though. Not only was the answer to every one of my questions about them "Yes", it was a very enthusiastic and confident one. No one else really knew what to do with my Navy experience, but the Rensselaer guy said that I could just have the Navy send them my transcript directly and they'd be able to squeeze 30ish credits out of it.
He was the school's transfer admissions counselor, and said that if I could challenge Precalc and some humanities requirement successfully, I'd be able to apply as a sophomore transfer instead of a freshman. Everyone else acknowledged that there was a potential for funding conflicts. Rensselaer? Nope, apparently they do this kind of thing all the time. I'll be able to draw Federal Montgomery GI bill, State Veteran Aid, and Yellow Ribbon aid all at the same time. That would leave me with a tuition shortfall of only about $8,000 a year, which I would call manageable.
What really got me was when he said "I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to attend Rensselaer without paying tuition at all." Well that makes a difference, now doesn't it? My SAT qualified me for a number of financial aid options from the school, though I may have to take it again. The results that I have are old, and he said that there could be problems relating to the fact that though my cumulative score is good, I got a substantially higher score (760! EEEHEHEHEE! I had forgotten about that.) on the critical reading section than I did in math. My math score was actually sort of average and could present a potential problem, but what he had to say was very encouraging. I have no doubt that I'll be applying to and touring Rensselaer when I get the chance.
So anyway, Mom and I had dinner at PF Chang's after I was done talking to all the college recruiters. It was a delicious and very finely-crafted meal. I thought it odd that my ginger beer was taking so long to arrive, and then the waitress said that they were out of one of the ingredients and had to get more from the stockroom. I could hardly be upset after I found out that they were making my drink back there. The finished product was certainly worth the wait. Not nearly as sweet as most soft drinks, but it's a helpful reminder that there are flavors other than "enough sugar to make a dozen hummingbirds drop from the sky in diabetic shock".
Once home I went about the arduous, confusing and somewhat rushed process of packing. I tried not to stress too much about it. Never has forgetting just one thing completely ruined a trip for me. My Mom warned me that there would be fees if I checked a bag. Now, I tend to travel quite light, but I'm going on a 12-day trip to two states I've never been to before, a trip which also includes a furry convention. I'm going to bring at least ONE checked bag. I'll accept the cost. ($25 on Delta and United, $0 on Southwest) Packing took late into the night, and I had to take a little while to decompress before I could get to sleep. I managed to rest from around midnight to four in the morning, an excellent way to start a long journey and very sleepless weekend.
The flight out on Thursday went well, barring a cabin electrical failure. Everyone seemed pretty freaked out by it, but I knew that nothing in the cabin keeps the plane in the air so I was like 'Whatevs, darkness and not falling to our fiery deaths is cool with me.' I think they just put too much powerload on the system. It was one of Boeing's fancy twin-jet 757-200s. The kind that seats seven abreast and has a little TV in every seat. The Detroit airport stands in stark contrast to the largely empty city. It's still quite a nice airport and it has a freaking train inside running across the terminal overhead.
I got into Seattle and contacted torakiyoshi. The terminal was sketchy on maps of the airport's surroundings, so I didn't really have a good sense of how to get to the nearby con hotel. We settled on having TK come to retrieve me since I could just hang out at the USO for a bit while he got his affairs in order. We got in and I got moved into my room with TK, and then things happened so then got moved into a different room with 
mursa. There had always been a certain amount of uncertainty in these plans, which I'm used to. I had a place to sleep every night, in the con hotel no less, so I was totally okay with it. We made it to the con space without incident and got a start on a surely record-breaking line. It wound around through the hotel passageways, creating a significant disruption to other operations. This was an omen of things to come, as it was a congoer's first sign that there were administrative problems behind the scenes.
You see, this hour-plus wait wasn't for on-site registration, which is an understandably laborious process. This was the line for Pre-registered attendees, the people who committed early and got all the necessary paperwork out of the way specifically to streamline this process. At most cons, pre-registration doesn't even have a line, as the process is nearly instantaneous. The line here was an unruly beast, several times longer than the on-site line. It was shepherded by the energetic and aptly-named Line Monkey,
linemonkey who made the experience nearly bearable with her whimsical attitude. Mursa was especially frustrated with the process, as he had been repeatedly reassured that he was supposed to wait in that interminable pre-registration line and only when he got to the front was he told about the special dealer registration process. He was in an understandably bad mood, so I elected to keep my peace and right-shift our introduction a bit.
After running the gauntlet and getting a badge, I kicked the con off with a few writing panels. At one of these, the subject of intellectual uplift came up, and I was surprised to find how many people read or were at least familiar with Freefall. It made the examples I was using from it much more useful. One memorable moment came from a discussion of uplifted super-soldiers.
"And so you can run into situations where the Russians are breeding their warbears and then the Americans will come up with… I don't know, like-"
"Laser eagles."
"Hell yeah, laser eagles!"
And then that became a whole big thing. It was great because it was a fun idea to run with and also because 'Muricuh! The concern of what to do with your genetically engineered fighting creatures when the war is over was also a popular topic. I couldn't help sharing.
"Okay I just have this image in my mind of this towering, biotically modified laser eagle that's working as like… a cashier at Costco or something."
"What's with you and bringing up the laser eagles all the time?"
"Hey, if you don't like laser eagles then you need to get out right now."
"MURRICA!"
It was a good time, and I think we've established that laser eagles would be by far the best use of genetic modification technology. Get on that, science!
Next up were the opening ceremonies, which kept alive the Rainfurrest tradition of rather disappointing first impressions. The ceremony was campy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it also seemed rather disjointed and poorly organized. There was no real theme or central message, and certainly no strong figure to stand up and be the face of the con. Everyone just kind of showed up and said hi, cracked a few jokes and then they said to have a nice time. It would've been okay had they not taken nearly an entire hour just to do that.
As I headed back to my room to ready-up for my next panel, something truly unprecedented happened in the elevator. Someone who happened to be riding up to the fourth floor with me recognized me by the FurAffinity username on my badge and said that he was a big fan of my writing and was very excited to meet me. I had not the vaguest concept of how to handle that situation, but I think I made a decent first impression after shaking off the initial shock. I mean, that's the whole reason I use my FA tag on my badge instead of the forum name all you guys know me by, because on the astronomically small chance that I run into someone who knows me from the internets, that's the name they're most likely to know me by. Having to deal with the frustration of my somewhat injudiciously chosen FA name all the time for four conventions was instantly made absolutely worth it with that one meeting. I am so proud of past-me for sticking to his guns; even more than I am frustrated with further-past-me for picking such an unpronounceable lummox of an FA name.
In any case, Archai and I spoke for a minute and exchanged cell phone numbers. I was of course excited at the prospect of spending more time with him, but he and his girlfriend had just arrived and were still dragging around fursuits in boxes, so I let them on their way. Later when we spoke about dinner plans, he seemed concerned about keeping me from the writing panels later in the day. That was very considerate, but unnecessary, really. One thing I'll give this con is that it was absolutely stuffed to the gills with content in the writing track. There were four writing events before the con even started and a writing panel that ran right up to the start of the closing ceremonies. There were a total of 37 writing panels, so I made it as clear as I could that I could miss a few without worry, despite my obvious enthusiasm for them. To allay his fears, I relayed to Archai the wisdom that I had gained at AC'13. "Don't ever let that concern enter your mind. People trump panels every time. Panels are what I do to burn up time when my friends aren't doing anything cool. Now, events are a little different, but there are none of those tonight." And so the three of us went out for dinner.
The locale they chose was a quiet 50s style diner. A bit of a walk away, but fortunately it hadn't started raining yet. That night the rain started and kept on in various strengths throughout the rest of the con. So we sat and chatted and were served unreasonably large portions of food. And of course I got to enjoy the rare and always quite novel experience of being in the presence of one of my fans. Naturally I bore the praise with all the grace and humility for which I am so well known.
*short lull in the conversation*
Faileas: Are we out of things to talk about already?
Me: Well weren't you going to tell me about how awesome I am? I was really looking forward to hearing greater detail about what a skilled and prolific master of literature I am.
Archai: Oh yeah, I did promise I was going to do that.
Faileas: You're so humble about it too. It's amazing.
Me: Yeah, I am pretty amazing. Do go on.
Yeah, my ego may exceed my celebrity by just a little bit. I'm proud of my skill and achievements though, and I don't understand why that's such a rare thing, especially on the pictogram side of the spectrum. I count among my friends a great many skilled and prolific artists, most of whom seem to hate their work and ceaselessly whine about how terrible everything they've ever done is and how no one likes them. It's kind of frustrating for me to hear since I'm actually someone that nobody has ever heard of. I want to (and sometimes do) just grab them and yell "Dammit! You're amazing! Admit that you're amazing right now or I will straight-up punch you in the face!" People pay money, honest to God, capitalist, government-certified legal tender for what you make. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? I'm happy enough when someone attaches an internet smiley face to something I've written that it'll keep me toiling away in the dark for another few years at it. You know what my sales and publishing credits are? I once sold an article to the pilot issue of AnthroView Magazine for $7.22. And you know what happened? The magazine fell on its face, never went to print, and I never got paid. That is the entirety of my illustrious resume. So excuse me for failing to be sympathetic to the plight of the person who literally has people running up to them and waving money in their face all convention when all I want you to do is admit that you're really fucking good at something.
My near-embarrassing level of giddiness at this encounter really reminded me of something that
IanusjWolf said at one of the first writing panels I ever went to back at AC'12. "Writing is not a business proposition. It's extremely unlikely you'll find money in it. Only the top top-tier writers ever even make enough to support themselves on it such that they can truly call writing their job. Money and even notoriety are terrible reasons to get into writing. You have to write because you love it. And that's because writing sucks- there are times when writing sucks, let me say it like that. There are times when nothing you write works or you can't write anything at all and it. is. miserable. The only way you'll get through those times is if you truly love what you do. Writing is a ton of work, often for little or no recognition. And that's why when you finally get someone who comes up to you and tells you that they love your work and that they think you're the most wonderful writer ever it is just the sweetest crack that you will ever taste."
Wheeee, that was fun! I had a point up there somewhere but whatever, I'll get back to talking about the convention. I had figured on making a few late-night panels, but I was out so late with my adoring public that I managed to miss them all, so I figured I'd turn in (relatively) early to stock up on sleep for what was sure to be a long drought to follow. That's a bit of a tough proposition when you have two roommates who disagree with your assertion that sleep is a necessity and regard it as either a momentary inconvenience (MountainBlueFox) or as completely optional (Mursa). I still slept pretty well if for no other reason than the flight and time change had had me up for about 22 hours by that time.
Friday morning started as every good morning does, breakfast with TK and a writing panel. Not at the same time of course, but if we could combine the two that would be pretty cool. There was a My Little Pony Picnic that I ducked out of the start of because it was cold and rainy out and I wanted to get something waterproof. I got back just in time to hear that everyone decided that being out here where it was cold and rainy really sucked and that they wanted to go inside. One of our valiant leaders had been finagling an empty panel room in the meantime and so we holed up in there. Once safely inside we took a minute to decide who was in charge and what exactly we were all about in there, and then sang songs, played games and were just generally immature for awhile. Someone knew his way around a guitar and we managed to get through 'Smile, smile, smile!' the crowd favorite, in something resembling a coordinated effort. We played 20 questions with a box of blind-bag figurines of ignominious background ponies. A lot of them can be quite tough to nail down unless you've got some really buff fan cred. I correctly guessed Berry Punch in one round and won a cookie. It is inexplicably satisfying to win a cookie in a way that's truly impossible to even describe.
I ducked out midway through my next writing event to have lunch with TK, and after that we both went to a panel that had piqued my interest before the convention even started, "Partner Dancing 101" by Mia Lutra. If I had to pick just one panel to hang my laurel on for the con, it would have to be this one, if for no reason other than I had never attended, seen or even heard of anything like it before, and of course it was loads of fun. There's lots of stuff in the dancing track. Open dancing running all night, lots of dance competitions and performances, but none of those are really accessible unless you already at least have some idea of what you're doing and are comfortable dancing. There were two dance panels at this con that actually advertised teaching and used phrases like "all levels of experience welcome". That was a totally new thing to me. I was pretty excited by the prospect and I couldn't be happier that I went and tried something new.
It was a little tough to get into, since partner dancing is something of an intimate thing and you're being asked to pair off with a bunch of total strangers. And since this is a furry con, like 80% of those strangers are male. I got over that though, and pretty soon I was falling in step with everyone else, so to speak. I was definitely a noteworthy margin behind everyone else all the way. My progress was slow in the context of the group, but much, much faster than I'd expected. I like to think that I have a sense for rhythm, it's just that dancing has never really been my thing. And of course no one has ever offered to teach me to dance, particularly in a much lower-pressure setting than an actual dance. Despite the hardship, I managed to have a fair deal of fun there. I ended up dancing with TK more than a few times, but that was fine. It was a little more comfortable and he had at least a vague idea of what he was doing. Big disappointment on this end that his camera has fallen from the edge of the known universe. He got a few good shots of me during my instruction in the art of the dance, to include taking a fursuiter to task on it when he decided to crash the panel. I don't know how much of those lessons are actually going to stick, but I'm very glad that I went.
The next writing panel was another one that I was anticipating before the fact. It was titled "You had me at…" and it went over the ins and outs of an "elevator pitch". The phrase comes from the idea that an inventor, designer, or writer, some kind of content creator, would happen upon an investor or publisher in an elevator, and have that one short, once-in-a-lifetime chance to capture the interest of that potential backer with a super-condensed, really fast pitch of their work. That was basically the frame of the discussion. You have somehow secured like… 45 seconds of a publisher's time. You have to hook them in, if not completely sell them on your idea before they walk away. That sounds like the sort of absolutely terrifying and yet totally awesome scenario that I'm going to need to be ready for.
The panelists all confirmed that this is absolutely one of the ways for a new author to get their big break. As
Kyell once observed, "The easiest way to get through writing a novel, is to already have written one so that you know you can do it. The easiest way to get published, is to already be a famous author, because name recognition will sell books." It's extremely difficult for a brand new author to get over that hump. Publishers see such tremendous volume of these brand new, no-name authors that many of them just get lost in the shuffle when they try to go the traditional submission route. Sometimes connections, or a tour-de-force of speed-salesmanship are the only way to break that barrier. Very interesting stuff.
Next up was the second dance instruction panel. Different instructors and a very different kind of dancing. This one was the sort of stage or performance dancing that's always so popular with fursuiters and at cons in general. The kind that can just spontaneously break out in the middle of an open area when nothing else is going on. That sort of dance-circle thing that you sometimes see where people step up into the circle one at a time and perform in the middle in sequence. It took a minute, but I learned that such a circle is called a "cypher" and felt a little less out of the loop on that.
It was an interesting experience, because as clueless as I was about partner dancing, I was orders-of-magnitude more clueless about this kind of dancing. I'm still not even sure what you call it, really. Street dancing? That sounds stodgy and vaguely racist. I'm going to go with "rhythm dancing" until someone tells me I'm wrong. It's inoffensive and slightly less ignorant than my other options, and is at least tangentially informative as to the nature of the art. In any case, we stretched out and got through some fundamentals, and I got to hear from some of the experts exactly how the logic behind rhythm dancing works. That was really one of the best parts.
I doubt I'm at all ready to bust a move in any meaningful way, but it was fascinating to get a look at the pieces from which the larger performance is composed. One of the things that was so captivating about watching the dance competition at AC was that some of the things that they were doing looked just impossible, and even if they weren't it was impossible to try and think of what they'd do next, or where they got the idea from to do what they were doing. Really though, knowing where all that comes from doesn't really ruin the magic the way you might think it would. It actually makes the performances more interesting to watch, since you have that element of understanding. You know what they're trying to accomplish with their moves and something of the message they're trying to send with their dance. It's a very enriching experience.
The instructor that I had was
Flinch, a very skilled dancer that I had seen perform before. He has a style as unforgettable as his fursuit, so I was excited to see him there, and it was a privilege to learn from him. I was getting dangerously close to experiencing what could be called fun when the hammer came down. The room was double-booked and there was a wedding in there soon. So the staff's entirely equitable solution was "Sorry, but GTFO." Our solution was to have a cypher outside, which was cool for a little while, but of course it wasn't all that long before hotel security told us to knock it off. We managed to get back inside once the room was free and wrap things up in something of a haphazard fashion, but it still felt like kind of a bust towards the end.
Next up was "Banned Cartoons", a two-parter where the name said it all. It was basically a screening of cartoons that had been censured extensively or outright pulled from broadcast and distribution for myriad reasons. It was an astonishingly and quite unexpectedly popular screening, particularly for this being its first year. The hosts went from wondering what they'd do with such a large room to having the panel interrupted by the staff with the announcement: "Okay, fire code says that eight of you have to leave." When they came in to tell us that, I saw that they were also outside chasing away more people that wanted to come in. It was just that popular that they had to station people to stop more people from going to have fun at it. I know that the fire codes need to be respected, but really? There was no alternative to that at all? I thought that sarcastically, but that may have indeed been the case. Most con spaces were booked solid at that time, so we just had to deal with it.
The first half was cartoons before 1980, and was very far from what I had expected because of it. This wasn't the over-protective nanny-state bullcrap that we see today. These cartoons were banned for obvious, and good, extremely good reasons. As sampling of what I saw in the time that I was there includes: Nazi Donald duck, an early Popeye featuring a Philipino Betty Boop, Goldilox and the Three Jive Bears, Coal Black and the Seben Dwarbes, and Bugs Bunny in the Pacific killing Japanese fighter pilots. I laughed hysterically and hated myself for it.
During intermission they played a banned episode of The PowerPuff Girls. That had content more like what I expected. It was banned for having "communist themes" which, yeah it did, but the villain had those themes. It was a surprisingly smart and well-presented indictment against communism. It was more to the speed of just someone being too sensitive like I thought I would see there. By then they were asking for volunteers to leave so that some of the people waiting outside could see part II. Didn't necessarily want to leave, but I figured the next part would be something of a let-down after Fascist Looney Toons, and that actually did sound fair. So I gave my spot up and headed out.
Next appointment was dinner with TK and like three dozen of his closest friends at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Mursa was part of that troupe, and was the only other face at the table I had seen before. It was nice to talk to him a little bit. Despite being at the con for two days together by then we had spent scarcely a few minutes in each others' presence while conscious. We got along pretty well. I was in the middle of the table so I had the privilege/imposition of bouncing around between the different conversations that were happening at either end. Never a dull moment, to be sure.
Having never been to or heard of this place before I was a bit bewildered by the menu. I probably should've guessed the business model a little quicker by the name. Everything on the menu is just a description of what they're going to put on the big-ass plate of spaghetti they're about to bring you. Fortunately the assembling of our entourage took a little while so I had some time to nail down the protocol. Ordinarily I would've chaffed at the wait, but I really wasn't all that hungry, despite having gone from noon to 9:00 without any food. It was odd. I never felt hungry at any point from Thursday until Sunday. I kept eating somewhat regularly because I have it on good authority that "nothing" is an unwise dietary choice, particularly under stressful conditions, but I never felt the slightest bit hungry for days. My only guess was that the time change was making all the meals happen at the wrong time. If I was at home and I was trying to eat a pound of spaghetti at midnight then I bet my stomach would balk at it just the same way. My chosen topping probably did little to help. I should've gone with an alfredo sauce or something, having just the cheese was good, but very dry and didn't do anything to appease my crabby stomach. In any case we finished our meal only a little bit after they closed and turned in for the night.
I think that point was my first actual interaction with
crazyjoe1952, even if it was just introducing myself and shaking his hand. MBF is in his mid-sixties and I'm quite convinced that he got more out of that con than I did. He has something like five fursuits that he made himself and spent very little time out of them through the whole con. His workmanship is a true marvel though. His suits are quite seamless at first blush, with some very interesting innovations like a truly articulated tail and functional ears that actually work to direct sound into the suit. The real shocker though is that every suit contains not just LED effects, but an advanced array of animatronics. The head is more cyborg than costume; blinking eyes, articulated tongue, motorized jaws, jowls that pull back to expose teeth, I'd never seen anything like it. And quite rightly so I'm told. Suits with actuated movements of any kind are rare, and ones with that extent of mechanization are exclusive to him as far as anyone I've talked to is aware. He wears them right into the ground, too. His paws are always falling apart, not from poor craftsmanship but because he just never stops. I get the creeping suspicion that MountainBlueFox may actually be a cyborg… Even if he's not, I still feel like I'm not exaggerating by calling him practically superhuman. I can only aspire to still have that kind of spirit when I'm his age, or to ever be as good at anything as he is at suitcraft. With as little time as I spent with him because of how busy we both stayed, I don't know as I ever got a chance to tell him what an astonishing masterwork every one of his suits is. And what a prodigious talent and truly singular personality he himself possesses.
Saturday morning started with breakfast with TK again, probably. I know I had breakfast with him every day except one but I forget which day that was. In any case, I'm pretty sure the sun came up that day… metaphorically of course. It was still cloudy and raining. We managed to catch a bit of the Saturday morning cartoon panel, which was a great idea that went over quite well. There was a bit of fluff time that morning in which I visited the Dealers' Den and Artists' Alley. I was struck by the variety of art and wares that they were able to pack into such a small space, but what was even more noteworthy was the extremely small space. I'd heard a lot of people online that were skipping RF because they couldn't get a vendor's spot even more than a month in advance. The Den had filled up incredibly fast, and being in the room I could see why. The Dealers' room was comparable in size to the one I visited at the 400-strong FurThe'More, and it was the less disappointing room of the two.
The Alley didn't even have registration for the room, nor did it have a room for that matter. It was just a first-come first-serve Road Warrior lawless zone. They picked up all the leather gear and unnecessary chains to complete their battle wardrobe in the Den and then just threw down in pitched combat for the few folding tables that were set up in the small foyer outside the Den. Yeah, that's how it worked, someone took the term "Alley" entirely too literally and set the artists up in a hallway. I would've been insulted if I were an artist, having to sit there and watch everyone walk past my table to get to where they're actually going instead of getting to work with just the people who are there to buy art. Fortunately they were advertizing this opportunity to furry artists, people who are quite well used to debasing themselves for cash.
Next up was the ice cream social. It seemed like a good idea at first blush. I like socializing at cons, and also, well duh! Ice cream! I didn't purchase a ticket in advance, because I can barely plan my minute-to-minute schedule at a con as it is. The idea of committing time and money to an event a month in advance when I'm pre-registering is laughable. I thought that I'd give this one a shot, seeing if I could buy into it on-site, but as I walked by it I caught a characteristic whiff of bullshit. For one, there was a line. I don't know what the reason was, but it's pretty much impossible for there to have been a good one. Either they somehow didn't have the room yet, weren't ready, or were forming a line to check tickets or some function that could easily be done without a line. It wasn't like a crowd of people were slowly making their way through the door and they pushed them to form an orderly line, they just stopped everyone from coming in for awhile without any apparent reason. Also, there wasn't just one line. As always there was the large worthless peon line, and also the super-special investors' line for people that are better than you. Now I understand extra donations buying privilege, but this was a ticketed event. Everyone paid money to be there, so it wasn't really fair to put sponsors and uber-sponsors and righteous demigods or whatever cut in front.
You saw it every place there was a line. Apparently the staff's biggest concerns with the giant, traffic-choking lines was not that they were a sign of endemic inefficiency or the fact that they have too many people for the space they're in. Their number one worry appeared to be that some poor real person might unintentionally blunder into the drooling proletariat line and become trapped there interminably, despite their much higher social caste. Every line I stood in had a town crier that raced up and down its imposing serpentine length, telling everyone to plaster ourselves against the walls such that our existence does not inconvenience mobile people and calling out to any inadvertently trapped super-robot-Jesus-wizards that were in line with the common serfs by mistake. I know that cons run on money, but the tiered registration system can, and has been done without subjugating the mere attendees beneath the iron heel of the ruling class. I'll come back to this issue later. It's getting me frustrated and I'm out of fascist metaphors.
In any case, I had the option of ice cream, or yet another writing panel. The ice cream people wanted money and there was a huge-ass line of imposing physical, and indeterminate chronological length. Writing panel it is! It was editing this time, another thing that I really shouldn't be burning time on while trying to make progress on my novel, but still very good to know. I figured the panel's running right up to the fursuit parade lineup wouldn't be a problem. Hah! What a fool I was. I don't know how I could've been such a fool as to leave myself only a half-hour to walk the necessary 500 yards to get in position to watch the parade. The capricious and near-constant rain had forced the parade inside, constricting space and motivating me to seek out a vantage point "early". The convention space is three stories up from the hotel. I gave a cursory glance to the elevators as I passed to get to a functioning means of transport. It's only a few floors, but we promptly destroyed the elevators trying to traverse them in the course of the con, further proof that this building can't handle us.
I got to the top of the stairs to find a complete blockage that extended back into the stairwell. Con staff had roped off the parade routes, severely restricting the mobility of spectators. That, and quite a few people were totally okay with getting off the elevator or stairs and standing right in front of them to watch. I went with my last option, going outside to walk around the building to the main entrance. It was a long walk, but one quite a few people were willing to make, as that entrance was also choked with people. I managed to stand outside of a window I could watch through, and honestly got a better view than the other dozens of people that were mob-blocked from the parade. The parade was in progress by then, but it's not like timeframe made a difference. I was out of routes by then. It was literally impossible to reach for a great many of those who tried. So, I managed to watch about 60% of the parade by standing on my tiptoes on the North face of the building. Fortunately security was lost in the parade scramble, so they didn't have time to yell at me to get down from there until the parade was over. Yay, I guess.
The Furry Variety Show (essentially a talent show) sounded interesting, but I passed it up for more of that human interaction stuff I've been hearing so much about. I managed to blend two crowds by going with Archai, Faileas and TK to Subway. While we were meeting up in the lobby we had a most interesting experience.
silverwolf16 came over to us and started talking to us. I told him he looked great when he was suiting at the dance cypher we had earlier and we had some good conversation there for a few minutes. I was glad I had seen him dance because it gave me a less awkward conversational option than "Oh yeah! I've seen you in all that TF porn by 
soty!" Which I said anyway because whatever. It was quite interesting when he walked off and we all looked at each other for a second.
"So, you know him, right?"
"What? No, I was just making conversation. I thought he came over because he knew you guys. I've never seen him out of suit before."
"I don't know him either, I thought one of you guys knew him."
"… what just happened?"
So, fresh from being conversation-trolled in a most interesting and memorable fashion, we proceeded out into the murk in search of food. It was only moderately raining at the time, and the walk entailed some interesting conversation, so all in all it was a worthy trip. On my return, I was just in time to attend the wedding of one of my old friends from Virginia.
and 
were getting hitched during the con. That was a lot of firsts for me. First furry wedding, first con wedding, you could also fill that blank with "Gay" and "Fursuit" if you wanted to cover all the bases. "Presided over by an officiate in a kilt" probably wouldn't fit unless you left a very long blank. It was a simple occasion but one I was happy to witness. The fact that both grooms were Lucarioes was something that I found endlessly amusing.
After the festivities, I came upon the counterpoint to all the panels that intrigued me the moment that I looked at the schedule, something that pissed me off as soon as I looked at the schedule. Furry karaoke was scheduled opposite the fursuit dance competition and that decision was agonizing. I knew I'd never be happy with the one I picked because I'd be thinking about the other one the whole time. I went with Karaoke because TK liked the idea and because I had never been to such an event before. It was something new and, for a moment, I allowed myself to hope.
Words fail to describe my disappointment. And I'm damn good with words so you know you can take that to the bank. Furry Karaoke's first impression was that of a man with douchey mirrored sunglasses who was covered 70% in body glitter and about 7% by a thin leopard-print loincloth. Okay, I get it, I'm in the furry fandom. I'm going to have to deal with some weird shit once in awhile in order to enjoy this unique brand of insanity we have collected here. I'm okay with that, but not only was this crossing the line, or rather cartwheeling over the line and leaving it in the dust, it wasn't even justified by a good event. The sound system sounded like a scaled-up flip-phone speakerphone, but that's cool, because they compensated for the transistor-amplifier clipping and poor tone balance by it by turning it up debilitatingly loud to the point where I had to retreat to the back of the room to get the volume back below the threshold of pain.
After finally getting my hands on the one copy of the song roster they had and finding that there were big holes in the list, that or their understanding of alphabetization is fragmented in more ways than one, I found they didn't have the song I had signed up for, or any that I was particularly inclined towards singing. I was nowhere near old enough for that song roster, for one. How do you invite furries to sing and not have Disney movie soundtracks? Bullshit! I resolved then to leave and go to the dance competition after TK sang. Of course that was back when TK was number five on the list. A few contestants in, TK went from number "five" to number "FUCK THE RULES I DO WHAT I WANT!" when nekkid leopard douche started just picking whoever he felt like from the list instead of going in order. So I bailed. I'd like to say that I learned something from it, but all I'm really getting at this point is "Man, those must've been some really douchey sunglasses for me to remember them with the same vividness as the fact that DJ Sparklefuck was up on stage wearing less than underwear.
Escaping Karaoke purgatory to get to the dance competition was a bit like catching a life preserver and being just the slightest bit dismayed to find it filled with concrete. Firstly, the performance space was just a cheap sectionalized temporary dancefloor. For one, this made it impossible to see thanks to the ever-present crowd problem. Ah, if only there were a way to elevate the performers above the audience. A raised platform of some sort, such that visibility might be enhanced and there would be no need to occupy half the room with performance space, crowding the spectators against the walls. Ah, but enough of my foolish speculations about inconceivable future space technology, let's get back to what actually happened.
Midway through the first dance I was there for, there were some truly righteous extra strobe effects that really got the crowd going, right before the music cut out unexpectedly. It turned out that everyone had been grooving to the convention hall's fire alarm. Fortunately the con staff handled that one with every ounce of coordination and organization they possessed. That is to say, about a third of an ounce of the two combined. We spent a minute or two deciding if we should all evacuate or if life truly has no intrinsic meaning and that it wouldn't matter at all if we all died anyway. After choosing the former (disappointingly) we all shuffled towards the nearest exit- well in fact it was actually one of the furthest exits from us, but it was the only one that would accommodate a group of our size. Well, theoretically anyway. We never got a chance to test that theory, as con staff came back with the "all clear" call as we were on our way out. And just as we were getting ourselves back into position and I actually got a good vantage point for the dance, hotel staff came back with the "What the fuck are you doing evacuate right now" call. We had almost reached our previous evacuation-distance record when the second "but no seriously everything is fine" came across. Wheee…
So as you might suspect, all this foolishness wasted a considerable chunk of time. There didn't appear to be any change in the programming at first, so I figured that they were just going to push a bit into the dance that had the room next. You know, the unstructured event that just occupies the room until bullshit O'clock in the morning? Well, it turns out that we were so concerned about encroaching on their mere 7.5 hours of open dance time, that the solution was to cut out all the judges' comments at the end of the performances. So, each dancer's set ended with "Yeah good job now get your ass off the stage we have a schedule to keep." Classy.
Flinch pulled off a win in the end, and I was happy for him. And really for their part, I think the performers handled all this in stride as well as can be expected. There were still some impressive displays, but just as many who were struggling with their circumstances. Having people sit right at the edge or in some cases on the dancefloor was a hazard, and while no one got kicked in the face like they easily could have, there was more than one occasion where a dancer had to jump back after finding themselves uncomfortably close to hurling their body into the crowd. The floor itself also proved a challenge, as I saw a few dancers engaged in a valiant struggle for traction on the slick panels. It was quickly obvious that this contest didn't have prelims because of the sheer volume of contestants, which of course made us run even longer and prompted the emcee to shove people off the stage even faster. So in the end, the two events that I was sure would both be so amazing that I'd kill myself trying to decide between them both ended up failing just about as hard as they possibly could. Way to flip a coin and land on bullshit.
One more late-night super sexy awesome writing panel and it was time for a much more dependable event, Whose Lion is it Anyway? TK's friend Gadget went with me and she thought that I was amazing, which is always a nice thing to be reminded of. I did pretty much nail "Questions only", knocking out something like seven people with my quick thinking and masterful command of language. I came up with a bunch more funny lines as the night went on, but the later ones had more to do with "I have a dirty mind and the balls to say this in front of all you people" than any measure of cleverness on my part. It was a laugh riot all the way through and none of us wanted it to end. We kept at it long into the night, half and again past our original timeslot. It was a shame that the original host, Alkali, couldn't be there. So of course we waited until 0dark:30 and called him. With the time difference that put our wakeup at an even more absurd time for him, but he was a good sport about it. By the time we finally broke that party up at about half-past-tomorrow I had worn my throat ragged with all the shouting and laughing, so it's safe to say that was a pretty great way to end the day.
Sunday started with more My Little Pony, this time a more formal panel that was actually supposed to occur inside. It was honestly rather subdued for a pony panel, which wasn't really better or worse, just different. We screened some fanart and works, and compared notes about pony resources. They showed "Children of the Night", a favorite of Line Monkey, one of the panelists. It was interesting to hear that it was drawn frame-by-frame, that's a tremendous amount of work, and it looks credibly like flash or cel animation. I could've done without the frequent advertisements for Everfree Northwest, but it was still a good time. I love the ponies, but I wouldn't go to a con just for them, a panel here and a panel there is plenty.
I was going to make a few of these observations at the scritch n' bitch feedback panel towards the end of the day, about how they kept putting big-draw events opposite each other in the schedule, but I ended up not going because they scheduled the scritch n' bitch opposite some writing panels I really wanted to go to. Much as I love complaining and you've no doubt observed I have something of a knack for it, I certainly don't prefer it to talking about writing. And why go through all that effort to change the next RainFurrest when I could spare myself its shortcomings by not being there for them? Yes, I much prefer that solution. Cleaner, simpler, probably going to result in less bloodshed overall.
In any case, I got quite a surprise after I shuffled to my place in the con's last giant-ass line for the closing ceremonies. No, no the surprise wasn't that there was no giant-ass line for this event, don't be ridiculous. Of all the con's giant-ass lines this was surely the giantest, if not also the lineiest and assiest. No, the surprise came from who came to stand next to me at the back of the line. It was none other than Author Guest of Honor Kyell Gold. I was as flummoxed as I was intrigued by the opportunity. He was clearly aware of the special, much shorter and less disease-ridden line for those of noble blood, as the fiefdom's herald came running down the line to inform us of such at regular intervals. Perhaps being a simple guest (of honor) doesn't entitle one to the privileges of nobility.
I would rant and rave about that subject more, but someone pointed out to me later that he probably could have claimed his rightful place if he so chose and may have waited in the back intentionally because he's just that kind of guy. Knowing Kyell as I do, (My assessment of his personality I mean. It's not like we know each other. I doubt he remembers my name even.) I'd say that's a distinct possibility. In any case, I'm not going to complain. I got to chat with Kyell Gold for awhile while I waited instead of just staring at the floor and wishing I had been spawned of highborne ancestry. I let him alone after some idle chat. He didn't seem much in the mood to talk, he'd probably had an exhausting con as well.
The closing ceremonies were smooth and simple. A nice chance to pause and reflect. And this time they didn't pad out the whole hour with not much happening. It was a chance for everyone that worked on the con to stand up and be recognized, in a most literal sense. As much shit as I've given con staff, they all did work very hard to make all this happen, and though I quibble over a number of things, I respect the effort and commitment that they've shown to this event. They did some things wrong, or moreover just some things I disagree with, but it's easy for me to snipe from my position of not having any of the work to do. It was nice to see these guys up on stage and give them the applause they deserved.
That night I met up with Archai's crew, a group of eight or so and not a single remembered name in the bunch. I hope none of them take offense. I was meeting them all for the first time and I had been operating on very little sleep all week. In any case, we all went out to a delectable Thai restaurant and stuffed ourselves to the gills. We were there for hours talking and laughing and just having a good time in general. We waited a bit for a break in the by-then-pouring rain, but realized that one would never come. There was a little sting of regret in that we had gotten so far away from the hotel, but certainly nowhere near enough to make me wish I hadn't came. I got back in after a harrowing journey, said goodbye to my new friends, shook off some of the water and checked out the dead dog events for a bit, trying to make a few last minute connections. Having worn myself down quite thoroughly by then, I turned in for the night.
Okay, final thoughts on RainFurrest. Good con, would not go again. There are just too many endemic problems with how it's run. I was baffled at first to see such a large, well-established con making what looked to be novice mistakes. Or entirely original mistakes in some cases. I thought they might have become overgrown, but no. Anthrocon manages nearly three times their attendance without falling victim to these pitfalls. Nor can I truly call them "Novice" mistakes, as I went to the inaugural year of FurThe'More and I noticed none of the things that bothered me about this con. FurThe'More was started and staffed largely by people who worked the big east-coast cons, FWA, AC, and MFF, many of whom worked extensively with the big kahuna of Anthrocon.
I heard once that Dr. Conway refused to attend RF anymore and so I asked around about it. Apparently after attending, Uncle Kage had a few suggestions for the staff as to how they could improve things. His offer of assistance was rebuffed, and their newbie mistakes became dogma over the years. It got to the point where bad blood arose between them, and now Kage refuses to be associated with RF in any way, beyond buying adspace in the conbook to let attendees know what they're missing on the other side of the country. Spurning the advice that represents many years' experience and comes from someone who is arguably the face of the furry fandom at large is very telling of RF's attitude.
Another big revelation that I came upon was that the staff restructures its responsibilities and leadership structure each and every year. That goes a long way towards explaining why people who have ostensibly been doing this for years were acting like they were bluffing their way through something they were unfamiliar with and learning as they go. They kind of were doing that, really. It's one thing to have upward mobility and the capacity to revise the organization to solve problems as they arise. That's an important aspect of being able to adapt and improve the convention as progress marches on. It's quite another matter entirely to commemorate every year with the Mad Hatter jumping out of his seat and yelling "Change places!" thus nullifying everything everyone learned in their previous positions. Yes, it keeps everything dynamic and in constant motion, but a hurricane could be described as " dynamic and in constant motion". You can't make a workforce out of nothing but trainees. All the learning that everyone is doing in their new positions is not of any use if they never cash in on it and get a second year in their role to put their experience to use.
One of the things I found so striking and amazing when I attended Anthrocon was what a wide representation of locations the convention boasted. Offhand I can remember meeting people there from Ohio, Georgia, Virginia, Hawaii, Texas, Montana, England, Australia, and Japan. And those are just the ones I remember readily now months after attending. What struck me most about RainFurrest is that holy crap bloody freaking everyone is from Seattle! It was a majority no matter what group I was with at the time. A lot of the panels took polls of the audience as icebreakers and they were always "Seattle, Seattle, Vancouver, Seattle, Spokane, Seattle, Bremerton, Walla Walla(I didn't know that place was real.) Seattle, Tacoma" etc. Twice I was the only Non-Washington attendee in a room of a few dozen.
That's really the most telling thing about it. People are going to Anthrocon because they wanted to attend Anthrocon. People at RainFurrest are there because they wanted to attend "The closest furry con to them". Convenience of location is RF's number one selling point. A legitimate advantage, but it has nothing to do with the convention or how it's run. That's a common theme, really. I had fun there and I experienced frustrations there. Most of the fun that happened was coming from the panelists and attendees and was unrelated to the con admin, and most of the frustration was a result of con admin. Bottom line, having a convention close to home is a perfectly fine reason to attend. It just doesn't apply to me. If I were within driving distance, I'd go every year. I am not, and don't soon plan to be. So with the advantage of locale working in the opposite direction, I'll pursue other options for my next con.
The next morning the decision came up as to whether or not we wanted to stay in Seattle and do Seattle things or hit the road for Spokane. Mursa was debilitatingly ill by then. He had gotten sick from his interactions in the Dealers' Den, and by the end of the con both I and MountainBlueFox had it from sleeping in the same room as him. TK was still on an even keel, but was up pretty late the night before. That made it pretty universal that everyone was tired and in favor of Spokane, and so off we went. As we passed through the expansive and mostly sodden countryside, TK kept telling me that we were moving into the "dry" part of the state as we went east. I was unimpressed as this transition meant only that it rained slightly less.
We met up with one of TK friends in some little Germany-themed villa for lunch. His name was Bosus, near as I can guess at the spelling anyway. He offered to drive one of us so that we were two to a car and I took him up on it since Mursa didn't have much interest in any kind of physical movement by then. Despite his attempts to make his aging Subaru do some Tokyo drift shenanigans that it was clearly never meant for, Bosus made a pretty good impression on me. He was a pretty nice guy and was good for some conversation. He said that he was glad for someone to talk with to make the drive go faster, so much the better that it was a nice, attractive young guy. You'd think that getting called "a cute guy" like that would be something that you would get used to after awhile. You'd be incorrect, but it's still flattering in a certain way.
On arrival, I got to enjoy some of the rain and hail that typified the "dry" portion of the state and met the surprisingly numerous denizens of Casa Kiyoshi. As riveting as the tour was I, like everyone else, was pretty keen on just stumbling into bed and passing out. The next day started slow, and for me at least stayed pretty slow. After "eat pancakes" I didn't really have any priorities, so I thought I'd take a little nap in the afternoon. Just a short five hours or so later I woke up in time to go out for dinner. TK said we'd be eating with a few friends of his, which was cool. What he didn't mention was that they were work friends and not furry friends, and that we'd be representing the fandom to those people.
That was a surprise, but it wasn't like I minded. I actually like doing that sort of thing. During the con a middle-aged Asian woman who was staying at the hotel came up and asked me what all the fuss was about. I gave her the best condensed explanation I could, but she had quite a battery of questions. We were headed in vaguely the same direction, so I pretty much gave her the grand tour of the con on the hotel side as we walked. I realized later that I was wearing my Navy jacket because it was waterproof, and it was covering up my conbadges. I guess "that young sailor" is a bit more of an approachable profile than "the guy with a lime green Mohawk and dinner plates in his ears". I was happy to fulfill that role though, and though I found myself without the mobility and time limit that I had at the con, talking about furry stuff did make for some very lively dinner conversation. I had a lot of fun there and it was a great way to close out the day.
TK had to work Tuesday, but that was all well and good. Despite being asleep there more time than I spent awake there, I still wasn't feeling up to doing a whole lot. I didn't want to risk lazing about the entire trip though. So I took him up on his offer of the grand tour of Spokane. We visited a park and arboretum, very nice nature walks even given the relatively un-florid time of year. It's the sort of thing I haven't had time for until recently, and that was kind of the theme of this trip. 'I want to do this thing, because at long last, I actually can!' Maybe I'll call it my National Freedom Tour.
Anyway we got into town to see some of the cool stuff they had there. We went to the barbeque joint that TK used to work at to get some of that sauce he wanted Lucius to try. The city park was very nice. Spokane is one of those "a river runs through it" towns, so there are lots of interesting landforms in the undeveloped areas. Something interesting downtown was that they had this skywalk where the second or third floors of several of the buildings are networked together with enclosed bridges to span streets and such. All together it forms one massive sprawling commercial complex like nothing I've ever seen. I got an extensive tour of the place. Too bad shopping has never really been my thing. Doubly so when I have to tote anything that I purchase to the other side of the continent.
Next up, TK pointed out the Spokane Steamworks, to which I responded "Wait, that exists? Still? People will still pay a utility bill for steam? Has anyone told them what century it is?" Turns out that these days the Steamworks have been converted into a steampunk restaurant-slash-bar-slash-office-complex-slash-museum-slash-cold-war-bunker-slash-spelunking-cave-slash-James-Bond-chase-scene-backdrop. There's probably an emergency outbreak infirmary or something in the basement that I missed. All in all a great new life for old industry.
The other major stop on the sightseeing tour was the Davenport Hotel, local landmark and dreamworld venue for All Fur Fun. It was a gorgeous place, very ornate and expansive. It really had that Great Gatsby sort of old world charm. It also worked very hard to earn every one of its five stars. It was a lot like the Omni in that it was so nice I felt like I didn't belong there. In this case specifically I didn't have a reservation so I kind of actually didn't belong there. That made that uneasy feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop even stronger. TK managed to give me a pretty thorough tour and history of the place without us ever being asked to leave, so I guess we're just quite skilled at loitering.
Before long, TK had to go to work. Such a drag. Any of you who have jobs, I encourage you to follow in my footsteps; quit them to spend your time going to furry conventions and traveling the country. It's loads of fun. A little time to relax in TK's room while he was gone was fine by me though. I thought that being out and about would help, since I usually feel laziest after being lazy for a really long time, but I stayed pretty tired throughout. That's what started to convince me that I was looking at a real pathogen illness and not just timechange/lack-of-sleep. So I got on my laptop and got caught up on what the internet was doing while I was busy. TK got roped into doing some stuff at work that would take him all night, but I didn't mind as none of that interfered with my plan of: "going to bed". My flight was pretty early, but I had it easy as my path was "go to sleep earlier" and TKs was "not sleep at all".
Well folks, it appears I've finally done it and exceeded the maximum length that FA allows for a journal submission, so stay turned for the exciting conclusion of whatever it is I'm doing here.
Okay so, the stuff that happened. I'm still not entirely sure what all went down because I spent so long having no idea what was going on that I just kind of accepted it as the new norm and I'm just now catching up on all that sleep I'm told I need to survive. Alright firstly, BLAUHWAHHAAAGH! If you think it's difficult to get packed and prepared for a con, try doing it in a hurry, for a con on the side of the country you've never been to after having just moved so you have only a vague idea where all your stuff is or if you even still possess said stuff since said move was an entirely different messy and unplanned event. Oh and also you're making a $650 circumnavigation of the country by plane to try and catch up with a bunch of people some of whom you've never met before and thus have nothing to catch up with about.
That was certainly entertaining, especially to do on the clock. I'd let this con sneak up on me due to other priorities. I wanted to carve out some time to spend with my family now that I was back home with them. I had a lot of Navy paperwork to do in addition to the business of getting properly moved in at home, and getting my coverage and benefits from the VA. That stuff was rendered moot recently anyway. It's all stalled out because someone pushed the hard-reset button on the federal government. I really hope this isn't going to hamstring my ability to go to college on time. I'm doing plenty to do that on my own. Of course the day before I left there was a college fair that I'd have to go to. I mean, I didn't have to go, really. I could've just put it off the way I did with all the other college stuff I was supposed to be doing during this time. I have found amazing new depths of my procrastination ability since moving home, being free to do as I please for the first time in my life, and being informed that I'd best get started on getting rid of all this money I have lying around in the most expeditious way possible and also divest myself of this pesky new freedom with that same impetus both in one fell swoop by starting college.
In any case, the college fair was all the way up in Rochester, a little over an hour's drive under ideal conditions, which in this state actually do happen on occasion unlike other previous locales of mine. When I told my Mom about it she said that she'd like to come. Of course I wasn't going to say no, but that did add a little extra encumbrance to the trip. She had a few things to do before we could leave, so I waited around for those. I made a point of asking her if she remembered the way or if I should use GPS. She said she did, and as it turns out she was incorrect, so that cost us a little more time. We made out okay though. I had budgeted in enough time to go to Gamestop and try to pawn off an old, burnt-out X-Box 360, so I just had to cut that out of the schedule to even things up.
I got to talk to about all the schools I was interested in that were there that day. I was disappointed that there was no showing for Cornell, but there were enough schools there to make it worth the trip. I had restricted my interests to New York schools only, which my Mom disapproved of, so I shopped around a bit more than I'd intended without really having done the research necessary to do so. I really doubted that any other college would come forward with anything that could pull me away from the extra $5200 a semester I get from New York, but Penn State actually came close. I may call them back. I've been to their main campus before and it seemed like a nice place, and their representative there had a lot of right answers to the questions I was asking.
With the New York universities I had picked out beforehand, I was astonished at how many of them gave me blank/terrified looks when I asked about nuclear engineering. RIT was the biggest surprise, really only having mechanical engineering as something close to what I wanted. Rensselaer, the old favorite, came to my rescue though. Not only was the answer to every one of my questions about them "Yes", it was a very enthusiastic and confident one. No one else really knew what to do with my Navy experience, but the Rensselaer guy said that I could just have the Navy send them my transcript directly and they'd be able to squeeze 30ish credits out of it.
He was the school's transfer admissions counselor, and said that if I could challenge Precalc and some humanities requirement successfully, I'd be able to apply as a sophomore transfer instead of a freshman. Everyone else acknowledged that there was a potential for funding conflicts. Rensselaer? Nope, apparently they do this kind of thing all the time. I'll be able to draw Federal Montgomery GI bill, State Veteran Aid, and Yellow Ribbon aid all at the same time. That would leave me with a tuition shortfall of only about $8,000 a year, which I would call manageable.
What really got me was when he said "I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to attend Rensselaer without paying tuition at all." Well that makes a difference, now doesn't it? My SAT qualified me for a number of financial aid options from the school, though I may have to take it again. The results that I have are old, and he said that there could be problems relating to the fact that though my cumulative score is good, I got a substantially higher score (760! EEEHEHEHEE! I had forgotten about that.) on the critical reading section than I did in math. My math score was actually sort of average and could present a potential problem, but what he had to say was very encouraging. I have no doubt that I'll be applying to and touring Rensselaer when I get the chance.
So anyway, Mom and I had dinner at PF Chang's after I was done talking to all the college recruiters. It was a delicious and very finely-crafted meal. I thought it odd that my ginger beer was taking so long to arrive, and then the waitress said that they were out of one of the ingredients and had to get more from the stockroom. I could hardly be upset after I found out that they were making my drink back there. The finished product was certainly worth the wait. Not nearly as sweet as most soft drinks, but it's a helpful reminder that there are flavors other than "enough sugar to make a dozen hummingbirds drop from the sky in diabetic shock".
Once home I went about the arduous, confusing and somewhat rushed process of packing. I tried not to stress too much about it. Never has forgetting just one thing completely ruined a trip for me. My Mom warned me that there would be fees if I checked a bag. Now, I tend to travel quite light, but I'm going on a 12-day trip to two states I've never been to before, a trip which also includes a furry convention. I'm going to bring at least ONE checked bag. I'll accept the cost. ($25 on Delta and United, $0 on Southwest) Packing took late into the night, and I had to take a little while to decompress before I could get to sleep. I managed to rest from around midnight to four in the morning, an excellent way to start a long journey and very sleepless weekend.
The flight out on Thursday went well, barring a cabin electrical failure. Everyone seemed pretty freaked out by it, but I knew that nothing in the cabin keeps the plane in the air so I was like 'Whatevs, darkness and not falling to our fiery deaths is cool with me.' I think they just put too much powerload on the system. It was one of Boeing's fancy twin-jet 757-200s. The kind that seats seven abreast and has a little TV in every seat. The Detroit airport stands in stark contrast to the largely empty city. It's still quite a nice airport and it has a freaking train inside running across the terminal overhead.
I got into Seattle and contacted
torakiyoshi. The terminal was sketchy on maps of the airport's surroundings, so I didn't really have a good sense of how to get to the nearby con hotel. We settled on having TK come to retrieve me since I could just hang out at the USO for a bit while he got his affairs in order. We got in and I got moved into my room with TK, and then things happened so then got moved into a different room with 
mursa. There had always been a certain amount of uncertainty in these plans, which I'm used to. I had a place to sleep every night, in the con hotel no less, so I was totally okay with it. We made it to the con space without incident and got a start on a surely record-breaking line. It wound around through the hotel passageways, creating a significant disruption to other operations. This was an omen of things to come, as it was a congoer's first sign that there were administrative problems behind the scenes. You see, this hour-plus wait wasn't for on-site registration, which is an understandably laborious process. This was the line for Pre-registered attendees, the people who committed early and got all the necessary paperwork out of the way specifically to streamline this process. At most cons, pre-registration doesn't even have a line, as the process is nearly instantaneous. The line here was an unruly beast, several times longer than the on-site line. It was shepherded by the energetic and aptly-named Line Monkey,
linemonkey who made the experience nearly bearable with her whimsical attitude. Mursa was especially frustrated with the process, as he had been repeatedly reassured that he was supposed to wait in that interminable pre-registration line and only when he got to the front was he told about the special dealer registration process. He was in an understandably bad mood, so I elected to keep my peace and right-shift our introduction a bit.After running the gauntlet and getting a badge, I kicked the con off with a few writing panels. At one of these, the subject of intellectual uplift came up, and I was surprised to find how many people read or were at least familiar with Freefall. It made the examples I was using from it much more useful. One memorable moment came from a discussion of uplifted super-soldiers.
"And so you can run into situations where the Russians are breeding their warbears and then the Americans will come up with… I don't know, like-"
"Laser eagles."
"Hell yeah, laser eagles!"
And then that became a whole big thing. It was great because it was a fun idea to run with and also because 'Muricuh! The concern of what to do with your genetically engineered fighting creatures when the war is over was also a popular topic. I couldn't help sharing.
"Okay I just have this image in my mind of this towering, biotically modified laser eagle that's working as like… a cashier at Costco or something."
"What's with you and bringing up the laser eagles all the time?"
"Hey, if you don't like laser eagles then you need to get out right now."
"MURRICA!"
It was a good time, and I think we've established that laser eagles would be by far the best use of genetic modification technology. Get on that, science!
Next up were the opening ceremonies, which kept alive the Rainfurrest tradition of rather disappointing first impressions. The ceremony was campy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it also seemed rather disjointed and poorly organized. There was no real theme or central message, and certainly no strong figure to stand up and be the face of the con. Everyone just kind of showed up and said hi, cracked a few jokes and then they said to have a nice time. It would've been okay had they not taken nearly an entire hour just to do that.
As I headed back to my room to ready-up for my next panel, something truly unprecedented happened in the elevator. Someone who happened to be riding up to the fourth floor with me recognized me by the FurAffinity username on my badge and said that he was a big fan of my writing and was very excited to meet me. I had not the vaguest concept of how to handle that situation, but I think I made a decent first impression after shaking off the initial shock. I mean, that's the whole reason I use my FA tag on my badge instead of the forum name all you guys know me by, because on the astronomically small chance that I run into someone who knows me from the internets, that's the name they're most likely to know me by. Having to deal with the frustration of my somewhat injudiciously chosen FA name all the time for four conventions was instantly made absolutely worth it with that one meeting. I am so proud of past-me for sticking to his guns; even more than I am frustrated with further-past-me for picking such an unpronounceable lummox of an FA name.
In any case,
Archai and I spoke for a minute and exchanged cell phone numbers. I was of course excited at the prospect of spending more time with him, but he and his girlfriend had just arrived and were still dragging around fursuits in boxes, so I let them on their way. Later when we spoke about dinner plans, he seemed concerned about keeping me from the writing panels later in the day. That was very considerate, but unnecessary, really. One thing I'll give this con is that it was absolutely stuffed to the gills with content in the writing track. There were four writing events before the con even started and a writing panel that ran right up to the start of the closing ceremonies. There were a total of 37 writing panels, so I made it as clear as I could that I could miss a few without worry, despite my obvious enthusiasm for them. To allay his fears, I relayed to Archai the wisdom that I had gained at AC'13. "Don't ever let that concern enter your mind. People trump panels every time. Panels are what I do to burn up time when my friends aren't doing anything cool. Now, events are a little different, but there are none of those tonight." And so the three of us went out for dinner. The locale they chose was a quiet 50s style diner. A bit of a walk away, but fortunately it hadn't started raining yet. That night the rain started and kept on in various strengths throughout the rest of the con. So we sat and chatted and were served unreasonably large portions of food. And of course I got to enjoy the rare and always quite novel experience of being in the presence of one of my fans. Naturally I bore the praise with all the grace and humility for which I am so well known.
*short lull in the conversation*
Faileas: Are we out of things to talk about already?
Me: Well weren't you going to tell me about how awesome I am? I was really looking forward to hearing greater detail about what a skilled and prolific master of literature I am.
Archai: Oh yeah, I did promise I was going to do that.
Faileas: You're so humble about it too. It's amazing.
Me: Yeah, I am pretty amazing. Do go on.
Yeah, my ego may exceed my celebrity by just a little bit. I'm proud of my skill and achievements though, and I don't understand why that's such a rare thing, especially on the pictogram side of the spectrum. I count among my friends a great many skilled and prolific artists, most of whom seem to hate their work and ceaselessly whine about how terrible everything they've ever done is and how no one likes them. It's kind of frustrating for me to hear since I'm actually someone that nobody has ever heard of. I want to (and sometimes do) just grab them and yell "Dammit! You're amazing! Admit that you're amazing right now or I will straight-up punch you in the face!" People pay money, honest to God, capitalist, government-certified legal tender for what you make. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? I'm happy enough when someone attaches an internet smiley face to something I've written that it'll keep me toiling away in the dark for another few years at it. You know what my sales and publishing credits are? I once sold an article to the pilot issue of AnthroView Magazine for $7.22. And you know what happened? The magazine fell on its face, never went to print, and I never got paid. That is the entirety of my illustrious resume. So excuse me for failing to be sympathetic to the plight of the person who literally has people running up to them and waving money in their face all convention when all I want you to do is admit that you're really fucking good at something.
My near-embarrassing level of giddiness at this encounter really reminded me of something that
IanusjWolf said at one of the first writing panels I ever went to back at AC'12. "Writing is not a business proposition. It's extremely unlikely you'll find money in it. Only the top top-tier writers ever even make enough to support themselves on it such that they can truly call writing their job. Money and even notoriety are terrible reasons to get into writing. You have to write because you love it. And that's because writing sucks- there are times when writing sucks, let me say it like that. There are times when nothing you write works or you can't write anything at all and it. is. miserable. The only way you'll get through those times is if you truly love what you do. Writing is a ton of work, often for little or no recognition. And that's why when you finally get someone who comes up to you and tells you that they love your work and that they think you're the most wonderful writer ever it is just the sweetest crack that you will ever taste."Wheeee, that was fun! I had a point up there somewhere but whatever, I'll get back to talking about the convention. I had figured on making a few late-night panels, but I was out so late with my adoring public that I managed to miss them all, so I figured I'd turn in (relatively) early to stock up on sleep for what was sure to be a long drought to follow. That's a bit of a tough proposition when you have two roommates who disagree with your assertion that sleep is a necessity and regard it as either a momentary inconvenience (MountainBlueFox) or as completely optional (Mursa). I still slept pretty well if for no other reason than the flight and time change had had me up for about 22 hours by that time.
Friday morning started as every good morning does, breakfast with TK and a writing panel. Not at the same time of course, but if we could combine the two that would be pretty cool. There was a My Little Pony Picnic that I ducked out of the start of because it was cold and rainy out and I wanted to get something waterproof. I got back just in time to hear that everyone decided that being out here where it was cold and rainy really sucked and that they wanted to go inside. One of our valiant leaders had been finagling an empty panel room in the meantime and so we holed up in there. Once safely inside we took a minute to decide who was in charge and what exactly we were all about in there, and then sang songs, played games and were just generally immature for awhile. Someone knew his way around a guitar and we managed to get through 'Smile, smile, smile!' the crowd favorite, in something resembling a coordinated effort. We played 20 questions with a box of blind-bag figurines of ignominious background ponies. A lot of them can be quite tough to nail down unless you've got some really buff fan cred. I correctly guessed Berry Punch in one round and won a cookie. It is inexplicably satisfying to win a cookie in a way that's truly impossible to even describe.
I ducked out midway through my next writing event to have lunch with TK, and after that we both went to a panel that had piqued my interest before the convention even started, "Partner Dancing 101" by Mia Lutra. If I had to pick just one panel to hang my laurel on for the con, it would have to be this one, if for no reason other than I had never attended, seen or even heard of anything like it before, and of course it was loads of fun. There's lots of stuff in the dancing track. Open dancing running all night, lots of dance competitions and performances, but none of those are really accessible unless you already at least have some idea of what you're doing and are comfortable dancing. There were two dance panels at this con that actually advertised teaching and used phrases like "all levels of experience welcome". That was a totally new thing to me. I was pretty excited by the prospect and I couldn't be happier that I went and tried something new.
It was a little tough to get into, since partner dancing is something of an intimate thing and you're being asked to pair off with a bunch of total strangers. And since this is a furry con, like 80% of those strangers are male. I got over that though, and pretty soon I was falling in step with everyone else, so to speak. I was definitely a noteworthy margin behind everyone else all the way. My progress was slow in the context of the group, but much, much faster than I'd expected. I like to think that I have a sense for rhythm, it's just that dancing has never really been my thing. And of course no one has ever offered to teach me to dance, particularly in a much lower-pressure setting than an actual dance. Despite the hardship, I managed to have a fair deal of fun there. I ended up dancing with TK more than a few times, but that was fine. It was a little more comfortable and he had at least a vague idea of what he was doing. Big disappointment on this end that his camera has fallen from the edge of the known universe. He got a few good shots of me during my instruction in the art of the dance, to include taking a fursuiter to task on it when he decided to crash the panel. I don't know how much of those lessons are actually going to stick, but I'm very glad that I went.
The next writing panel was another one that I was anticipating before the fact. It was titled "You had me at…" and it went over the ins and outs of an "elevator pitch". The phrase comes from the idea that an inventor, designer, or writer, some kind of content creator, would happen upon an investor or publisher in an elevator, and have that one short, once-in-a-lifetime chance to capture the interest of that potential backer with a super-condensed, really fast pitch of their work. That was basically the frame of the discussion. You have somehow secured like… 45 seconds of a publisher's time. You have to hook them in, if not completely sell them on your idea before they walk away. That sounds like the sort of absolutely terrifying and yet totally awesome scenario that I'm going to need to be ready for.
The panelists all confirmed that this is absolutely one of the ways for a new author to get their big break. As
Kyell once observed, "The easiest way to get through writing a novel, is to already have written one so that you know you can do it. The easiest way to get published, is to already be a famous author, because name recognition will sell books." It's extremely difficult for a brand new author to get over that hump. Publishers see such tremendous volume of these brand new, no-name authors that many of them just get lost in the shuffle when they try to go the traditional submission route. Sometimes connections, or a tour-de-force of speed-salesmanship are the only way to break that barrier. Very interesting stuff.Next up was the second dance instruction panel. Different instructors and a very different kind of dancing. This one was the sort of stage or performance dancing that's always so popular with fursuiters and at cons in general. The kind that can just spontaneously break out in the middle of an open area when nothing else is going on. That sort of dance-circle thing that you sometimes see where people step up into the circle one at a time and perform in the middle in sequence. It took a minute, but I learned that such a circle is called a "cypher" and felt a little less out of the loop on that.
It was an interesting experience, because as clueless as I was about partner dancing, I was orders-of-magnitude more clueless about this kind of dancing. I'm still not even sure what you call it, really. Street dancing? That sounds stodgy and vaguely racist. I'm going to go with "rhythm dancing" until someone tells me I'm wrong. It's inoffensive and slightly less ignorant than my other options, and is at least tangentially informative as to the nature of the art. In any case, we stretched out and got through some fundamentals, and I got to hear from some of the experts exactly how the logic behind rhythm dancing works. That was really one of the best parts.
I doubt I'm at all ready to bust a move in any meaningful way, but it was fascinating to get a look at the pieces from which the larger performance is composed. One of the things that was so captivating about watching the dance competition at AC was that some of the things that they were doing looked just impossible, and even if they weren't it was impossible to try and think of what they'd do next, or where they got the idea from to do what they were doing. Really though, knowing where all that comes from doesn't really ruin the magic the way you might think it would. It actually makes the performances more interesting to watch, since you have that element of understanding. You know what they're trying to accomplish with their moves and something of the message they're trying to send with their dance. It's a very enriching experience.
The instructor that I had was
Flinch, a very skilled dancer that I had seen perform before. He has a style as unforgettable as his fursuit, so I was excited to see him there, and it was a privilege to learn from him. I was getting dangerously close to experiencing what could be called fun when the hammer came down. The room was double-booked and there was a wedding in there soon. So the staff's entirely equitable solution was "Sorry, but GTFO." Our solution was to have a cypher outside, which was cool for a little while, but of course it wasn't all that long before hotel security told us to knock it off. We managed to get back inside once the room was free and wrap things up in something of a haphazard fashion, but it still felt like kind of a bust towards the end. Next up was "Banned Cartoons", a two-parter where the name said it all. It was basically a screening of cartoons that had been censured extensively or outright pulled from broadcast and distribution for myriad reasons. It was an astonishingly and quite unexpectedly popular screening, particularly for this being its first year. The hosts went from wondering what they'd do with such a large room to having the panel interrupted by the staff with the announcement: "Okay, fire code says that eight of you have to leave." When they came in to tell us that, I saw that they were also outside chasing away more people that wanted to come in. It was just that popular that they had to station people to stop more people from going to have fun at it. I know that the fire codes need to be respected, but really? There was no alternative to that at all? I thought that sarcastically, but that may have indeed been the case. Most con spaces were booked solid at that time, so we just had to deal with it.
The first half was cartoons before 1980, and was very far from what I had expected because of it. This wasn't the over-protective nanny-state bullcrap that we see today. These cartoons were banned for obvious, and good, extremely good reasons. As sampling of what I saw in the time that I was there includes: Nazi Donald duck, an early Popeye featuring a Philipino Betty Boop, Goldilox and the Three Jive Bears, Coal Black and the Seben Dwarbes, and Bugs Bunny in the Pacific killing Japanese fighter pilots. I laughed hysterically and hated myself for it.
During intermission they played a banned episode of The PowerPuff Girls. That had content more like what I expected. It was banned for having "communist themes" which, yeah it did, but the villain had those themes. It was a surprisingly smart and well-presented indictment against communism. It was more to the speed of just someone being too sensitive like I thought I would see there. By then they were asking for volunteers to leave so that some of the people waiting outside could see part II. Didn't necessarily want to leave, but I figured the next part would be something of a let-down after Fascist Looney Toons, and that actually did sound fair. So I gave my spot up and headed out.
Next appointment was dinner with TK and like three dozen of his closest friends at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Mursa was part of that troupe, and was the only other face at the table I had seen before. It was nice to talk to him a little bit. Despite being at the con for two days together by then we had spent scarcely a few minutes in each others' presence while conscious. We got along pretty well. I was in the middle of the table so I had the privilege/imposition of bouncing around between the different conversations that were happening at either end. Never a dull moment, to be sure.
Having never been to or heard of this place before I was a bit bewildered by the menu. I probably should've guessed the business model a little quicker by the name. Everything on the menu is just a description of what they're going to put on the big-ass plate of spaghetti they're about to bring you. Fortunately the assembling of our entourage took a little while so I had some time to nail down the protocol. Ordinarily I would've chaffed at the wait, but I really wasn't all that hungry, despite having gone from noon to 9:00 without any food. It was odd. I never felt hungry at any point from Thursday until Sunday. I kept eating somewhat regularly because I have it on good authority that "nothing" is an unwise dietary choice, particularly under stressful conditions, but I never felt the slightest bit hungry for days. My only guess was that the time change was making all the meals happen at the wrong time. If I was at home and I was trying to eat a pound of spaghetti at midnight then I bet my stomach would balk at it just the same way. My chosen topping probably did little to help. I should've gone with an alfredo sauce or something, having just the cheese was good, but very dry and didn't do anything to appease my crabby stomach. In any case we finished our meal only a little bit after they closed and turned in for the night.
I think that point was my first actual interaction with
crazyjoe1952, even if it was just introducing myself and shaking his hand. MBF is in his mid-sixties and I'm quite convinced that he got more out of that con than I did. He has something like five fursuits that he made himself and spent very little time out of them through the whole con. His workmanship is a true marvel though. His suits are quite seamless at first blush, with some very interesting innovations like a truly articulated tail and functional ears that actually work to direct sound into the suit. The real shocker though is that every suit contains not just LED effects, but an advanced array of animatronics. The head is more cyborg than costume; blinking eyes, articulated tongue, motorized jaws, jowls that pull back to expose teeth, I'd never seen anything like it. And quite rightly so I'm told. Suits with actuated movements of any kind are rare, and ones with that extent of mechanization are exclusive to him as far as anyone I've talked to is aware. He wears them right into the ground, too. His paws are always falling apart, not from poor craftsmanship but because he just never stops. I get the creeping suspicion that MountainBlueFox may actually be a cyborg… Even if he's not, I still feel like I'm not exaggerating by calling him practically superhuman. I can only aspire to still have that kind of spirit when I'm his age, or to ever be as good at anything as he is at suitcraft. With as little time as I spent with him because of how busy we both stayed, I don't know as I ever got a chance to tell him what an astonishing masterwork every one of his suits is. And what a prodigious talent and truly singular personality he himself possesses. Saturday morning started with breakfast with TK again, probably. I know I had breakfast with him every day except one but I forget which day that was. In any case, I'm pretty sure the sun came up that day… metaphorically of course. It was still cloudy and raining. We managed to catch a bit of the Saturday morning cartoon panel, which was a great idea that went over quite well. There was a bit of fluff time that morning in which I visited the Dealers' Den and Artists' Alley. I was struck by the variety of art and wares that they were able to pack into such a small space, but what was even more noteworthy was the extremely small space. I'd heard a lot of people online that were skipping RF because they couldn't get a vendor's spot even more than a month in advance. The Den had filled up incredibly fast, and being in the room I could see why. The Dealers' room was comparable in size to the one I visited at the 400-strong FurThe'More, and it was the less disappointing room of the two.
The Alley didn't even have registration for the room, nor did it have a room for that matter. It was just a first-come first-serve Road Warrior lawless zone. They picked up all the leather gear and unnecessary chains to complete their battle wardrobe in the Den and then just threw down in pitched combat for the few folding tables that were set up in the small foyer outside the Den. Yeah, that's how it worked, someone took the term "Alley" entirely too literally and set the artists up in a hallway. I would've been insulted if I were an artist, having to sit there and watch everyone walk past my table to get to where they're actually going instead of getting to work with just the people who are there to buy art. Fortunately they were advertizing this opportunity to furry artists, people who are quite well used to debasing themselves for cash.
Next up was the ice cream social. It seemed like a good idea at first blush. I like socializing at cons, and also, well duh! Ice cream! I didn't purchase a ticket in advance, because I can barely plan my minute-to-minute schedule at a con as it is. The idea of committing time and money to an event a month in advance when I'm pre-registering is laughable. I thought that I'd give this one a shot, seeing if I could buy into it on-site, but as I walked by it I caught a characteristic whiff of bullshit. For one, there was a line. I don't know what the reason was, but it's pretty much impossible for there to have been a good one. Either they somehow didn't have the room yet, weren't ready, or were forming a line to check tickets or some function that could easily be done without a line. It wasn't like a crowd of people were slowly making their way through the door and they pushed them to form an orderly line, they just stopped everyone from coming in for awhile without any apparent reason. Also, there wasn't just one line. As always there was the large worthless peon line, and also the super-special investors' line for people that are better than you. Now I understand extra donations buying privilege, but this was a ticketed event. Everyone paid money to be there, so it wasn't really fair to put sponsors and uber-sponsors and righteous demigods or whatever cut in front.
You saw it every place there was a line. Apparently the staff's biggest concerns with the giant, traffic-choking lines was not that they were a sign of endemic inefficiency or the fact that they have too many people for the space they're in. Their number one worry appeared to be that some poor real person might unintentionally blunder into the drooling proletariat line and become trapped there interminably, despite their much higher social caste. Every line I stood in had a town crier that raced up and down its imposing serpentine length, telling everyone to plaster ourselves against the walls such that our existence does not inconvenience mobile people and calling out to any inadvertently trapped super-robot-Jesus-wizards that were in line with the common serfs by mistake. I know that cons run on money, but the tiered registration system can, and has been done without subjugating the mere attendees beneath the iron heel of the ruling class. I'll come back to this issue later. It's getting me frustrated and I'm out of fascist metaphors.
In any case, I had the option of ice cream, or yet another writing panel. The ice cream people wanted money and there was a huge-ass line of imposing physical, and indeterminate chronological length. Writing panel it is! It was editing this time, another thing that I really shouldn't be burning time on while trying to make progress on my novel, but still very good to know. I figured the panel's running right up to the fursuit parade lineup wouldn't be a problem. Hah! What a fool I was. I don't know how I could've been such a fool as to leave myself only a half-hour to walk the necessary 500 yards to get in position to watch the parade. The capricious and near-constant rain had forced the parade inside, constricting space and motivating me to seek out a vantage point "early". The convention space is three stories up from the hotel. I gave a cursory glance to the elevators as I passed to get to a functioning means of transport. It's only a few floors, but we promptly destroyed the elevators trying to traverse them in the course of the con, further proof that this building can't handle us.
I got to the top of the stairs to find a complete blockage that extended back into the stairwell. Con staff had roped off the parade routes, severely restricting the mobility of spectators. That, and quite a few people were totally okay with getting off the elevator or stairs and standing right in front of them to watch. I went with my last option, going outside to walk around the building to the main entrance. It was a long walk, but one quite a few people were willing to make, as that entrance was also choked with people. I managed to stand outside of a window I could watch through, and honestly got a better view than the other dozens of people that were mob-blocked from the parade. The parade was in progress by then, but it's not like timeframe made a difference. I was out of routes by then. It was literally impossible to reach for a great many of those who tried. So, I managed to watch about 60% of the parade by standing on my tiptoes on the North face of the building. Fortunately security was lost in the parade scramble, so they didn't have time to yell at me to get down from there until the parade was over. Yay, I guess.
The Furry Variety Show (essentially a talent show) sounded interesting, but I passed it up for more of that human interaction stuff I've been hearing so much about. I managed to blend two crowds by going with Archai, Faileas and TK to Subway. While we were meeting up in the lobby we had a most interesting experience.
silverwolf16 came over to us and started talking to us. I told him he looked great when he was suiting at the dance cypher we had earlier and we had some good conversation there for a few minutes. I was glad I had seen him dance because it gave me a less awkward conversational option than "Oh yeah! I've seen you in all that TF porn by 
soty!" Which I said anyway because whatever. It was quite interesting when he walked off and we all looked at each other for a second."So, you know him, right?"
"What? No, I was just making conversation. I thought he came over because he knew you guys. I've never seen him out of suit before."
"I don't know him either, I thought one of you guys knew him."
"… what just happened?"
So, fresh from being conversation-trolled in a most interesting and memorable fashion, we proceeded out into the murk in search of food. It was only moderately raining at the time, and the walk entailed some interesting conversation, so all in all it was a worthy trip. On my return, I was just in time to attend the wedding of one of my old friends from Virginia.
and 
were getting hitched during the con. That was a lot of firsts for me. First furry wedding, first con wedding, you could also fill that blank with "Gay" and "Fursuit" if you wanted to cover all the bases. "Presided over by an officiate in a kilt" probably wouldn't fit unless you left a very long blank. It was a simple occasion but one I was happy to witness. The fact that both grooms were Lucarioes was something that I found endlessly amusing.After the festivities, I came upon the counterpoint to all the panels that intrigued me the moment that I looked at the schedule, something that pissed me off as soon as I looked at the schedule. Furry karaoke was scheduled opposite the fursuit dance competition and that decision was agonizing. I knew I'd never be happy with the one I picked because I'd be thinking about the other one the whole time. I went with Karaoke because TK liked the idea and because I had never been to such an event before. It was something new and, for a moment, I allowed myself to hope.
Words fail to describe my disappointment. And I'm damn good with words so you know you can take that to the bank. Furry Karaoke's first impression was that of a man with douchey mirrored sunglasses who was covered 70% in body glitter and about 7% by a thin leopard-print loincloth. Okay, I get it, I'm in the furry fandom. I'm going to have to deal with some weird shit once in awhile in order to enjoy this unique brand of insanity we have collected here. I'm okay with that, but not only was this crossing the line, or rather cartwheeling over the line and leaving it in the dust, it wasn't even justified by a good event. The sound system sounded like a scaled-up flip-phone speakerphone, but that's cool, because they compensated for the transistor-amplifier clipping and poor tone balance by it by turning it up debilitatingly loud to the point where I had to retreat to the back of the room to get the volume back below the threshold of pain.
After finally getting my hands on the one copy of the song roster they had and finding that there were big holes in the list, that or their understanding of alphabetization is fragmented in more ways than one, I found they didn't have the song I had signed up for, or any that I was particularly inclined towards singing. I was nowhere near old enough for that song roster, for one. How do you invite furries to sing and not have Disney movie soundtracks? Bullshit! I resolved then to leave and go to the dance competition after TK sang. Of course that was back when TK was number five on the list. A few contestants in, TK went from number "five" to number "FUCK THE RULES I DO WHAT I WANT!" when nekkid leopard douche started just picking whoever he felt like from the list instead of going in order. So I bailed. I'd like to say that I learned something from it, but all I'm really getting at this point is "Man, those must've been some really douchey sunglasses for me to remember them with the same vividness as the fact that DJ Sparklefuck was up on stage wearing less than underwear.
Escaping Karaoke purgatory to get to the dance competition was a bit like catching a life preserver and being just the slightest bit dismayed to find it filled with concrete. Firstly, the performance space was just a cheap sectionalized temporary dancefloor. For one, this made it impossible to see thanks to the ever-present crowd problem. Ah, if only there were a way to elevate the performers above the audience. A raised platform of some sort, such that visibility might be enhanced and there would be no need to occupy half the room with performance space, crowding the spectators against the walls. Ah, but enough of my foolish speculations about inconceivable future space technology, let's get back to what actually happened.
Midway through the first dance I was there for, there were some truly righteous extra strobe effects that really got the crowd going, right before the music cut out unexpectedly. It turned out that everyone had been grooving to the convention hall's fire alarm. Fortunately the con staff handled that one with every ounce of coordination and organization they possessed. That is to say, about a third of an ounce of the two combined. We spent a minute or two deciding if we should all evacuate or if life truly has no intrinsic meaning and that it wouldn't matter at all if we all died anyway. After choosing the former (disappointingly) we all shuffled towards the nearest exit- well in fact it was actually one of the furthest exits from us, but it was the only one that would accommodate a group of our size. Well, theoretically anyway. We never got a chance to test that theory, as con staff came back with the "all clear" call as we were on our way out. And just as we were getting ourselves back into position and I actually got a good vantage point for the dance, hotel staff came back with the "What the fuck are you doing evacuate right now" call. We had almost reached our previous evacuation-distance record when the second "but no seriously everything is fine" came across. Wheee…
So as you might suspect, all this foolishness wasted a considerable chunk of time. There didn't appear to be any change in the programming at first, so I figured that they were just going to push a bit into the dance that had the room next. You know, the unstructured event that just occupies the room until bullshit O'clock in the morning? Well, it turns out that we were so concerned about encroaching on their mere 7.5 hours of open dance time, that the solution was to cut out all the judges' comments at the end of the performances. So, each dancer's set ended with "Yeah good job now get your ass off the stage we have a schedule to keep." Classy.
Flinch pulled off a win in the end, and I was happy for him. And really for their part, I think the performers handled all this in stride as well as can be expected. There were still some impressive displays, but just as many who were struggling with their circumstances. Having people sit right at the edge or in some cases on the dancefloor was a hazard, and while no one got kicked in the face like they easily could have, there was more than one occasion where a dancer had to jump back after finding themselves uncomfortably close to hurling their body into the crowd. The floor itself also proved a challenge, as I saw a few dancers engaged in a valiant struggle for traction on the slick panels. It was quickly obvious that this contest didn't have prelims because of the sheer volume of contestants, which of course made us run even longer and prompted the emcee to shove people off the stage even faster. So in the end, the two events that I was sure would both be so amazing that I'd kill myself trying to decide between them both ended up failing just about as hard as they possibly could. Way to flip a coin and land on bullshit.
One more late-night super sexy awesome writing panel and it was time for a much more dependable event, Whose Lion is it Anyway? TK's friend Gadget went with me and she thought that I was amazing, which is always a nice thing to be reminded of. I did pretty much nail "Questions only", knocking out something like seven people with my quick thinking and masterful command of language. I came up with a bunch more funny lines as the night went on, but the later ones had more to do with "I have a dirty mind and the balls to say this in front of all you people" than any measure of cleverness on my part. It was a laugh riot all the way through and none of us wanted it to end. We kept at it long into the night, half and again past our original timeslot. It was a shame that the original host, Alkali, couldn't be there. So of course we waited until 0dark:30 and called him. With the time difference that put our wakeup at an even more absurd time for him, but he was a good sport about it. By the time we finally broke that party up at about half-past-tomorrow I had worn my throat ragged with all the shouting and laughing, so it's safe to say that was a pretty great way to end the day.
Sunday started with more My Little Pony, this time a more formal panel that was actually supposed to occur inside. It was honestly rather subdued for a pony panel, which wasn't really better or worse, just different. We screened some fanart and works, and compared notes about pony resources. They showed "Children of the Night", a favorite of Line Monkey, one of the panelists. It was interesting to hear that it was drawn frame-by-frame, that's a tremendous amount of work, and it looks credibly like flash or cel animation. I could've done without the frequent advertisements for Everfree Northwest, but it was still a good time. I love the ponies, but I wouldn't go to a con just for them, a panel here and a panel there is plenty.
I was going to make a few of these observations at the scritch n' bitch feedback panel towards the end of the day, about how they kept putting big-draw events opposite each other in the schedule, but I ended up not going because they scheduled the scritch n' bitch opposite some writing panels I really wanted to go to. Much as I love complaining and you've no doubt observed I have something of a knack for it, I certainly don't prefer it to talking about writing. And why go through all that effort to change the next RainFurrest when I could spare myself its shortcomings by not being there for them? Yes, I much prefer that solution. Cleaner, simpler, probably going to result in less bloodshed overall.
In any case, I got quite a surprise after I shuffled to my place in the con's last giant-ass line for the closing ceremonies. No, no the surprise wasn't that there was no giant-ass line for this event, don't be ridiculous. Of all the con's giant-ass lines this was surely the giantest, if not also the lineiest and assiest. No, the surprise came from who came to stand next to me at the back of the line. It was none other than Author Guest of Honor Kyell Gold. I was as flummoxed as I was intrigued by the opportunity. He was clearly aware of the special, much shorter and less disease-ridden line for those of noble blood, as the fiefdom's herald came running down the line to inform us of such at regular intervals. Perhaps being a simple guest (of honor) doesn't entitle one to the privileges of nobility.
I would rant and rave about that subject more, but someone pointed out to me later that he probably could have claimed his rightful place if he so chose and may have waited in the back intentionally because he's just that kind of guy. Knowing Kyell as I do, (My assessment of his personality I mean. It's not like we know each other. I doubt he remembers my name even.) I'd say that's a distinct possibility. In any case, I'm not going to complain. I got to chat with Kyell Gold for awhile while I waited instead of just staring at the floor and wishing I had been spawned of highborne ancestry. I let him alone after some idle chat. He didn't seem much in the mood to talk, he'd probably had an exhausting con as well.
The closing ceremonies were smooth and simple. A nice chance to pause and reflect. And this time they didn't pad out the whole hour with not much happening. It was a chance for everyone that worked on the con to stand up and be recognized, in a most literal sense. As much shit as I've given con staff, they all did work very hard to make all this happen, and though I quibble over a number of things, I respect the effort and commitment that they've shown to this event. They did some things wrong, or moreover just some things I disagree with, but it's easy for me to snipe from my position of not having any of the work to do. It was nice to see these guys up on stage and give them the applause they deserved.
That night I met up with Archai's crew, a group of eight or so and not a single remembered name in the bunch. I hope none of them take offense. I was meeting them all for the first time and I had been operating on very little sleep all week. In any case, we all went out to a delectable Thai restaurant and stuffed ourselves to the gills. We were there for hours talking and laughing and just having a good time in general. We waited a bit for a break in the by-then-pouring rain, but realized that one would never come. There was a little sting of regret in that we had gotten so far away from the hotel, but certainly nowhere near enough to make me wish I hadn't came. I got back in after a harrowing journey, said goodbye to my new friends, shook off some of the water and checked out the dead dog events for a bit, trying to make a few last minute connections. Having worn myself down quite thoroughly by then, I turned in for the night.
Okay, final thoughts on RainFurrest. Good con, would not go again. There are just too many endemic problems with how it's run. I was baffled at first to see such a large, well-established con making what looked to be novice mistakes. Or entirely original mistakes in some cases. I thought they might have become overgrown, but no. Anthrocon manages nearly three times their attendance without falling victim to these pitfalls. Nor can I truly call them "Novice" mistakes, as I went to the inaugural year of FurThe'More and I noticed none of the things that bothered me about this con. FurThe'More was started and staffed largely by people who worked the big east-coast cons, FWA, AC, and MFF, many of whom worked extensively with the big kahuna of Anthrocon.
I heard once that Dr. Conway refused to attend RF anymore and so I asked around about it. Apparently after attending, Uncle Kage had a few suggestions for the staff as to how they could improve things. His offer of assistance was rebuffed, and their newbie mistakes became dogma over the years. It got to the point where bad blood arose between them, and now Kage refuses to be associated with RF in any way, beyond buying adspace in the conbook to let attendees know what they're missing on the other side of the country. Spurning the advice that represents many years' experience and comes from someone who is arguably the face of the furry fandom at large is very telling of RF's attitude.
Another big revelation that I came upon was that the staff restructures its responsibilities and leadership structure each and every year. That goes a long way towards explaining why people who have ostensibly been doing this for years were acting like they were bluffing their way through something they were unfamiliar with and learning as they go. They kind of were doing that, really. It's one thing to have upward mobility and the capacity to revise the organization to solve problems as they arise. That's an important aspect of being able to adapt and improve the convention as progress marches on. It's quite another matter entirely to commemorate every year with the Mad Hatter jumping out of his seat and yelling "Change places!" thus nullifying everything everyone learned in their previous positions. Yes, it keeps everything dynamic and in constant motion, but a hurricane could be described as " dynamic and in constant motion". You can't make a workforce out of nothing but trainees. All the learning that everyone is doing in their new positions is not of any use if they never cash in on it and get a second year in their role to put their experience to use.
One of the things I found so striking and amazing when I attended Anthrocon was what a wide representation of locations the convention boasted. Offhand I can remember meeting people there from Ohio, Georgia, Virginia, Hawaii, Texas, Montana, England, Australia, and Japan. And those are just the ones I remember readily now months after attending. What struck me most about RainFurrest is that holy crap bloody freaking everyone is from Seattle! It was a majority no matter what group I was with at the time. A lot of the panels took polls of the audience as icebreakers and they were always "Seattle, Seattle, Vancouver, Seattle, Spokane, Seattle, Bremerton, Walla Walla(I didn't know that place was real.) Seattle, Tacoma" etc. Twice I was the only Non-Washington attendee in a room of a few dozen.
That's really the most telling thing about it. People are going to Anthrocon because they wanted to attend Anthrocon. People at RainFurrest are there because they wanted to attend "The closest furry con to them". Convenience of location is RF's number one selling point. A legitimate advantage, but it has nothing to do with the convention or how it's run. That's a common theme, really. I had fun there and I experienced frustrations there. Most of the fun that happened was coming from the panelists and attendees and was unrelated to the con admin, and most of the frustration was a result of con admin. Bottom line, having a convention close to home is a perfectly fine reason to attend. It just doesn't apply to me. If I were within driving distance, I'd go every year. I am not, and don't soon plan to be. So with the advantage of locale working in the opposite direction, I'll pursue other options for my next con.
The next morning the decision came up as to whether or not we wanted to stay in Seattle and do Seattle things or hit the road for Spokane. Mursa was debilitatingly ill by then. He had gotten sick from his interactions in the Dealers' Den, and by the end of the con both I and MountainBlueFox had it from sleeping in the same room as him. TK was still on an even keel, but was up pretty late the night before. That made it pretty universal that everyone was tired and in favor of Spokane, and so off we went. As we passed through the expansive and mostly sodden countryside, TK kept telling me that we were moving into the "dry" part of the state as we went east. I was unimpressed as this transition meant only that it rained slightly less.
We met up with one of TK friends in some little Germany-themed villa for lunch. His name was Bosus, near as I can guess at the spelling anyway. He offered to drive one of us so that we were two to a car and I took him up on it since Mursa didn't have much interest in any kind of physical movement by then. Despite his attempts to make his aging Subaru do some Tokyo drift shenanigans that it was clearly never meant for, Bosus made a pretty good impression on me. He was a pretty nice guy and was good for some conversation. He said that he was glad for someone to talk with to make the drive go faster, so much the better that it was a nice, attractive young guy. You'd think that getting called "a cute guy" like that would be something that you would get used to after awhile. You'd be incorrect, but it's still flattering in a certain way.
On arrival, I got to enjoy some of the rain and hail that typified the "dry" portion of the state and met the surprisingly numerous denizens of Casa Kiyoshi. As riveting as the tour was I, like everyone else, was pretty keen on just stumbling into bed and passing out. The next day started slow, and for me at least stayed pretty slow. After "eat pancakes" I didn't really have any priorities, so I thought I'd take a little nap in the afternoon. Just a short five hours or so later I woke up in time to go out for dinner. TK said we'd be eating with a few friends of his, which was cool. What he didn't mention was that they were work friends and not furry friends, and that we'd be representing the fandom to those people.
That was a surprise, but it wasn't like I minded. I actually like doing that sort of thing. During the con a middle-aged Asian woman who was staying at the hotel came up and asked me what all the fuss was about. I gave her the best condensed explanation I could, but she had quite a battery of questions. We were headed in vaguely the same direction, so I pretty much gave her the grand tour of the con on the hotel side as we walked. I realized later that I was wearing my Navy jacket because it was waterproof, and it was covering up my conbadges. I guess "that young sailor" is a bit more of an approachable profile than "the guy with a lime green Mohawk and dinner plates in his ears". I was happy to fulfill that role though, and though I found myself without the mobility and time limit that I had at the con, talking about furry stuff did make for some very lively dinner conversation. I had a lot of fun there and it was a great way to close out the day.
TK had to work Tuesday, but that was all well and good. Despite being asleep there more time than I spent awake there, I still wasn't feeling up to doing a whole lot. I didn't want to risk lazing about the entire trip though. So I took him up on his offer of the grand tour of Spokane. We visited a park and arboretum, very nice nature walks even given the relatively un-florid time of year. It's the sort of thing I haven't had time for until recently, and that was kind of the theme of this trip. 'I want to do this thing, because at long last, I actually can!' Maybe I'll call it my National Freedom Tour.
Anyway we got into town to see some of the cool stuff they had there. We went to the barbeque joint that TK used to work at to get some of that sauce he wanted Lucius to try. The city park was very nice. Spokane is one of those "a river runs through it" towns, so there are lots of interesting landforms in the undeveloped areas. Something interesting downtown was that they had this skywalk where the second or third floors of several of the buildings are networked together with enclosed bridges to span streets and such. All together it forms one massive sprawling commercial complex like nothing I've ever seen. I got an extensive tour of the place. Too bad shopping has never really been my thing. Doubly so when I have to tote anything that I purchase to the other side of the continent.
Next up, TK pointed out the Spokane Steamworks, to which I responded "Wait, that exists? Still? People will still pay a utility bill for steam? Has anyone told them what century it is?" Turns out that these days the Steamworks have been converted into a steampunk restaurant-slash-bar-slash-office-complex-slash-museum-slash-cold-war-bunker-slash-spelunking-cave-slash-James-Bond-chase-scene-backdrop. There's probably an emergency outbreak infirmary or something in the basement that I missed. All in all a great new life for old industry.
The other major stop on the sightseeing tour was the Davenport Hotel, local landmark and dreamworld venue for All Fur Fun. It was a gorgeous place, very ornate and expansive. It really had that Great Gatsby sort of old world charm. It also worked very hard to earn every one of its five stars. It was a lot like the Omni in that it was so nice I felt like I didn't belong there. In this case specifically I didn't have a reservation so I kind of actually didn't belong there. That made that uneasy feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop even stronger. TK managed to give me a pretty thorough tour and history of the place without us ever being asked to leave, so I guess we're just quite skilled at loitering.
Before long, TK had to go to work. Such a drag. Any of you who have jobs, I encourage you to follow in my footsteps; quit them to spend your time going to furry conventions and traveling the country. It's loads of fun. A little time to relax in TK's room while he was gone was fine by me though. I thought that being out and about would help, since I usually feel laziest after being lazy for a really long time, but I stayed pretty tired throughout. That's what started to convince me that I was looking at a real pathogen illness and not just timechange/lack-of-sleep. So I got on my laptop and got caught up on what the internet was doing while I was busy. TK got roped into doing some stuff at work that would take him all night, but I didn't mind as none of that interfered with my plan of: "going to bed". My flight was pretty early, but I had it easy as my path was "go to sleep earlier" and TKs was "not sleep at all".
Well folks, it appears I've finally done it and exceeded the maximum length that FA allows for a journal submission, so stay turned for the exciting conclusion of whatever it is I'm doing here.
Film Review: Gravity
General | Posted 12 years agoI've finally had the chance to sit down and work on my con report for RF. As usual, that's going to take some time. I saw Gravity while I was out though, so I figured I would post this in the meantime. I skipped reviewing this one the night I saw it because it was a late night to end a long string of late nights. That's made me lose a lot of the details I was going to talk about, so though I'm in much the same situation right now, I'm going to forge ahead with it. I blame severe lack of sleep for large portions of this review. In a technical sense, this was a very well made movie. The silence of space was both accurate and very compelling in setting the mood. The camerawork managed to convey a lot of impacts, shaking, spinning and other chaotic movements without going all streaky, nausea-inducing Cloverfield style shaky cam on us, big points for that. It really lent itself well to 3D, since the ability to perceive in all three dimensions of space is actually quite critical to your understanding of the action. The cinematography was quite good on the whole, enough for me to call the filming truly a work of art. As for what I was actually being shown, well that was an escalating cavalcade of frustrating disappointment, and I'll tell you why. Of course, the why is a lot of spoilers, so mind the gap.
Okay, I hate Dr. Stone. A lot. I'm not even going to jump into my trademark theatrical hyperbole in describing how much because essentially all of her actions just disengendered me to her even more with every one, to the point where I don't even want to dwell on it anymore because I've grown sick of my own emotions in that area. By the end, I was able to piece together the writers' intent with the bulk of these decisions, which was one of the few things that kept me from leaving the theater in the middle. The intent that I gathered was to show character development by giving her character something of a rocky start in skill, competence, confidence, sanity, courage, focus, composure, self-control, will to live, ability to utilize opposable thumbs to grip objects, basic understanding of mechanical physics, okay this is getting tedious. The character started off with some damn sexy zero-G boobies and some vague technical skills that were rendered entirely useless the moment the shit's orbit decayed such as to put it into contact with the fan at its next perigee. Those were the only three positive characteristics she possessed from the outset.
Even the only one of Dr. Stone' virtues with plot relevance, the reason that she's a Mission Specialist and not a space stewardess on this mission, was established in a ham-handed and ineffective fashion. In the midst of Sandra Bullock's boobs being utterly powerless to fix the Hubble's serial communications array, a rather innocuous and quite natural sounding radio dialogue between her and mission control was interrupted by engineering blurting out: "Well golly gee Doctor Stone, I guess you were right huh? Willikers! You're just so gosh darn smart Doctor Stone! I'll have to give your glorious space breasts an apology hug when they get back to earth. I mean when you get back to earth! Gheheheee..." If you wanted to establish Dr. Boobs' technical competence as a flimsy excuse for getting her into space in the first place, she could have to at one point or another been displayed perhaps not failing at her job? Once? Ever? That's the sort of thing that people judge by action, not what they're informed of. Everyone will use their own judge of character to determine the competence of the technician attached to Sandra Bullock's boobs, and form their opinion entirely on their own. Having other characters fawn over and compliment a character to establish their efficacy is a bullshit corner-cutting, Mary-Sue-crafting hack-fan-fiction cheap trick that has no place in cinema. And just as an aside, a smart, strong character would've had the stones to convince that stringy earth nerd that she's right in the first place. Thus circumventing the problem that had them still outside with the weather forecast suddenly turned quite nasty.
Grrr... talking about the non-boob parts of Dr. Stone is depressing, so I'm shifting the scope for a second. George Clooney was a total boss as usual. His cool masculine charm perfectly balanced local spacetime to prevent ripple distortions caused by the large swinging masses attached to his colleague on the robot arm. He's everything that an astronaut should be. Adventurous, cool under pressure, daring, calm when the heat is on, smart, able to keep his wits about him in an emergency situation, possessed of zen-like self control in the face of a crisis, able to face death with a grim but determined reservation, able to keep his emotions in check even while stressed... Hm, am I forgetting to emphasize one particular aspect sufficiently? Whatever, I'll come back to it. If all the crew had been at George-Clooney-level competence, they would've repaired the telescope in seconds, punched all the shrapnel out of orbit and sent the fragments of the derelict satellite crashing down in pieces over Scandinavia such that the flaming wreckage traced out a giant middle finger aimed at Moscow and still had time to achieve the world's first orbital conception. But that wouldn't have been an interesti- Actually scratch that I would've watched the hell out of that movie. Get on that, Hollywood.
I'll even give them a pass on Indian stereotype astronaut #3, even though it took me about 90 seconds to figure out that he was going to die immediately as soon as something above the level of a bent eyelash went wrong. You knew this guy was totally boned once we even came close to a bleeding-hangnail-level crisis. We never see his face, he contributes next to nothing to the mission or conversation, and he's off-camera for most of the shots. Yeah, it's patently obvious that he's wearing a red shirt under that spacesuit. I wasn't too offended by him though, as he's a passable audience avatar in the scenario. What would the average person be doing up there? I'll tell ya what: Wheeling around giggling impishly at how awesome zero-G is before being immediately space-murdered by a flying license plate off some Ruskie space clunker because stupid is instantly fatal when you're in space. Nice touch having the first clear shot of his face being the one where a few croutons from that high-speed twisted metal salad had liberated his meager brains from their fleshy prison, setting the stage for a new 'brains in space' opera.
Ah, good palate cleanser. Now, back at boobs HQ... Okay, so she's a timid scientist, not a real astronaut, and is only up here because they couldn't find someone actually good at space-ing to do the work. I get the impression that the heaping of praise by the ground crew is a woefully inadequate spray of Lysol to keep the audience from smelling what a shit character is there ruining the lovely pine fresh atmosphere that surrounds Sandra Bullock's boobs. Maybe she can turn this around, though. Maybe she can pull through in the clutch. Maybe in a crisis she- oh nevermind she completely falls apart and ruins everything even harder when the chips are down. So before the crisis her clumsiness at non-boob-related tasks just cost time and presumably billions of taxpayer dollars. Now it costs the airtight seal in the vapor-sealed environment and skull cavity of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the same metal space blizzard as she is. Awesome. Way to raise the stakes and then accidentally impale your eye on one of them.
Okay, so the ship briefly gains sapience and tries to defend itself by flinging a bunch of dead weight out into space to hasten its escape, but wastes too long savoring the departure of that annoying thing stuck on the end of its arm and is decimated by the hail of jagged space bullets. Despite her being quite unhelpful in the effort to preserve her own life, Dr. Stone was able to follow enough simple verbal instructions to allow George Clooney to save her because of course George Clooney is going to save her. The only reason he hasn't done the ol' Orientation-is-irrelevant mambo with her already is the multiple layers of space-proof fabric between the two of them. From there, George Clooney calmly states that they ought to gather the frozen corpses of their slaughtered crew with the tone of someone instructing Sandra Bullock's boobs to go pick up a half-pound of ham from the deli. And of course the one function on Dr. Boobs' suit that hasn't failed by that point is the panic button and she hammers at that irritatingly for a few moments while the one remaining competent astronaut quickly and decisively hatches a plan to fix everything.
Now, toting around George Clooney's immeasurably massive balls has depleted his space cowboy jetpack of fuel, and so he has to take the ultimate risk, telling Dr. Stone to do something besides whinge depressingly in the background and have attractive torso adornments. Quite a gamble, but it's his only option. Against all odds, Dr. Stone succeeds in accidentally becoming entangled in enough parachute cord to keep her from tumbling back out into space where she would have served science much better as an orbital research platform. George Clooney, thanks to his being chained to a wrecking ball of concentrated incompetence for most of the encounter, was unable to hold onto the station and thus is obligated to make use of some severely dilated time and questionable physics in order to heroically sacrifice himself such that Earth might maintain even the slightest chance of benefiting from his counterpart's truly glorious breasts for decades to come. To that end, as he spins off to certain death, he continues calmly shepherding Dr. Boobs through the equivalent of baby's first spacewalk to safety. And as his radio signal fades into silence, he takes in the awesome sights, revels in how totally freaking awesome being in space is and blasts some tunes as he fades- well, he doesn't really fade. He shoots away at 17,000 MPH into the sunset. Like. a. BOSS. The only thing that could ruin this penultimate moment of heroism is if some useless dolt nullified all that by doing everything in their power to somehow still manage to get themselves kill- aw dammit.
So, after curling up into a pre-natal metaphor that was about as subtle as being hit in the face with a cinder block covered in burning phosphors due to her weakened body's curling up from its inability to resist the mighty gravitational pull of its own bosom, Dr. Stone proceeds to chase after everything on the International Space Station that could conceivably kill her with the enthusiasm of Mr Magoo walking through an active construction site. This is a big thing that ruins her character. I could understand mistakes. I DO NOT understand doing the exact opposite of a reasonable course of action every time. When time is of the essence, she floats around and shows off her underwear. When she's doing a precise task that requires care and focus, she rushes through it and fumbles everything for long enough that coincidence takes pity on her and throws her a bone. So, let's follow Sandra's boobs though our little whirlwind tour of the ISS, shall we? Let me see here... a little wandering about the station to waste time and bring high-speed stabby, serrated death that much closer, ignoring an obvious electrical fire sounds nice. That's something that people would do without the slightest thought, right? Maybe I should spray some water into the air and all over these sensitive instrument consoles while I float down to check the communication systems that I already know don't work, in order to talk to people that could do nothing to help me in any case because fires on a space station tend to BECOME A PROBLEM WHEN LEFT UNSUPERVISED!
So, after nearly killing herself (Damn. So close to a satisfying ending!) by failing spectacularly at using a fire extinguisher, the impact to her head caused her two functional brain cells to bump into each other and create the impulse that perhaps she should cease dawdling and get back to George Clooney's original plan of getting the duck out of fodge because there's the blazing fury of hell on the inside and an approaching metal salad shooter on the outside of the station. Well, and the vacuum of space too. Suffice it to say a number of things are poised to swiftly end the star-studded career of those magnificent boobs, and so finally some motivation occurs that resembles self-preservation. Wow, that's dangerously close to a characteristic that real human beings exhibit on a fairly regular basis. Dr. Stone had better be careful or someone might notice that there's some sort of person attached to her world-famous boobs. I mean, they've gotta be famous by now. They're visible from space!
Alright, so here's where Dr. Stone' never developing of any non-boob positive personality characteristics really starts to become a problem. Firstly, her one saving grace is that she never just broke down and cri-awww dammit she's crying now, nevermiiIIOH MY GOD THAT IS NOT HOW CRYING IN SPACE WORKS! (For reference, I cut some very creative profanities out of this part. Sorry, but I had to stay below the character limit somehow.) Okay then... Despite a whole movie worth of pissing me off being condensed into a few seconds there, the lullaby scene that followed was kind of cute and almost made her seem like a person, but nowhere near enough. You see, that's the problem with having a shabby, cardboard cutout boob-vehicle in place of where your main character is supposed to be. When it became clear that the craft was out of fuel for no adequately explained reason, probably teen space punks siphoning the tank, the Good Doctor's go-to solution was shutting down life support and dying in relative comfort to avoid being turned into space shishkabob by the approaching orgy of jagged metal. This was meant to be dramatic, or a sympathetic moment, or probably just about anything besides "Good! That bitch doesn't deserve to live. At least the cold will preserve her boobs for the archaeologists of future generations to recover. The only bad thing is I can't enjoy them because they've got some commie bastard's name plastered all over them now!" Anyway, someone on the production team thought that my preferred ending might not go over well in the international market, so George Clooney uses the force to deliver a truly legendary lucid dream bitchslap to get Doc titties to stop crapping all over his heroic sacrifice with her sniveling emo bullshit.
George Clooney's unabashed fury scares Boobs PhD. into a truly unprecedented fit of competence, causing her to successfully execute the the half-second rocket burn needed to propel her to the next tin-plated space death-trap acStone the way, because all major space objects are always located within easy visual distance of each other because science. Now then, in her competence-fueled stupor, Dr Stone' highly observant breasts remind her of her earlier painful (and apparently first ever) encounter with Newton's Third Law of motion and she uses what remains of the late George Clooney's residual masculine bravado to perform a totally boss-awesome if poorly executed extinguisher-propelled spacejump. Yes... yes I'm seeing the Russian judge giving that jump a 7.3 for degree-of-difficulty, ouch! That's going to hurt her chance at the medal... Anyway, her charmingly incompetent firefighting had already pissed away most of her propellant so she was once again ragdollized against the side of the station in another space jungle gym sequence that hearkens back to the Mr Magoo failing-to-die-despite-his-best-efforts analogy.
The next scene was one of the more realistic depictions of what would happen in this situation. "Let me climb into this foreign space capsule and I'll just- Oh fuck all the buttons are in Mandarin! Never fear I'll- Oh fuck the manual is also in Mandarin! I'd better start bashing my face against random buttons and praying to George Clooney's all-powerful spirit that this course of action results in something other than my dying horribly!" Following her breasts' keen space-faring instincts, Dr Stone successfully implements something functionally resembling the craft's descent sequence. One fiery roller coaster ride later and bam! Earth. Or rather splash... My friend and I got kind of distracted in this part talking about those stupid Ruskies and other ferinner-types that are too stupid to make a landing craft that can successfully land in the thing you have a 72% chance of hitting anyway. YEAH! 'Murica! But yeah, Dr Boobs finds a surprisingly legitimate reason to show off her namesake, those handy flotation devices get her to the surface and they all live happily ever after. Presumably. We're left to wonder if the shore she's on is populated by cannibals or something, but I'm okay with that. It lets the viewer fill in the ending. I prefer to think that she landed on the Island of Dr Moreau, thus setting the stage for a much more interesting movie.
Okay, so remember at the beginning when I said I was able to piece together the writers' intent in making Dr Stone a useless, unlikable, unrelatable, putrid psuedo-being that only tangentially resembled a human due to certain particular primary sex characteristics? Yeah, me neither. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, what I was able to piece together by the end was that someone on the staff decided that character development was good. He wasn't wrong about that, far from it. Character development is totally good. I love character development. Sometimes I like to curl up with character development under the covers on long winter nights until our closeness chases the chill from our bodies and we can both find escape in the blissful oblivion of sleep until the glorious dawning of a new day. But once this concept was brought forth, someone pulled some Dilbert Pointy-Haired Boss logic and decided that Character Development: good means that more Character Development means more good! To accommodate this primitive perspective, the character of Breasts McChestington, Esq. needed more room to grow. That's why instead of progressing from average or at-the-very-least-recognizable human being into a hero worthy of sharing the screen with George Clooney's rugged mountain man beard, Doctor Feelgood there had to start out as the disgusting invertebrate blob that she was for most of the film. This left more potential for the precious character development and thus more movie-goodness-getting for Writer-PHB.
I guess in the end, I'm saying that I understand why they screwed the pooch on this one, but try explaining that to the pooch!
Okay, I hate Dr. Stone. A lot. I'm not even going to jump into my trademark theatrical hyperbole in describing how much because essentially all of her actions just disengendered me to her even more with every one, to the point where I don't even want to dwell on it anymore because I've grown sick of my own emotions in that area. By the end, I was able to piece together the writers' intent with the bulk of these decisions, which was one of the few things that kept me from leaving the theater in the middle. The intent that I gathered was to show character development by giving her character something of a rocky start in skill, competence, confidence, sanity, courage, focus, composure, self-control, will to live, ability to utilize opposable thumbs to grip objects, basic understanding of mechanical physics, okay this is getting tedious. The character started off with some damn sexy zero-G boobies and some vague technical skills that were rendered entirely useless the moment the shit's orbit decayed such as to put it into contact with the fan at its next perigee. Those were the only three positive characteristics she possessed from the outset.
Even the only one of Dr. Stone' virtues with plot relevance, the reason that she's a Mission Specialist and not a space stewardess on this mission, was established in a ham-handed and ineffective fashion. In the midst of Sandra Bullock's boobs being utterly powerless to fix the Hubble's serial communications array, a rather innocuous and quite natural sounding radio dialogue between her and mission control was interrupted by engineering blurting out: "Well golly gee Doctor Stone, I guess you were right huh? Willikers! You're just so gosh darn smart Doctor Stone! I'll have to give your glorious space breasts an apology hug when they get back to earth. I mean when you get back to earth! Gheheheee..." If you wanted to establish Dr. Boobs' technical competence as a flimsy excuse for getting her into space in the first place, she could have to at one point or another been displayed perhaps not failing at her job? Once? Ever? That's the sort of thing that people judge by action, not what they're informed of. Everyone will use their own judge of character to determine the competence of the technician attached to Sandra Bullock's boobs, and form their opinion entirely on their own. Having other characters fawn over and compliment a character to establish their efficacy is a bullshit corner-cutting, Mary-Sue-crafting hack-fan-fiction cheap trick that has no place in cinema. And just as an aside, a smart, strong character would've had the stones to convince that stringy earth nerd that she's right in the first place. Thus circumventing the problem that had them still outside with the weather forecast suddenly turned quite nasty.
Grrr... talking about the non-boob parts of Dr. Stone is depressing, so I'm shifting the scope for a second. George Clooney was a total boss as usual. His cool masculine charm perfectly balanced local spacetime to prevent ripple distortions caused by the large swinging masses attached to his colleague on the robot arm. He's everything that an astronaut should be. Adventurous, cool under pressure, daring, calm when the heat is on, smart, able to keep his wits about him in an emergency situation, possessed of zen-like self control in the face of a crisis, able to face death with a grim but determined reservation, able to keep his emotions in check even while stressed... Hm, am I forgetting to emphasize one particular aspect sufficiently? Whatever, I'll come back to it. If all the crew had been at George-Clooney-level competence, they would've repaired the telescope in seconds, punched all the shrapnel out of orbit and sent the fragments of the derelict satellite crashing down in pieces over Scandinavia such that the flaming wreckage traced out a giant middle finger aimed at Moscow and still had time to achieve the world's first orbital conception. But that wouldn't have been an interesti- Actually scratch that I would've watched the hell out of that movie. Get on that, Hollywood.
I'll even give them a pass on Indian stereotype astronaut #3, even though it took me about 90 seconds to figure out that he was going to die immediately as soon as something above the level of a bent eyelash went wrong. You knew this guy was totally boned once we even came close to a bleeding-hangnail-level crisis. We never see his face, he contributes next to nothing to the mission or conversation, and he's off-camera for most of the shots. Yeah, it's patently obvious that he's wearing a red shirt under that spacesuit. I wasn't too offended by him though, as he's a passable audience avatar in the scenario. What would the average person be doing up there? I'll tell ya what: Wheeling around giggling impishly at how awesome zero-G is before being immediately space-murdered by a flying license plate off some Ruskie space clunker because stupid is instantly fatal when you're in space. Nice touch having the first clear shot of his face being the one where a few croutons from that high-speed twisted metal salad had liberated his meager brains from their fleshy prison, setting the stage for a new 'brains in space' opera.
Ah, good palate cleanser. Now, back at boobs HQ... Okay, so she's a timid scientist, not a real astronaut, and is only up here because they couldn't find someone actually good at space-ing to do the work. I get the impression that the heaping of praise by the ground crew is a woefully inadequate spray of Lysol to keep the audience from smelling what a shit character is there ruining the lovely pine fresh atmosphere that surrounds Sandra Bullock's boobs. Maybe she can turn this around, though. Maybe she can pull through in the clutch. Maybe in a crisis she- oh nevermind she completely falls apart and ruins everything even harder when the chips are down. So before the crisis her clumsiness at non-boob-related tasks just cost time and presumably billions of taxpayer dollars. Now it costs the airtight seal in the vapor-sealed environment and skull cavity of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the same metal space blizzard as she is. Awesome. Way to raise the stakes and then accidentally impale your eye on one of them.
Okay, so the ship briefly gains sapience and tries to defend itself by flinging a bunch of dead weight out into space to hasten its escape, but wastes too long savoring the departure of that annoying thing stuck on the end of its arm and is decimated by the hail of jagged space bullets. Despite her being quite unhelpful in the effort to preserve her own life, Dr. Stone was able to follow enough simple verbal instructions to allow George Clooney to save her because of course George Clooney is going to save her. The only reason he hasn't done the ol' Orientation-is-irrelevant mambo with her already is the multiple layers of space-proof fabric between the two of them. From there, George Clooney calmly states that they ought to gather the frozen corpses of their slaughtered crew with the tone of someone instructing Sandra Bullock's boobs to go pick up a half-pound of ham from the deli. And of course the one function on Dr. Boobs' suit that hasn't failed by that point is the panic button and she hammers at that irritatingly for a few moments while the one remaining competent astronaut quickly and decisively hatches a plan to fix everything.
Now, toting around George Clooney's immeasurably massive balls has depleted his space cowboy jetpack of fuel, and so he has to take the ultimate risk, telling Dr. Stone to do something besides whinge depressingly in the background and have attractive torso adornments. Quite a gamble, but it's his only option. Against all odds, Dr. Stone succeeds in accidentally becoming entangled in enough parachute cord to keep her from tumbling back out into space where she would have served science much better as an orbital research platform. George Clooney, thanks to his being chained to a wrecking ball of concentrated incompetence for most of the encounter, was unable to hold onto the station and thus is obligated to make use of some severely dilated time and questionable physics in order to heroically sacrifice himself such that Earth might maintain even the slightest chance of benefiting from his counterpart's truly glorious breasts for decades to come. To that end, as he spins off to certain death, he continues calmly shepherding Dr. Boobs through the equivalent of baby's first spacewalk to safety. And as his radio signal fades into silence, he takes in the awesome sights, revels in how totally freaking awesome being in space is and blasts some tunes as he fades- well, he doesn't really fade. He shoots away at 17,000 MPH into the sunset. Like. a. BOSS. The only thing that could ruin this penultimate moment of heroism is if some useless dolt nullified all that by doing everything in their power to somehow still manage to get themselves kill- aw dammit.
So, after curling up into a pre-natal metaphor that was about as subtle as being hit in the face with a cinder block covered in burning phosphors due to her weakened body's curling up from its inability to resist the mighty gravitational pull of its own bosom, Dr. Stone proceeds to chase after everything on the International Space Station that could conceivably kill her with the enthusiasm of Mr Magoo walking through an active construction site. This is a big thing that ruins her character. I could understand mistakes. I DO NOT understand doing the exact opposite of a reasonable course of action every time. When time is of the essence, she floats around and shows off her underwear. When she's doing a precise task that requires care and focus, she rushes through it and fumbles everything for long enough that coincidence takes pity on her and throws her a bone. So, let's follow Sandra's boobs though our little whirlwind tour of the ISS, shall we? Let me see here... a little wandering about the station to waste time and bring high-speed stabby, serrated death that much closer, ignoring an obvious electrical fire sounds nice. That's something that people would do without the slightest thought, right? Maybe I should spray some water into the air and all over these sensitive instrument consoles while I float down to check the communication systems that I already know don't work, in order to talk to people that could do nothing to help me in any case because fires on a space station tend to BECOME A PROBLEM WHEN LEFT UNSUPERVISED!
So, after nearly killing herself (Damn. So close to a satisfying ending!) by failing spectacularly at using a fire extinguisher, the impact to her head caused her two functional brain cells to bump into each other and create the impulse that perhaps she should cease dawdling and get back to George Clooney's original plan of getting the duck out of fodge because there's the blazing fury of hell on the inside and an approaching metal salad shooter on the outside of the station. Well, and the vacuum of space too. Suffice it to say a number of things are poised to swiftly end the star-studded career of those magnificent boobs, and so finally some motivation occurs that resembles self-preservation. Wow, that's dangerously close to a characteristic that real human beings exhibit on a fairly regular basis. Dr. Stone had better be careful or someone might notice that there's some sort of person attached to her world-famous boobs. I mean, they've gotta be famous by now. They're visible from space!
Alright, so here's where Dr. Stone' never developing of any non-boob positive personality characteristics really starts to become a problem. Firstly, her one saving grace is that she never just broke down and cri-awww dammit she's crying now, nevermiiIIOH MY GOD THAT IS NOT HOW CRYING IN SPACE WORKS! (For reference, I cut some very creative profanities out of this part. Sorry, but I had to stay below the character limit somehow.) Okay then... Despite a whole movie worth of pissing me off being condensed into a few seconds there, the lullaby scene that followed was kind of cute and almost made her seem like a person, but nowhere near enough. You see, that's the problem with having a shabby, cardboard cutout boob-vehicle in place of where your main character is supposed to be. When it became clear that the craft was out of fuel for no adequately explained reason, probably teen space punks siphoning the tank, the Good Doctor's go-to solution was shutting down life support and dying in relative comfort to avoid being turned into space shishkabob by the approaching orgy of jagged metal. This was meant to be dramatic, or a sympathetic moment, or probably just about anything besides "Good! That bitch doesn't deserve to live. At least the cold will preserve her boobs for the archaeologists of future generations to recover. The only bad thing is I can't enjoy them because they've got some commie bastard's name plastered all over them now!" Anyway, someone on the production team thought that my preferred ending might not go over well in the international market, so George Clooney uses the force to deliver a truly legendary lucid dream bitchslap to get Doc titties to stop crapping all over his heroic sacrifice with her sniveling emo bullshit.
George Clooney's unabashed fury scares Boobs PhD. into a truly unprecedented fit of competence, causing her to successfully execute the the half-second rocket burn needed to propel her to the next tin-plated space death-trap acStone the way, because all major space objects are always located within easy visual distance of each other because science. Now then, in her competence-fueled stupor, Dr Stone' highly observant breasts remind her of her earlier painful (and apparently first ever) encounter with Newton's Third Law of motion and she uses what remains of the late George Clooney's residual masculine bravado to perform a totally boss-awesome if poorly executed extinguisher-propelled spacejump. Yes... yes I'm seeing the Russian judge giving that jump a 7.3 for degree-of-difficulty, ouch! That's going to hurt her chance at the medal... Anyway, her charmingly incompetent firefighting had already pissed away most of her propellant so she was once again ragdollized against the side of the station in another space jungle gym sequence that hearkens back to the Mr Magoo failing-to-die-despite-his-best-efforts analogy.
The next scene was one of the more realistic depictions of what would happen in this situation. "Let me climb into this foreign space capsule and I'll just- Oh fuck all the buttons are in Mandarin! Never fear I'll- Oh fuck the manual is also in Mandarin! I'd better start bashing my face against random buttons and praying to George Clooney's all-powerful spirit that this course of action results in something other than my dying horribly!" Following her breasts' keen space-faring instincts, Dr Stone successfully implements something functionally resembling the craft's descent sequence. One fiery roller coaster ride later and bam! Earth. Or rather splash... My friend and I got kind of distracted in this part talking about those stupid Ruskies and other ferinner-types that are too stupid to make a landing craft that can successfully land in the thing you have a 72% chance of hitting anyway. YEAH! 'Murica! But yeah, Dr Boobs finds a surprisingly legitimate reason to show off her namesake, those handy flotation devices get her to the surface and they all live happily ever after. Presumably. We're left to wonder if the shore she's on is populated by cannibals or something, but I'm okay with that. It lets the viewer fill in the ending. I prefer to think that she landed on the Island of Dr Moreau, thus setting the stage for a much more interesting movie.
Okay, so remember at the beginning when I said I was able to piece together the writers' intent in making Dr Stone a useless, unlikable, unrelatable, putrid psuedo-being that only tangentially resembled a human due to certain particular primary sex characteristics? Yeah, me neither. What the hell was I thinking? Anyway, what I was able to piece together by the end was that someone on the staff decided that character development was good. He wasn't wrong about that, far from it. Character development is totally good. I love character development. Sometimes I like to curl up with character development under the covers on long winter nights until our closeness chases the chill from our bodies and we can both find escape in the blissful oblivion of sleep until the glorious dawning of a new day. But once this concept was brought forth, someone pulled some Dilbert Pointy-Haired Boss logic and decided that Character Development: good means that more Character Development means more good! To accommodate this primitive perspective, the character of Breasts McChestington, Esq. needed more room to grow. That's why instead of progressing from average or at-the-very-least-recognizable human being into a hero worthy of sharing the screen with George Clooney's rugged mountain man beard, Doctor Feelgood there had to start out as the disgusting invertebrate blob that she was for most of the film. This left more potential for the precious character development and thus more movie-goodness-getting for Writer-PHB.
I guess in the end, I'm saying that I understand why they screwed the pooch on this one, but try explaining that to the pooch!
Safari into the RainFurrest
General | Posted 12 years agoThere has been a lot of uncertainty here these past few weeks, but seeing as I just spent nearly $600 on plane tickets, I guess I'm pretty darn sure about it now. And here's the part where I do the thing.
Where are you staying? -
The official overflow hotel
What day are you getting there? -
Thursday
How are you traveling?
Aeromobile. The 44-hour drive put me off a bit.
Who will you be with? -
ToraKiyoshi, Mursa, and possibly Gadget RedTips. He's stayed unsure even longer than I have..
Do you do free art? -
Have you seen my art? I couldn't conscionably charge money for it.
Do you do trades? -
I don't see why not.
Do you do commissions? -
Yes. (Yay!) Of stories. (Aww...)
Do you do badges? -
We don't need no stinking badges!
What is your gender? -
Male
How old are you? -
24
Are you Taken? -
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you.
What suits will you have? -
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I touch you? -
Stop! Hammertime. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
Can I talk to you? -
My ears work if your mouth works.
Can I buy you lots of drinks? -
Yes! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you things? -
What is with these questions? Do people not like getting free stuff or something? Weirdos.
Can I take your picture? -
If you believe that my image is of merit for some reason then yeah, sure.
Can I hug or snuggle with you? -
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. If not, well... case-by-case I guess.
How tall are you? -
Yes. (6'2" according to spotty government estimates.)
Are you nice? -
Woah, let's not go putting labels on people here. Especially using alarmist, hyperbolic terms like "nice". I'm rough around the edges usually, but I tend to get pretty sociable when I'm at a con. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
Are you cliquey? -
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you? -
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. Plus a given con leaves me with like 9000 Brazillion names to learn, so it may take me a little bit.
Do you have an artist table? -
No, my table prefers musical theater.
Do you like parties? -
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
If I see you, how should I get your attention? -
If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.) I go by my FA name, Bucephalus, in person. That's what I registered for as well. I made that name years and years ago, before the idea of meeting other furries in person had ever occurred to me, so I realize it's an unpronounceable lummox. So usually I just go with "Beau" to make it easier. If you're close enough to me "Hey you!" will probably work.
Can I hang out with you? -
Totally! I'd love to do whatever it is we're doing with you. Whoever you are and wherever it is we're doing that. I'm not much for details, ya see.
How can I find you? -
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. Otherwise, I guess my red Vibram shoes would be my most distinctive visual feature since I don't wear my uniform anymore, and I'll try to have my badge on at all times. Just picture that with a white background.
Where are you staying? -
The official overflow hotel
What day are you getting there? -
Thursday
How are you traveling?
Aeromobile. The 44-hour drive put me off a bit.
Who will you be with? -
ToraKiyoshi, Mursa, and possibly Gadget RedTips. He's stayed unsure even longer than I have..Do you do free art? -
Have you seen my art? I couldn't conscionably charge money for it.
Do you do trades? -
I don't see why not.
Do you do commissions? -
Yes. (Yay!) Of stories. (Aww...)
Do you do badges? -
We don't need no stinking badges!
What is your gender? -
Male
How old are you? -
24
Are you Taken? -
No. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that can make me a nightmare for people like you.
What suits will you have? -
Just the human one. It's not very creative, but it's got very good visibility and ventilation. Plus it's hard to argue with the price.
Can I touch you? -
Stop! Hammertime. I mean... yeah, sure I guess.
Can I talk to you? -
My ears work if your mouth works.
Can I buy you lots of drinks? -
Yes! I'm usually not much for alcohol, but 'free' is by far my favorite flavor. If you buy something for me, I would certainly be obliged to drink it.
Can I give you things? -
What is with these questions? Do people not like getting free stuff or something? Weirdos.
Can I take your picture? -
If you believe that my image is of merit for some reason then yeah, sure.
Can I hug or snuggle with you? -
If you're in a fursuit, absolutely! That's one of my favorite things. If not, well... case-by-case I guess.
How tall are you? -
Yes. (6'2" according to spotty government estimates.)
Are you nice? -
Woah, let's not go putting labels on people here. Especially using alarmist, hyperbolic terms like "nice". I'm rough around the edges usually, but I tend to get pretty sociable when I'm at a con. I really do like to meet and interact with new people at conventions, so I'll put on my best friendly face while I'm there.
Are you cliquey? -
I'm a lot more comfortable around people I know, but I only know like four people, so I just kind of hang out with whoever most of the time. Some of my favorite moments at cons have been with people I only just met that day.
Anything I should know before I try to talk to you? -
Don't be offended if I have trouble learning your name, I do that to everyone. Plus a given con leaves me with like 9000 Brazillion names to learn, so it may take me a little bit.
Do you have an artist table? -
No, my table prefers musical theater.
Do you like parties? -
Sure, I'll stop by. But I realize these days that I have never in my life found myself saying "Oh, man! I'm so glad I went to that room party!" I think there are many much more fun things to do at a con, so I may likely find other things to do.
If I see you, how should I get your attention? -
If we're in a crowded room, try yelling "FIRE!" (Seriously though, don't do that.) I go by my FA name, Bucephalus, in person. That's what I registered for as well. I made that name years and years ago, before the idea of meeting other furries in person had ever occurred to me, so I realize it's an unpronounceable lummox. So usually I just go with "Beau" to make it easier. If you're close enough to me "Hey you!" will probably work.
Can I hang out with you? -
Totally! I'd love to do whatever it is we're doing with you. Whoever you are and wherever it is we're doing that. I'm not much for details, ya see.
How can I find you? -
I've learned that wading through I giant sea of people based on a vague physical description is a pretty thankless and self-defeating task, and I wouldn't want to force that one anyone. Noting cell phone numbers back and forth and texting a meeting spot is the only method I've tried with any appreciable success rate, so I usually go with that if I want to meet someone. Otherwise, I guess my red Vibram shoes would be my most distinctive visual feature since I don't wear my uniform anymore, and I'll try to have my badge on at all times. Just picture that with a white background.
Beau does the arr-pea: Doesn't burst into flames Story at 11
General | Posted 12 years agoH'okay, so I've never done a roleplay before. Not that I'm really opposed to the idea or anything, it's just no one ever asked because I'm weird and have no friends. Well recently 
knifesharpener and I got to talking about romance and how it's awesome and how ya just don't see enough of it these days et al, and he asked if I'd like to RP and I was like "I know not of these RP's." And then he was like "These are the RPs. Let me show u dem." I really didn't know what I was doing, so I just plucked a character from one of my recent stories that I thought might be fun to play with/as and we had our two characters meet and do their thing. Nothing wild, just getting to know each other a little. It was kinda cute and a lot of fun.
I always saw the flags about how people don't want creepy comments or murry purry RPs, so I thought that there was this stigma surrounding it. I really liked the concept as he presented it to me though. "It's like playing with dolls. You take two characters, put them together and see what happens." I loved that idea because that's how I write. I put a lot of work into the characters, and then a lot of plot and dialogue just sort of writes itself. I know how each character would react in a given situation, so I just give them a bunch of situations and let them do their thing. The characters play off each other and before long I have a story.
It's one of my favorite parts of the creative process and I get kind of a rush when that happens, especially when I'm at a big block and my characters figure out a way to worm around it and help me keep going even when I feel like I've got nothing. Writing is ignominious and unrewarding at times, but that's one of the moments when it really feels magical and reminds me why it is I do this. Roleplaying is that same element, character interactions driving plot in a scene, but with different people at the helm of each character. It's a fusion of creativity that makes that same kind of magic, but with even more potential thanks to having another mind at the controls. (Huzzah! The fun has been doubled!)
I feel like this is something that I could really get into. I can't count the number of times the submission notes on an artwork or story that I like have said "This came out of an RP between me and sonicscrewdriver over the weekend." And those pieces are good, sometimes very good. Lacking in structure maybe, but absolutely worth reading. Our RP took up three hours and totaled nearly 4000 words. The time just flew by and I had a blast doing it. So if anyone out there is wondering, yes! I do Role Play!
knifesharpener and I got to talking about romance and how it's awesome and how ya just don't see enough of it these days et al, and he asked if I'd like to RP and I was like "I know not of these RP's." And then he was like "These are the RPs. Let me show u dem." I really didn't know what I was doing, so I just plucked a character from one of my recent stories that I thought might be fun to play with/as and we had our two characters meet and do their thing. Nothing wild, just getting to know each other a little. It was kinda cute and a lot of fun. I always saw the flags about how people don't want creepy comments or murry purry RPs, so I thought that there was this stigma surrounding it. I really liked the concept as he presented it to me though. "It's like playing with dolls. You take two characters, put them together and see what happens." I loved that idea because that's how I write. I put a lot of work into the characters, and then a lot of plot and dialogue just sort of writes itself. I know how each character would react in a given situation, so I just give them a bunch of situations and let them do their thing. The characters play off each other and before long I have a story.
It's one of my favorite parts of the creative process and I get kind of a rush when that happens, especially when I'm at a big block and my characters figure out a way to worm around it and help me keep going even when I feel like I've got nothing. Writing is ignominious and unrewarding at times, but that's one of the moments when it really feels magical and reminds me why it is I do this. Roleplaying is that same element, character interactions driving plot in a scene, but with different people at the helm of each character. It's a fusion of creativity that makes that same kind of magic, but with even more potential thanks to having another mind at the controls. (Huzzah! The fun has been doubled!)
I feel like this is something that I could really get into. I can't count the number of times the submission notes on an artwork or story that I like have said "This came out of an RP between me and sonicscrewdriver over the weekend." And those pieces are good, sometimes very good. Lacking in structure maybe, but absolutely worth reading. Our RP took up three hours and totaled nearly 4000 words. The time just flew by and I had a blast doing it. So if anyone out there is wondering, yes! I do Role Play!
Fair winds and following seas
General | Posted 12 years agoWell, I finally got out of the Navy. Third time's the charm I guess. I got to work and made it to morning quarters to give my proper sendoff. I'll definitely file that under the strikingly large list of 'things I thought I wouldn't care about but totally did'. Of course, that indulgence led me to make it down to personnel a minute after they'd closed for cleaning stations. So I had an hour's delay in getting started because the daily necessity of floor sweeping prevents them from just handing me some paperwork to spend the whole day doing. God, I can't wait until I can be in a place where being a nuclear engineer means that yes, you actually are above scrubbing toilets.
So, once I was done waiting for every one else to clean (You thought I was going to help? Hah! You're funny.) I went back down to get what I needed for the checkout process. There was an absolutely staggering line of people there trying to get things done, and quite a fair number of them were trying to get the thing done that I was trying to get done. Apparently the size of the "straight out of high school" crowd that enlists in July and August is quite significant and it was overtaxing the logistical systems that we use to get rid of people. We had to designate a classroom for all the separatees so that we could get all the pertinent information disseminated quickly. It made me worry because this is the type of environment where mistakes tend to happen, but really, what are my other options? Delay my end of service even further? Not happening. They've already charged me three days of leave for my present quagmire, I am not adding to that. Oh did I not mention that? Yeah, the separations clerk said "You know y'all were supposed to start terminal leave on Friday morning..." Yes, I am ACUTELY aware of that, thank you.
From there it was one long scramble around the ship to get my name off of literally everyone's lists so that I could leave unobtrusively. Everyone had different hours and policies and things they needed done, it was tough to keep it all straight after awhile. Somehow I managed to skullbash my though all that in only four hours. I suppose this is what I've been training for. "Somehow" may have involved forging some signatures, but honestly, does it really matter if I check out with Graphics Media Department or the command fitness program leader before I leave?
Naturally, by the time I finished all the necessaries, Personnel was closed for lunch. So I had an hour to kill. I thought about having one last meal aboard, but the food sucked, so I had ice cream and spent the last of my ship's charge card balance on vending machine junk. Great sendoff, though my pancreas may not forgive me for some time. I got back down there for more agonizing waiting and filling out forms and making yet another trip to the reactor office for something no one told me I needed until just then. People had started acting surprised that I was still there early in the morning, but 1430 it was wearing on me as well. In any case, I did it. I even managed to get the info that I requested about how to get the Navy Housing Authority to move my stuff.
And now I'm done. DONE done. The checkout process was kind of a microcosm of my Naval career. It was really inconvenient, involved a lot of paperwork and consumed ungodly amounts of my time, and I was too frustrated to be happy by the end of it. Interesting point though, I checked out exact day that I reported to the ship four years ago. What a ride... I can say without a doubt now that I'm going to miss this, despite how glad I am that it's over. I'm astonished with how much work I have to do now even though I've finally cast off my job. There's a lot with closing the lease and moving that needs to be done, getting ready to finally sever ties and leave the area, plus I promised my family I'd visit during this time, but really I don't want to do anything right now. Getting up in the morning and checking my e-mail seems like too much work. Seeing as I'm my boss now, I'm giving myself a day off. I'll play it by ear from there.
For those interested, my farewell address to the division went something like this:
Well, this sucked and I'm glad to be done with it, but I want you to know that you guys were a big part of what made this bearable. Some of you were part of the problem but that's cool I don't hold a grudge. I guess what I'm saying is... this was by far the best mistake I've ever made, and I'm glad that you guys were a part of it. I can't say I don't regret anything, but I don't regret everything. If I had my life to live over again, I'd probably do this, all over again. However, I have only the one life to live, so I'm going to get the hell out of here. Good luck, everyone.
So, once I was done waiting for every one else to clean (You thought I was going to help? Hah! You're funny.) I went back down to get what I needed for the checkout process. There was an absolutely staggering line of people there trying to get things done, and quite a fair number of them were trying to get the thing done that I was trying to get done. Apparently the size of the "straight out of high school" crowd that enlists in July and August is quite significant and it was overtaxing the logistical systems that we use to get rid of people. We had to designate a classroom for all the separatees so that we could get all the pertinent information disseminated quickly. It made me worry because this is the type of environment where mistakes tend to happen, but really, what are my other options? Delay my end of service even further? Not happening. They've already charged me three days of leave for my present quagmire, I am not adding to that. Oh did I not mention that? Yeah, the separations clerk said "You know y'all were supposed to start terminal leave on Friday morning..." Yes, I am ACUTELY aware of that, thank you.
From there it was one long scramble around the ship to get my name off of literally everyone's lists so that I could leave unobtrusively. Everyone had different hours and policies and things they needed done, it was tough to keep it all straight after awhile. Somehow I managed to skullbash my though all that in only four hours. I suppose this is what I've been training for. "Somehow" may have involved forging some signatures, but honestly, does it really matter if I check out with Graphics Media Department or the command fitness program leader before I leave?
Naturally, by the time I finished all the necessaries, Personnel was closed for lunch. So I had an hour to kill. I thought about having one last meal aboard, but the food sucked, so I had ice cream and spent the last of my ship's charge card balance on vending machine junk. Great sendoff, though my pancreas may not forgive me for some time. I got back down there for more agonizing waiting and filling out forms and making yet another trip to the reactor office for something no one told me I needed until just then. People had started acting surprised that I was still there early in the morning, but 1430 it was wearing on me as well. In any case, I did it. I even managed to get the info that I requested about how to get the Navy Housing Authority to move my stuff.
And now I'm done. DONE done. The checkout process was kind of a microcosm of my Naval career. It was really inconvenient, involved a lot of paperwork and consumed ungodly amounts of my time, and I was too frustrated to be happy by the end of it. Interesting point though, I checked out exact day that I reported to the ship four years ago. What a ride... I can say without a doubt now that I'm going to miss this, despite how glad I am that it's over. I'm astonished with how much work I have to do now even though I've finally cast off my job. There's a lot with closing the lease and moving that needs to be done, getting ready to finally sever ties and leave the area, plus I promised my family I'd visit during this time, but really I don't want to do anything right now. Getting up in the morning and checking my e-mail seems like too much work. Seeing as I'm my boss now, I'm giving myself a day off. I'll play it by ear from there.
For those interested, my farewell address to the division went something like this:
Well, this sucked and I'm glad to be done with it, but I want you to know that you guys were a big part of what made this bearable. Some of you were part of the problem but that's cool I don't hold a grudge. I guess what I'm saying is... this was by far the best mistake I've ever made, and I'm glad that you guys were a part of it. I can't say I don't regret anything, but I don't regret everything. If I had my life to live over again, I'd probably do this, all over again. However, I have only the one life to live, so I'm going to get the hell out of here. Good luck, everyone.
The "AC Journal is too long and is eating my page" Journal
General | Posted 12 years agoSo I typed this up last night as something of a status report/sendoff:
Well, the ship is back in port and my Anthrocon leave expires tomorrow. I know ten or twelve days is a pathetically short timespan to develop nostalgia over, but when I put on my uniform this morning, it felt very different. I'm going to miss wearing it. Never before did I think I'd say that. I spent so many long, agonizing days praying in earnest to get out of it. Yet now I find there is a sense of strength, duty and focus that comes with wearing it. It's something I'd never fully grasped until now. It makes me glad that I have such a... spirited recollection of my various trials during my service, scribed indelibly in my personal logs. I've always said that I didn't re-enlist because you can't take back a re-enlistment if you decide that it was a mistake. If you don't re-up, you can always change your mind later and extend your contract. "Later" extends all the way up to your End Of Active Service date, not 'till August for me. Hell, even beyond that. I've bought myself into two years of Inactive Ready Reserves with a bit of fine print I didn't look over too carefully. Heh, without this very striking reminder of all the bullets in the 'Con' column, suddenly encountering this sense of attachment to the uniform that I wear and the job that I do, facing the uncertainty of my future without the structure and support of the service, realizing my own lack of motivation and direction as the framework that I've built my life on thus far breaks loose all around me... well it might just be enough to give a guy like me cold feet about this decision.
I had decided to go in today because for a long time, the Captain's policy was that we'd get a three-day weekend following pull-in. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do my checkout stuff on Friday if that was a day off. That is now no longer the way things are, it seems. Couldn't determine the source of the policy change in the time I had. I'm guessing we fucked up something to do with drugs and alcohol, or women, or some combination thereof, like usual. I thought I might make the most of my time regardless. Maybe check my e-mail one last time? No. IT removed my network access. Such a shame considering that I brought a disc to burn because my ship's account had a number of things I wanted to save. I suppose it might be nice to check on the status of some of the work that I left behind in such haste two weeks ago, the responsibilities and duties I turned over? No. My Propulsion Plant Network access is also revoked. Perhaps I could say goodbye to a few old friends? No. They're all hard at work in areas that I've lost my clearance for, or exposure zones that I find myself lacking the dosimetry for. Could I get started on my checkout process? No. Personnel was closed, so the necessary paperwork was locked up out of reach. ... maybe just hang around for a few hours waiting for them to open? No. They would be closed up until, and all through the General Quarters drill that was scheduled for this afternoon. I'd have no part in the drill of course. My battlestation has been reassigned as well. I simply wouldn't be permitted to leave the ship while the drill was in progress. I've been erased and replaced across the board. I'm really not a part of this ship anymore. Well, so it seems they really can function without me. Good on ya, guys.
So I accomplished absolutely nothing with the time I spent braving the unbearable heat to make it into work on a day when I had no obligation to do so and I had to leave the ship quickly lest I risk becoming trapped there for as long as the drill took. I can't think of a better sendoff than I day where I put in a little extra effort and accomplished absolutely nothing in so doing. That's basically how my tour went as well. Well, I suppose I did manage one thing. I learned that the muster time had changed in the morning. A valuable piece of intelligence, to be sure. As apropos as missing morning quarters on my last day would be, I really want to go to quarters that one last time. There are people I want to speak to before I go and that muster might be my only chance. Perhaps I'll even have something of a sendoff address if I can think of something befitting the occasion in the interim. Thanks to the dismal failure of today's venture I'll have my hands full cramming the whole checkout process into a single day. I'm not sure it can be done. But then that's a proper sendoff as well I suppose. Throwing something potentially impossible that no one else in my division has ever attempted before at me and telling me to have it done by the end of the day. Hah! It'll be just another day at the office! Six impossible things before breakfast. I don't just believe them, I make them happen!
We, the unwilling
led by the unknowing
are doing the impossible
for the ungrateful.
We have done so much
for so long, with so little,
we are now qualified to do anything
with nothing.
― Konstantin Josef Jireček
I am an engineer. As such my vocabulary contains quite a stunning variety of words.
"Impossible" is not among them.
And of course I went back in and tried to checkout again today. Only to find that yesterday's General Quarters drill was to be followed up today by General Quarters II: General Quarters Harder. I just barely escaped getting trapped on the ship all day by using my new First Class powers. Don't know if I'll be able to get back aboard today to actually accomplish anything thanks to the ceremony scheduled this afternoon. Looks like I get another weekend in the uniform. Knowing the Navy, Monday will be General Quarters III: Never Die Again Tomorrow Forever.
Oh, Navy... clearly your feelings for me run deep. Deeper than I ever imagined. But if you love something, you have to let it go.
Well, the ship is back in port and my Anthrocon leave expires tomorrow. I know ten or twelve days is a pathetically short timespan to develop nostalgia over, but when I put on my uniform this morning, it felt very different. I'm going to miss wearing it. Never before did I think I'd say that. I spent so many long, agonizing days praying in earnest to get out of it. Yet now I find there is a sense of strength, duty and focus that comes with wearing it. It's something I'd never fully grasped until now. It makes me glad that I have such a... spirited recollection of my various trials during my service, scribed indelibly in my personal logs. I've always said that I didn't re-enlist because you can't take back a re-enlistment if you decide that it was a mistake. If you don't re-up, you can always change your mind later and extend your contract. "Later" extends all the way up to your End Of Active Service date, not 'till August for me. Hell, even beyond that. I've bought myself into two years of Inactive Ready Reserves with a bit of fine print I didn't look over too carefully. Heh, without this very striking reminder of all the bullets in the 'Con' column, suddenly encountering this sense of attachment to the uniform that I wear and the job that I do, facing the uncertainty of my future without the structure and support of the service, realizing my own lack of motivation and direction as the framework that I've built my life on thus far breaks loose all around me... well it might just be enough to give a guy like me cold feet about this decision.
I had decided to go in today because for a long time, the Captain's policy was that we'd get a three-day weekend following pull-in. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do my checkout stuff on Friday if that was a day off. That is now no longer the way things are, it seems. Couldn't determine the source of the policy change in the time I had. I'm guessing we fucked up something to do with drugs and alcohol, or women, or some combination thereof, like usual. I thought I might make the most of my time regardless. Maybe check my e-mail one last time? No. IT removed my network access. Such a shame considering that I brought a disc to burn because my ship's account had a number of things I wanted to save. I suppose it might be nice to check on the status of some of the work that I left behind in such haste two weeks ago, the responsibilities and duties I turned over? No. My Propulsion Plant Network access is also revoked. Perhaps I could say goodbye to a few old friends? No. They're all hard at work in areas that I've lost my clearance for, or exposure zones that I find myself lacking the dosimetry for. Could I get started on my checkout process? No. Personnel was closed, so the necessary paperwork was locked up out of reach. ... maybe just hang around for a few hours waiting for them to open? No. They would be closed up until, and all through the General Quarters drill that was scheduled for this afternoon. I'd have no part in the drill of course. My battlestation has been reassigned as well. I simply wouldn't be permitted to leave the ship while the drill was in progress. I've been erased and replaced across the board. I'm really not a part of this ship anymore. Well, so it seems they really can function without me. Good on ya, guys.
So I accomplished absolutely nothing with the time I spent braving the unbearable heat to make it into work on a day when I had no obligation to do so and I had to leave the ship quickly lest I risk becoming trapped there for as long as the drill took. I can't think of a better sendoff than I day where I put in a little extra effort and accomplished absolutely nothing in so doing. That's basically how my tour went as well. Well, I suppose I did manage one thing. I learned that the muster time had changed in the morning. A valuable piece of intelligence, to be sure. As apropos as missing morning quarters on my last day would be, I really want to go to quarters that one last time. There are people I want to speak to before I go and that muster might be my only chance. Perhaps I'll even have something of a sendoff address if I can think of something befitting the occasion in the interim. Thanks to the dismal failure of today's venture I'll have my hands full cramming the whole checkout process into a single day. I'm not sure it can be done. But then that's a proper sendoff as well I suppose. Throwing something potentially impossible that no one else in my division has ever attempted before at me and telling me to have it done by the end of the day. Hah! It'll be just another day at the office! Six impossible things before breakfast. I don't just believe them, I make them happen!
We, the unwilling
led by the unknowing
are doing the impossible
for the ungrateful.
We have done so much
for so long, with so little,
we are now qualified to do anything
with nothing.
― Konstantin Josef Jireček
I am an engineer. As such my vocabulary contains quite a stunning variety of words.
"Impossible" is not among them.
And of course I went back in and tried to checkout again today. Only to find that yesterday's General Quarters drill was to be followed up today by General Quarters II: General Quarters Harder. I just barely escaped getting trapped on the ship all day by using my new First Class powers. Don't know if I'll be able to get back aboard today to actually accomplish anything thanks to the ceremony scheduled this afternoon. Looks like I get another weekend in the uniform. Knowing the Navy, Monday will be General Quarters III: Never Die Again Tomorrow Forever.
Oh, Navy... clearly your feelings for me run deep. Deeper than I ever imagined. But if you love something, you have to let it go.
AC2013: Why can't I do everything at the same time?
General | Posted 12 years agoJeebus... I don't even know where to start. Alright so, the Anthrahconns...
I didn't very much appreciate having to rush through what was effectively my last day in the Navy. My friend AceFox27 wanted to leave straight from work, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to make that happen. Naturally I was coming off my duty day and I just stood a 6-hour watch in the early morning. I had a lot of things to take care of too, like printing off a copy of my novel while I still have government office resources to abuse. That was interesting. I knew that I had quite a bit written, but that perspective changed a bit when I ran all of it off the printer and it filled up a 2" binder.
I had to mow lawn too, which never happened because it just would NOT stop raining ALL WEEK. So I had to call up a landscaping service to do it while I was away. They said they'd get to it as soon as they could, which could be while as they were very busy. Apparently after it rained for forty days and forty nights the sun came down to teabag the entire state for the rest of ever. So now the humidity is 9000% and the whole state has a big patch of inhospitable marshland surrounding their house that they want someone else to deal with. A week later I come back to find out it's still not done, totally kneecapping my entire reason for calling them in the first place. Also there's trash piled up everywhere because no one else that lives here seems to understand how public waste management works. Being responsible is hard...
So anyway, day one very effectively proved something that I already knew. Arriving a day early is a good idea, arriving two days early is fucking retarded. I probably spent a cumulative hour out of that day giving him shit for that.
"Man, we're just sitting around in the lobby and there's like, nobody here at all."
"I know right? If only at some point someone had told you that getting here 50 years before the con started was a fucking idiotic plan and told you not to do it. Yes if only there were such a wise and sensible person involved in this decision-making process we might've been spared this!"
I wasn't really mad, I just like making fun of him, especially when he's the one complaining that none of his friends are here yet. We were hanging out in the lobby in our uniforms and a pilot came by to say hello. Naturally, the fun question came up.
"So, what brings you into town?"
"We're here for the convention."
"... the aviation convention?"
"... no."
"Don't tell me that you guys are furries..."
"Okay. I won't tell you that."
Good stuff. In any case, Ace did manage to work out a room for me that night, which was the only reason I agreed to go so stupid early. It was one of those clown-car rooms where they were putting nine people into a double because none of them have money and they're just going to party all night anyway. Fortunately arriving stupid-early isn't popular and the first night had "only" five people in there. I do like staying with furries though, they're always so willing to help people out when they're in a tough spot, even people they barely know.
When
clemfox showed up with the reservations I gave her $60 for the night, a rough stab at my share, and she said she couldn't accept that much. That right there is a big sign that you found good people. When we tried to check in to the room, she found that her bank card was still locked due to some earlier fraud that she thought she had resolved. All the other tenants had already paid her through the bank, so they couldn't put up the cost of the room either.
I've always thought the silly little cash rewards card I got from Navy Federal looked like baby's first credit card and I'd never really use it for much at all. I thought the $3000 spending limit they offered me was rather insulting, but in this scenario it meant that I was the only one with the necessary credit margin to make sure we weren't homeless. Since I was able to help, I offered. I waited until Clementine was done fighting with her bank's customer service line and told her that if she needed me to buy time to get this sorted out.
"Wait, what are you saying?"
"If you need me to buy time, I will. If I put this card on the counter, they'll say 'Welcome to the Westin, enjoy your stay!' and you'll have as much time as you need to sort this out."
"I couldn't ask you to do that."
"You didn't. The power of capitalism does not wait to be called to action."
Since by this time, they were starting to ask us to clear out of the drop-off zone out front and she wasn't getting anywhere with the bank, she agreed. It stung a bit that the cost of the 6-day reservation was over $900 plus deposit and incidentals, but it was better than everyone being stuck in the lobby with a giant pile of luggage. If you're keeping track, which by this point I most certainly was, in rough numbers, my con startup expenses on my statement looked a lot like this:
$575 Pre-existing balance
$180 Lawn service
$135 Oil change and car maintenance
$80 food
$60 gas/travel
$70 Parking
$550 Omni reservations
$140 Omni Deposit
$900 Westin reservations
$90 Westin Deposit
That left me with a $220 margin for the rest of the con. Urf... good thing I'm good at spending hours in the Dealers' Den and somehow spending no money. Apparently I've been practicing for this very moment. I'm really glad I stuck my neck out though. Clem still hasn't worked out her differences with the bank, so this could have potentially been a very unpleasant weekend for a lot of people. It feels pretty good to save the day. Ace wouldn't have made it here without me. Everyone would be literally stuck out in the street without me. I's A Hero! They asked me if the extra delay was going to be a problem for me. Not really. It doesn't cost me anything until the bill posts at the end of the month. I believe that's what it says next to "credit" in the dictionary: "Spending money you don't have but can totally come up with by the 30th."
One of the things that stuck me about the fandom early on is that it's not really a Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous. The amount of moaning and panhandling on Furaffinity and the like had made me wary of this fact at first. And yet, every furry I've met in person has been the stalwart sort that wouldn't take money even if it were offered. Well, except for Ace, he still owes me like $600, but he's still good people. I had to shove money into the hands of a friend of mine who was moving to Nebraska to become an Air Force officer, even though he would never have made it to his new job without it. I've known people with very legitimate reasons as to why they can't find work at the moment that refuse to go on unemployment because they don't need or deserve the help. "It's not my money. They took it from someone who has a job. I'm not going to steal to support myself." It's a beautiful thing. That demographic gulf has been one of the many things that has made me something of an odd man out, what with all this "responsibility" nonsense and my steady, relatively lucrative job. Perhaps I'll fit in better later on when I'm a college student.
So anyway I spent the day hanging out with Ace, Clem, Yazoo, K2, Rashia and anyone else that happened to filter through the rubber room during that time. We got to the hotel pool before it turned into con soup, so that was nice. There was tequila, and of course my gut instinct was to refuse since I know tequila is like a punch in the balls for your tongue. I changed my mind when they said that the little 20oz. bottle in front of me had cost over a hundred dollars. I'm well aware that tequila is not a particularly consistent drink. Scotch, gin, vodka... a lot of things give you a good idea of what you're getting into without needing a whole lot of extra info. Tequila runs the gamut from "the best thing that's ever happened to my mouth" all the way down to "I would rather drive staples in underneath my fingernails than let that caustic demon piss near any of my orifices ever again." So bearing in mind that I was being offered something very expensive for free I went for it. "Free" is my favorite flavor after all.
It went down real smooth and I'd almost say I enjoyed it. Everyone was impressed that I didn't want salt or lime. That's what you use to desensitize your mouth to the onslaught of high-reactant industrial solvent that they sell as cheap tequila. The good stuff doesn't need any of that. The 1800 they had wasn't quite a pleasant experience, but I made it through that okay. Also two double-shots of tequila when you haven't eaten for 8 hours serves as a nice science experiment in how quickly alcohol is transferred to the bloodstream. I'm having a great time you guys! Oh, let me pick up this brick that just hit me in the face. Hm, there's a note attached to it that says "YUR DRUNK NOW HURRR!" Wonder what that-hruubluwugghuh...
The good news was I stayed hydrated so burned all that off just as quickly as it came on, so I didn't make an ass of myself or get a huge hangover or anything. Ace was wiped out from the trip so he just went to bed. Yeah, all that office work now that he's a Yeoman and riding shotgun in the car and asking to smoke or go to the bathroom every five minutes must've really worn him out. Whatevs, I still had fun and got to bed at a rather reasonable hour. I had not much else to do and I knew that sleep was going to become scarce in the coming days.
All the head-butting with Ace really highlighted a fundamental difference in our personalities and reasons for attending. I don't think he goes to any of the convention events. He didn't even do the fursuit parade this year. It made me a little mad that he didn't get back to me about it because I totally would've guest-starred in his suit again this year had I known. Again, not something I can legitimately be all that mad about. No one's obligated to share their suit with me. Still, near as I can tell his days are filled with booze, sushi, room parties, hanging out and crippling sleep deprivation. I really didn't see the appeal. The way I looked at the schedule, every minute had three things I wanted to be at, once the convention actually started anyway. I couldn't imagine not trying to do ALL the things all the time. Still, he seemed quite adamant about it.
"You're totally doing Anthrocon wrong, dude. Get out there and talk to someone. Meet awesome people and have fun with them. You'll have the time of your life, I guarantee it."
Much as I have great love for the writing panels in a practical sense of learning how to refine my craft and have great fun doing them, I'll admit that writers tend to be a quiet and introspective crowd, as befitting their chosen artform. We all just kind of ghost through there and then break up once the panel is over. It was something that I had always thought a bit odd, so I kept his words under advisement as I made those always-difficult decisions about where to be and when during those far-too-scarce hours of the convention proper. I did wander about a bit, managed to say hi to
Alty, who was killing some time in the lobby after his bags had been lost on the flight in. He wasn't having the best day ever, but it was still nice to see someone whose name I recognized.
The benefits of an early arrival became more clear Wednesday, when the lack of crowds and foot traffic allowed me to catch up with
FastTrack37d, a favorite artist who I was very excited to meet. He was a personable British gentlemen that still seemed a bit worn from crossing the pond. Our conversation actually started with him wondering exactly why it was that I was so excited to meet him. I didn't necessarily come prepared to answer that, but I was working my way through that when he greeted his friend as he walked over to us.
"Oh hey
EasySpark, lookit! I've got a fan! Fancy that, eh?"
Naturally EasySpark was another favored artist of mine. I didn't even know he was going to be there. He was quite happy to have someone to chat with as well, so we all got to know each other a little bit. I learned that Easy has been in the game a lot longer and he's been showing FastTrack the ropes, leading to his meteoric rise in popularity. I don't think I mentioned the comparison to them, but they seemed a lot like Holmes and Dr. Watson. FastTrack was the prodigious but eccentric genius with his own mind pulling him in a thousand directions at once. And then EasySpark was the calm and determined professional trying to keep this lightning in a jar so that his best friend's talent can be used to its full potential. I can't count the number of times he said "We've gotta go. FastTrack has work to do." to us, even though FastTrack was the one out smoking like a chimney or trying to learn how to play guitar from a homeless man or whatever.
The two of them had to go before long. They had many things to do as they had come here for reasons of commerce and not leisure. Still, they asked if I'd come by the Artists' Alley later to visit and I agreed. After the lunch/dinner whatever-you-call-it when you eat at 3:30 PM, I got a message from lionkingcmsl saying that he'd arrived and was staying at the Omni as well. After I wrapped things up at the Westin I stopped by and had the chance to meet him and his friend Kamau, a retired Chaplain, in person. More interesting conversation and catching up to be had there. I was wondering where the time went by the end of it. I had enough time to get all my stuff moved into my new room and then it was bedtime. Again, stocking up for the drought that was sure to come.
Thursday I bumped into LK again, and with
McClaw we made a little Cross-Time Cafe circle down in the Westin lobby. Probably could've chosen a less obtrusive spot, but good talk nonetheless. Lots of machines and technical stuff, befitting the audience. After that I spent approximately forever in the registration line. I was disappointed that I couldn't find someone to wait in line with this year. Last time 
PattheCat and I passed the time chatting and enjoying some "real coke taste" (mix drinks in innocuous bottles). Still, I got my notepad out of the car first, so I got some writing done in the 3.5 hour wait.
A lot of people bitch about the line, but it's not really something you can blame on the con. You can't exactly fault them for being too popular, as that's very much an indication that they're doing something right. You can skip the line by pre-registering or sponsoring, which were kept out of reach of me by the Navy's chronically poor scheduling and my sudden financial glass ceiling. And having worked with untold dozens of those 'deceptively-simple yet cost-fifty-brazillion-dollars' machines I can safely say that the Anthrocon Inc. Official Badge Printing Machine™ is certainly in that class of device. Getting another one or risking its safety by asking too much of it are both expensive and unwise. Really though, my time wasn't worth much right then, so I was okay with the wait.
After that I hung out at the rubber room some and went swimming with them again. Someone at the pool had this little bluetooth-controlled rolling ball there. It was a simple thing that blinked and lit up, and then rolled in whatever direction it was commanded. It was watertight, so it even industriously paddled its way across the pool a few times. Cute little widget, it was. It may have been specifically designed to entertain furries, as racing it or chasing it about the pool was great fun. The red error light that it gives off when it gets stuck is rather satisfying to see when you went to great lengths to catch it.
We ended up getting locked out for a little while afterwards as the room had many more occupants than keys and no one was home. That was partly on me as mine had stayed in my pocket when I changed into my swim trunks. Earlier the same thing had happened to my wallet when we went to eat and someone had to cover my bill, so I was clearly not learning from my mistakes. Still, I probably could've thought of a better way to summarize the situation than: "Dammit! Every time I take off my pants everything just goes straight to hell!"
I don't know how long I spent waiting or trying to get in there since I didn't have a watch either, but it didn't feel unreasonably long. It was actually kind of a nice lull amidst the mounting urgency that the start of the convention was bringing on. After I got changed, the Inspector and the Good Doctor had finished setting up their table at the Artist Alley. I and Alty met up with them and we went out for pizza before we all turned in. I considered watching the fireworks that were meant to be happening, but I was pretty tired and it was raining, so once again I favored sleep.
So I started Friday with a writing panel that was during another thing I wanted to be at and also ran long into the opening ceremonies, after which I jumped into the next writing panel already in progress and then literally ran back across to the Westin to make the start of the transformation panel on time. That panel burned up six of Kyell's "Ten Ways to Improve Your Writing" that I also jumped into the middle of. I had the gap between 1535 and 1600 to stuff something edible in my face before getting to "Charades Impossible" an absolutely hilarious event in which fursuit performers have to act out the most merciless and cruel charades clues ever inflicted on someone. I'm pretty sure it qualified as animal cruelty. Nothing can quite compare to the unique humor of watching a white wolf try to act out "Mount Kilimanjaro" or a Skunk silently trying to prompt someone to say "Toronto, Canada". A sampling of the other clues included: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Uranium235", "The Jackson Five", "Cards Against Humanity", "The Western Black Rhino", and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." For some truly baffling reason, none of the contestants were successful.
At the end of Charades, I again asked the foolish question "Is there a writing panel in progress now?" Why of course there was! So I went to that. Afterwards was the first chance I had to check out the Dealers' Den and Artist Alley. It was also at that time that they closed. Still, I said that I'd visit my new friends at their table, so I did, and they invited me to dinner. Now, dinner was naturally going to make me miss like 30 other events, since the evening schedule was even more packed, but this was the only time they had free, and would ever have free because they had to work every day. I decided to go with them for that reason, and because refusing would've been rather rude really.
Fann, a flash animator and Foley artist/musician whose work I was casually familiar with, had joined the group by that time, so I got to make nice with him while we waited in line for FastTrack to get his money.
So we worked logistics of getting everyone's stuff put away and putting together a dinner group that also included Rampack,
TaurinFox and like four people I don't think I ever even learned the names of. A small group of us went first to hold down the reservations while everyone else got their affairs in order. We were working through Fann being Canadian and realizing he was underage here when we tried to order beer when he realized that his phone had died before he could tell Taurin Fox where we were eating. Restarting it, fiddling with the battery and various occult rituals had failed to get us the phone number we needed to relay the info. My time to shine I guess.
I came up with the idea of putting the SIM card into a working phone. That went great until he asked for my phone and realized it was from two decades before SIM cards became a thing, and asked for EasySpark's phone and realized that it was an iPhone and thus told all other technology of dissimilar origins to go fuck right off, and asked for FastTrack's phone and realized it doesn't exist. My and his phone were both LGs, but without a time portal that wasn't of any use. They use the same voltage, but a different generation of battery with a different terminal configuration. In the end, opening up the battery door to Fann's phone and flipping my battery upside down before jamming it perpendicularly into the back of the phone and onto the terminal contacts somehow did something other than fail horribly.
I got the number into my PDA (the notepad) and then re-powered my phone to contact Taurin Fox. We totally win at all the engineering forever. I thought it was hilarious because trying to make decades-old technology jump through hoops of fire for no adequately explained reason and making them do things that should be impossible under an unreasonable time crunch with woefully inadequate technical documentation and only a general idea of the principles of operation at work was what I just spent six years doing in the Navy. So yeah, when you get home, try to get data from an Seagate external hard drive and display it on a graphing calculator using the Ethernet port on the back of a DSL modem with only a set of stereo headphones and a reel of unterminated CAT-5 cable. That is an accurate simulation of my job.
The restaurant was a craft beer and gourmet burger joint that was actually really good. It was called the 'Sharp Edge Bistro' and it gets a hearty recommendation from me. For about ten solid minutes the only things out of FastTrack's mouth were various attempts to convey to the waiter "This is not enough beer. Bring out more beer immediately, preferably sooner." To the waiter's credit he did get some beer piled up in front of him eventually. It was kind of interesting to look around the table at the crowd we had gathered. We had several digital artists, a couple traditional artists, a musician/Foley artist, a flash animator, a 3D animator, and several combinations thereof. I realized that since I was a writer, with our powers combined we could probably summon Captain Planet. The only bad news is that I'm pretty sure I'd be "Heart".
The TV was playing some loud and distracting Nascar event. When I mentioned this, the waiter asked if we'd like the channel changed. I was just being a jackass when I said "Sure, Cartoon Network!" and then he actually did it. Which was, of course, 5000 times more distracting because EHMAHGEERDCartoonNetwork! It was really funny when a second table featuring a big group of furries sat down with every one of them saying "Oh Camp Laslo I love this show!" or some permutation thereof. An astonishingly universal creeping realization went around the table that became the subject of conversation for quite some time.
"Holy shit, you guys. You realize that we're all adults?"
"I know, right? We like... have jobs and make money and stuff."
"We booked hotel rooms and got plane tickets and drove cars and all that."
"I own a gun."
"I split fucking atoms on a billion dollar warmachine every day."
"I have kids!"
"How is it that we are all allowed to be a part of society and do these things when we have nothing near the maturity required for any of them?"
"How has this not destroyed the world already?"
"How does society still work when we're a part of it?"
I think at some point everyone realizes that you don't go through some grand, sweeping transformation as you mature. You don't become an adult, you just are one all of a sudden, and no one ever stops to explain that to you. It was kind of fun to have a group of 10 people come to that conclusion all at the same time.
FastTrack, EasySpark, Fann and I went back to the Omni to hang out for awhile. Fann's room was crowded, so we went to mine. Big perk of being by yourself is you get a lot of control over the atmosphere and usability of your room. Almost made it worth the cost. Almost. We chatted a lot and shared stories and experiences. Apparently FastTrack has made enough from his art to move to California, and is doing so as we speak. By the way, at this point, he still wasn't convinced that he is a talented and extremely prolific artist. We had to bust out that Furaffinity popularity tracker gizmo to prove it to him. In any case, somehow learning happened, as Fann was starting to help FastTrack branch into animation. That's another area where I'm like 'lolwut', but it was interesting regardless. We decided to break it up before it was tomorrow. There were con events going on at that time, but I was literally sitting on my bed already. A tough position to convince oneself to leave from, particularly when tomorrow starts so early.
The next day was not as densely populated, but I did have to haul myself out at 0730 and get my uniform on for the MilFurs breakfast. Lion King was there, and we bantered back and forth for a little while before I realized that he legitimately didn't recognize me. I was surprised at how common that was. A lot of people who saw me in uniform didn't recognize me after I changed, and vice versa. I guess it really is a pretty drastic difference. Knifesharpener said it makes me look older, a lot older. Not sure if that's a compliment, but it's a thing that happened. Some say that they might think that they recognize me, but my behavior throws them off. Apparently I act completely different in uniform. Not that unreasonable if you think about it. As I told so many: "You're a different person in your costume, and I'm a different person in mine."
So anyway, there was another writing panel to get to, and after that I was headed back to my room to change. That was when I got the news that Amon was going to be at
Rukis' booth in the Dealers' Den. Amon is a character from 'Red Lantern', a comic that I'm a big fan of. This put me in a difficult spot.
"Did you know that Amon is going to be at Rukis' booth around lunchtime?"
"No! Why did you wait until now to tell me this?"
"What's the problem?"
"Because now I have to go there and I really should change first but I might not have time. You're pitting me against Naval Regulations and that's not fair!"
And so I was at the Dealers' Den in uniform. Amon wasn't there yet, but fortunately I hadn't missed him. I talked with Rukis as well as I could whilst dodging out of the way of people who actually had money. She looked to be doing a brisk business from what I could see. She was very excited to hear that I liked her comic and was really quite personable despite already looking like the con was wearing on her a bit. It's always wonderful to see someone so proud of their work, and that so genuinely enjoys what they do. I'm a little jealous of that, to be honest. Having an enjoyably job is a pretty foreign concept to me. I still can't adequately describe what it's like to look at someone who looks like they've been on the wrong side of a zombie plague outbreak and hear "Oh I'm so excited to hear that! I can't believe someone that's actually in the Navy likes my comic, that's so awesome!" Red Lantern features sailing ships and naval battles and the like, so my seal of approval meant a great deal to her.
I came back there a few times, and attracted attention in so doing apparently. Someone asked me if I liked Red Lantern later in the day.
"Have we met? I mean, yes, yes I do. That question is being asked with inordinate frequency, what's the deal?"
"Oh, one of my friends tweeted about this Navy guy at Rukis' booth that was super excited to meet Amon. I figured, what are the odds?"
"Ah, so good to hear I've been keeping a low profile."
I stuck around in the Den so that I would be there for my photo op. I met
Angrboda while I was there and talked for quite some time. I ended up with something I hadn't really expected, career advice. I mentioned that I was looking at RPI and she said that she had some friends who had gone there. It was only a few minutes before they showed up, coincidentally enough. Throwing a big group of people at me is a great way to make me suck at names and now I feel terrible for not remembering. I know that 
Taki was one of them and one went by "spark". There was also the girl with a truly righteous cowbell around her neck that I can't place at all. I'll have to ask around and see if I can reconstruct that event, especially seeing as it may have direct relevance to my future.
Angrboda said that I was welcome to attend a Transformation Art Jam that was happening that night. Another tough decision, but that night was spoken for. There was Kage's Story Time which I'd really like to see, and Kyell Gold's novel writing panel, which I had to HAD to go to, and the standing invitation to dinner after the Alley closed. I felt bad for missing it, as it sounded like fun and I didn't get another chance to see Angrboda the rest of the con.
By then though, I spied my target and went to get my picture taken with Amon. I actually caught him just as he was about to leave for the fursuit parade, but he held back for me. My camera chose a truly perfect time to flame out due to a bad memory card. Fortunately someone nearby that went by 'Bowser' had a working camera and he e-mailed the photos to me. Lucky save, there. I'm very grateful to you, wherever you are.
I had a lot of people I knew through FA that I had been trying to meet. That scenario has been the first time in my life I genuinely wished I had a smartphone. Without one, I couldn't use the Twitters to track people's location, couldn't check FA updates either, and it was hilarious how many people just went with. "Oh yeah! I was at the Dealers' Den an hour ago. On the off chance I'm still there, maybe you could comb through the 2000 people who are in there to find me based on this vague physical description! See you there!" Oh, good. I'm sure there won't be too many "Pale skinny white guy with jeans and a backpack" in there... Even though I was wearing what had to be the most conspicuous outfit in the place I realized the hilarious futility of this effort. I gave up on that pretty quick and just noted everyone my cell number.
I successfully found Nevir like this and we met up at the zoo after our respective panels were over. He's a musician that I follow and was very excited to meet me. A few of his friends came by the table as well and we had a grand old time. I mentioned that I didn't remember the last thing I ate and he produced half a Subway sandwich from somewhere and gave it to me. Real lifesaver, that. I didn't have any other chances to eat in the near future. Of course I ran off again, but I promised to stay in touch. That was on me of course, as it's not very helpful when someone asks what your plans are and the only answer you have is "BLAWAGH! ALL the things!"
So, my questions burned up about 25 minutes worth of Kyell Gold's noveling panel, as well they should have. It ran a little long and I got out of there hoping to get in touch with FastTrack again. Indeed I did and we hung out at Fann's room for awhile. In there I met LanHao, an upstart transformation and general sketch artist whose work was new to me. Turned out that he was originally from Western New York also, so we've got something of a connection there. Circumstances knocking me about as they were, I had only a bare minimum of time with him, but we still got along famously. Turns out he was a part of Angrboda's little circle. One that I do hope to get in touch with someday. Our group powwow there was cut off by the realization that it was half-past-tomorrow and we needed sleep to live. In that vein, if there was one thing I could say to describe Anthrocon in a sentence it would have to be "Oh thank God I've run out of awesome things to do I can finally go to bed."
If you've been paying attention you'll note that I got suckered into spending a whole day of the con in uniform. And if you haven't been paying attention then go get some coffee or something. I didn't spend all day writing this for you to ignore me, asshole. Anyways, that attire prompted some mixed responses. Just like last year, a lot of people were really enthusiastic about it. They wanted to hear stories from me or tell their own, thank me for serving, or just remark on how what I do is awesome. There's nothing like spending a few minutes correcting the saluting posture of a silver fox to brighten your day.
There were also a handful of people who did the right thing, that is to say, chastise me for wearing an unauthorized uniform in such a ridiculous location. I felt uneasy about that part of it at times, but I just really didn't want to give it up. That's not an easy crowd to stand out in and the Navy is really my only hook in that regard. This was my last chance to say that I was indeed in the Navy when people remarked on how good my cosplay was.
It also led me to an experience that I'll take to my grave. Somehow in all the din and insanity in the hotel lobby, I heard a woman ask: "Do you want to pet the kitty, hon?" Not an unusual thing really. Some of the hotel's "normal" guests really enjoy the con and the unique opportunities it offers. What was unusual was what I heard after I had started to walk away.
"I wanna see the soldier!" What. No. There's no way-
"Oh, well hello there." Good, I managed some words, now remember to breathe in. I don't believe it. I have more appeal than a thousand life-sized, talking stuffed animals! This. Is not possible. I'm really glad that he's small so I have a non-effeminate reason for dropping to my knees because I don't think I can stand anymore.
"My daddy used to be a soldier."
"Oh, really? What was his job?" 'Daddy... Used to'? Oh dear. He's... here with just his mom...
"He was in Iraq."
"Y-yeah..." No. NO! OhGodohGOD I can NOT HANDLE THIS!
"... now he's-" AHHHHHHH! "a pilot."
"Ah... that's good." GUHARGH! Heart. Start beating again. Dammit. Need... blood to move...
The other things that he said escape me now. I was busy having apoplexy and trying to not turn inside out. I gathered that his daddy was a commercial pilot now and had been in town for that aviation convention. He was just busy at the moment.
"Thank you so much." She said as she collected her child.
"Of course... no problem." Now if you'll excuse me I have to go puke up the mealy sludge that used to be all of my organs.
The takeaway from that, other than the fact that jumping to conclusions will get you in trouble, was that from that little encounter I experienced approximately ALL the feels ever. A month before I get out is a hell of a time to find out that I'm so passionate and invested in my service to the armed forces. They told me this day was coming, but I really thought that I'd be filling out for my AARP membership before that.
One thing that made the financial gut-punch of booking a King room by myself kind of worth it was having a quiet place all to yourself to pass out in when everything was all done for the day. I'm certain that was a big part of what let me keep my higher brain functions while everyone else ran themselves into the ground. It was always pretty funny. I'd go to bed just because I logically knew I needed to. I was too jazzed on con-meth to calm down or feel tired at any point. Every night I laid down thinking "Well this is stupid I'm not even sleepy or anyth- oh it's 0930 I'd better get up I have a thousand more things to do."
Naturally every good day starts with a writing panel, and this was actually my last one. There were still a couple left, but I brushed them off because this whole "human interaction" thing I had going was working out pretty well for me. I got a text from
Zennithm and met him just an hour or two before he had not leave. Not much of a contact, but some things can't be helped. Still, I was really glad I caught up to him. It was worth it just for the fact that we went to the fursuit dance competition finals together. That's something it never would've crossed my mind to go to, but he offered, so why not? I was absolutely knocked on my ass by the performance these guys put on. There is an utterly outrageous and mind-boggling amount of talent on display up there. Such precision, such rhythm, power and agility, such reckless disregard for one's personal safety, and all while effectively blindfolded, wearing a restrictive carpet over their entire body and boxing gloves on all four limbs. Fucking phenomenal.
After that, another ping, this time from
Voxian. He and his better half, so to speak, 
CatNamedFish, were in the Den and also wanted to meet me. Fantastic news, as this was a chance I had missed last year. Vox has been a fan of my work for quite some time and it was a joy to make this connection successfully. We talked adamantly for much longer than we should have whilst standing in the middle of the Den's traffic lane. Fish had to run off after awhile, an obligation I could hardly call myself unsympathetic to. Vox and I found ourselves a better place to chat. I talked at length about my in-progress novel, but only because he asked me to. Nevir did the same thing, actually. It was a real boost for my excitement about the project. I'm sure I'll be writing like a fiend once I'm done burning up hours and hours trying to chronicle Anthrocon. So, another friend, another writing contact, and another reason I was so stupid for not dropping everything to find all these people sooner.
After that, another Artist's Alley cleanup and another dinner with a big troupe of people. FastTrack turned out to be the highest-grossing artist there in the Alley. The ever-expanding brick of cash he was dragging around was going a long way towards convincing him that perhaps he is indeed a popular and successful artist like I've been telling him this whole time. Considering that a months' pay for me would buy precisely one sequence commission from him, I'd say he's doing alright for himself.
Anyways, there were cab rides and such on the way to get everyone's stuff in order before we went to dinner. On one of them I lost my eyeglasses. This led to me wasting half the evening looking for them and the other half looking like a twat wearing my sunglasses everywhere. I still could function okay because they're ground to my prescription, but that put a bit of a damper on my mood and made me really preoccupied the rest of the time.
Everyone really hated the Italian place we went to, I wasn't too passionately moved in either direction, but they did charge a bit much for some outstandingly average food. Regardless, we split the party to make our way back and it took a bit to pull back together. The con was over by then and it was quite late at night. I wandered about the Zoo a bit after I had given up the search I couldn't get a response from anyone for about half an hour, including Ace. I had checked out, so I didn't really have any place to go either. No room, no friends, no glasses, no intel... it was not good times. No comms with Ace was particularly problematic because I didn't know when he planned to leave. That was a big deal since I didn't have a place to sleep Sunday night if indeed that was the plan. And, to a lesser extent, it was a big deal because Ace actually has to go on the underway while I don't, so if he wasn't back on time the MPs would come after him.
The former was my problem, and the latter was not, so I set about finding somewhere to chill while my crew got together and also possibly spend the night. I found both with Nevir upstairs. They were cleaning up in his room and had some leftover Jager to offer. They were going to toss it anyway, and well, free is still my favorite flavor, even if warm Jager tastes like used transaxle fluid. I made it through a few ounces before giving up on it, which helped with the nerves of all the awesome things suddenly going tragically wrong.
Finally I had the sense to look outside in the smoking area for Ace, where he is about every 20 minutes. His phone had died and he did indeed plan on staying there Sunday night. That would've irked me another time, but as it was, there was plenty I wanted to do, and people started showing up about that time so I got back to it. I spent some more time with the old crew watching them art at things, as they do.
Aquacoon did an absolutely darling piece for FastTrack that was just bursting with adorableness. I got to watch that whole process, which is always a treat.
There was one point where FastTrack talked about how much he hated fanboys who just fawn all over his art and never buy anything.
"But I'm a fanboy that just fawns over your art and never buys anything."
"Oh, it's not you. Your company has been just fantastic, I don't need you to buy things."
"Awww, that's so nice!" I'll admit it, I made big puppydog eyes for a second there.
The night wound down, and once again: "FastTrack has work to do. We've got to go." We made plans to meet up one last time in the morning and then turned in for the night. I watched a bunch of Archer with Nevir's crew upstairs and got to sleep eventually at godawful O'clock. I packed up and headed down to the lobby once I heard from EasySpark that they had arrived. We talked and handed out the commissions that he had been pushing FastTrack to do all night. Ace was pushing for us to leave by then, but I told him to wait because there was still someone else I needed to see before I left. Looking at all the new contacts I had seen off thus far, and the group of people I was standing with in the lobby at the time, he said:
"You son of a bitch. You went out and made a bunch of friends didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"It was awesome, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. I've been saying my goodbyes to like, seven good friends that I hadn't even met three days ago."
"Hah! I told you so. Alright, we'll wait for this one guy and then we gotta be outta here."
"Okay. I'm sorry about the delay. I'm not used to this kind of thing. I don't usually... you know, have friends."
"Ahhh! What's going on? How do I poppyfur!"
"Yeah. Something like that."
So I finally saw off LanHao and promised to stay in touch before we rode off into the sunset. I was bummed to miss lunch with all those guys, but Ace's obligations were my obligations by that time. It made for a bitter departure, but I certainly didn't regret bringing him. I would've never turned him down when he needed help. He made the drive go a lot faster, prompted me to make all the great friends I'm going to miss so much, and just in general made for a great con. He was crashed out for most of the drive home, so that plus traffic made the trip go pretty slow. I couldn't fathom why all the unconsciousness came on the heels of him describing to me how he had gotten drunk and sobered up three times the previous day. I wore down by the end and asked him to drive for a little while. I laid back to rest for a moment and that moment ended up taking like 90 minutes.
In the end, I'm really glad I got out of my safe little bubble in the writing community. To use entirely appropriate metaphors, writers are like the German Shepherds of the furry fandom. Dutiful, focused, and persistent. They know when it's time for work and when it's time for play, and how to keep the two from interfering with each other. Having dipped my paws into the other end of the pool, I can safely say that artists are more like the fandom's Golden Retrievers.
"Hey! You're new. Look over here, hi! What do you smell like? Oh, that's interesting! I like you! Let's go play I'm so excited this is awesome we'regonnabethemostbestestfriendseverforever BAWHAW I LICK YAH FACE ALL OVARR!"
Well, I suppose I have work to do. I've got to get this lawn business sorted out and there's quite a mess that my roommates left while I was gone. I've got glasses to replace too. I'll have to call up Tricare and see if I can squeeze one more eye exam out of the Navy while I'm still in it. And sometime soon before my memory starts degrading I'll have to sift through all these hastily scribbled notes to cement all the dozen or so contacts I have with all the wonderful people I'm in touch with now. I'd really hate to forget someone now that the con is over and I'm out of second chances to hit them up. Man, is having friends always this much pressure?
Speaking of people I'm forgetting, even with the truly shameless amount of name-dropping I've been doing I haven't gotten to everyone. I've linked so many people that the little icon text parsing macro has stopped working but here goes anyway:
reograyfox 
daniskunk ryoken 
catmonkshiro and a dozen others were all around just being awesome in my general vicinity and doing what they do. Thanks for a fantastic con, everyone.
I didn't very much appreciate having to rush through what was effectively my last day in the Navy. My friend
AceFox27 wanted to leave straight from work, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops to make that happen. Naturally I was coming off my duty day and I just stood a 6-hour watch in the early morning. I had a lot of things to take care of too, like printing off a copy of my novel while I still have government office resources to abuse. That was interesting. I knew that I had quite a bit written, but that perspective changed a bit when I ran all of it off the printer and it filled up a 2" binder. I had to mow lawn too, which never happened because it just would NOT stop raining ALL WEEK. So I had to call up a landscaping service to do it while I was away. They said they'd get to it as soon as they could, which could be while as they were very busy. Apparently after it rained for forty days and forty nights the sun came down to teabag the entire state for the rest of ever. So now the humidity is 9000% and the whole state has a big patch of inhospitable marshland surrounding their house that they want someone else to deal with. A week later I come back to find out it's still not done, totally kneecapping my entire reason for calling them in the first place. Also there's trash piled up everywhere because no one else that lives here seems to understand how public waste management works. Being responsible is hard...
So anyway, day one very effectively proved something that I already knew. Arriving a day early is a good idea, arriving two days early is fucking retarded. I probably spent a cumulative hour out of that day giving him shit for that.
"Man, we're just sitting around in the lobby and there's like, nobody here at all."
"I know right? If only at some point someone had told you that getting here 50 years before the con started was a fucking idiotic plan and told you not to do it. Yes if only there were such a wise and sensible person involved in this decision-making process we might've been spared this!"
I wasn't really mad, I just like making fun of him, especially when he's the one complaining that none of his friends are here yet. We were hanging out in the lobby in our uniforms and a pilot came by to say hello. Naturally, the fun question came up.
"So, what brings you into town?"
"We're here for the convention."
"... the aviation convention?"
"... no."
"Don't tell me that you guys are furries..."
"Okay. I won't tell you that."
Good stuff. In any case, Ace did manage to work out a room for me that night, which was the only reason I agreed to go so stupid early. It was one of those clown-car rooms where they were putting nine people into a double because none of them have money and they're just going to party all night anyway. Fortunately arriving stupid-early isn't popular and the first night had "only" five people in there. I do like staying with furries though, they're always so willing to help people out when they're in a tough spot, even people they barely know.
When
clemfox showed up with the reservations I gave her $60 for the night, a rough stab at my share, and she said she couldn't accept that much. That right there is a big sign that you found good people. When we tried to check in to the room, she found that her bank card was still locked due to some earlier fraud that she thought she had resolved. All the other tenants had already paid her through the bank, so they couldn't put up the cost of the room either. I've always thought the silly little cash rewards card I got from Navy Federal looked like baby's first credit card and I'd never really use it for much at all. I thought the $3000 spending limit they offered me was rather insulting, but in this scenario it meant that I was the only one with the necessary credit margin to make sure we weren't homeless. Since I was able to help, I offered. I waited until Clementine was done fighting with her bank's customer service line and told her that if she needed me to buy time to get this sorted out.
"Wait, what are you saying?"
"If you need me to buy time, I will. If I put this card on the counter, they'll say 'Welcome to the Westin, enjoy your stay!' and you'll have as much time as you need to sort this out."
"I couldn't ask you to do that."
"You didn't. The power of capitalism does not wait to be called to action."
Since by this time, they were starting to ask us to clear out of the drop-off zone out front and she wasn't getting anywhere with the bank, she agreed. It stung a bit that the cost of the 6-day reservation was over $900 plus deposit and incidentals, but it was better than everyone being stuck in the lobby with a giant pile of luggage. If you're keeping track, which by this point I most certainly was, in rough numbers, my con startup expenses on my statement looked a lot like this:
$575 Pre-existing balance
$180 Lawn service
$135 Oil change and car maintenance
$80 food
$60 gas/travel
$70 Parking
$550 Omni reservations
$140 Omni Deposit
$900 Westin reservations
$90 Westin Deposit
That left me with a $220 margin for the rest of the con. Urf... good thing I'm good at spending hours in the Dealers' Den and somehow spending no money. Apparently I've been practicing for this very moment. I'm really glad I stuck my neck out though. Clem still hasn't worked out her differences with the bank, so this could have potentially been a very unpleasant weekend for a lot of people. It feels pretty good to save the day. Ace wouldn't have made it here without me. Everyone would be literally stuck out in the street without me. I's A Hero! They asked me if the extra delay was going to be a problem for me. Not really. It doesn't cost me anything until the bill posts at the end of the month. I believe that's what it says next to "credit" in the dictionary: "Spending money you don't have but can totally come up with by the 30th."
One of the things that stuck me about the fandom early on is that it's not really a Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous. The amount of moaning and panhandling on Furaffinity and the like had made me wary of this fact at first. And yet, every furry I've met in person has been the stalwart sort that wouldn't take money even if it were offered. Well, except for Ace, he still owes me like $600, but he's still good people. I had to shove money into the hands of a friend of mine who was moving to Nebraska to become an Air Force officer, even though he would never have made it to his new job without it. I've known people with very legitimate reasons as to why they can't find work at the moment that refuse to go on unemployment because they don't need or deserve the help. "It's not my money. They took it from someone who has a job. I'm not going to steal to support myself." It's a beautiful thing. That demographic gulf has been one of the many things that has made me something of an odd man out, what with all this "responsibility" nonsense and my steady, relatively lucrative job. Perhaps I'll fit in better later on when I'm a college student.
So anyway I spent the day hanging out with Ace, Clem, Yazoo, K2, Rashia and anyone else that happened to filter through the rubber room during that time. We got to the hotel pool before it turned into con soup, so that was nice. There was tequila, and of course my gut instinct was to refuse since I know tequila is like a punch in the balls for your tongue. I changed my mind when they said that the little 20oz. bottle in front of me had cost over a hundred dollars. I'm well aware that tequila is not a particularly consistent drink. Scotch, gin, vodka... a lot of things give you a good idea of what you're getting into without needing a whole lot of extra info. Tequila runs the gamut from "the best thing that's ever happened to my mouth" all the way down to "I would rather drive staples in underneath my fingernails than let that caustic demon piss near any of my orifices ever again." So bearing in mind that I was being offered something very expensive for free I went for it. "Free" is my favorite flavor after all.
It went down real smooth and I'd almost say I enjoyed it. Everyone was impressed that I didn't want salt or lime. That's what you use to desensitize your mouth to the onslaught of high-reactant industrial solvent that they sell as cheap tequila. The good stuff doesn't need any of that. The 1800 they had wasn't quite a pleasant experience, but I made it through that okay. Also two double-shots of tequila when you haven't eaten for 8 hours serves as a nice science experiment in how quickly alcohol is transferred to the bloodstream. I'm having a great time you guys! Oh, let me pick up this brick that just hit me in the face. Hm, there's a note attached to it that says "YUR DRUNK NOW HURRR!" Wonder what that-hruubluwugghuh...
The good news was I stayed hydrated so burned all that off just as quickly as it came on, so I didn't make an ass of myself or get a huge hangover or anything. Ace was wiped out from the trip so he just went to bed. Yeah, all that office work now that he's a Yeoman and riding shotgun in the car and asking to smoke or go to the bathroom every five minutes must've really worn him out. Whatevs, I still had fun and got to bed at a rather reasonable hour. I had not much else to do and I knew that sleep was going to become scarce in the coming days.
All the head-butting with Ace really highlighted a fundamental difference in our personalities and reasons for attending. I don't think he goes to any of the convention events. He didn't even do the fursuit parade this year. It made me a little mad that he didn't get back to me about it because I totally would've guest-starred in his suit again this year had I known. Again, not something I can legitimately be all that mad about. No one's obligated to share their suit with me. Still, near as I can tell his days are filled with booze, sushi, room parties, hanging out and crippling sleep deprivation. I really didn't see the appeal. The way I looked at the schedule, every minute had three things I wanted to be at, once the convention actually started anyway. I couldn't imagine not trying to do ALL the things all the time. Still, he seemed quite adamant about it.
"You're totally doing Anthrocon wrong, dude. Get out there and talk to someone. Meet awesome people and have fun with them. You'll have the time of your life, I guarantee it."
Much as I have great love for the writing panels in a practical sense of learning how to refine my craft and have great fun doing them, I'll admit that writers tend to be a quiet and introspective crowd, as befitting their chosen artform. We all just kind of ghost through there and then break up once the panel is over. It was something that I had always thought a bit odd, so I kept his words under advisement as I made those always-difficult decisions about where to be and when during those far-too-scarce hours of the convention proper. I did wander about a bit, managed to say hi to
Alty, who was killing some time in the lobby after his bags had been lost on the flight in. He wasn't having the best day ever, but it was still nice to see someone whose name I recognized. The benefits of an early arrival became more clear Wednesday, when the lack of crowds and foot traffic allowed me to catch up with
FastTrack37d, a favorite artist who I was very excited to meet. He was a personable British gentlemen that still seemed a bit worn from crossing the pond. Our conversation actually started with him wondering exactly why it was that I was so excited to meet him. I didn't necessarily come prepared to answer that, but I was working my way through that when he greeted his friend as he walked over to us."Oh hey
EasySpark, lookit! I've got a fan! Fancy that, eh?"Naturally EasySpark was another favored artist of mine. I didn't even know he was going to be there. He was quite happy to have someone to chat with as well, so we all got to know each other a little bit. I learned that Easy has been in the game a lot longer and he's been showing FastTrack the ropes, leading to his meteoric rise in popularity. I don't think I mentioned the comparison to them, but they seemed a lot like Holmes and Dr. Watson. FastTrack was the prodigious but eccentric genius with his own mind pulling him in a thousand directions at once. And then EasySpark was the calm and determined professional trying to keep this lightning in a jar so that his best friend's talent can be used to its full potential. I can't count the number of times he said "We've gotta go. FastTrack has work to do." to us, even though FastTrack was the one out smoking like a chimney or trying to learn how to play guitar from a homeless man or whatever.
The two of them had to go before long. They had many things to do as they had come here for reasons of commerce and not leisure. Still, they asked if I'd come by the Artists' Alley later to visit and I agreed. After the lunch/dinner whatever-you-call-it when you eat at 3:30 PM, I got a message from
lionkingcmsl saying that he'd arrived and was staying at the Omni as well. After I wrapped things up at the Westin I stopped by and had the chance to meet him and his friend Kamau, a retired Chaplain, in person. More interesting conversation and catching up to be had there. I was wondering where the time went by the end of it. I had enough time to get all my stuff moved into my new room and then it was bedtime. Again, stocking up for the drought that was sure to come.Thursday I bumped into LK again, and with
McClaw we made a little Cross-Time Cafe circle down in the Westin lobby. Probably could've chosen a less obtrusive spot, but good talk nonetheless. Lots of machines and technical stuff, befitting the audience. After that I spent approximately forever in the registration line. I was disappointed that I couldn't find someone to wait in line with this year. Last time 
PattheCat and I passed the time chatting and enjoying some "real coke taste" (mix drinks in innocuous bottles). Still, I got my notepad out of the car first, so I got some writing done in the 3.5 hour wait. A lot of people bitch about the line, but it's not really something you can blame on the con. You can't exactly fault them for being too popular, as that's very much an indication that they're doing something right. You can skip the line by pre-registering or sponsoring, which were kept out of reach of me by the Navy's chronically poor scheduling and my sudden financial glass ceiling. And having worked with untold dozens of those 'deceptively-simple yet cost-fifty-brazillion-dollars' machines I can safely say that the Anthrocon Inc. Official Badge Printing Machine™ is certainly in that class of device. Getting another one or risking its safety by asking too much of it are both expensive and unwise. Really though, my time wasn't worth much right then, so I was okay with the wait.
After that I hung out at the rubber room some and went swimming with them again. Someone at the pool had this little bluetooth-controlled rolling ball there. It was a simple thing that blinked and lit up, and then rolled in whatever direction it was commanded. It was watertight, so it even industriously paddled its way across the pool a few times. Cute little widget, it was. It may have been specifically designed to entertain furries, as racing it or chasing it about the pool was great fun. The red error light that it gives off when it gets stuck is rather satisfying to see when you went to great lengths to catch it.
We ended up getting locked out for a little while afterwards as the room had many more occupants than keys and no one was home. That was partly on me as mine had stayed in my pocket when I changed into my swim trunks. Earlier the same thing had happened to my wallet when we went to eat and someone had to cover my bill, so I was clearly not learning from my mistakes. Still, I probably could've thought of a better way to summarize the situation than: "Dammit! Every time I take off my pants everything just goes straight to hell!"
I don't know how long I spent waiting or trying to get in there since I didn't have a watch either, but it didn't feel unreasonably long. It was actually kind of a nice lull amidst the mounting urgency that the start of the convention was bringing on. After I got changed, the Inspector and the Good Doctor had finished setting up their table at the Artist Alley. I and Alty met up with them and we went out for pizza before we all turned in. I considered watching the fireworks that were meant to be happening, but I was pretty tired and it was raining, so once again I favored sleep.
So I started Friday with a writing panel that was during another thing I wanted to be at and also ran long into the opening ceremonies, after which I jumped into the next writing panel already in progress and then literally ran back across to the Westin to make the start of the transformation panel on time. That panel burned up six of
Kyell's "Ten Ways to Improve Your Writing" that I also jumped into the middle of. I had the gap between 1535 and 1600 to stuff something edible in my face before getting to "Charades Impossible" an absolutely hilarious event in which fursuit performers have to act out the most merciless and cruel charades clues ever inflicted on someone. I'm pretty sure it qualified as animal cruelty. Nothing can quite compare to the unique humor of watching a white wolf try to act out "Mount Kilimanjaro" or a Skunk silently trying to prompt someone to say "Toronto, Canada". A sampling of the other clues included: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Uranium235", "The Jackson Five", "Cards Against Humanity", "The Western Black Rhino", and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." For some truly baffling reason, none of the contestants were successful.At the end of Charades, I again asked the foolish question "Is there a writing panel in progress now?" Why of course there was! So I went to that. Afterwards was the first chance I had to check out the Dealers' Den and Artist Alley. It was also at that time that they closed. Still, I said that I'd visit my new friends at their table, so I did, and they invited me to dinner. Now, dinner was naturally going to make me miss like 30 other events, since the evening schedule was even more packed, but this was the only time they had free, and would ever have free because they had to work every day. I decided to go with them for that reason, and because refusing would've been rather rude really.
Fann, a flash animator and Foley artist/musician whose work I was casually familiar with, had joined the group by that time, so I got to make nice with him while we waited in line for FastTrack to get his money. So we worked logistics of getting everyone's stuff put away and putting together a dinner group that also included Rampack,
TaurinFox and like four people I don't think I ever even learned the names of. A small group of us went first to hold down the reservations while everyone else got their affairs in order. We were working through Fann being Canadian and realizing he was underage here when we tried to order beer when he realized that his phone had died before he could tell Taurin Fox where we were eating. Restarting it, fiddling with the battery and various occult rituals had failed to get us the phone number we needed to relay the info. My time to shine I guess. I came up with the idea of putting the SIM card into a working phone. That went great until he asked for my phone and realized it was from two decades before SIM cards became a thing, and asked for EasySpark's phone and realized that it was an iPhone and thus told all other technology of dissimilar origins to go fuck right off, and asked for FastTrack's phone and realized it doesn't exist. My and his phone were both LGs, but without a time portal that wasn't of any use. They use the same voltage, but a different generation of battery with a different terminal configuration. In the end, opening up the battery door to Fann's phone and flipping my battery upside down before jamming it perpendicularly into the back of the phone and onto the terminal contacts somehow did something other than fail horribly.
I got the number into my PDA (the notepad) and then re-powered my phone to contact Taurin Fox. We totally win at all the engineering forever. I thought it was hilarious because trying to make decades-old technology jump through hoops of fire for no adequately explained reason and making them do things that should be impossible under an unreasonable time crunch with woefully inadequate technical documentation and only a general idea of the principles of operation at work was what I just spent six years doing in the Navy. So yeah, when you get home, try to get data from an Seagate external hard drive and display it on a graphing calculator using the Ethernet port on the back of a DSL modem with only a set of stereo headphones and a reel of unterminated CAT-5 cable. That is an accurate simulation of my job.
The restaurant was a craft beer and gourmet burger joint that was actually really good. It was called the 'Sharp Edge Bistro' and it gets a hearty recommendation from me. For about ten solid minutes the only things out of FastTrack's mouth were various attempts to convey to the waiter "This is not enough beer. Bring out more beer immediately, preferably sooner." To the waiter's credit he did get some beer piled up in front of him eventually. It was kind of interesting to look around the table at the crowd we had gathered. We had several digital artists, a couple traditional artists, a musician/Foley artist, a flash animator, a 3D animator, and several combinations thereof. I realized that since I was a writer, with our powers combined we could probably summon Captain Planet. The only bad news is that I'm pretty sure I'd be "Heart".
The TV was playing some loud and distracting Nascar event. When I mentioned this, the waiter asked if we'd like the channel changed. I was just being a jackass when I said "Sure, Cartoon Network!" and then he actually did it. Which was, of course, 5000 times more distracting because EHMAHGEERDCartoonNetwork! It was really funny when a second table featuring a big group of furries sat down with every one of them saying "Oh Camp Laslo I love this show!" or some permutation thereof. An astonishingly universal creeping realization went around the table that became the subject of conversation for quite some time.
"Holy shit, you guys. You realize that we're all adults?"
"I know, right? We like... have jobs and make money and stuff."
"We booked hotel rooms and got plane tickets and drove cars and all that."
"I own a gun."
"I split fucking atoms on a billion dollar warmachine every day."
"I have kids!"
"How is it that we are all allowed to be a part of society and do these things when we have nothing near the maturity required for any of them?"
"How has this not destroyed the world already?"
"How does society still work when we're a part of it?"
I think at some point everyone realizes that you don't go through some grand, sweeping transformation as you mature. You don't become an adult, you just are one all of a sudden, and no one ever stops to explain that to you. It was kind of fun to have a group of 10 people come to that conclusion all at the same time.
FastTrack, EasySpark, Fann and I went back to the Omni to hang out for awhile. Fann's room was crowded, so we went to mine. Big perk of being by yourself is you get a lot of control over the atmosphere and usability of your room. Almost made it worth the cost. Almost. We chatted a lot and shared stories and experiences. Apparently FastTrack has made enough from his art to move to California, and is doing so as we speak. By the way, at this point, he still wasn't convinced that he is a talented and extremely prolific artist. We had to bust out that Furaffinity popularity tracker gizmo to prove it to him. In any case, somehow learning happened, as Fann was starting to help FastTrack branch into animation. That's another area where I'm like 'lolwut', but it was interesting regardless. We decided to break it up before it was tomorrow. There were con events going on at that time, but I was literally sitting on my bed already. A tough position to convince oneself to leave from, particularly when tomorrow starts so early.
The next day was not as densely populated, but I did have to haul myself out at 0730 and get my uniform on for the MilFurs breakfast. Lion King was there, and we bantered back and forth for a little while before I realized that he legitimately didn't recognize me. I was surprised at how common that was. A lot of people who saw me in uniform didn't recognize me after I changed, and vice versa. I guess it really is a pretty drastic difference.
Knifesharpener said it makes me look older, a lot older. Not sure if that's a compliment, but it's a thing that happened. Some say that they might think that they recognize me, but my behavior throws them off. Apparently I act completely different in uniform. Not that unreasonable if you think about it. As I told so many: "You're a different person in your costume, and I'm a different person in mine."So anyway, there was another writing panel to get to, and after that I was headed back to my room to change. That was when I got the news that Amon was going to be at
Rukis' booth in the Dealers' Den. Amon is a character from 'Red Lantern', a comic that I'm a big fan of. This put me in a difficult spot."Did you know that Amon is going to be at Rukis' booth around lunchtime?"
"No! Why did you wait until now to tell me this?"
"What's the problem?"
"Because now I have to go there and I really should change first but I might not have time. You're pitting me against Naval Regulations and that's not fair!"
And so I was at the Dealers' Den in uniform. Amon wasn't there yet, but fortunately I hadn't missed him. I talked with Rukis as well as I could whilst dodging out of the way of people who actually had money. She looked to be doing a brisk business from what I could see. She was very excited to hear that I liked her comic and was really quite personable despite already looking like the con was wearing on her a bit. It's always wonderful to see someone so proud of their work, and that so genuinely enjoys what they do. I'm a little jealous of that, to be honest. Having an enjoyably job is a pretty foreign concept to me. I still can't adequately describe what it's like to look at someone who looks like they've been on the wrong side of a zombie plague outbreak and hear "Oh I'm so excited to hear that! I can't believe someone that's actually in the Navy likes my comic, that's so awesome!" Red Lantern features sailing ships and naval battles and the like, so my seal of approval meant a great deal to her.
I came back there a few times, and attracted attention in so doing apparently. Someone asked me if I liked Red Lantern later in the day.
"Have we met? I mean, yes, yes I do. That question is being asked with inordinate frequency, what's the deal?"
"Oh, one of my friends tweeted about this Navy guy at Rukis' booth that was super excited to meet Amon. I figured, what are the odds?"
"Ah, so good to hear I've been keeping a low profile."
I stuck around in the Den so that I would be there for my photo op. I met
Angrboda while I was there and talked for quite some time. I ended up with something I hadn't really expected, career advice. I mentioned that I was looking at RPI and she said that she had some friends who had gone there. It was only a few minutes before they showed up, coincidentally enough. Throwing a big group of people at me is a great way to make me suck at names and now I feel terrible for not remembering. I know that 
Taki was one of them and one went by "spark". There was also the girl with a truly righteous cowbell around her neck that I can't place at all. I'll have to ask around and see if I can reconstruct that event, especially seeing as it may have direct relevance to my future. Angrboda said that I was welcome to attend a Transformation Art Jam that was happening that night. Another tough decision, but that night was spoken for. There was Kage's Story Time which I'd really like to see, and Kyell Gold's novel writing panel, which I had to HAD to go to, and the standing invitation to dinner after the Alley closed. I felt bad for missing it, as it sounded like fun and I didn't get another chance to see Angrboda the rest of the con.
By then though, I spied my target and went to get my picture taken with Amon. I actually caught him just as he was about to leave for the fursuit parade, but he held back for me. My camera chose a truly perfect time to flame out due to a bad memory card. Fortunately someone nearby that went by 'Bowser' had a working camera and he e-mailed the photos to me. Lucky save, there. I'm very grateful to you, wherever you are.
I had a lot of people I knew through FA that I had been trying to meet. That scenario has been the first time in my life I genuinely wished I had a smartphone. Without one, I couldn't use the Twitters to track people's location, couldn't check FA updates either, and it was hilarious how many people just went with. "Oh yeah! I was at the Dealers' Den an hour ago. On the off chance I'm still there, maybe you could comb through the 2000 people who are in there to find me based on this vague physical description! See you there!" Oh, good. I'm sure there won't be too many "Pale skinny white guy with jeans and a backpack" in there... Even though I was wearing what had to be the most conspicuous outfit in the place I realized the hilarious futility of this effort. I gave up on that pretty quick and just noted everyone my cell number.
I successfully found
Nevir like this and we met up at the zoo after our respective panels were over. He's a musician that I follow and was very excited to meet me. A few of his friends came by the table as well and we had a grand old time. I mentioned that I didn't remember the last thing I ate and he produced half a Subway sandwich from somewhere and gave it to me. Real lifesaver, that. I didn't have any other chances to eat in the near future. Of course I ran off again, but I promised to stay in touch. That was on me of course, as it's not very helpful when someone asks what your plans are and the only answer you have is "BLAWAGH! ALL the things!"So, my questions burned up about 25 minutes worth of Kyell Gold's noveling panel, as well they should have. It ran a little long and I got out of there hoping to get in touch with FastTrack again. Indeed I did and we hung out at Fann's room for awhile. In there I met
LanHao, an upstart transformation and general sketch artist whose work was new to me. Turned out that he was originally from Western New York also, so we've got something of a connection there. Circumstances knocking me about as they were, I had only a bare minimum of time with him, but we still got along famously. Turns out he was a part of Angrboda's little circle. One that I do hope to get in touch with someday. Our group powwow there was cut off by the realization that it was half-past-tomorrow and we needed sleep to live. In that vein, if there was one thing I could say to describe Anthrocon in a sentence it would have to be "Oh thank God I've run out of awesome things to do I can finally go to bed."If you've been paying attention you'll note that I got suckered into spending a whole day of the con in uniform. And if you haven't been paying attention then go get some coffee or something. I didn't spend all day writing this for you to ignore me, asshole. Anyways, that attire prompted some mixed responses. Just like last year, a lot of people were really enthusiastic about it. They wanted to hear stories from me or tell their own, thank me for serving, or just remark on how what I do is awesome. There's nothing like spending a few minutes correcting the saluting posture of a silver fox to brighten your day.
There were also a handful of people who did the right thing, that is to say, chastise me for wearing an unauthorized uniform in such a ridiculous location. I felt uneasy about that part of it at times, but I just really didn't want to give it up. That's not an easy crowd to stand out in and the Navy is really my only hook in that regard. This was my last chance to say that I was indeed in the Navy when people remarked on how good my cosplay was.
It also led me to an experience that I'll take to my grave. Somehow in all the din and insanity in the hotel lobby, I heard a woman ask: "Do you want to pet the kitty, hon?" Not an unusual thing really. Some of the hotel's "normal" guests really enjoy the con and the unique opportunities it offers. What was unusual was what I heard after I had started to walk away.
"I wanna see the soldier!" What. No. There's no way-
"Oh, well hello there." Good, I managed some words, now remember to breathe in. I don't believe it. I have more appeal than a thousand life-sized, talking stuffed animals! This. Is not possible. I'm really glad that he's small so I have a non-effeminate reason for dropping to my knees because I don't think I can stand anymore.
"My daddy used to be a soldier."
"Oh, really? What was his job?" 'Daddy... Used to'? Oh dear. He's... here with just his mom...
"He was in Iraq."
"Y-yeah..." No. NO! OhGodohGOD I can NOT HANDLE THIS!
"... now he's-" AHHHHHHH! "a pilot."
"Ah... that's good." GUHARGH! Heart. Start beating again. Dammit. Need... blood to move...
The other things that he said escape me now. I was busy having apoplexy and trying to not turn inside out. I gathered that his daddy was a commercial pilot now and had been in town for that aviation convention. He was just busy at the moment.
"Thank you so much." She said as she collected her child.
"Of course... no problem." Now if you'll excuse me I have to go puke up the mealy sludge that used to be all of my organs.
The takeaway from that, other than the fact that jumping to conclusions will get you in trouble, was that from that little encounter I experienced approximately ALL the feels ever. A month before I get out is a hell of a time to find out that I'm so passionate and invested in my service to the armed forces. They told me this day was coming, but I really thought that I'd be filling out for my AARP membership before that.
One thing that made the financial gut-punch of booking a King room by myself kind of worth it was having a quiet place all to yourself to pass out in when everything was all done for the day. I'm certain that was a big part of what let me keep my higher brain functions while everyone else ran themselves into the ground. It was always pretty funny. I'd go to bed just because I logically knew I needed to. I was too jazzed on con-meth to calm down or feel tired at any point. Every night I laid down thinking "Well this is stupid I'm not even sleepy or anyth- oh it's 0930 I'd better get up I have a thousand more things to do."
Naturally every good day starts with a writing panel, and this was actually my last one. There were still a couple left, but I brushed them off because this whole "human interaction" thing I had going was working out pretty well for me. I got a text from
Zennithm and met him just an hour or two before he had not leave. Not much of a contact, but some things can't be helped. Still, I was really glad I caught up to him. It was worth it just for the fact that we went to the fursuit dance competition finals together. That's something it never would've crossed my mind to go to, but he offered, so why not? I was absolutely knocked on my ass by the performance these guys put on. There is an utterly outrageous and mind-boggling amount of talent on display up there. Such precision, such rhythm, power and agility, such reckless disregard for one's personal safety, and all while effectively blindfolded, wearing a restrictive carpet over their entire body and boxing gloves on all four limbs. Fucking phenomenal.After that, another ping, this time from
Voxian. He and his better half, so to speak, 
CatNamedFish, were in the Den and also wanted to meet me. Fantastic news, as this was a chance I had missed last year. Vox has been a fan of my work for quite some time and it was a joy to make this connection successfully. We talked adamantly for much longer than we should have whilst standing in the middle of the Den's traffic lane. Fish had to run off after awhile, an obligation I could hardly call myself unsympathetic to. Vox and I found ourselves a better place to chat. I talked at length about my in-progress novel, but only because he asked me to. Nevir did the same thing, actually. It was a real boost for my excitement about the project. I'm sure I'll be writing like a fiend once I'm done burning up hours and hours trying to chronicle Anthrocon. So, another friend, another writing contact, and another reason I was so stupid for not dropping everything to find all these people sooner.After that, another Artist's Alley cleanup and another dinner with a big troupe of people. FastTrack turned out to be the highest-grossing artist there in the Alley. The ever-expanding brick of cash he was dragging around was going a long way towards convincing him that perhaps he is indeed a popular and successful artist like I've been telling him this whole time. Considering that a months' pay for me would buy precisely one sequence commission from him, I'd say he's doing alright for himself.
Anyways, there were cab rides and such on the way to get everyone's stuff in order before we went to dinner. On one of them I lost my eyeglasses. This led to me wasting half the evening looking for them and the other half looking like a twat wearing my sunglasses everywhere. I still could function okay because they're ground to my prescription, but that put a bit of a damper on my mood and made me really preoccupied the rest of the time.
Everyone really hated the Italian place we went to, I wasn't too passionately moved in either direction, but they did charge a bit much for some outstandingly average food. Regardless, we split the party to make our way back and it took a bit to pull back together. The con was over by then and it was quite late at night. I wandered about the Zoo a bit after I had given up the search I couldn't get a response from anyone for about half an hour, including Ace. I had checked out, so I didn't really have any place to go either. No room, no friends, no glasses, no intel... it was not good times. No comms with Ace was particularly problematic because I didn't know when he planned to leave. That was a big deal since I didn't have a place to sleep Sunday night if indeed that was the plan. And, to a lesser extent, it was a big deal because Ace actually has to go on the underway while I don't, so if he wasn't back on time the MPs would come after him.
The former was my problem, and the latter was not, so I set about finding somewhere to chill while my crew got together and also possibly spend the night. I found both with Nevir upstairs. They were cleaning up in his room and had some leftover Jager to offer. They were going to toss it anyway, and well, free is still my favorite flavor, even if warm Jager tastes like used transaxle fluid. I made it through a few ounces before giving up on it, which helped with the nerves of all the awesome things suddenly going tragically wrong.
Finally I had the sense to look outside in the smoking area for Ace, where he is about every 20 minutes. His phone had died and he did indeed plan on staying there Sunday night. That would've irked me another time, but as it was, there was plenty I wanted to do, and people started showing up about that time so I got back to it. I spent some more time with the old crew watching them art at things, as they do.
Aquacoon did an absolutely darling piece for FastTrack that was just bursting with adorableness. I got to watch that whole process, which is always a treat. There was one point where FastTrack talked about how much he hated fanboys who just fawn all over his art and never buy anything.
"But I'm a fanboy that just fawns over your art and never buys anything."
"Oh, it's not you. Your company has been just fantastic, I don't need you to buy things."
"Awww, that's so nice!" I'll admit it, I made big puppydog eyes for a second there.
The night wound down, and once again: "FastTrack has work to do. We've got to go." We made plans to meet up one last time in the morning and then turned in for the night. I watched a bunch of Archer with Nevir's crew upstairs and got to sleep eventually at godawful O'clock. I packed up and headed down to the lobby once I heard from EasySpark that they had arrived. We talked and handed out the commissions that he had been pushing FastTrack to do all night. Ace was pushing for us to leave by then, but I told him to wait because there was still someone else I needed to see before I left. Looking at all the new contacts I had seen off thus far, and the group of people I was standing with in the lobby at the time, he said:
"You son of a bitch. You went out and made a bunch of friends didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"It was awesome, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. I've been saying my goodbyes to like, seven good friends that I hadn't even met three days ago."
"Hah! I told you so. Alright, we'll wait for this one guy and then we gotta be outta here."
"Okay. I'm sorry about the delay. I'm not used to this kind of thing. I don't usually... you know, have friends."
"Ahhh! What's going on? How do I poppyfur!"
"Yeah. Something like that."
So I finally saw off LanHao and promised to stay in touch before we rode off into the sunset. I was bummed to miss lunch with all those guys, but Ace's obligations were my obligations by that time. It made for a bitter departure, but I certainly didn't regret bringing him. I would've never turned him down when he needed help. He made the drive go a lot faster, prompted me to make all the great friends I'm going to miss so much, and just in general made for a great con. He was crashed out for most of the drive home, so that plus traffic made the trip go pretty slow. I couldn't fathom why all the unconsciousness came on the heels of him describing to me how he had gotten drunk and sobered up three times the previous day. I wore down by the end and asked him to drive for a little while. I laid back to rest for a moment and that moment ended up taking like 90 minutes.
In the end, I'm really glad I got out of my safe little bubble in the writing community. To use entirely appropriate metaphors, writers are like the German Shepherds of the furry fandom. Dutiful, focused, and persistent. They know when it's time for work and when it's time for play, and how to keep the two from interfering with each other. Having dipped my paws into the other end of the pool, I can safely say that artists are more like the fandom's Golden Retrievers.
"Hey! You're new. Look over here, hi! What do you smell like? Oh, that's interesting! I like you! Let's go play I'm so excited this is awesome we'regonnabethemostbestestfriendseverforever BAWHAW I LICK YAH FACE ALL OVARR!"
Well, I suppose I have work to do. I've got to get this lawn business sorted out and there's quite a mess that my roommates left while I was gone. I've got glasses to replace too. I'll have to call up Tricare and see if I can squeeze one more eye exam out of the Navy while I'm still in it. And sometime soon before my memory starts degrading I'll have to sift through all these hastily scribbled notes to cement all the dozen or so contacts I have with all the wonderful people I'm in touch with now. I'd really hate to forget someone now that the con is over and I'm out of second chances to hit them up. Man, is having friends always this much pressure?
Speaking of people I'm forgetting, even with the truly shameless amount of name-dropping I've been doing I haven't gotten to everyone. I've linked so many people that the little icon text parsing macro has stopped working but here goes anyway:
reograyfox 
daniskunk ryoken 
catmonkshiro and a dozen others were all around just being awesome in my general vicinity and doing what they do. Thanks for a fantastic con, everyone.Anthrocon: The Meme colon moviefilm for theaters
General | Posted 12 years agoA friend of mine just made rate for Yeoman on the most recent advancement exam, so I asked if he could look into whether or not my leave request had fallen off the edge of the earth. He said that it had made it through to personnel and was awaiting a leave control number. Very good news, since that means that it made it through the always treacherous review and approval process. So my odds on attending AC have moved from the mid-30s into the 90% range. As such, here's this thing!
Where are you staying?
Uhhh, kinda playing that by ear right now. I didn't know I'd be able to go until just recently.
What day are you getting there?
I see no reason why I wouldn't be able to make it there by Thursday.
How are you traveling?
My car. Or some other car that will abruptly become mine over the weekend.
Who are you rooming with?
Heh, well... Yeah I'm working on that too. Jeeze I'm bad at this.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone I meet there that I know. I'm sure the three or four of us will have a wonderful time.
How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels you might be attending?
I'm going to be all over the writing panels, and the Transfurmation panel. Probably the Brony one too. The schedule has like 9000 things on it and I haven't got a chance to look at it closely yet. I may update this if anyone really needs to know for some reason.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I'm in the Navy, so my haircut will probably be one of the better distinguishers. You might catch me wearing my bright red Vibram FiveFingers. (The shoes with toes) This is the only venue where they aren't the most ridiculous article of clothing in the room.
Will you be suiting?
I don't own a suit, and yet I ended up suiting quite a bit last year, so who knows?
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
Sure, if you want something that would go at auction for "Free" or less.
Do you do badges?
We don't need no stinking badges!
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2"
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English?
Can I touch you?
Sure. Good touch.
How can I find you?
My badge is this with a white background, laminated with the finest packing tape that your tax dollars can buy. As for where I'll be, well I don't really know myself!
Can I visit your room?
The room I end up in probably won't be mine, so I may not be the one to ask.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! "Free" is my favorite flavor!
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests.
How long are you going?
Thursday to Monday
Do you have an artist table?
Nope
Will you be going to parties?
Sure, if I have some time to fill.
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor. It's looking like the Dealers' Den is going to have a lot of people that I want to meet there, so I'll spend some time doing that.
What/where will you be eating?
Food/at places.
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
Sure! Just don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online.
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, enslave mankind, see some cool shows and stuff, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
Where are you staying?
Uhhh, kinda playing that by ear right now. I didn't know I'd be able to go until just recently.
What day are you getting there?
I see no reason why I wouldn't be able to make it there by Thursday.
How are you traveling?
My car. Or some other car that will abruptly become mine over the weekend.
Who are you rooming with?
Heh, well... Yeah I'm working on that too. Jeeze I'm bad at this.
Who will you hang out with during the convention?
Anyone I meet there that I know. I'm sure the three or four of us will have a wonderful time.
How is the best way to find you?
Honestly it's really tough to find anyone at this convention at all. If you want to get in touch just let me know and I'll PM you my cell number. We can work it out from there.
Are there any panels you might be attending?
I'm going to be all over the writing panels, and the Transfurmation panel. Probably the Brony one too. The schedule has like 9000 things on it and I haven't got a chance to look at it closely yet. I may update this if anyone really needs to know for some reason.
What do you look like?
I'm a tall, thin, blonde white guy. I'm in the Navy, so my haircut will probably be one of the better distinguishers. You might catch me wearing my bright red Vibram FiveFingers. (The shoes with toes) This is the only venue where they aren't the most ridiculous article of clothing in the room.
Will you be suiting?
I don't own a suit, and yet I ended up suiting quite a bit last year, so who knows?
Do you do free art?
Yes, and it's worth every penny.
Do you do trades?
Sure, if you want something that would go at auction for "Free" or less.
Do you do badges?
We don't need no stinking badges!
Do you do commissions?
It's rare that I'm offered money to write something, but I'd never say 'No' to it.
What is your gender?
Dude.
... sweet.
How tall are you?
6'2"
Can I talk to you?
Do you speak English?
Can I touch you?
Sure. Good touch.
How can I find you?
My badge is this with a white background, laminated with the finest packing tape that your tax dollars can buy. As for where I'll be, well I don't really know myself!
Can I visit your room?
The room I end up in probably won't be mine, so I may not be the one to ask.
Can I buy you drinks?
Absolutely! "Free" is my favorite flavor!
Can I give you stuff?
See above. Note that I may eat what you give me whether that is its purpose or not.
Are you nice?
That seems like a loaded question. I'm pretty personable though, especially in a setting like this. I'm here to meet people and have fun. Being a dick would really not be in my best interests.
How long are you going?
Thursday to Monday
Do you have an artist table?
Nope
Will you be going to parties?
Sure, if I have some time to fill.
Will you be performing?
I may do something stupid if I get drunk, but I don't think I'll be performing anything intentionally.
If I see you, how should I get your attention?
Likely your attempts to struggle through my username would get me to look in your direction. I go by 'Beau' among friends. (Pronounced "Bo".) Or you could just get within my peripheral vision and wave feverishly. I'll probably look to see what all the commotion is about.
Where will you be most of the time during the day/s?
I'll be doing a lot of panels or wandering about the floor. It's looking like the Dealers' Den is going to have a lot of people that I want to meet there, so I'll spend some time doing that.
What/where will you be eating?
Food/at places.
Can I come with you for food/fun/etc?
Totally! This is the one time of year where I break my normal conventions and go hang out with tons of people I've never seen before. Take advantage of this limited-time offer while you can!
Can I take your picture?
Sure! Just don't use my real name (if you find that out somehow) when you post it online.
What's your goal(s) for the con this year?
Meet people, have fun, buy cool swag, enslave mankind, see some cool shows and stuff, get tips on writing and just generally dive in and enjoy everything that the furry world has to offer.
Extremely Long Fur the 'More Debrief
General | Posted 12 years agoAwright, so Fur the 'More. I suppose I can now say with some confidence that I have experienced both extremes of a con experience having been to AC and also one of the smallest cons. I truly can't choose a favorite because they both have a lot to bring to the table. There are many pros and many cons to each... con, and you'll just have to choose for yourself which cons would stop you from going to a particular con due to that con's cons conning you out of a good con experience.
Yeah, that last sentence was just to weed out the weak-willed. Now, on to the post-con report. A big ham-string came right off the bat in that I didn't know of this con's existence until the week of, giving me practically no time to plan. AceFox wasn't going and said that he would let me borrow his fursuit, but I didn't have the time to go meet up with him. I couldn't get off work on Friday because of the short notice, but I did manage to get out relatively early that day. I didn't necessarily ask, but regardless I left work at like 1100. I was already missing the con by then so I had to make a tough call on departure. I didn't know when Ace would be home, so I couldn't really justify waiting for him to get out of work to grab the suit before I left. So, missed opportunity there. Still, I reasoned, if I can make it to more of the con, that should make up for it. Turns out it was a pretty good decision. He called at like 1630 to let me know he was getting out of work.
Up until now I had regarded Maryland as 'That over-urbanized speed trap that I have to pass through to get to New York' and DC as 'that endless, blazing abyss of unceasing oblivion that must be avoided at all costs during any east coast travel.' Having now been forced to drive straight through both of them, I can say that my second impressions have updated my perceptions to something more like this:
Ahhh! Holy sweet mother of Christ everything is trying to kill me! How the fuck do these people continue to exist without descending into a blasted miasma of fear-induced insanity? I'm taking my life and those of anyone within 20 yards into my hands whenever I take my foot off the brake! What the holy Christing buggery fuck is wrong with this pla-AAAAAAHHHHFUCKFUCKFUCKFUUUCK!!
I have been set on fire and in so doing experienced orders of magnitude less blinding terror than this particular commute. If not for my experience at work with regularly having to keep cool in life-threatening situations I would've screamed like a howler monkey caught in a bear trap for a solid hour. My envisioned best-case scenario was "Only running over a couple people and getting away with it" on my way there. The state law in DC gives pedestrians there the right-of-way no matter what and it makes them a right nasty bunch of entitled little fucks about this whole situation. It certainly doesn't help the matter that a more effective street infrastructure could've been planned out by a brain-dead quadruple-amputee playing Sim City by bashing his face against a Wacom tablet.
I suppose I can't complain about the delay due to traffic (Which was mind-boggling nonetheless) because the onslaught of unrelenting soul-searing terror made me pray to whatever merciful god would listen for a bus to stop in front of me to make a left across two Northbound and all four Southbound lanes just so that I would have a precious fraction of a second to collect the ever-fleeting broken shards of my resolve to continue in order to make it another 18 feet to the next red light. That prayer was indeed answered, and though I didn't phrase it quite like that when I asked, I was grateful to fate for providing me the reprieve.
It was 3:30 PM and I was driving in a lane that was marked "Northbound 10AM-4PM only". What kind of sick Jack Bauer doomsday clock scenario did I just buy my way into? That would've been a lot less terrifying if I had ever changed lanes successfully on the first try through the entire fucking city. Where I come from a horn is a way of telling drivers that they are doing something wrong. In DC it's a way of telling other drivers "Fuck you dickwad this is my lane and you can't have any! ONLY MY DESTINATION IS OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE!" After realizing that this was the norm instead of the exception I was forced to play chicken with nearby cars during every merge, forcing my way into their path and having to earn my place in their lane by demonstrating that I was entirely willing to smash their car with mine should the two attempt to occupy the same space. Should I fail to rise to that challenge, I knew that I would never be able to change lanes or make a turn and ultimately escape this post-apocalyptic demented Seussian deathtrap.
So, once I had put 300 miles on my car and about 12,000 on my adrenal glands, I arrived at the convention center, nestled safely in the middle of a bizarre commercial/industrial complex that was a microcosm of the rest of the state's "Aggregate random unrelated buildings all in the same place" theory of city planning. The fight-or-flight response having suppressed my appetite into oblivion, I hadn't eaten the entire trip. So, I sought out Hengstolf so that I could meet up with him and his pack to eat at Panera Bread. Stunned and relieved that this did not somehow also turn into a disaster of mythic proportions the way everything else had, I enjoyed my meal and actually managed to calm down a little. Honestly once you get past the drawbridge and the flaming portcullis made of the shattered ruins of broken dreams, Baltimore is a pretty nice place.
Despite my best efforts, I had still managed to miss pretty much the entire first day of the con. I missed the opening ceremonies, the writing contest, the first writing panel AND the publishing panel, the Doctor Who panel and all sorts of meet-and-greet events that I thought would've been really nice to go to. It was around 7PM before I had finally reassembled myself into something resembling a human being and got around to actually checking out some convention events. In my first stroke of fortune I had gotten back to the convention hall just in time for Uncle Kage's Story Hour. I had no idea he was here until just then. Hell, the con would've been almost worth it just for that. I accrued a great deal of respect for the man in the fleeting moments that I spent in his presence at AC'12 and I leapt at the chance to partake of his wisdom again.
As the crew got things set up, I recognized Ice Man by his partial suit and gave him a shout-out. I've seen some art of him in uniform so I wanted to ask if he was in the military too and various other things. Of course if he is, he's in the real military. He's a native Icelander and his physique certainly reflects that. He looked like he could juggle three of me while casually chewing up a bottle cap. I didn't get to say much to him because the Man himself was about to take the stage for story time and it would've been rude to just keep chatting away, but he said I could find him some other time to talk. That ended up never happening and I quietly lamented another missed opportunity. Still, nice to bump into someone I've heard of and perhaps vice versa, put a face to the name and such.
The Story Hour went just as I expected. Very clever, insightful and entertaining. Dr. Conway has such an interesting perspective on the world and a whimsical way of phrasing just about everything. I truly envy that skill. When a cameraman asked if he would hold a microphone for his panel so that he could pick up better sound, "Yes." would've conveyed the necessary information, but instead the unsuspecting tech got this:
"Well I suppose if you were to provide me with the necessary gadgetry I could hold it in the appropriate position for a time while I make face noises into it such that your hulking technical machine there could effectively capture the rich pageantry of a drunk old man up on stage talking nonsense."
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. There's no chance to add flair or wit that goes to waste whenever his mouth is open, provided it isn't being filled with wine at the time. Because of this extremely distinctive and memorable personality of his I've come to dread the next opportunity that I find myself face-to-face with my Commanding Officer. His appearance and manner of speaking match that of the Good Doctor closely enough that I'm having a great deal of difficulty taking him seriously anymore. I'm forced to assume that it wouldn't go particularly well if I were ever forced to explain exactly what it is that I keep giggling about.
After the hour was up, in a turn of events I never would've foreseen, someone called out my name, my actual given human surname, from behind me. I turned to see a new sailor from my ship that had come to ask me about the fandom earlier that week. He had stumbled upon it recently and learned of my connection to it in passing. (Must remember to ask him exactly how he came across this information.) He had come to me on Tuesday to ask my advice about crafting fursuits. A subject that I freely admit I know absolutely nothing about, but I could put him in touch with the right people.
I was astonished to see him there, and with a 'Super-special-awesome turbo Whamodyne epic chocolaty fudge-coated mega sponsor' ribbon attached to his badge no less. I couldn't follow that logic at all. "Yeah I've known the fandom existed for on the north side of 90 seconds, I think I'll opt for the $400 one-step-below-Jesus level sponsor registration." Ah well, gotta love the enthusiasm.
In any case, we chatted for a moment and I surreptitiously moved our conversation in the general direction of Dr. Conway. I asked if he'd met him yet, and he responded with the same answer everyone does. "Everyone's met Uncle Kage." Good for him. Still, I saw an opportunity there, and since this was pretty much the last event of interest for the night, I saw no reason to leave if the big cheese was still there having a good time and being his magnanimous self. My colleague didn't seem too excited about staying there, or at least not as excited as I was, but I was not compelling him to stay there by any means so I didn't think anything of it.
In due time, my appeal to fate was rewarded beyond anything I could've expected. Kage had been well provided for by his hosts, and soon lamented: "Well I seem to have most of a bottle left here and I'm beginning to get some subtle biological signals that indicate I may be unable to finish it all by myself..." And with that came the chance I had been waiting for. I got to pay a little back to him. Drink some wine with Uncle Kage and tell him a few stories and make him laugh a little. It was a chance that I relished with great fervor. I don't even like wine, really. Perhaps there is something to the idea that it's all about who you're enjoying it with, because I certainly never said no, even when the Good Doctor reached his limit and offered to let me play cleanup for him.
We were out there until near midnight having a grand old time. The staff shuffled us back and forth once or twice, always very demurely because of who I was with, but we kept on talking and laughing until it was nearly tomorrow. A truly rewarding experience for me, really. I'll never forget what he said to me at this moment:
"Why yes, of course! But we're going to have to take this sitting down."
I only managed to make it to one event my first day, but I still called it a very good day. And the second had only just begun. Literally, as I'd gotten to bed at something like 0005. Having my own room was expensive, but actually quite worth it. There are a lot of times when you just want to stumble into your room and pass out. Having someone there to interfere with that can really ruin your day.
Saturday was well populated, and I easily found something to do right off. The morning had a lot of 'First-timers' sort of panels, which I still went to. I'm hardly an expert in these matters, and certainly planning was a glaring weakness of mine in this con. There were some useful tips to be had, but I was convinced by the end that I actually have a pretty good handle on what I'm doing. I probably won't be going to too many of those in the future, but they were good times certainly. In the interim I managed to get one of those "only at a furmeet" videos. I captured LuckyCoon playing a grand piano in fursuit. An interesting sight to be sure.
From there it was off to the writing panels. Despite jumping on the horse midstream due to my late arrival I feel like I got a lot out of them, and in any case I had a lot of fun. Ianus J. Wolf was the same person that had led AC's writing panels, so I felt really comfortable there and sparked a lot of interesting discussion topics. The fursuit parade was quick and remarkably streamlined, though that might've been due as much to the convenience of having only a hundred or so fursuiters as it was the efforts of the directors. I turned out for it and took a bunch of terrible, streaky motion-shots as usual. I really wanted to find that guy 'Rad Fox' that I saw, but he vanished mysteriously after the group photo. I wonder if it's a gimmick or if he's actually in the industry.
Later in the day I was really feeling the sting of leaving the fursuit behind. This con was nowhere near as busy as AC, and there was a significant amount of fluff time in which it would've been really easy to just throw on a fursuit and go to town. I said this to Hengstolf, and he started in with the old "Well, you're about my size..." line. I couldn't believe it. Where did I get such awesome friends?
So there I was with a borrowed wolf partial that I was more than welcome to throw on and make a fool of myself for a few hours. It had a disquietingly small view-field, but it was most certainly a gift horse, so I went ahead and enjoyed the hell out of it. I even went to a panel in it. I felt a bit foolish doing so, but you've got to get over this "Feeling foolish" nonsense really fast if you hope to ever truly enjoy fursuiting. Hard to really get into dressing up as a werewolf and dancing around a hotel lobby like an idiot if you're going to have any reservations about doing it. I caught the tail-end (so to speak) of one of the Fursuit Performance panels and I really wish I'd gotten all of it. I really have no idea what I'm doing and there's apparently a number of aspects to fursuiting that I didn't even know I didn't know.
So anyway, I was in that suit approximately forever. Remind me to add "Taking stupid Facebook profile self-portraits" to my list of things that are really hard to do in suit. Still, suiting is a truly amazing experience. I'll never be able to adequately describe the feeling that you get when you walk by a mirror, or anything reflective really and you get that exhilarating reminder that you are this silly cartoon animal. Even my shadow was a whimsical little prompt that I was something more than I always was.
Another tough decision in the afternoon, I skipped out on the chainmail crafting workshop to go out and eat with my friends. Worth it. I had skipped lunch and it was a great chance to hear what a great time everyone was having. They invited me to their room party later and I went for it. I needed to shower to get all my sweat and the leavings of my synthetic pelt off of me first, but I made it down in good time. The room party was certainly interesting and I got to talk to a few people like Blitz. They had nicked a corrugated plastic sign and were doing shots off of it because it was waterproof enough to serve as a ridiculous novelty funnel. Got to have some cake flavored vodka there. It certainly lived up to the label and got the job done, but I think I'll characterize my reactions to it anatomically.
Tongue: Hell yeah!
Stomach: Meh, sure.
Brain: Woooo Hoooo!
Liver: Yeah, I got this.
Inner ear: You go get 'em champ!
Colon: Fuck you. I'm never speaking to you again.
So yeah, got almost all of the wickets on that one. Anyway, I was pretty buzzed and having a good time. My Kage impression got some laughs, though I think that has a lot to do with the fact that everyone in the room was a couple exponents more lit than I was. There was a late writing panel to go to, and sure, I went for it. I was having fun there, but I realized that I've never been to a room party where my thought the next day was "Aww yeah! I'm SO glad I went to that room party!" A lot of people said that I was weird for going to panels and events all the time instead of just fursuiting and getting drunk, or both at the same time. My assertion in response to that was pretty simple. "Uh, you're dressed up as a blue polka-dotted ferret. You don't get to call me weird." And I was drunk so I then told them to stop throwing houses at their glass rocks. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it's a very entertaining and evocative visual regardless.
The writing panel was super-awesome and I only partly credit the liquor with that. I get really talkative when I'm drunk, so a discussion panel was actually a perfectly appropriate place to be. I got lucky and remained below the 'constantly yelling' phase of inebriation for the whole of it. Once again I learned a lot and had a ton of fun. I think I'm going to make getting drunk and going to a really late panel a tradition, because it went so very well both times I tried it.
After the panel I stuck around, not because I had any real interest in the next event, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but because I saw that Ianus was just kind of standing around not doing much at about the same time that I was also doing so. I took that opportunity to assail him with questions one-on-one about the novel I'm writing. He was very accommodating and had a wealth of useful advice to share. He said that it was really for the best that I couldn't get to a publishing panel to save my life. He said publishing is the last thing I should be worrying about right now. Literally the last thing. Right now it's all about making words happen to a piece of paper and getting to that part where it says "The End". Then you sit on it for a couple months and read it all again to realize how stupid you were back when you wrote it so you can revise everything, get comments and feedback from your beta-readers and revise again, by then it'll be ready for a real, paid editor who will tell you about another several hundred corrections you need to make, and then you can go talk to a publisher. I've got some work to do still is what I'm saying.
I like to think that I was being personable since he put up with me for so long, but there was a bit of ill-advised Kage-phrasing to some of the things that I said. He said that he had work to do with the next event and I sent him off with something like:
"No, that's perfectly all right. I'm asking of your time and I know that not everyone can afford to give their time away for free in this very tight time-economy. If you've got work to do that I'm keeping you from by all means get yourself there. I just saw that you had some downtime that coincided with my downtime and I had some brain noises that I wanted to turn into face noises in your general direction."
I got through all that remarkably fast and coherently for my mental state at the time. I think the burnoff had gotten me into that sweet spot where the inebriation makes you somehow paradoxically more coordinated. My theory is that only the slow and weak brain cells are hampered at that point, streamlining the brain's efficiency. In any case, I must've done something right, because we had a lot of good talk and in the end Ianus gave me his card and said he'd look my work over if he had the time. Big victory there. He's a published author and knows enough about writing to host panels on the subject regularly. It gave me five confidence cookies just having talked to him.
I felt really good and I was in the room already, so I figured why not watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show? The movie was literally brought to me and despite my long and storied history of hanging out with crazy people, I had never seen it before. I took my seat in front, and my colleague sat near me for a time. He moved later to get a better view. As people filed in for the showing, a honey badger with a purple stripe down his back sat next to me. There were some technical difficulties at the beginning of the showing, so there was a bit of time to kill while we tried to get all these newfangled gadgets to cooperate. You can only sit there chanting "Start the fucking movie" for so long.
Now, the fursuiter seated right next to me was quite stout of build, at least in comparison to the 180-odd pounds of stringy nerd that was seated to his left, so physical contact of a sort was unavoidable. As with many things though, I took it in stride. I was fine with a tail in my chair and a significant deficit of personal space, it comes with the territory. As time went on though, I got even more comfortable in my spot up against this tower of fluffy warmth. There was skritching and petting and other such things that I only now consider normal having been in the fandom as long as I have. We had our arms around each other for the whole movie, keeping up with the little gestures of affection.
It was very out-of-character for me, but I was almost entirely sober by that time, so I really have no explanation for it. It's hard to pinpoint the transition between just playing along and genuinely enjoying myself, but those are certainly the start and end points of this little cinematic experience. I really did have fun then. I wish I had a cuddly fursuiter to snuggle up against for every movie I see. I can only imagine what my colleague must think having seen that going on. Ah, well. Can't worry too much about reputation in this context I suppose. I found my new friend later at the headless lounge because we never did exchange info during the screening. Call me old-fashioned but I do like to get the name of people that I spend an hour or so plus the entirety of a full, feature-length film skritching and cuddling with. He goes by Nom Crunch and I do hope I'll run into him another day soon.
Tumbling into bed at 3 AM at the end of all that was a very satisfying feeling. As was waking up pretty much whenever I wanted on Sunday. That morning was quiet so I slept in. To be frank, that whole day was pretty quiet. A lot of people, including my friend from back home and most of his pack, headed home early. A lot of people were fearful of the hellacious traffic they'd fought through on the way in. Despite my harrowing and traumatic experience inbound, I wasn't too worried. Comparing Sunday traffic to Friday traffic is like comparing apples to Cobalt-seeded neutron cluster bombs.
I stopped by the artist's alley and market place, giving them more than the quick cursory glance of previous days. I said hello to Gideon and chatted a bit. I really do love his art, but I really stopped by because Kage said that he was a good friend of his and was always worth talking to. I also found Heather Burton, who has done some of my all-time favorite depictions of the Egyptian pantheon. I got a Horus bookmark from her and a really nifty Anubis lapel pin.
I went to the Reddit panel just for the heck of it. I may get into that now, not that I particularly need another online time-sink. It sounded really interesting though. The furry Olympics were a really good time. It's amazing some of the skill that these fursuiters have. John Striped Fur was showing off all the moves that earned him the wrestling belt he carries. Renashe Tradewind was a real star performer at the limbo. I really liked watching that. It was as if you could really see the concentration on her face.
After that I went to Dr. Conway's other panel. It was all about the tricks and snake oil pills that people dress up as actual science these days. Really interesting to hear about. Again, he has an excellent way of turning a phrase, and I think listening to him will really help my express my own opinions to others in the future. I tend to be a bit abrasive when talking about technical matters, so having a few more delicate instruments in my toolbox will certainly be a benefit.
And then once again a tough choice. There was a lull and the only two remaining events were the charity auction and the closing ceremonies. Do I skip those and make it home at a reasonable hour, mindful of duty on Monday, or do I go for it? As much as it stung to do, I made the mature decision and left early. Having to go back to adulting is so lame, but I didn't really stand to gain a whole lot by staying. If I really needed more swag, I could've just bought it outright at the marketplace. And as for the closing ceremonies, well, I sure as hell wasn't going to be leaving this place at 1900ish I'll tell you that. Post-con depression actually hit me pretty hard right then. It wasn't like AC at all. At the end of that I was actually kind of glad to be going home so that I could get started on the lengthy recovery process. Here it felt like I had just gotten up and then suddenly: "Oh, the con is over..." Still, I knew what I was getting into, and now I find it quite easy to find the good in that experience.
The drive home was effortless thanks to it being a weekend, (being right is awesome.) also due to a bit of once-bitten twice-shy logic on my part. This time I went around the urban centers and took the bridge across the Potomac. It was a longer route and there was a $4 toll there, which is why my GPS and Google maps both refused to acknowledge its existence or told me to avoid it. It saved me a ton of time though, probably added years to my life in the process. When I got off the bridge and almost immediately saw a "Buckle up, Virginia!" sign I thought "Hm? What sorcery is this?"
I still had much driving to do, but it was quiet driving that I was familiar and comfortable with. Even the interim parking lot known as I-95 South was drivable. Though I will say that interchange was the first place I've ever had to wait in line for gas. It wasn't like the infrastructure wasn't there to handle it either. There were three gas stations that I could see from the one that I was at, all of them had lines. Still, the driving was smooth. A few times I found myself hitting 80 or 85 just for the sheer joy of the freedom to go fast if I so chose. In hindsight I realize I may have been a bit too ambitious about it. The long, fast trip gradually turned the gentle, rolling purr that my CV-joint has been making for the last 10,000 miles or so into a much more aggressive, piercing roar. I'll likely have to get that serviced soon. In any case I made it back in good condition, and to duty the next day likewise.
In closing, I can safely say that I really enjoyed this con. I only got about 1.6 days worth of it, but that was honestly a good amount. I won't say small cons are better, they just have different strengths and sensibilities. People that were used to AC, MFF, FWA and the like balked at it, but I don't believe that judgment was fair. The short length and more leisurely schedule made it a lot more accessible to people like me. It's size was what allowed me to stumble into it with hardly any planning or prior notice and still have a blast. It also let me experience a majority of the con without having to do anything special to get out of work.
I heard a couple people whining at different points, and I really didn't know what they were on about. Some said there wasn't anything going on, but I managed to keep busy the entire time pretty well. Granted there were times when I had to look for something to do instead of having activities rained on my head, but I actually rather liked the slower pace. AC'12 was a blast, but I came back from that one practically in traction. I managed to have a lot of fun this weekend without totally wiping myself out, a fact that I really appreciated with 12 hours of watch ahead of me on Monday. And really, I was never at a complete loss. I was occupied enough that I never even went to the video or tabletop gaming rooms, even though those were an option 24 hours a day. A few people said that they were disappointed that they came all this way for "Some tiny weekend con". Uh, 'came all this way'? That was your decision. I was surprised to hear about people coming from Florida or the left coast to be here, but that's their call as to whether or not the trip is worth it No one promised anything more than you got and that's all you can reasonably ask. I came to this one specifically because it was within arm's reach. The short length meant that I could realistically sneak away for a weekend to get there without a big to-do at work.
There was a lot of stumbling because of how late I first heard about it, but that's solved for me personally. I wish that I knew what I know now (when I was younger, Oooh...) a little earlier, but now I know it and unless certain habits of mine worsen significantly in the interim I will not cease knowing it. The visibility problem is solved for a lot of other people by the fact that the con is established now, so word of mouth about it is getting around. Kind of like I'm doing right now. And really, it's not like a small crowd is a bad thing regardless. A smaller con means whole lot less logistical complications. No long lines anywhere, moving about is easy, particularly in suit, parking was close and plentiful, and I when I booked on Wednesday there were still dozens of rooms available at the con rate.
I think there's a lot of merit to this con, and judging by the 400-odd people that turned up for it in its inaugural year I'd say there's a market for it. I'm in for a whole host of life changes here in the year to come, but through it all, I'm going to be sure to keep my calendar marked for Fur the 'More 2014.
Yeah, that last sentence was just to weed out the weak-willed. Now, on to the post-con report. A big ham-string came right off the bat in that I didn't know of this con's existence until the week of, giving me practically no time to plan. AceFox wasn't going and said that he would let me borrow his fursuit, but I didn't have the time to go meet up with him. I couldn't get off work on Friday because of the short notice, but I did manage to get out relatively early that day. I didn't necessarily ask, but regardless I left work at like 1100. I was already missing the con by then so I had to make a tough call on departure. I didn't know when Ace would be home, so I couldn't really justify waiting for him to get out of work to grab the suit before I left. So, missed opportunity there. Still, I reasoned, if I can make it to more of the con, that should make up for it. Turns out it was a pretty good decision. He called at like 1630 to let me know he was getting out of work.
Up until now I had regarded Maryland as 'That over-urbanized speed trap that I have to pass through to get to New York' and DC as 'that endless, blazing abyss of unceasing oblivion that must be avoided at all costs during any east coast travel.' Having now been forced to drive straight through both of them, I can say that my second impressions have updated my perceptions to something more like this:
Ahhh! Holy sweet mother of Christ everything is trying to kill me! How the fuck do these people continue to exist without descending into a blasted miasma of fear-induced insanity? I'm taking my life and those of anyone within 20 yards into my hands whenever I take my foot off the brake! What the holy Christing buggery fuck is wrong with this pla-AAAAAAHHHHFUCKFUCKFUCKFUUUCK!!
I have been set on fire and in so doing experienced orders of magnitude less blinding terror than this particular commute. If not for my experience at work with regularly having to keep cool in life-threatening situations I would've screamed like a howler monkey caught in a bear trap for a solid hour. My envisioned best-case scenario was "Only running over a couple people and getting away with it" on my way there. The state law in DC gives pedestrians there the right-of-way no matter what and it makes them a right nasty bunch of entitled little fucks about this whole situation. It certainly doesn't help the matter that a more effective street infrastructure could've been planned out by a brain-dead quadruple-amputee playing Sim City by bashing his face against a Wacom tablet.
I suppose I can't complain about the delay due to traffic (Which was mind-boggling nonetheless) because the onslaught of unrelenting soul-searing terror made me pray to whatever merciful god would listen for a bus to stop in front of me to make a left across two Northbound and all four Southbound lanes just so that I would have a precious fraction of a second to collect the ever-fleeting broken shards of my resolve to continue in order to make it another 18 feet to the next red light. That prayer was indeed answered, and though I didn't phrase it quite like that when I asked, I was grateful to fate for providing me the reprieve.
It was 3:30 PM and I was driving in a lane that was marked "Northbound 10AM-4PM only". What kind of sick Jack Bauer doomsday clock scenario did I just buy my way into? That would've been a lot less terrifying if I had ever changed lanes successfully on the first try through the entire fucking city. Where I come from a horn is a way of telling drivers that they are doing something wrong. In DC it's a way of telling other drivers "Fuck you dickwad this is my lane and you can't have any! ONLY MY DESTINATION IS OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE!" After realizing that this was the norm instead of the exception I was forced to play chicken with nearby cars during every merge, forcing my way into their path and having to earn my place in their lane by demonstrating that I was entirely willing to smash their car with mine should the two attempt to occupy the same space. Should I fail to rise to that challenge, I knew that I would never be able to change lanes or make a turn and ultimately escape this post-apocalyptic demented Seussian deathtrap.
So, once I had put 300 miles on my car and about 12,000 on my adrenal glands, I arrived at the convention center, nestled safely in the middle of a bizarre commercial/industrial complex that was a microcosm of the rest of the state's "Aggregate random unrelated buildings all in the same place" theory of city planning. The fight-or-flight response having suppressed my appetite into oblivion, I hadn't eaten the entire trip. So, I sought out Hengstolf so that I could meet up with him and his pack to eat at Panera Bread. Stunned and relieved that this did not somehow also turn into a disaster of mythic proportions the way everything else had, I enjoyed my meal and actually managed to calm down a little. Honestly once you get past the drawbridge and the flaming portcullis made of the shattered ruins of broken dreams, Baltimore is a pretty nice place.
Despite my best efforts, I had still managed to miss pretty much the entire first day of the con. I missed the opening ceremonies, the writing contest, the first writing panel AND the publishing panel, the Doctor Who panel and all sorts of meet-and-greet events that I thought would've been really nice to go to. It was around 7PM before I had finally reassembled myself into something resembling a human being and got around to actually checking out some convention events. In my first stroke of fortune I had gotten back to the convention hall just in time for Uncle Kage's Story Hour. I had no idea he was here until just then. Hell, the con would've been almost worth it just for that. I accrued a great deal of respect for the man in the fleeting moments that I spent in his presence at AC'12 and I leapt at the chance to partake of his wisdom again.
As the crew got things set up, I recognized Ice Man by his partial suit and gave him a shout-out. I've seen some art of him in uniform so I wanted to ask if he was in the military too and various other things. Of course if he is, he's in the real military. He's a native Icelander and his physique certainly reflects that. He looked like he could juggle three of me while casually chewing up a bottle cap. I didn't get to say much to him because the Man himself was about to take the stage for story time and it would've been rude to just keep chatting away, but he said I could find him some other time to talk. That ended up never happening and I quietly lamented another missed opportunity. Still, nice to bump into someone I've heard of and perhaps vice versa, put a face to the name and such.
The Story Hour went just as I expected. Very clever, insightful and entertaining. Dr. Conway has such an interesting perspective on the world and a whimsical way of phrasing just about everything. I truly envy that skill. When a cameraman asked if he would hold a microphone for his panel so that he could pick up better sound, "Yes." would've conveyed the necessary information, but instead the unsuspecting tech got this:
"Well I suppose if you were to provide me with the necessary gadgetry I could hold it in the appropriate position for a time while I make face noises into it such that your hulking technical machine there could effectively capture the rich pageantry of a drunk old man up on stage talking nonsense."
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. There's no chance to add flair or wit that goes to waste whenever his mouth is open, provided it isn't being filled with wine at the time. Because of this extremely distinctive and memorable personality of his I've come to dread the next opportunity that I find myself face-to-face with my Commanding Officer. His appearance and manner of speaking match that of the Good Doctor closely enough that I'm having a great deal of difficulty taking him seriously anymore. I'm forced to assume that it wouldn't go particularly well if I were ever forced to explain exactly what it is that I keep giggling about.
After the hour was up, in a turn of events I never would've foreseen, someone called out my name, my actual given human surname, from behind me. I turned to see a new sailor from my ship that had come to ask me about the fandom earlier that week. He had stumbled upon it recently and learned of my connection to it in passing. (Must remember to ask him exactly how he came across this information.) He had come to me on Tuesday to ask my advice about crafting fursuits. A subject that I freely admit I know absolutely nothing about, but I could put him in touch with the right people.
I was astonished to see him there, and with a 'Super-special-awesome turbo Whamodyne epic chocolaty fudge-coated mega sponsor' ribbon attached to his badge no less. I couldn't follow that logic at all. "Yeah I've known the fandom existed for on the north side of 90 seconds, I think I'll opt for the $400 one-step-below-Jesus level sponsor registration." Ah well, gotta love the enthusiasm.
In any case, we chatted for a moment and I surreptitiously moved our conversation in the general direction of Dr. Conway. I asked if he'd met him yet, and he responded with the same answer everyone does. "Everyone's met Uncle Kage." Good for him. Still, I saw an opportunity there, and since this was pretty much the last event of interest for the night, I saw no reason to leave if the big cheese was still there having a good time and being his magnanimous self. My colleague didn't seem too excited about staying there, or at least not as excited as I was, but I was not compelling him to stay there by any means so I didn't think anything of it.
In due time, my appeal to fate was rewarded beyond anything I could've expected. Kage had been well provided for by his hosts, and soon lamented: "Well I seem to have most of a bottle left here and I'm beginning to get some subtle biological signals that indicate I may be unable to finish it all by myself..." And with that came the chance I had been waiting for. I got to pay a little back to him. Drink some wine with Uncle Kage and tell him a few stories and make him laugh a little. It was a chance that I relished with great fervor. I don't even like wine, really. Perhaps there is something to the idea that it's all about who you're enjoying it with, because I certainly never said no, even when the Good Doctor reached his limit and offered to let me play cleanup for him.
We were out there until near midnight having a grand old time. The staff shuffled us back and forth once or twice, always very demurely because of who I was with, but we kept on talking and laughing until it was nearly tomorrow. A truly rewarding experience for me, really. I'll never forget what he said to me at this moment:
"Why yes, of course! But we're going to have to take this sitting down."
I only managed to make it to one event my first day, but I still called it a very good day. And the second had only just begun. Literally, as I'd gotten to bed at something like 0005. Having my own room was expensive, but actually quite worth it. There are a lot of times when you just want to stumble into your room and pass out. Having someone there to interfere with that can really ruin your day.
Saturday was well populated, and I easily found something to do right off. The morning had a lot of 'First-timers' sort of panels, which I still went to. I'm hardly an expert in these matters, and certainly planning was a glaring weakness of mine in this con. There were some useful tips to be had, but I was convinced by the end that I actually have a pretty good handle on what I'm doing. I probably won't be going to too many of those in the future, but they were good times certainly. In the interim I managed to get one of those "only at a furmeet" videos. I captured LuckyCoon playing a grand piano in fursuit. An interesting sight to be sure.
From there it was off to the writing panels. Despite jumping on the horse midstream due to my late arrival I feel like I got a lot out of them, and in any case I had a lot of fun. Ianus J. Wolf was the same person that had led AC's writing panels, so I felt really comfortable there and sparked a lot of interesting discussion topics. The fursuit parade was quick and remarkably streamlined, though that might've been due as much to the convenience of having only a hundred or so fursuiters as it was the efforts of the directors. I turned out for it and took a bunch of terrible, streaky motion-shots as usual. I really wanted to find that guy 'Rad Fox' that I saw, but he vanished mysteriously after the group photo. I wonder if it's a gimmick or if he's actually in the industry.
Later in the day I was really feeling the sting of leaving the fursuit behind. This con was nowhere near as busy as AC, and there was a significant amount of fluff time in which it would've been really easy to just throw on a fursuit and go to town. I said this to Hengstolf, and he started in with the old "Well, you're about my size..." line. I couldn't believe it. Where did I get such awesome friends?
So there I was with a borrowed wolf partial that I was more than welcome to throw on and make a fool of myself for a few hours. It had a disquietingly small view-field, but it was most certainly a gift horse, so I went ahead and enjoyed the hell out of it. I even went to a panel in it. I felt a bit foolish doing so, but you've got to get over this "Feeling foolish" nonsense really fast if you hope to ever truly enjoy fursuiting. Hard to really get into dressing up as a werewolf and dancing around a hotel lobby like an idiot if you're going to have any reservations about doing it. I caught the tail-end (so to speak) of one of the Fursuit Performance panels and I really wish I'd gotten all of it. I really have no idea what I'm doing and there's apparently a number of aspects to fursuiting that I didn't even know I didn't know.
So anyway, I was in that suit approximately forever. Remind me to add "Taking stupid Facebook profile self-portraits" to my list of things that are really hard to do in suit. Still, suiting is a truly amazing experience. I'll never be able to adequately describe the feeling that you get when you walk by a mirror, or anything reflective really and you get that exhilarating reminder that you are this silly cartoon animal. Even my shadow was a whimsical little prompt that I was something more than I always was.
Another tough decision in the afternoon, I skipped out on the chainmail crafting workshop to go out and eat with my friends. Worth it. I had skipped lunch and it was a great chance to hear what a great time everyone was having. They invited me to their room party later and I went for it. I needed to shower to get all my sweat and the leavings of my synthetic pelt off of me first, but I made it down in good time. The room party was certainly interesting and I got to talk to a few people like Blitz. They had nicked a corrugated plastic sign and were doing shots off of it because it was waterproof enough to serve as a ridiculous novelty funnel. Got to have some cake flavored vodka there. It certainly lived up to the label and got the job done, but I think I'll characterize my reactions to it anatomically.
Tongue: Hell yeah!
Stomach: Meh, sure.
Brain: Woooo Hoooo!
Liver: Yeah, I got this.
Inner ear: You go get 'em champ!
Colon: Fuck you. I'm never speaking to you again.
So yeah, got almost all of the wickets on that one. Anyway, I was pretty buzzed and having a good time. My Kage impression got some laughs, though I think that has a lot to do with the fact that everyone in the room was a couple exponents more lit than I was. There was a late writing panel to go to, and sure, I went for it. I was having fun there, but I realized that I've never been to a room party where my thought the next day was "Aww yeah! I'm SO glad I went to that room party!" A lot of people said that I was weird for going to panels and events all the time instead of just fursuiting and getting drunk, or both at the same time. My assertion in response to that was pretty simple. "Uh, you're dressed up as a blue polka-dotted ferret. You don't get to call me weird." And I was drunk so I then told them to stop throwing houses at their glass rocks. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it's a very entertaining and evocative visual regardless.
The writing panel was super-awesome and I only partly credit the liquor with that. I get really talkative when I'm drunk, so a discussion panel was actually a perfectly appropriate place to be. I got lucky and remained below the 'constantly yelling' phase of inebriation for the whole of it. Once again I learned a lot and had a ton of fun. I think I'm going to make getting drunk and going to a really late panel a tradition, because it went so very well both times I tried it.
After the panel I stuck around, not because I had any real interest in the next event, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but because I saw that Ianus was just kind of standing around not doing much at about the same time that I was also doing so. I took that opportunity to assail him with questions one-on-one about the novel I'm writing. He was very accommodating and had a wealth of useful advice to share. He said that it was really for the best that I couldn't get to a publishing panel to save my life. He said publishing is the last thing I should be worrying about right now. Literally the last thing. Right now it's all about making words happen to a piece of paper and getting to that part where it says "The End". Then you sit on it for a couple months and read it all again to realize how stupid you were back when you wrote it so you can revise everything, get comments and feedback from your beta-readers and revise again, by then it'll be ready for a real, paid editor who will tell you about another several hundred corrections you need to make, and then you can go talk to a publisher. I've got some work to do still is what I'm saying.
I like to think that I was being personable since he put up with me for so long, but there was a bit of ill-advised Kage-phrasing to some of the things that I said. He said that he had work to do with the next event and I sent him off with something like:
"No, that's perfectly all right. I'm asking of your time and I know that not everyone can afford to give their time away for free in this very tight time-economy. If you've got work to do that I'm keeping you from by all means get yourself there. I just saw that you had some downtime that coincided with my downtime and I had some brain noises that I wanted to turn into face noises in your general direction."
I got through all that remarkably fast and coherently for my mental state at the time. I think the burnoff had gotten me into that sweet spot where the inebriation makes you somehow paradoxically more coordinated. My theory is that only the slow and weak brain cells are hampered at that point, streamlining the brain's efficiency. In any case, I must've done something right, because we had a lot of good talk and in the end Ianus gave me his card and said he'd look my work over if he had the time. Big victory there. He's a published author and knows enough about writing to host panels on the subject regularly. It gave me five confidence cookies just having talked to him.
I felt really good and I was in the room already, so I figured why not watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show? The movie was literally brought to me and despite my long and storied history of hanging out with crazy people, I had never seen it before. I took my seat in front, and my colleague sat near me for a time. He moved later to get a better view. As people filed in for the showing, a honey badger with a purple stripe down his back sat next to me. There were some technical difficulties at the beginning of the showing, so there was a bit of time to kill while we tried to get all these newfangled gadgets to cooperate. You can only sit there chanting "Start the fucking movie" for so long.
Now, the fursuiter seated right next to me was quite stout of build, at least in comparison to the 180-odd pounds of stringy nerd that was seated to his left, so physical contact of a sort was unavoidable. As with many things though, I took it in stride. I was fine with a tail in my chair and a significant deficit of personal space, it comes with the territory. As time went on though, I got even more comfortable in my spot up against this tower of fluffy warmth. There was skritching and petting and other such things that I only now consider normal having been in the fandom as long as I have. We had our arms around each other for the whole movie, keeping up with the little gestures of affection.
It was very out-of-character for me, but I was almost entirely sober by that time, so I really have no explanation for it. It's hard to pinpoint the transition between just playing along and genuinely enjoying myself, but those are certainly the start and end points of this little cinematic experience. I really did have fun then. I wish I had a cuddly fursuiter to snuggle up against for every movie I see. I can only imagine what my colleague must think having seen that going on. Ah, well. Can't worry too much about reputation in this context I suppose. I found my new friend later at the headless lounge because we never did exchange info during the screening. Call me old-fashioned but I do like to get the name of people that I spend an hour or so plus the entirety of a full, feature-length film skritching and cuddling with. He goes by Nom Crunch and I do hope I'll run into him another day soon.
Tumbling into bed at 3 AM at the end of all that was a very satisfying feeling. As was waking up pretty much whenever I wanted on Sunday. That morning was quiet so I slept in. To be frank, that whole day was pretty quiet. A lot of people, including my friend from back home and most of his pack, headed home early. A lot of people were fearful of the hellacious traffic they'd fought through on the way in. Despite my harrowing and traumatic experience inbound, I wasn't too worried. Comparing Sunday traffic to Friday traffic is like comparing apples to Cobalt-seeded neutron cluster bombs.
I stopped by the artist's alley and market place, giving them more than the quick cursory glance of previous days. I said hello to Gideon and chatted a bit. I really do love his art, but I really stopped by because Kage said that he was a good friend of his and was always worth talking to. I also found Heather Burton, who has done some of my all-time favorite depictions of the Egyptian pantheon. I got a Horus bookmark from her and a really nifty Anubis lapel pin.
I went to the Reddit panel just for the heck of it. I may get into that now, not that I particularly need another online time-sink. It sounded really interesting though. The furry Olympics were a really good time. It's amazing some of the skill that these fursuiters have. John Striped Fur was showing off all the moves that earned him the wrestling belt he carries. Renashe Tradewind was a real star performer at the limbo. I really liked watching that. It was as if you could really see the concentration on her face.
After that I went to Dr. Conway's other panel. It was all about the tricks and snake oil pills that people dress up as actual science these days. Really interesting to hear about. Again, he has an excellent way of turning a phrase, and I think listening to him will really help my express my own opinions to others in the future. I tend to be a bit abrasive when talking about technical matters, so having a few more delicate instruments in my toolbox will certainly be a benefit.
And then once again a tough choice. There was a lull and the only two remaining events were the charity auction and the closing ceremonies. Do I skip those and make it home at a reasonable hour, mindful of duty on Monday, or do I go for it? As much as it stung to do, I made the mature decision and left early. Having to go back to adulting is so lame, but I didn't really stand to gain a whole lot by staying. If I really needed more swag, I could've just bought it outright at the marketplace. And as for the closing ceremonies, well, I sure as hell wasn't going to be leaving this place at 1900ish I'll tell you that. Post-con depression actually hit me pretty hard right then. It wasn't like AC at all. At the end of that I was actually kind of glad to be going home so that I could get started on the lengthy recovery process. Here it felt like I had just gotten up and then suddenly: "Oh, the con is over..." Still, I knew what I was getting into, and now I find it quite easy to find the good in that experience.
The drive home was effortless thanks to it being a weekend, (being right is awesome.) also due to a bit of once-bitten twice-shy logic on my part. This time I went around the urban centers and took the bridge across the Potomac. It was a longer route and there was a $4 toll there, which is why my GPS and Google maps both refused to acknowledge its existence or told me to avoid it. It saved me a ton of time though, probably added years to my life in the process. When I got off the bridge and almost immediately saw a "Buckle up, Virginia!" sign I thought "Hm? What sorcery is this?"
I still had much driving to do, but it was quiet driving that I was familiar and comfortable with. Even the interim parking lot known as I-95 South was drivable. Though I will say that interchange was the first place I've ever had to wait in line for gas. It wasn't like the infrastructure wasn't there to handle it either. There were three gas stations that I could see from the one that I was at, all of them had lines. Still, the driving was smooth. A few times I found myself hitting 80 or 85 just for the sheer joy of the freedom to go fast if I so chose. In hindsight I realize I may have been a bit too ambitious about it. The long, fast trip gradually turned the gentle, rolling purr that my CV-joint has been making for the last 10,000 miles or so into a much more aggressive, piercing roar. I'll likely have to get that serviced soon. In any case I made it back in good condition, and to duty the next day likewise.
In closing, I can safely say that I really enjoyed this con. I only got about 1.6 days worth of it, but that was honestly a good amount. I won't say small cons are better, they just have different strengths and sensibilities. People that were used to AC, MFF, FWA and the like balked at it, but I don't believe that judgment was fair. The short length and more leisurely schedule made it a lot more accessible to people like me. It's size was what allowed me to stumble into it with hardly any planning or prior notice and still have a blast. It also let me experience a majority of the con without having to do anything special to get out of work.
I heard a couple people whining at different points, and I really didn't know what they were on about. Some said there wasn't anything going on, but I managed to keep busy the entire time pretty well. Granted there were times when I had to look for something to do instead of having activities rained on my head, but I actually rather liked the slower pace. AC'12 was a blast, but I came back from that one practically in traction. I managed to have a lot of fun this weekend without totally wiping myself out, a fact that I really appreciated with 12 hours of watch ahead of me on Monday. And really, I was never at a complete loss. I was occupied enough that I never even went to the video or tabletop gaming rooms, even though those were an option 24 hours a day. A few people said that they were disappointed that they came all this way for "Some tiny weekend con". Uh, 'came all this way'? That was your decision. I was surprised to hear about people coming from Florida or the left coast to be here, but that's their call as to whether or not the trip is worth it No one promised anything more than you got and that's all you can reasonably ask. I came to this one specifically because it was within arm's reach. The short length meant that I could realistically sneak away for a weekend to get there without a big to-do at work.
There was a lot of stumbling because of how late I first heard about it, but that's solved for me personally. I wish that I knew what I know now (when I was younger, Oooh...) a little earlier, but now I know it and unless certain habits of mine worsen significantly in the interim I will not cease knowing it. The visibility problem is solved for a lot of other people by the fact that the con is established now, so word of mouth about it is getting around. Kind of like I'm doing right now. And really, it's not like a small crowd is a bad thing regardless. A smaller con means whole lot less logistical complications. No long lines anywhere, moving about is easy, particularly in suit, parking was close and plentiful, and I when I booked on Wednesday there were still dozens of rooms available at the con rate.
I think there's a lot of merit to this con, and judging by the 400-odd people that turned up for it in its inaugural year I'd say there's a market for it. I'm in for a whole host of life changes here in the year to come, but through it all, I'm going to be sure to keep my calendar marked for Fur the 'More 2014.
FurTheMore
General | Posted 12 years agoOkay, so as I just learned recently, FurTheMore is a thing that exists now. It's a furry convention this weekend in Baltimore, and so, why not? I'm gonna try and go there. So far it's looking like it's going to work out like AC with it being 30% disaster thanks to my inability to plan anything. Both in terms of a personal failing and the very literal fact that I never know in advance when or how long I'm going to have to work. I'm still debating on whether or not to risk money on a room when I'm not sure I'll even have Saturday and Sunday off. It was looking like yes, but then something broke. Something that will likely become my problem very soon. Having to bum rooms all over the place was a HUGE drag at AC, but I still don't know what my prospects are on actually going. Bah, gambling is hard. Anyway, I regret chances not taken much more than failures, so one way or another I'm throwing my hat in the ring on this one. So um... hope to see you there?
Music Appreciation
General | Posted 13 years agoFurry music is an odd thing. I'm never one to squash a creative outlet, but for the longest time I never could figure out just what it was doing here on FA. I forget how now, but I ended up listening to some, and found a few composers that I liked. Before long I was listening through entire galleries. I don't comment around here as often as I should, so I figured why not leave a few encouraging remarks? Music is very evocative, and the artists that I gravitated to tended to have very diverse, dynamic styles that left me with much to say at the end. I left a few of what I felt to be superfluous, uninformed comments on pieces that really spoke to me, and I thought that that was that.
I never expected the enthusiastic response that I got to my assessment and words of encouragement. I knew very little in a technical sense, the same way I do when I comment on visual works of art, but where those are predominantly ignored, my little blurbs on musical compositions prompted a tremendous wealth of gratitude. I was truly flabbergasted. All I ever really did was try to summarize how the music made me feel, what it made me experience; trying to see if I got the same message that the composer had in mind. Since I got such overwhelming feedback on my feedback, I started doing it regularly, with everyone I listened too. Nearly every time I listened to a clip I had something to say. Soon a quick "Hey thanks" in the comment box was replaced with a heartfelt note the following day, stammering through stunned and near-speechless gratitude for all I had done. Someone said they felt silly just writing "I don't know what to say." In response to every single one, so they condensed everything into a single note. Pretty much everyone had some level of difficulty articulating just what this meant to them. Poor
karuno was nearly moved to tears reading some of my more impassioned reviews of his work.
One of my latest victims of this gallery-sweeping nice-comment-leaving crusade was nevir who out of nowhere decided that my effort merited a gift. I suppose it's my turn now to be overwhelmed my my new friends' generosity as I look over this charming picture I now have to commemorate this little experience.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9980947/
I suppose the lesson to take away from this is that you should never assume you won't like something until you try it, and that goes both ways too. Never assume someone won't appreciate something you do without doing it!
I never expected the enthusiastic response that I got to my assessment and words of encouragement. I knew very little in a technical sense, the same way I do when I comment on visual works of art, but where those are predominantly ignored, my little blurbs on musical compositions prompted a tremendous wealth of gratitude. I was truly flabbergasted. All I ever really did was try to summarize how the music made me feel, what it made me experience; trying to see if I got the same message that the composer had in mind. Since I got such overwhelming feedback on my feedback, I started doing it regularly, with everyone I listened too. Nearly every time I listened to a clip I had something to say. Soon a quick "Hey thanks" in the comment box was replaced with a heartfelt note the following day, stammering through stunned and near-speechless gratitude for all I had done. Someone said they felt silly just writing "I don't know what to say." In response to every single one, so they condensed everything into a single note. Pretty much everyone had some level of difficulty articulating just what this meant to them. Poor
karuno was nearly moved to tears reading some of my more impassioned reviews of his work.One of my latest victims of this gallery-sweeping nice-comment-leaving crusade was
nevir who out of nowhere decided that my effort merited a gift. I suppose it's my turn now to be overwhelmed my my new friends' generosity as I look over this charming picture I now have to commemorate this little experience.http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9980947/
I suppose the lesson to take away from this is that you should never assume you won't like something until you try it, and that goes both ways too. Never assume someone won't appreciate something you do without doing it!
