Happy Halloween!

,

Necro Day 3 and After

To cut costs I brought a bag of hamburger patties, a thing of store bought mashed potatoes, cheese, etc. This was based on last year when we had a fridge and a microwave in the room. I figured even if we didn't get a microwave I could heat food up in the con suite which last year was on the same floor we were staying on.

THIS year we didn't have a microwave or a fridge and the con suite was not only 7 floors away but half way across the hotel from the only bank of elevators. You can get really tired of cold hamburger patties and cold mashed potatoes in two days.

Then with one thing and another I didn't get lunch yesterday so when we left the con hotel we went to a Chinese buffet and I ate incredible amounts.

Other than being hungry the last day was pretty good. The last two panels were both really good and the last event of the day for me was the pirate costume contest and showing of Pirates of the Caribean.

The contest was a little disappointing. Almost none of the people who had paraded around all weekend in impressive pirate gear showed up and the winner won mostly because of the joke of her outfit. I have a picture which I'll post later when I have time to upload it to photobucket and play with links. Probably tonight.

Necro Day 2

This year there aren't really any panels that I'm dying to attend and a lot fewer that I am making any sort of effort to get to. Which is actually a good thing since I'm getting over being sick and don't have that much energy.

I didn't wear my pointy ears this year. I told the girl who cut my hair Thursday that I needed enough around the ears to hide the seams and I guess it curled up more than she expected because it's too short by less than an inch. If I had a bottle of liquid latex along I might have been able to blend the prosthetic into my own ear well enough that that didn't matter. Oh. well.

I thought I looked damn good last night any way and asked a friend to take a picture but from what I can tell of the preview on the camera it came out goofy as usual. I need friends who can take better pictures.

Went to the Q&A with the guests of honor and found Harry Turtledove to be much more entertaining in person than I found his book to be.

Even though I told myself I wasn't going to buy anything I ended up buying a print of a water color of a little dragon and a kitten sleeping curled up together and bid on a print by the same author who did the series of kitsune prints I bought over the last couple of years. This one is "Pirat" and is of a white rat in full buccaneer rig. He is soooooo squealably cute. I won't know until I go downstairs if I won him.

The costumes are impressive as usual. I haven't got as many pictures as I wanted of them with one thing and another but there are few Hollywood professional level ones. They instituted a new award last night in memory of a man who has been responsible for many of the best of the best in the past. I didn't know him other than to take his picture from across the room but many were in tears last night when the new award was explained. His last creation, which he made for someone else to wear since he lacked the height, was Galactus. I later rode up in the elevator with the guy wearing it and even up close it was flawless.

We had fun at a name that tune contest where short, sometimes 1 or 2 note, clips from movie scores were played. Then I sat with an old friend at a discussion of Slash and fanfic.

Then I watched the Doctor Who episode "Satan Pit" and crashed

I have to go get breakfast and pack before the panels start again at 10. Today is the pirate costume contest so there looks to be many guys in leather pants in my immediate future. Whee!

Ahhhhhhhh

I just had a 20 minute massage from a hunky guy wearing kilt and very little else. And if that's not enough he is the best masseuse I've ever met. Jay is a treasure. I want to clone him.

Dinner with Mandy and co. last night was fun. I wish we'd gotten together more over the last year. It sounds like heading back to Columbus with Rowan in tow will be a good move for her.

I was watching The Satan Pit, the Doctor Who episode where the newest Doctor confronts some sort of evil elder god and it had just got to a key moment when my phone vibrated to let me know they were here. ARRGGH. Oh, well. I'm taking advantage of high speed access to download the episode so I can find out what happens next.

When I got back I attended the Good vs. Evil battle in which random characters from comics, anime and movies enacted often clumsy choreography. Several of the performers were really impressive though. The guy playing Spider Man did back flips and other acrobatics.

The highlight, even if it did go on too long, was the battle between Jason Voorhees, The Crow and Buddy Jesus.

I was too tired to go to Rocky Horror this year but that was okay.

This morning I sat in on a how to break into writing panel and took notes which I will attempt to put into some sort of rational order and post at WASIF.

Necro!

Yay! The next few hours will be a mad rush followed by a long drive and the weekend will begin. 12 hours or so until I see Mandy. Less than that before I get to try out my Chinese Tao bubble bath.

I'm taking lots of digital pics this year so I hope there are as many hunky guys in leather pants as there were last year.

I've recorded sessions the last couple of years and then never got around to transcribing them so I don't think I'll bother this year. Of course that means that something spectacular will be said at some point.

Necro -2

Necronomicon starts Friday and right now I'm almost counting the minutes. Not just from the anticipation of having 3 nights in a place with an actual bath tub with running water that I don't have to heat on the stove, and getting to have dinner with Mandy Friday before she leaves, but because the people at work are getting on my last nerve this week.

Some of it is me, some of it is them, but I'm really, really, going to be glad when I leave for 4 days tomorrow and go spend the weekend wearing pointy ears and talking writing and anime.

Jane Wyatt 1910 - 2006

The various news outlets are announcing the death of "The wholesome stay at home mom from Father Knows Best". I realized that I have never seen more than a handful of clips from that show. It went off the air before I was born and was never syndicated in my area.

To me Wyatt was Amanda, wife of Sarek, and mother to Spock. She only played the role once on TV, in the episode Journey to Babel, and once in the movies but Amanda has been a steady feature of Star Trek fanfic and profic since the very beginning.

Amanda was one of the reasons I could identify so much with Spock. She was a teacher just like my mother. She married a man from outside her own culture just like Mama did. Other than Lucy and Ricky, she and Sarek were the closest you could get to my immediate family on sixties TV.

Wyatt played the role well showing the strength and love that a woman like Amanda would need to have.

One of my all time favorite scenes in all of Trek occurs when she shares with Bones that Spock had a pet sehlat:

Bones: Mrs. Sarek, I know about the rigorous training of the Vulcan youth, but tell me, did he ever run and play like the human children, even in secret?

Amanda: Well, he, uh ...he did have a pet sehlat he was very fond of.

Bones: Sehlat?

Amanda: It's sort of a -- a fat teddy bear.

Bones: A teddy bear?

Sarek: Excuse me, Doctor. It has been a rather long day for my wife. Captain. Ambassador. [Sarek gets her out of the room]

Bones: A teddy bear.

Spock: Not precisely, Doctor. On Vulcan, the teddy bears are alive, and they have six-inch fangs.

And of course there is the great bit in sickbay after Spock and Sarek make it though complex surgery:

Amanda: Logic. Logic. I'm sick to death of logic. You know how I feel about your logic ?

Spock: Emotional, isn't she?

Sarek: She's always been so.

Spock: Indeed? Why did you marry her?

Sarek: At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do.

And Amanda laughs with love and exasperation.

Sick again

Yay! A new course of antibiotics. Just what I wanted.

A big deal in hospitals right now is a national program to reduce the incidents of patients being given the wrong medicine (as well as having surgery on the wrong site). It's a bit disturbing given this when I go to the Doc in a Box near my workplace that takes our insurance and fill out the form listing my allergies, including penicylin and myacin, and have them try to give me a myacin the last 3 times I've gone there.

Had a really bad tempered nurse too. She didn't direct any of it to me except via body language but she was being exceptionally bitchy to her co-workers. She was impatient enough when I insisted on reading the label before signing for the pills, but when I told her that there wasn't any point in taking them since I'd just throw them up before they had time to do anything I could see the urge to kill the doctor growing.

Anyway, no real dignosis since the doctor didn't run any tests. Just some sort of ENT generalized crud with sore throat and occasional earache and a sinus headache. So, now I'm not getting stuff done again this weekend and I'm alternating between sweating like a horse and wearing my fuzzy robe even though the temp in the room is a steady 72.

FUN

You Might Be A Floridian IF

(Sent to me by my cousin Jean)

YOU MIGHT BE A FLORIDIAN IF:

• "Down South" means Key West
• You were 8 before you realized they made houses without pools. (Who needs a pool when you live on a lake? Oh, wait...our next door neighbors.)
• You were 12 when you first met someone who couldn't swim. (Other than my mother who was from Alabama)
• "Panhandling" means going to Pensacola.
• It's not soda, cola, or pop...it's coke, regardless of brand or flavor, "What kinda coke you want?"
• You think no-one over 70 should be allowed to drive.
• Flip-flops are everyday wear.Shoes are for business meetings and church.No, wait, flip flops are good for church too, unless it's Easter or Christmas.
• Sweet tea can be served at any meal.
• An alligator once walked through lived in your neighborhood.
• You smirk when a game show's "Grand Prize" is a trip or cruise to Florida.
• You measure distance in minutes.
• You have a drawer full of bathing suits, and one sweatshirt.
• You get annoyed at the tourists who feed seagulls.
• All the local festivals are named after a fruit.
• A mountain is any hill 100 feet above sea level.
• You think everyone from a bigger city has a northern accent.
• You know the four seasons really are: almost summer, summer, not summer but really hot, and Christmas.
• Anything under 95 is just warm.
• You've hosted a hurricane party.
• You go to a theme park for an afternoon, and know when to get on the best rides.
• You pass on the right and honk at the elderly.
• You understand the futility of exterminating cockroaches.
• You can pronounce Okeechobee, Kissimmee and Withlacoochee.
• You understand why it's better to have a friend with a boat, than have a boat yourself.
• You've worn shorts and used the A/C on Christmas.
• You know what the "stingray shuffle" is, and why it's important! (I don't know this one)
• You recognize Miami-Dade as " Northern Cuba" (except for the parts that are Southern New Jersey)

Bollywood Thriller

Duh

At last year's Necronomicon I had planed to do a Kistune costume but for various reasons never got it done. Instead I did what I usually do and just wore my pointed ears with my regular clothes.

So, I'm sitting in the hall outside the room where the costume contest will be held wishing my new boots weren't killing my feet when a stanger walked up and asked to take my picture. I was puzzled as to why she would want to take my picture when all about us where some really excellent hall costumes but for some reason I didn't ask her before she vanished into the crowd again.

I've mentioned this to people a couple of times as a weird random thing that happened at Necro and still didn't have a clue.

Until I woke up yesterday morning with the answer. It only took me 50 weeks to figure it out.

Picture a 5 foot tall woman wearing pointed ears, a red indian cotton broomstick skirt with a red indian style top with the little plastic miror trim things, red boots, earings with long strands of beads, and a nice chunk of amber set in silver for a necklace.

Just a woman with a funky sense of style dressed up for the biggest night of the convention? Well, yeah but also a pretty darn good, if modernized, Elfquest costume. One of the Sun Folk probably. The only thing off was that I was a few inches too tall and had too many fingers on each hand.

I'd link to a picture but while it's relatively easy to find stuff online with the scantily clad main cast it's not so easy to find stuff that clearly shows the more ordinary villagers in the background.

I choose to be proud that my personal tastes match those of a race of elves instead of freaked that I managed to do that without even realizing it.

F*** the FCC

Eric Idle sings about the FCC and other evils. Frequent and joyfull use of everyone's favorite F word. Up to you if that's safe where you work or not.

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

199.2!!!!!!!*

*Does happy dance of joy*

I finally, finally got below 200!!!!!!

Now I hope I can make it to Curves and weigh in to make it official before I bloat up or something.








*Yes, I know what exclamation point abuse means. I'll take black satin please.

My Bluebell Bloomed!

Mexican Bluebell by ~Ranuel on deviantART

For the Trekers

Bidding ended yesterday but you can still check out the photos of Christie's Star Trek auction. Included were many costumes and set pieces.

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LotSummary.asp?intSaleID=20723

ETA: Christies has pulled the pictures and they are now only available by buying their horribly overpriced auction catalog.

Why I Hate Crisis: This Says it All

Before the Crisis, Krypton was a place of marvels. There were the Crimson
Jungle and the Thoughtbeasts and the Fire Falls and the Jewel Mountains
formed from the skeletons of extinct birds and a thousand other fantastic
details. Its people were human; they struggled and fought and lived
and loved and dreamt dreams petty and magnificent. Superman's exile from
his home was a genuine loss.

After the Crisis, Krypton was a sterile world without wonder. Its people
were soulless automatons; its destruction almost welcome. Superman's exile
became a rescue from a fate worse than death.

Greg Morrow, The Annotated Sandman, Chapter 48

Sporks and MSTs

I mentioned in my previous post about editing Darkness and Light that I've learned a lot from sites devoted to picking apart fanfiction. Most of these do so in humorous ways that are referred to as "sporking" or "MSTing".

These are not the same things. MST stands for Mystery Science Theater. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) was a series that featured a human and two robots who were forced to watch bad movies. The movie was shown with the silhouettes of the characters at the bottom of the screen. The characters would poke fun at the movie as they watched. Frankly, when I watched the show I watched it for the stuff they'd do before and after commercial breaks, not for the movie commentary. I had a group of friends then who could do the same thing to a movie and be far funnier doing it. Ironically they were the ones who loved the show the most.

When you MST a fic you take large chunks, maybe all, of a story and add in your own comments. The point is mostly to mock the story.

Most Sporking is done with smaller sample bits and plot descriptions. Commentary can be woven in, as in an MST, or placed before or after the quoted bits. While a certain amount of humorous mocking is involved, a more serious attempt at pointing out what is wrong with the story, and why, is also included.

I find that the MST approach gets a little wearing after a while, just as the original commentary on MST3K did. I much prefer reading a good spork instead. Not only can it be ROTF funny but if you pay attention you will learn something along the way.

My favorite sporking site, Popcorn and Chainmail focuses on historical movies. For fanfiction I really like a lot of the stuff that they do at Ficbitches Slap to the Head Fanfiction.

These sites all deal with Mary Sues:

Narnia Sues - Poor, poor King Peter! I'll bet he wishes they'd never made a movie now.

Deleterious - Focus is mainly on Mary Sues in several fandoms but also takes on canon abuse.

Bastion of Questional Sanity