TMcG

So, World Fantasy.

( brief encounters not so briefly enumerated )

( eating and drinking and pitting and a smidgen of partygoing )

( programming )

( and the inevitable little bit about travel to and from )

ETS (edit to substitute) the LJ names of people who had LJs unbeknownst to me when I posted or who've acquired LJs since WFC, and to increase this entry's AB (abbreviation count).

( here's my schedule for I-Con this year )

More info at the I-Con homepage.

Back from Readercon, where a very good time was had. akaspeedo has a report up already. I'm watching merlinpole's and (check) stevendj's (check) space.

We cracked today and hauled the fans and air-conditioner up from the basement. Actually, my SO cracked, so he did the hauling of the AC. I would have just kept sitting in my own thermal deliquescence. I've gotta hand it to Hotpoint; that little room unit dates back to my bedroom in my parents' house, and it's still working after many, many moves. My best estimate of its DOB is 1982, maybe 1983.

Meanwhile, the electronic vortex of doom continues to plague this house. This week's casualty: my NEC monitor. The problem seems not to be the power cord but the connection between the power cord and the monitor, which is no longer jiggable with random objects. (Nonrandom objects don't work either.) This issue comes up with monitors a lot, doesn't it? Is it something easily fixed, worth fixing? Something that would be a crime to abandon an otherwise perfectly good monitor because of? (I have a spare in its place now.)

I'll be at Lunacon tonight and for a little while tomorrow morning.

( my programming schedule )

Hunks on the one hand, villains on the other, and lots of candy. Hmm.

Update: ferragus has posted pictures.

I have no idea how the subject came around to this, but at my kaffeeklatsch this past Worldcon I found myself describing how I used to be in love with the voice of this one particular announcer at New York's Penn Station. I have no idea where he sat. I never saw him in the flesh. I don't know if he actually had flesh. All he did was read off the track assignments, the station stops, and the last calls of the Long Island Rail Road commuter trains. But I just adored that voice.

I was catching up on communities, and I saw that unclephil2k had posted this in blakes7:

(The Onion)
Monday, July 19, 2004
NERD HAS MOST OBSCURE CRUSH EVER

The unrequited nature of area nerd June Manzo's crush on actor Peter Tuddenham, who provides the voice of piloting computer Slave on Blake's 7, is only slightly more agonizing than the process of explanation she must put herself through every time her media obsession is discussed. "He has this slightly sinister but dynamic way of speaking on the show, particularly in the 'Headhunter' episode," Manzo said, painstakingly describing Tuddenham to fellow science-fiction fan Bradley Preakniss. "When I hear his voice congratulating Avon on his 'consummate skill,' I just get shivers... Doesn't that ring a bell? No? Not at all?" Manzo's crush is surpassed in geekiness and obscurity only by that of Denver's Demitri Ostrow, who has a long-harbored passion for author Neil Gaiman's "fabulous" assistant Lorraine.

For the record, Peter Tuddenham also voiced the characters Zen and Orac, two other computer intelligences.

I'd go more for Zen, myself.

Has anyone yet come out with a diet cola soft drink made with sucralose rather than aspartame?

At a very nice con in Little Rock, Arkansas, a couple of years ago, I found something called Diet Big Red in the consuite bathtub. Being very much a Northerner (though I was made an honorary Bubba at a Birmingham DeepSouthCon), I had never heard of this beverage. I saw sucralose in the list of ingredients. Oh yay! I thought. Splenda soda! A strange silence fell over the group I was chatting with as I popped the can and took a sip. It was like a college initiation, or a practical joke. This drink tasted like stale beer and Robitussin. There being no spittoons, I quickly returned the liquid to the plumbing portion of the bathroom from whence it came.

I'm hoping some beverage company somewhere will do better than this. Anyone run across anything?

All the things I would get done if I didn't have to go to this convention! Grumble grumble raggit fraggit bitch moan.

This is the thought that dominates the week preceding a business trip for me. I would get stuff done, some it fairly important. But it will get done anyway. And by going to a convention I am getting stuff done: cons aren't just social events, they're work, and they're important, too. Plus, I always have a great time at conventions. So why do I always approach them with this stubborn resistance? Not to mention going into denial about preparing for them (which includes procrastinating by writing LJ entries like this one) so that everything becomes a mad last-minute rush. My friends seem to think about nothing but the con for weeks beforehand. I seem to do everything I can to pretend I'm not going to the con until there's just no getting around it.

Sigh.

How am I going to get everything done before I have to leave??

This is the thought that dominates the two days before I go. Everything always gets done somehow. But I get inordinately cranky about it.

Sigh.

The plane's going to crash and I'm going to die with my series of books uncompleted!

This is the thought that dominates the night before I leave for the airport. I've heard other writers mention something similar--the fear that Something Will Happen to Them before they finish their current work-in-progress. Only natural, I suppose. At least I've shaken the conviction that the fear is a premonition. Empirical data (I go to a lot of cons; I'm still alive) tends to have that effect. And I'm not afraid of flying; I love flying--once I'm on the plane. But the fear of not finishing persists. Sometimes I think that it will subside once I've got more books in print and feel more strongly that I've proven what I can do. But from what those other writers have said...nope, it won't. That fear is always there.

Sigh.

On the bright side: At least for the time being I'm more worried about this stuff than about the yellow-belt test tonight!