{"id":641,"date":"2009-08-11T09:17:45","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T17:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=641"},"modified":"2009-08-11T09:18:50","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T17:18:50","slug":"the-final-lap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=641","title":{"rendered":"The Final Lap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last of my panels: Fermi\/Drake<\/em>, which, despite its Disneyfied title\u2014 and despite being held at 11am on the last bloody day of the con\u2014 was so jam-packed we had to move to a larger room halfway through the session.\u00a0 It was the panel on which I talked the least, and learned the most.\u00a0 I’m trying very hard to not notice the obvious lesson.<\/p>\n

Penultimate Panel:\u00a0 Legitimising the Woo<\/em>.\u00a0 Strong circumstantial evidence that\u00a0 Margaret Ronald and I had done something to piss off the Worldcon organisers, since they scheduled us across from the Hugos.\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 Fuck ’em:\u00a0 we kicked ass<\/em>.\u00a0 We had about thirty people in attendance \u2014 way higher than I was expecting, given the time slot \u2014 and we had a blast.\u00a0 Many lavves were had by all.\u00a0 Take home message; when faced with a cold house, ridicule family members.\u00a0 Works every time.<\/p>\n

Overall a terrific con, far better-run than 2003’s disastrous Torcon (although not without its own problems<\/a>).\u00a0 The only real downer over the weekend was the number of people who approached me wearing expressions of profound astonishment, blurting out “But\u2014 but you’re really cheerful<\/em> and happy<\/em> in person!” If one more person had done that, I swear I would\u00a0 have broken their fucking nose.<\/p>\n

News flash, people:\u00a0 I’m always<\/em> cheerful and happy.\u00a0 Deal with it.<\/p>\n

Here are some pictures of stuff.\u00a0 The Convention Center itself:<\/p>\n

\"Worldcon<\/p>\n

\n

\n

The convention center closer-up.\u00a0 Probably too<\/em> closer-up:<\/p>\n

\"rot\"<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure that spiderweb of cracks was not part of any deliberate aesthetic:<\/p>\n

\n

Some guys:<\/p>\n

\"strosskrugman\"<\/p>\n

\n

Some other guys:<\/p>\n

\"assort05\"\"assort01\"<\/p>\n

\"assort02\"\"glenn\"\"kathbrad\"<\/p>\n

(Okay, fine<\/em>.\u00a0 Paul Krugman and Charlie Stross; Michael Skeet, Madeline “Squeak” Ashby, and Robert “Death Ray” Ashby; some guy next to Karin Lowachee, Karin Lowachee; Jetsi de Vries; Glenn Grant & stuffed penguin (Glenn on left); Brad Templeton,\u00a0 Kathryn Myronuk.)<\/p>\n

\n

David Nickle’s Female Friend (aka Caitlin Sweet):<\/p>\n

\"assort03\"<\/p>\n

\n

An allegedly “Angry Robot” who, in my opinion, could use some lessons in the whole anger department:<\/p>\n

\"angryrobot\"<\/p>\n

\n

\n

A catnip mouse (or a small, fuzzy Star Destroyer, if you kinda look at it head-on) offered up as a gift for my cats by a fan who quite obviously had her priorities straight:<\/p>\n

\"bananamouse\"<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

Some building:<\/p>\n

\"somebuilding\"<\/p>\n

\n

Moonbase Alpha Memorial Maximum Security Penitentiary:<\/p>\n

\"residence\"<\/p>\n

\n

One of Old Montreal’s less-frequented cafes, for reasons which remain unclear:<\/p>\n

\"arsenik\"<\/p>\n

\n

Nature-loving Montrealers enjoying the wild untamed beauty of Canada’s great outdoors (visible at bottom center):<\/p>\n

\"green\"<\/p>\n

\n

My soul:<\/p>\n

\"mysoul\"<\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last of my panels: Fermi\/Drake, which, despite its Disneyfied title\u2014 and despite being held at 11am on the last bloody day of the con\u2014 was so jam-packed we had to move to a larger room halfway through the session.\u00a0 It was the panel on which I talked the least, and learned the most.\u00a0 I’m trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road","category-public-interface","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}