God, it doesn’t look like I read anything this month. I did! I swear!
Month: February 2020
In which I’m planning my nerdery and also I’m stupid
We’re heading to Chicago for C2E2 tomorrow; we only bought tickets for the Saturday part of the show, but we’re going to stay with my brother on Friday night so that we don’t have as long or complicated a drive to deal with on Saturday morning. I spent some time tonight looking around at who was planning on being there and trying to wargame out who I wanted to see and how much standing in lines I thought my eight-year-old might be willing to tolerate. Which is … probably not too much, honestly.
I have a handful of people on my list: two comics writers, Gail Simone and Al Ewing, both of whom should be easy enough to find at their Artist’s Alley tables, Noelle Stevenson, who my wife also wants to meet and who is responsible for the excellent Netflix She-Ra program, and a few science fiction authors: John Scalzi, Sam Sykes, Robert Jackson Bennett and S.L. Huang. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how difficult it will be to get autographs from these people, and I’m not about to subject my kid to lengthy lines, but is Sam Sykes gonna have a long line? I mean, probably not, right? Who the hell knows. There’s also the minor decision needed about whether I’m gonna bring stuff with me for autographing, which takes up space and requires me to carry said stuff around, or if I’m going to plan on buying things for signatures, which, okay, it’s our anniversary so I’m gonna splurge a bit, but I don’t know how many extra books I need just for signatory purposes. I mostly want to just meet these folks; the signatures are frankly all sorts of secondary to that purpose.
Now, take all that, whip up a bunch of unnecessary COVID-19 related paranoia, and pour said paranoia all over my plans like some sort of infection-based gravy. There have been sixty damn cases of the novel coronavirus in America, and I know how to wash my damn hands, which is the best way to avoid it. I’m just not super eager to be northern Indiana’s patient zero when I contract this shit and then spread it all over a damn middle school. Am I going to let this change my plans? Hell no, although I’m probably going to spend a smidge more time with my hands in my pockets than I might otherwise, and there’s definitely going to be more hand-washing than usual. But it’s in the back of my brain anyway, because stupid, and because oh right I have an actual anxiety disorder and anxiety disorders love this shit. Like, there’s nothing an anxiety disorder loves more than going to a 100,000-person-strong nerd convention during the opening weeks of a pandemic. Loves it.
Unrelated to anything: I am listening to a Kesha album right now, on purpose, and I’m rather enjoying it.
Anyway, I’ll post tons of pictures– pretty sure I can’t be infected with anything through my camera– and the usual end-of-month posts will be happening as usual. Whee!
Just for the record
The evening has gotten away from me, and it’s suddenly Time for Sleep and there are a number of minor things I wanted to do tonight that haven’t happened, including a blog post. Therefore, in the interest of Getting Something Written, and once again treating my blog as my outboard memory, because I want to remember the date for item #2 here:
- I had very nearly a perfect day at work today. I literally did not raise my voice once the entire day. That is exceptionally rare.
- I am typing this while wearing white cotton gloves on my hands, which is cutting my typing speed down and turning my accuracy to shit. Why am I doing this ridiculous thing? Because several years ago I forced myself to quit biting my nails when I realized it was literally causing wear patterns on my teeth, and I am now bound and determined to eradicate my similarly-disgusting and no doubt related habit of incessantly picking at the skin at the tips of my fingers, something I have been doing for, as far as I can recall, my entire life. I don’t intend to wear them to work or in public or anything like that but when I’m home or driving I’m going to try to have them on until “leave your fingertips alone” becomes muscle memory.
The end. Sleepy.
Ow
In the midst of one of the worst I-don’t-get-migraines-so-maybe-that’s-not-what-this-is episodes of my life, where I’ve got what feels like something inside my head trying to push my right eye out. It sucks and I’m trying to avoid screens or, really, looking at anything at all, and given my proclivities and hobbies and basically my life that’s a bit more complicated for me than for some people.
I’ll be back, if I don’t die. Or if my eye doesn’t pop out.
Quick question for the WordPress people
… has anyone else been seeing a rash of single-word spam comments for the last couple of months? Any idea what that’s about?
Mental health update
The portion of my brain that is able to view the rest of me dispassionately would like to report that it is fascinated at how much legit fucking emotional stress I am experiencing at the idea that Bernie Sanders might be the Democratic nominee for President, an experience that I’m pretty certain I’ve never had during a Democratic primary before, and I’ve been paying attention to these things for a minute now.
The rest of me … well, it’s glad that that one part is fascinated, I suppose. It would also appreciate it if it could motivate me to grade something or take a shower, now that it’s 4:30 in the God damn afternoon.
It is decided
For our 12th anniversary, my wife and son and I will be attending C2E2, which is a huge show that I attended once as a vendor several years ago. This will be the first nerd convention that I have been to in years where I will actually get to be a fan and an attendee and not trying to hawk books, so it ought to be a lot of fun, although I’ll probably need all of Sunday to recover afterwards. I have important decisions to make during next week now, mostly along the lines of how much money am I going to allow myself to blow at this thing and when I find a giant sword that I want, should I consider buying it, or am I past the point where I should be buying giant swords?
I mean, realistically I know the answer to that, but still.
There will be tons of pictures of cosplayers, of course, and there may be pictures of me taken with a handful of my favorite authors, as John Scalzi, Sam Sykes, and Gail Simone are all going to be in attendance. I will absolutely go meet Gail; Scalzi and Sykes will depend on the length of lines, as we’ll have the boy with us and I feel like C2E2 is not an optimal place to “meet” people who I might want to talk to for more than ten seconds. We’ll see, though.
Finally! A plan!
A brief political update
…several days after writing this, and having spent some time reading on and thinking about Michael Bloomberg as a candidate for the presidency, I feel compelled to inform you that he is now indisputably my last-choice candidate, and the only circumstances under which I will vote for him is if he somehow gains the nomination and I have no other choice. I actually feel like I did Sanders a disservice by ranking the two of them together.
Furthermore, I will cheerfully endorse any number of convention-based delegate shenanigans to deny him said nomination if necessary, regardless of which other candidate said shenanigans hands the nomination to.
One other thought, actually, and this is coming late enough that I’ve already hit “publish” on this post– I have officially given up on the idea that I Know Anything about politics, which is why you haven’t really seen me attempting to make any broad predictions about how either the primary or the overall race may be going beyond my insistence that you cannot declare the primary over before Black and Hispanic voters have had a chance to weigh in– and tomorrow will give us a fair amount of useful information on that account. The polls have been an enormous Goddamned mess throughout the primary, and given that I am utterly unable to understand why anyone would willfully and intentionally vote for the shitgibbon beyond the purest and most undistilled love for white supremacy, I’m not going to be any damn good at, say, predicting which Democratic candidate might be more electable than any other.
I strongly suspect that electable is code for “old white dude with good hair” anyway, if we’re being honest.
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