Announce that Mitch McConnell’s office has until the end of the week to respond in a satisfactory fashion to your entirely reasonable letter about his health. If they do not, at noon on Monday you’ll be holding a press conference on the front steps (or equivalent thereof; the hospital probably doesn’t have a lot of steps) of George Washington University Hospital in DC, which is supposedly where he is. After that press conference, you will be entering the hospital and demanding to see Senator McConnell.
If you are provided sufficient evidence that McConnell is alive and able to perform the duties of his office, you will come out and tell everyone that. If you, the governor of Kentucky, the state that McConnell represents, are denied the chance to see him, either by hospital staff, DC police, McConnell’s staff, or literally anyone else, you will be notifying the still-gathered news media of that fact and then you will immediately either appoint a new Senator in McConnell’s place or name the date of the special election, depending on which method your office has decided you’re able to utilize this week. I feel like this part keeps changing.
They will sue you, if you do that. An awesome thing about facing a lawsuit, though, is that they would have to prove he is alive in order to sue you for unlawfully replacing him. Which happens to solve the exact same problem that you already had, so it’s all good.
It’s time to make an ass of yourself, Governor. Do it.
So it occurred to me that I never really talked about ConGlomeration. Cool thing, first: I am right now listening to an MP3 of my first panel, which was on writing dialogue. I have recordings of two of the four panels, both of which will be posted to Patreon as soon as I have listened to them and made sure everything sounds good and that I’ve edited out the one place where I randomly blurted out what school I work at to someone. There aren’t a huge number of people in the crowd, but it’s still a fun talk.
Three of the four panels went really well; the fourth didn’t precisely go badly, but I quickly found myself not feeling like I belonged at the table. I really liked the people I was neighbors with in the vendor room. For the most part the folks who were there as con-goers were nice people. I sold … decently? I’ve had better shows, but I’ve had some that went way worse.
A couple of minor announcements: there will be second editions of both Skylights and The Sanctum of the Sphere coming, once I’ve sold out of my current physical stock of both of those books. Skylights is going to be slightly updated (no story changes) to eliminate references to the year it takes place in, and Sanctum is going to be released as a standalone single volume without The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 in it. I’m hoping this happens by the end of the year, but again, it’s depending on selling out or getting close to selling out the books I have which may take a while.
But, man, y’all … Kentucky.
I opted out of one of my panels because one of the people I was supposed to be sitting with is well-known in the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies movement. If you don’t know what that is, don’t look it up, just trust me that it was not a good idea for me to be on a stage with this guy.
(Man, I really talk too much on this first panel. Granted, there’s only two of us, but I didn’t realize I was talking as much as I do. Geez.)
Anyway. The thing about being in an area that is much much much more conservative than what you’re used to is the weird phenomenon where motherfuckers will say absolutely anything to you if you’re a white guy and assume you’re just going to agree with it. And … fuck, did I spend a lot of time not starting, or at least not continuing, shit with people. Like the guy who had three different wildly offensive Second Amendment/ MAGA/ anti-Obama shirts, one for each day of the show, and kept insisting on parking himself right in front of me at my panels. Or the three or four people who randomly brought up wanting to shoot people if they find themselves in certain neighborhoods. And … shit. It just got to be too fuckin’ much sometimes, y’know?
(Meanwhile, the other half of the crowd is the LGBTQIA+ hyper-liberal types who I’m much more comfortable and friendly with, and those folks were all cool.)
So, yeah. I was having fun, for the most part, interspersed with these occasional weird moments where I’m either just cringing or trying to keep myself from losing my shit at somebody. So … is that a decent show? Sure, why not, right?
Still haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame, as family medical drama continues. So I’m still spoiler-dodging and mostly avoiding the internet. I’m hoping to rectify the problem by this weekend. Just FYI.
