Friday, June 15, 2012

Back Again

Whoa. That was a week.

I took Jake, and we hit the mainland. Melbourne, in fact. Did the NatCon thing.

I always enjoy the SF Convention thing. The panels and discussions vary from the very damned silly ("God Vs Godzilla: Who Would Win If The 500ft Jesus Of Rio Came To Life And Fought Daikaiju?" - thank you, Cat Sparks, you amiable lunatic) to the valuable and interesting. The fans are pleasant enough. But what I really enjoy is catching up with a peer group of fascinating, intelligent, creative people who share many of my interests, and understand a large chunk of my sense of humour. In that sense, three or four days is never long enough.

This year, I met David McDonald and Steve Cameron. I've shared a TOC with them both recently, and met them in passing before, but this time they both had the opportunity to leave their mark. David is as thoughtful and decent an individual as ever you're likely to meet, while Steve has a raft of fascinating stories from his time doing a range of other jobs. (Not sure how much he's ready to reveal to the public at large, so I'm not sayin' what he did that was so interesting. But it was indeed interesting. Yep.)

Of course, on top of all that, Melbourne is always the goods for food. Mr Barnes was kind enough to collect Jake and I from the airport, and we celebrated with an evening of serious Szechuan goodness. I wasn't sure we were going to be able to do it, at first... I got scheduled to a late-afternoon thing, and then a mid-evening thing, so I didn't know whether I'd be able to fit in a dinner, but with just Barnes, me, and a couple of youngsters, we managed to stuff our faces and be off again with a wee bit of time to spare.

I'm not going to run through the whole weekend of dinners, panels, discussions, drinks, awards, and people. I'm just going to say a big fat 'thank you' to everybody involved. You all know who you were, and what you did... or didn't do. I had a great time, and I'm home again, and I'm writing, and that's good.

Anyhow, we made it home again more or less in one piece. Oh, well.. okay, there was that incident at security, where the prawn waving the stupid 'explosive check' wand decided to 'randomly select' me...

...fuck it. Does that phrase piss anybody else off? They pull you out of the stream of travellers, and they hide behind this bullshit "random selection" routine. I like to fuck with their heads, when I have time, by asking what kind of algorithm they're using to ensure truly randomised selection. Naturally, they get that rabbit-in-the-headlights look, and start stammering, because they have no fucking idea what I'm talking about. But of course, I'm talking about true randomness, and the fact that no human-driven decision-making process can actually be considered 'random'.

The truth is that when they pick you, they do so for a range of non-random reasons. Boredom. The fact that they have to meet a quota. That their subconscious prejudices lead them to regard you as suspicious. And all of these factors can be manipulated, and used to beat the system. (It also doesn't help that the little explosive-detector thingies are less than reliable, according to information I've been given by someone who ought to know.) In other words, if you take the time to observe, and act appropriately, you can maximise your chances of slipping past the idiot with the explosive wand precisely because the selection process isn't random.

If the stupid game was actually about safety, I'd probably take it up with the people who run the theatre. But of course, it's not. It's about show. They're not trying to make anyone safe. They're trying to convince us that they're in charge, and they're Doing Something Useful.

Fucking idiots...

...anyway. In all the confusion, what with Jake having his hat and his new leather jacket to look after (we went to the Vic Markets on Sunday morning) and with me being blindsided by Mr Not-So-Fucking-Random and his dysfunctional phallic device, nobody remembered to pick up Jake's backpack. So at the time of writing, the presents for Genghis and the Mau-Mau are still somewhere in transit. Many thanks to Tehani, who put me onto the Tullamarine lost-and-found site... and thanks to the Qantas lost-and-found bunch to whom I eventually managed to get through, after the Tullamarine lot proved they couldn't find their arse with both hands and an anatomy text. I'd even thank Pack 'n' Send, who are moving the backpack through to us... except I don't think I have to thank anybody who charges nearly $100 to ship a 4kg backpack from Melbourne to Tasmania.

Eh. It's all good. Hopefully sometime early next week, the Mau-Mau will get her bamboo dragonflies that balance on their noses, and her Haigh's dark chocolate valentine heart, and Genghis will get his engraved military-style dogtags with chain.

Of course, Genghis already got his book. Three hundred pages of Diana Wynne Jones; The Enchanted Glass. Three hundred and twenty nine pages, actually. (It was in my bag, not Jake's.)

I think he must have enjoyed that book. But I'm reluctant to bother buying more from DWJ to give him. The little bastard read the entire thing through in about six or seven hours. All of it. Cover to cover. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?

I can tell you one thing I've done. I've given the little sod a copy of Frank Herbert's Dune. He's enjoying it, but it's definitely slowing him up. He's been reading it for over a week now, and he's no more than halfway through. Ha!

But we're back on Tas soil now. And today was a gaming day. I set up and ran a game of Paranoia -- 2nd Edition. I don't think I've done that in... fifteen years? Maybe more?

Eight players, ranging in age from nine through to eighteen. And brutally, joyously, I butchered them all, repeatedly. Except for Jake, who was cunning enough to escape with nothing worse than a frozen lung, and an exceptionally large and bulky prosthetic replacement. (I duct taped a laundry basket to his chest to simulate the discomfort and clumsiness of his new Experimental Oxygenation System.)

I believe the best death of the day was one of the Baggins sisters - young April, who was swallowed whole by a Godzilla-sized aardvark. Damn, I love Paranoia!


Okay. That's it for now. Writing time. Good night!

17 comments:

  1. If you fucked with the heads of any police officer in the united states it wouldn't matter how good natured you were, you would end up in jail.

    A Police State cannot tolerate mirth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah. I know better than to say anything unnecessary to your TSA. But it's not nearly so savage over here. And honestly, I quite like the idea of getting the ground-level people to understand that the whole thing is being done wrong.

      Of course, we're actually used to that, too. It is the standing conviction of all true Australians that their bosses, political representatives and hierarchical superiors are all basically fucked, and the only reason things keep working is because we ignore them as much as possible.

      Delete
  2. Thanks, Dirk, that's very kind of you. The appreciation is certianly mutual.

    As we discussed, one of the great things about Cons is that you meet some amazing people you might not otherwise get to. I really enjoyed getting to chat to you, looking forward to the next time! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. greta to catch up with you while you were in town.

    mmm I wonder what might have prompted you play a game of Paranoia? nothing to do with recent experiences with air travel security theater, no similarities there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Believe it or not, it was the regular set of players. I'd mentioned the excruciating Fun of Paranoia to them a few weeks ago, and they were eager to try it out.

      Personally, I think the aardvark-Daikaiju was an excellent touch. It was a High Programmer's pet-bot which had been subjected to experimental radiation/drug therapy by a couple of Death Leopards... so of course, they were supposed to recover it without killing it. Even though it was the size of a large building.

      Fun!

      Delete
  4. If it makes you feel any better, I get pinged for attention by those guys all the time, and as I mostly travel to/from military bases for work its only a matter of time until I set the bloody thing off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel your pain. Happily, I don't have to work with, or around, explosives. But the way the younger son is bugging me about chemistry and rockets and stuff, it's only a matter of time before I make a simple batch of "rocket candy" to send up a model. And then, of course, it's all going to go pear-shaped, isn't it?

      Delete
  5. Good to hear you had a good time. Another reason why people are "randomly" picked is if they look like they won't cause trouble, I guess they messed up that time ;)
    PS God Emperor should slow him right up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey - do I have your postal address? I think I lost it. Can you maybe fix that for me? flinthartas at yahoo dot com.

      Adios!

      Delete
  6. I'm having a little comp with a mate on who can read the most books in a year. Of course instead of reading something the size of mills and boon i've just polished off birmo's new one and moved on to the last GRR Martin.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Possibly you should change that to 'published words of fiction' in a year, or something. I couldn't stand trying to choke down M&B to make the numbers... but how the hell are you planning to keep up if you're reading doorstops?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well i read a lot quicker when i'm actually interested and those were the next two on the kindle app. Couple of smaller ones up next though.

      Delete
  8. Cheers, Dirk. It was excellent to catch up and chat properly, although one of us still owes the other a drink - and I suspect it might be you.....

    Thanks for the kind words - although I can't believe you think McDonald is *decent* while I just have stories?

    Anyway - I have no secrets. You and I have a sacred bond - one that cannot be broken. The kind of bond that can only be forged through singing excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan in the vendors' room....

    Steve

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Admit it: you'd have been insulted if I'd called you "decent" in print.

      Delete
    2. Also: you're a writer, dude. What's this shit about "just" having stories?

      Delete
  9. When I'm bored in airports, which is often, I play a game with the security guys. Can I time my exit from the scanner choke point to avoid the wand? Yes. Yes I can. Every time.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I had the odds stacked against me this time. Kid in tow, lots of gear, first person after a long hiatus due to doofus wearing a lot of metal blocking the way for ages - and of course, our buddy Mr B, who was ALSO playing dodge-the-wand. And in his case, that's important, 'cos of his work with industrial chemicals.

    But yes: normally, one can easily slip the fuckers. And that just makes their "random selection" line all the more fucking annoying.

    ReplyDelete