Photos Outta WorldCon

Terri

Tehani and Max

Trent. Actually, his eyes very rarely open. I believe he's afraid of corneal sunburn.

Cat, Kaaron and Rob. "We got Ditmars. You didn't."

I know, it's Melbourne. But is it Art?

Deadly concentration and bitter rivalries at the Lego competition

The Mau-Mau, wearing her favouritest birthday present ever

Jake paints his lightsabre. Candy-striped. Naturally.

Chaz and Barnesm at kaffeeklatsch. Thank you, Sarah, for the table!

Eyjafjallajokull.

Yarrr. New Toy, Belike!

Arrharr. I 'ave lately pillaged meself a fine silkscreen, an' a matchin' squeegee. Most pleased I be with the results, wi' a wannion!

Movie Night Of Horror

"Let's have a movie night," said Natalie. "We can invite the Ferals.*"

"Mm," I said. And so it began.

The Ferals are fine. Mum and Dad Feral are wonderfully cool, and their son is on frequent best-friend terms with Jake (Elder Son) Flinthart, and their other two offspring are intelligent, funny, well-behaved, etc. Movie night with the Ferals? Cool.

Oh, but things never stay simple here, do they? A few days later, Natalie realised we needed to invite The Vikings **. It made sense, since Small Blonde Viking is the Mau-Mau's best and dearest friend on the planet. And what the heck: the three Viking boys are smart and fun, and Smallest Viking is still so wee that she couldn't possibly be too much trouble.

But... we were up to six adults and eleven kids at that point. And then Natalie remembered the Hyphens. *** Great friends of both the Vikings and the Flintharts, it was true: a movie night during school holidays which eschewed the Hyphens simply could not be contemplated.

And so it came to pass that on Wednesday, I began to prepare for an evening involving fourteen children, eight adults, and Rob the Visiting Doctor. (Who is adult. But has been known to drink Absinthe, which puts him into a category very much on his own.)

Long story short, eh?

It went pretty well. I fired up the barbecue, and with sterling assistance from Rob Viking, much food was dispatched. Much. Very, very much. Also there was beer, and cider, and wine. And music. And children in all directions. Even some that don't exist purely in three dimensions.

Afterwards, there was an enormous mass of popcorn, and we all settled in to watch "The Dark Knight". The loft bore up under the task admirably, and a good time was had by all. The Hyphens stayed the night, and Little E Hyphen only woke us up once, at three a.m, trundling up the stairs in search of her mother...

I abbreviate these things because frankly, they're a blur. I know I enjoyed myself. I remember that. I just don't remember actually stopping at any point, until halfway through the Batman flick.

And of course, in the morning it was all about pancakes and syrup and bacon from the local Butcher Of Amazing Talent. (Mmmm... thick-cut smoky bacon from organically raised piggies...) Oh, and archery. And wood-splitting. Because that's how it went, okay?

I guess I'd have been okay, except that on Wednesday I got a rush-job: a manuscript that needed to be assessed, like, yesterday. So Thursday I sat down, read it, annotated it, and began the writing. Somewhere around one in the morning I stopped, but I took it up again this morning, and by the time it was done, I'd put down about ten thousand words. That's kind of above and beyond your usual MS assessment, I know, but I'm kind of thorough. It's an exercise for me, too.

So, anyway. That's been my last two days or so. Meanwhile, the newspapers tell me half of Tasmania has blown away, and the other half has frozen. I hope Terri and her family are okay, if they're still out there!

*Very nice local people. Not their real name. Not Feral at all.

** Another lovely family. Not named Viking at all.

*** Why would I suddenly start using real names now? Jeez, you can be dense sometimes.

My New Hobby: Annoying Text Messages

As most of you know, I loathe my mobile phone. In fact, I hate mobile phones in general, and I despise the fractured, ADHD-freaky social interaction that they foster. I hate talking to people who are staring at their handsets and wiggling their thumbs like a dyslexic wanker in the final throes of the vinegar stroke. I hate being interrupted by my own goddam phone while talking, or driving, or concentrating on something more important. And I am absolutely not going to have anything to do with Twitter, because I'm already completely flat-out for time. I just don't have any more time to give to this kind of crap.

However.

On very, very rare occasions, I find myself briefly at a loose end. For example, yesterday. After driving to Launceston with the family and exchanging the dreaded Mediterranean Eggplant tiles for a much niftier bunch of slate tiles, we took in a lunch in the city, and then drifted across to a big hardware complex. Natalie is pining once again for the childhood she never quite got, and is determined to buy some kind of gigantic, child-maiming backyard play complex. She's been tracking these things all over the Internet and elsewhere, and despite my continued assertions that I can probably build whatever the hell it is she wants, she still thinks one of these ginormous and brutally expensive kits is the way to go.

Well, who am I to argue?

Anyway, there were a couple things I wanted at the Great Big Hardware store. I got a wire brush, so I can prep the concrete surface to lay the slate tiles. And I got two big bags of chook shit, so I could provide a good dose of nitrates and nutrients to my fruit trees, seeing as how it's springtime.

But then I was done, wasn't I? And the kids were happily scrambling around inside one of those play-complexes, pre-assembled inside the Big Hardware Store for precisely the purpose of occupying noisy little gobshites while their parents go on a hardware frenzy.

I ordered a cup of tea. I sat down. I waited.

I got bored.

I had nothing to read. Eventually, I pulled out my mobile phone and stared at it. Then I thought about it for a while. And then I started sending annoying text messages to a range of people. Because... well, why not? If I'm going to be dragged willy nilly into this feculent mobile-phone society, I might as well find a few moments of enjoyment while I can, eh?

So I told Trent that tonic water fluoresces under UV light (Which it does.) He got back to me, and opined that the information was fascinating.

Then I sent pointlessly phatic messages to Sam and Angela. And someone else. I can't remember who.

But the best message of the day was the one that went to Barnesm. It provoked an exchange which has carried on in leisurely fashion for 24 hours now, and as he has just had what I must believe is the last word, I shall reproduce it here:

Me: "My dog has no nose."

Barnesm: "How does he smell?"

Me: "No, she went of her own accord."

Barnesm: "But how that dog got into my pyjamas, I'll never know."

Completely gratified my sense of the surreal and ludicrous. So. Now, the rest of you are going to have to beware. Do I have your mobile number? If I do... the day will come. It isn't often I get bored, no. I haven't the time. But it's people like you who are forcing me to carry this stupid, brain-cancer-suspect gadget. And thus, you too shall suffer!

Next time, I think, I'll start in on the Monty Python stuff.

WorldCon Aftershocks

We had visitors!

I got a phone call on Friday from Terri, who I've known for ages through Andromeda Spaceways and similar SF stuff. Terri was also at WorldCon, hanging with the Twelfth Planet Press folks, and it transpired that she was planning a trip around Tasmania with her family in the aftermath of the Con. Naturally I pointed out that Chez Flinthart had plenty of space to park a campervan, and suggested that she and her mob would be welcome if they happened to come by.

So the phone call was about a proposed trip up Ben Lomond, which is Tassie's one-and-only ski mountain. Terri figured they might drop by afterwards. I thought about it, and asked what size the campervan was. Turned out the thing was a six-metre plus monster... and I had to break it to her that the switchback road up the face of Ben Lomond simply wasn't going to accommodate the thing. There's a shuttlebus that runs up the road apparently, but since we had a walloping rainstorm last Saturday, Ben Lomond has no snow, and the bus doesn't run under those conditions.

Thus, Terri's mob checked out Launceston, then breezed into the Flinthart Zone.

It was fine, meeting the Terri family. The three 'kids' were actually well into the grown-up category, the youngest being fourteen and the eldest nineteen. That didn't stop the two boys making a headlong charge for the trampoline, though, and in short order there was an all-in scrum on the thing, with the smaller Flinthart lads generally getting the worse of things -- but very much all in fun. Meantime, I took Terri, Brett and their daughter on a walking tour of the place.

It was useful for me, too. I haven't actually had time to walk the property since before going off to Borneo, and there's been a lot of weather since then. I've got a great deal of work to do around the place -- a lot of wattles to fell, just for starters. And the vegie beds need to be worked over thoroughly, and restarted: there was this triffid thing that had once been a Chinese cabbage... now a giant stem with flowers all the way up at my near-two-metres height. Dangerous stuff. Cabbage shouldn't be man-height, I feel.

We found a nest of jack-jumpers up by the water tank, which was useful: meant that the visitors now know what to look for so as to avoid probably Tasmania's most dangerous critters. It also meant that I went back up with a container of petrol today, and gave the little bastards a dose of ugly hydrocarbons. I don't like jack-jumper ants.

Down at the spring, I discovered that the recent rains have blocked the outflow pipe, and water is now running over the edge of the pond. That's not a great idea. I'll have to fix that in the next few days, which will be one hell of a cold, wet, muddy job. Has to happen, though. Can't have the retaining wall of the pond being eroded. That would be very inconvenient indeed.

The swimming pond was also super-full, and flowing so fast it's cut itself a new streambed. Happily, the platypus was on duty, much to the delight of Terri and her daughter, who hadn't actually seen a platypus in the wild. Our mild-mannered monotreme put on a nice show, paddling slowly around on the surface of the pond, diving, returning. Very decent of him to stick around for the visitors.

Dinner went pretty well. I'm no good at moderation, so it went to four courses: poached scallops on croutons, then chicken and sweet corn soup, then Singapore mee goreng, and finally an American-style apple cobbler with whipped cream. By the time that lot was done, even the three teenagers were lolling about, clutching their bellies and sobbing gently... but they recovered in time for us to watch Kung Fu Hustle and eat bowls of hot, buttery popcorn up in the loft. Yay! Terri's mob didn't quite seem to know exactly what to make of Stephen Chow's bizarro kung fu antics, but they knew how to deal with the popcorn. And the Mau-Mau adopted Terri's daughter, spending the entire film sitting on her lap.

All up, it was a pretty successful visit, I think. They took off this morning, loaded down with pancakes and bacon, aimed in the general direction of the East Coast. Of course, we still have at least one jacket here, belonging to a teenage type... but I'm sure we'll be able to sort out a means of returning it. And, you know: when a family goes on holiday, there's always a debris trail. That's just the way it is, if the holiday is actually any sort of success.

I was glad of the visit. It was a nice reminder of the whole Con thing, and it's good to have the chance to consolidate friendships made at SF events and over the 'Net and all. Nice to attach faces to imagined persons, and discover names and personalities. Terri's lot were good value: sharp, thoughtful, good-humoured, and good-natured. My kids were delighted, and even Natalie (who is often a bit socially challenged when the numbers of visitors start to climb) relaxed and had a good time. She's even talking about bringing kids/family across to Perth in Easter next year, what with Natcon/Swancon happening.

That wouldn't be a bad idea. Of course, they wouldn't be doing the Con. Young Jake may have slipped neatly into the SF scene, but I can guarantee that neither fandom nor the rest of my family is ready for one another. Happily, Nat's mum is over there in Perth, and Natalie hasn't seen her in quite a while. The kids need to see their grandmum now and again, I think, just to build a few memories.

Prob'ly won't happen, though. Arranging family holidays for Easter is damned difficult. And Natalie's priority is, of course, the National Folk Festival at Canberra. On the other hand, personally I'm glad that Natcon 2011 clashes with the NFF. Means I don't have to work too hard to come up with an excuse to avoid five days in Canberra dust, surrounded by somewhere between ten and twenty thousand folk music junkies...

Whups. It's late. I'd better pack this in and go to bed. I'm damned tired, and tomorrow is another big day...

Whoa! Slow Down!

So, I've been back four days, all up. House has been cleaned top to bottom. Shed's been cleaned out, and a bunch of old carpet rolled out in the loft. Very nice. I've written several thousand words. Edited a bunch of video from Malaysia for the kids (got a lot more to do.) Slushed a double handful of stories. Broke down the old wood-heater, smashed up the brick structure that held it, disassembled the entire thing, found someone who wanted it. Cleaned up the concrete base ready for tiling. And a bunch of other stuff.

This isn't all me by any means. I had hardly anything to do with the shed, for example, because I was busy with the old wood-heater. We'll be replacing it with a compact model, more modern, which hopefully won't smoke out the house the way the old one did.

Then today, Natalie needed some time to do stuff, so I took the kids into Launceston to see Despicable Me. Oh, and also to get some tiles to cover the concrete base for the new heater. And to get a spacer for Younger Son's asthma puffer. And to get a silkscreen and a squeegee, yeah.

There were no green tiles of any use, so I wound up with a colour called "eggplant", chosen because a) I was told that slate was simply not an option, and b) matching the couch was okay.

I knew this would be a disaster, though, so I made sure the tile guys were aware I knew about their 30-day exchange policy. And of course, when I came home... well, the "eggplant" tiles just weren't close enough in colour to the couch, oh no. And why didn't I get slate, anyway? Slate would have been just fine.

Well, never mind. Knowing the disaster was ahead of me, I'd already organised to be back at the tile centre on Monday. So now I'll go there with my "eggplant" tiles, trade 'em in, and come back with a bunch of slate coloured tiles. Which is really what I wanted in the first place.

The movie wasn't too bad. 3D, of course, so we all had goofy glasses and the eye-watering results thereof. Oh, and of course Launceston's one-and-only cineplex managed the event with their usual aplomb... a line four or five deep curling up, round, down and over the lobby, and only one poor fucker there to handle the tickets for both the (evidently) highly desirable Despicable Me and the three or four other films also showing. So their answer was to leave the cinema doors closed until five minutes before the stated session time. You wanna make some money? Invest a pile in a new cinema somewhere in Launceston. Staff it properly, and you'll have a customer-base you just won't believe -- and incredibly grateful customers they will be, too.

The movie was okay. Fun. I giggled here and there. If you've got kids and you want a harmless outing, it works.

Meanwhile, here I am at home again. And I'm looking at one of the most mysterious objects I've ever seen:

All right. I admit that for some, this may seem a little prosaic. But consider the issue more deeply.

1) Who bothers to put potatoes in a tin? They last pretty well with even the most basic storage, they're a staple at every supermarket in the nation, and since their own flavour is quite mild, storing them in a metal shell full of water, salt, and Food Acids 300 and 330 just makes 'em taste like shite.

2) Also, their texture becomes quite horrid.

3) And this is Tasmania. We have potatoes in every goddam garden patch. A lot of 'em.

4) And this is my house. I almost never use tinned ingredients. Except tinned chickpeas, for making dips. They're good.

5) They're 'home-brand'. I avoid 'home-brand' like leprosy, because I don't like the ethics and the economics behind them.

You see? A mystery!

The answer lies in my wife, who has a weakness for tinned champignon mushrooms. And who had to do all her own shopping not long ago, for a whole week. Apparently, the tinned potatoes are stored on the shelves in the same general sector of the supermarket as the tinned champignons. And it's true: the vaguely yellowish, bulbous objects depicted on the label could, I suppose, be mistaken for a bad photo of a bunch of tinned champignons. If you were in a hurry. And you'd left your glasses at home. And you weren't all that keen on actually reading labels.

So... there you have it. Mystery solved. Except that there's one more thing, one little element that really freaks me out. Struck by curiosity, I read the label on this thing, and there's a wee little statement that just puzzles the hell out of me: "Product Of Belgium".

Why the hell are we importing nasty little tinned potatoes from Belgium, of all places? Aren't we capable of producing our own nasty little proto-fetus spuds?

Beware, Belgium! I will get to the bottom of this.

edited to add:

Oh great. I can hear a commotion outside. Apparently Younger Son has been bitten by a spider. I hope the poor thing is okay. Does the RSPCA defend spiders?

Dear Julia: Fix This Shit. Now.

Dear Prime Minister.

Your government is balanced on the most precarious of knife edges. And well you might ask: how did your party go from the sweeping triumphalism of K-Rudd's landslide victory to this scary, skin-of-the-teeth sort of grip on governance? What did Labor do that almost made Australians willing to vote for a Tony freakin' Abbott government?

I'm sure there's a list. (And I'm pretty sure that dumbfuck Conroy and his buttwrenchingly stupid Internet Firewall are on it.) But most important of all, I suspect, was the overwhelming sense of betrayal and letdown.

K-Rudd promised us change. A lot of it. And after fifteen sphincter-puckering years under Howard and his team of Neo-Victorian cretins, we desperately wanted that change.

Now sure, I understand there was a global meltdown in the financial sector. But you know what? I don't fucking care. Because there are changes that could have been made, should have been made, would have been made in a fundamentally decent society, that would have cost pennies. In fact, they might even have been revenue-positive, once the costs were all totted up.

And they would have made K-Rudd's government look like it was actually trying to achieve something other than bullshit and arsecoverage.

So here's my suggestion for you. You want us to believe in your shiny new co-operative nice-guy government? Show us some fucking action.

Here's my suggestion, first up: get the refugee kids out of mandatory custody.

I'm not one of those who's taken potshots at you for not marrying and having kids. I figure it's your choice. But if you can read that article, and you've even the slightest touch of humanity about you, then either you will act to help these people -- or you really do hate kids and families, as your opponents have slyly suggested.

Ms Gillard, the Australian society is famously laid-back, relaxed, and egalitarian. We're not a bunch of pre-Nazis, just waiting for the right Hitler to come along with a racist agenda to turn us into a nation of slavering, xenophobic killers. This is the land of the 'fair go', the place where trust between friends and neighbours has built a society that, for all its flaws, remains one of the most open-hearted in the world.

We are not a country that needs to imprison children who have committed no crime against anyone. And indeed: in this country, children who have committed crimes worthy of detention get better treatment than these frightened, scarred, damaged, and utterly blameless children who have done nothing worse than flee some of the most horrifying and repressive places on earth.

A lot of us voted Green this election, Julia. Did you notice? A whole fucking lot more of us than ever before. You and your government have lately been led around the garden by a couple of ex-rightwingers who now claim to be independent -- but you are every bit as dependent on the support of the Green faction, and I really think you need to remember that.

Let the children go, Julia. It's the right thing to do. It's the Australian thing to do. It's what a true leader of a decent Australian society would do.

Let the children go.