she was cuffed to the truth

 A week from tonight is wiscon karaoke. ONE FUCKING WEEK.   It is so good I decided to say FUCK PREPPING and am just gonna shit talk on panels and drink a lot, because I got shit to do this week.   Financially I have to get one of these cars sold or wiscon is going to fuck us over.   I have to try to get caught up on sleep between now and then, or I'll go into the con exhausted.  

We're strongly considering bringing our friend's 13 yr old daughter with on friday, because she wants to do wiscon SO BAD and wants to help with the clothing swapo, but I know I don't want to be responsible for someone else's kid the whole weekend.  She keeps saying I don't have to be responsible for her, but I'd at least want to help keep her busy. So I'm thinking if her dad isn't going to come to the con, one night is all I'm down to commit to.  and friday means she'd get to do the gathering and some parties. and shit, I could get her thursday and have her watch the kids so z can come to karaoke.   But I'm going to have to decide that shit pretty quick here. 

I'm on one panel that I feel kinda overwhelmed about and thinking I am actually on the opposite side of the discussion than the other panelists, who are all, like, smart people who are good at arguing, but I guess we'll see how it actually goes.  It's too early in the day to go to drunk, so I'm hoping to have the nerve to disagree sober if it goes like I think.

Fuck if I know what I'm wearing.  That's why I do the clothing swap.

about the concomm response, the less okay I am with it. I mean, it's their decision, and they have more data than me. I am friends with people on the concomm, who I know are good people with great intentions, so I don't hold it against anybody, but this shit ain't right. I'm not saying that disinviting was the only answer, but claiming good will come of her still being guest of honor? no fucking way. Rescind the Honor part, but still have her as a guest of the con, so she can show up and try to defend this crap or apologize or get educated or at least not be "silenced" as some would try to claim. I get that there was no easy answer, but that letter was not the right move.

You are making fellow fans and writers feel unwelcome at wiscon. Fellow fans and writers who are already marginalized. I am seeing people say they will not come this year because they do not feel supported by the con against this bigotry. Both long time attendees and people who were thinking this would be their first wiscon.

This is my con. I will not stand for this shit. I believe that as someone who is not muslim, and therefore not directly hurt by this shit, and who wants Wiscon to be a welcoming place for all people, I am obligated to do what I can to make it a safer space. It shouldn't be on the few Muslims who come to the con to educate on this. Those of us who give a shit and have privilege need to step up as much as we can. I have shit talked about a walkout during her speech in comments to posts, and I'm committing publicly here to following through, unless a better plan is organized by someone else. Less in protest or hope to get through to Ms. Moon, than merely in solidarity, I guess.

I don't want my con poisoned by this shit. I expect better.

I think i've been putting off this last wiscon wrap up(which may take more than one post) because if i wrap up, that makes the being done official. I may go back over shit i touched on already too.

Firs, yes, there was considerable fail. I already went the fuck off about some of it, and there was MORE! But theres always some fail, and there was a lot more WIN this years than other years, at least from how I saw it, so I will call the con overall a win. For me socially, it was a HUGE win, as I usually still have some of my awkwardness, even at wiscon, where I talk to people a little here and there but don't hang out with anyone much, and this ear I went ahead and hung out, in part because Z took the kids a lot, and in part because I finally found significant numbers of people I felt truly comfortable with, even though I was blown away by being surrounded with people cooler and smarter than me they were silly enough that I didn't feel too awkward.

people I met but didn't name drop in other posts yet, um, Oyceter, Unusual_music,both of whom I saw around the con but didn't officially meet until late monday night at the bar takeover, which was another fantastic time, involving a lot of the crew who had been at geekeoke, now that i think, plus even more cool people. There was sneaking up to 12 with Tempest and naamen for free bar drinks. Well, I snuck, they were up there legitimately, i just trailed them up there. I hung out with chrome kitten at and after karaoke, but then hardly saw her the rest of the con, like to really talk or anything. And I know i said it before, but i would up out to dinner with real authors! squee

'know, I met too many good people to keep listing. there was oursin, generaljinjur, popelizbet and kendra, thewayoftheid, and all my usual rockstars, ansai, badgerbag, mystickeeper, raanve, lovelokest, nadiya, seaya, littlebutfierce,

all of whom rock my world, let's just leave it at that.

the problem with the name drop posts, is that you always forget someone, and then they think it's cu you don't like them, and then you're all no, I just forgot, really I loff you" and they're like "but you forgot me *sob* n so it's bad. people i'm not namedropping in these posts, it's not because you don't rock.

Sunday we hit parties, and sinbad discovered the bellydancing party. all weekend she wanted a dance party, so that was good.

went to the last little bit of the netbook party while drunk and in an evening gown, and mananged to get ubuntu installed, thanks to empest for setting up my bios whatsit and, oh shit, i forgot his name for the USB and help.


id weird things with fashion for me all weekend, including wearing dresses both saturday and sunday, and it will probably be another year before i wear another dress, but the attention was interesting, and i met trouble because of it. I was somewhere in my usual inbetween the rest of the weekend, but with less jeans and t shirt, more effort to look shmancy a little. the outfit i liked best was friday, and if anyone got a pic of me in that, lemme know.



oh, and there were panels. I made it to the autorial intent one, and even got permission from the panel to record it, then had tech fail, and saw people were liveblogging it, so I gave up. It was a good panel, with a couple of ORLY moments, that have been addressed elsenet as well.

I almost left a panel in tears, not because of any content of the panel, but because there were so many knitters, and it was killing me to realize how much i miss knitting since my hands started going to shit.I was sitting right behind someone knitting, and grooving to her knit rhythm, and then i was sniffly. If I can learn to knit with my wrist braces on, I could still do it, but i don't know if that would work out. w

caught most of best panel ever, including the bit about the cybernetic hoohaa, and the robo hair. sure sign of a great panel: having sore hands from clapping so hard. thank god badgerbag blogged that. Naamen made a crack about singing journey, but then even when several audience members called for him to sing, he would not.

for the questions being picked by nerf gun, there sure was a lot of zombie apocalypse. when it got to what the next apocolype should be, I was the one biting her tongue to keep from butting in "Mammoth Zombie Apocalypse." Yeah, i was in an elevator alone with mammothfail author, and jut bitched about losing my phone, did not say "so, howsabout them mammoths?" or "way to wipe out a whole peoples". but yeah, bit the fuck out my tongue in that elevator.

so, i would have liked to party more, but night time panels mean i just barely get to pop in to a couple parties. no night time panels tomorrow night though, so Verb Noire party for the win. managed to squeeze in a mimosa and a sangria anyway. If wiscon were every weekend, i would totally drink too much.

Talked to and or squeed at so many rockstar awesome people. RAWK! SQUEE! I'd talk about all the rockstars, but I haven't figured out the usertag/lj user code thing for DW. I may or may not have big fangurl crushes on a bunch of wisconners now. well, a bunch more.

Never had more than like 3 minutes to talk, because I was running past to someting i was late for, to relieve Z from kid duty, or to chase my kids.
Some wiscon I'mma be all organized and shit, and actually go out to dinner with people, or have downtime, and get to have real social conversations. yeahfuckingright.

Even if i score time to go out for dinner with anyone this weekend, I've totally gotta watch the damn budget and should eat free consuite food/dinner at home the rest of the weekend. SUCK, but it's been worth it. and the meal breaks are the only time my kids can get downtime/naps, really, and the nap thing pretty much only happens if i'm home with them.


too tired to blog more, and look, both my kids are asleep before three! goodnight! But kottam i love Wiscon!

anyone wanna help with the clothing swap? apparently I'm coordinating it but i didn't know that til last night, and I could use maybe one more volunteer to do set up. It looks like i have two people showing up around noon, and I'd like it if they had one more set of hands. I'm particularly looking at people who have done the swap before.w I'll show up at noon if i have to, but it may be complicated.

this is gonna be a good Wiscon. There are so many panels I am excited about, and gooooooood parties.
And this year Z is off work the whoooole weekend, so i can make it to panels even when the day care room isn't open or my kids hate it.
I notice the Tor party and the Verb Noire party are the same night, and i can tell from here which one will be more fun.

Stinky is now hassling me that we should have hotelled up so he can be at the con 24-7, but do i look lik I'm gonna drop hunnerts of dollars on a hotel room in my own town? Although that would allow for MORE DRINKING. Good thing it's too late to get a room.

not that I was MAD, but, now I am even more not mad at her. squee!

I have very few excited happy icons, my icons are all snark and flesh. but if I had a SQUEE icon, I'd use it right now

it's spreading, it seems she gets her internet fame.

Who's gonna be at Wiscon, anyway?

I'm still probably too sick to do this effectively, and I have an extra kid here today while dh and extra kid's dad help a good friend move. So we'll see what i get through before having to referee more.

being a local, i was in and out of the con all weekend. My kid mostly refused to leave the daycare during all the hours they were open, so I got more time to actually do con stuff than ever before. Hit the LAadan v. Klingon panel friday afternoon, which was a high point of the weekend for me, in part just being in a room with other people who knew wtf LAadan was, in major part getting to hear Suzette discuss it first hand, in another major part getting to hear both her and MJ Hardman in a discussion, and then the bonus part, meeting a couple of other potential LAadan geek friends, Porcinea and Badgerbag, who are also interested in spreading LAadan, if not as a complete language, at least working parts we could really use into english. I'm hoping my head will clear up and i can start working on that, seeing as i think I have now siccessfully found both of them online. Planning on finally ordering the complete LAadan dictionary and grammar this week, rather than just scraping by with what is available online, although I saw a day or so ago that the whole thing may become available online, once sf3 agrees. There's a pretty good transcript of that panel up on the feminist sf wiki, which i am too lazy to link for you, since i can't get the assdamn wiki to load.

(editted to add) http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=Láadan_vs_tlhIngan_Hol_%28WisCon_30_Panel%29
and the wiki is not assdamned. I love the new wiki.

Spent most of the gathering shmoozing, knitting, and horking down decaf. My least favorite thing about being pregnant is having to not O.D. on coffee.

After dinner, went to the panel on "What a feminist think tank would look like" which was also very stimulating, but I don't recall much for detail right now. I bet the transcript for that is on the wiki too.


Then i hit parties with the kid, and you all know what parties are like.


We were busy one way or another the mornings through the whole con, so I didn't hit another panel til saturday at 1, the "does your baby make you smarter" panel, which i was late for, and was primarily about the challenges of creating with kids, and involved some great stories, pointers and anecdotes.

I'm beginning to crash again from this cold, so I'm gonna just do major highlights from the rest of the weekend, and may or may not actually go back into details.

The breeders v broads panel rocked, and is one i wish i had taken notes on. We covered some really good ground there, though not the ground i expected to cover, and included more disagreement then i had thought.
Then there was the linguistics & sf panel, which was also astounding. Knitting for boys wound up being much more knitting for everyone.
Went to the comics panel with the intent of just picking up a few recommendations, and instead got to hear a lively discussion on women in comics and all.

I'm done for now, With the only other highlights I want to mention being attacked by naomi kritzer's adorable, ruthless children, who would not relent til i was on the ground, and who the elder of proved to be too tough for my wildass kid to pull off of me. And running into an old friend, whose new girlfriend i had met a couple months ago with a strange feeling of familiarity, and realizing i recognized her from wiscons past. She's the completely fucking fabulous Kat Beyer http://www.katspaw.com/ and someday when my poverty breaks, i shall buy much of her art. Went to her reading, as well, and dammit, not only is she a great artist, she can write, too. Had to skip out on the rest of the reading, which i felt bad for, but had left the ill husband in charge of the child, and only felt like he could handle the short time Kat was reading, not the whole panel.