WorldCon, part 2 (shopping)
Sep. 7th, 2004 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayIt was very irritating that the dealers room was open during exactly the same hours as the bulk of the panels. Still, I managed to find some time for shopping here and there. Odd that there was no "Dealers Row" equivalent.
The selection was more Boskone-like than Arisian. LOTS of books, moderate amount of filk and gaming, a smattering of media tie-in stuff, and very little costume or kink. There was some stuff that Kes and I had missed at the Flea recently, and told ourselves, "Well, we'll see them again in a month, at WorldCon." For the most part, not.
For myself, I got, big surprise, books. My "best-of" collections are actually nearing completion on some fronts. I have actually acquired the complete run of Donald Wollheim's best-of-the-year anthologies, and I am now only 2 books away from completing the main line of Gardner Dozois b-o-t-y's. I think I now have all the official Hugo Award collections, but still have lots of holes in my Nebula collections.
[This collection started on the general theory of "any 'best of' collection probably doesn't contain much that sucks". I have found this to be generally true in practice, at least back to about 1970 or so. Earlier than that, tastes diverge enough from my current ones that it becomes a less reliable indicator. And it's good to have a cutoff year, or the collection would take up even *more* space than it currently does...]
There was one vendor selling games and puzzles (Kadon Enterprises) who, when the saleslady noticed Kes and I walking by, did a hard sell on their blind-accessible puzzles. Pretty neat stuff, and Kes bought one, but boy did she talk our ears off.
I also picked up for Kes a copy of The Frankenstein Omnibus, which will no doubt come in handy for classwork in the coming year :-) Contains riffs on the Frankenstein story from just post-Shelley to the present.
Later in the con, Kes realzed that she hadn't brought enough clothes, and asked me to shop for a T-shirt for her to wear on Sunday. Though I found many possibilities, the one she wanted was, quite literally, the first one I saw on entering the dealers room: a reproduction of Munch's "The Scream", with text reading "Stop me before I volunteer again". Naturally, she volunteered for at least two new things while wearing the shirt. [sigh] They say that recognizing a problem is the first step towards solving it, but that only applies if you actually intend to take further steps :-s
[Other t-shirt candidates (from memory, may not be exact):
"Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabris, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam."
"English doesn't just borrow words; English pursues other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
"Watch out, I have a 75,000 word vocabulary, and I'm not afraid to use it."
[picture of chocolate molecule]
"Vorkosigan/Naismith 2004 -- vote for the *real* split ticket."]
The selection was more Boskone-like than Arisian. LOTS of books, moderate amount of filk and gaming, a smattering of media tie-in stuff, and very little costume or kink. There was some stuff that Kes and I had missed at the Flea recently, and told ourselves, "Well, we'll see them again in a month, at WorldCon." For the most part, not.
For myself, I got, big surprise, books. My "best-of" collections are actually nearing completion on some fronts. I have actually acquired the complete run of Donald Wollheim's best-of-the-year anthologies, and I am now only 2 books away from completing the main line of Gardner Dozois b-o-t-y's. I think I now have all the official Hugo Award collections, but still have lots of holes in my Nebula collections.
[This collection started on the general theory of "any 'best of' collection probably doesn't contain much that sucks". I have found this to be generally true in practice, at least back to about 1970 or so. Earlier than that, tastes diverge enough from my current ones that it becomes a less reliable indicator. And it's good to have a cutoff year, or the collection would take up even *more* space than it currently does...]
There was one vendor selling games and puzzles (Kadon Enterprises) who, when the saleslady noticed Kes and I walking by, did a hard sell on their blind-accessible puzzles. Pretty neat stuff, and Kes bought one, but boy did she talk our ears off.
I also picked up for Kes a copy of The Frankenstein Omnibus, which will no doubt come in handy for classwork in the coming year :-) Contains riffs on the Frankenstein story from just post-Shelley to the present.
Later in the con, Kes realzed that she hadn't brought enough clothes, and asked me to shop for a T-shirt for her to wear on Sunday. Though I found many possibilities, the one she wanted was, quite literally, the first one I saw on entering the dealers room: a reproduction of Munch's "The Scream", with text reading "Stop me before I volunteer again". Naturally, she volunteered for at least two new things while wearing the shirt. [sigh] They say that recognizing a problem is the first step towards solving it, but that only applies if you actually intend to take further steps :-s
[Other t-shirt candidates (from memory, may not be exact):
"Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabris, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam."
"English doesn't just borrow words; English pursues other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
"Watch out, I have a 75,000 word vocabulary, and I'm not afraid to use it."
[picture of chocolate molecule]
"Vorkosigan/Naismith 2004 -- vote for the *real* split ticket."]
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 09:46 pm (UTC)I never realized how similar caffeine and theobromine are. Just replace the latter's H with a CH3 to get the former.
How interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 09:55 pm (UTC)Have you read any of Kage Baker's stories of The Company? One of the background details is that the immortal cyborg protagonists are immune to almost all drugs and poisons -- except for theobromine, which gets them high :-)
Vorkosigan/Naismith
Date: 2004-09-08 01:19 am (UTC)Re: Vorkosigan/Naismith
Date: 2004-09-08 10:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-10 08:52 pm (UTC)Yeah, she'll sometimes do that. (She spent a good half-hour telling me about the genesis of the Star* game.) But I like her games well enough to put up with it...