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WorldCon, part 2 (shopping)
It 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."]
no subject
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
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 :-)