I am still in post-con slumpishness, which has not been alleviated by work being at all distracting. I know I whine about too much but nothing at all isn't better by any means. I'm inertial; if I am bored with nothing to do at work, I will continue the habit indefinitely until forced into motion, and I like motion.

I had a ridiculously good time, both staying with svmadelyn and at the con, which despite not being a vidder at all, has never not felt like my con, a fannish home where a year passing between meetings feels like only yesterday and we're all so ridiculously delighted to see each other and talk until we're asleep on our feet and waking up at ridiculous hours to do it all again. It's vids everywhere--not just at the panels and shows but in the consuite and in the rooms and outside on the patio and pretty much anywhere laptop will travel, which is anywhere at all. We pimp the vids from our friends and what we downloaded from youtube and what we saw last week and still remember what sockpuppett taught us about color and what we learned about structure and make everyone, everyone watch the most literal vid ever in Twilight set to Crazy For This Girl.

( vividcon as home: the art of being audience-only )

( Vividcon and Viddom )

More later. I'm actually supposed to be doing laundry and I was reading fic, then took a break and thought, right, I need to write this before I forget! And now there is the dryer done.

Writing this does ease the slump a little.

Quick note for anyone attending VividCon:

amireal posted grocery store run offers for those attending.

Personally, I've always found the notion that the grocery store is within easy walking distance to be faintly amusing *G*. Especially if it's a warm VVC year. So instead of leaving my ability to pick up a few items to the whims of fate, being in the right place at the right time, I figured it'd be worth it to organize one or two runs, pairing up people with cars to people who would like rides.

I think one Thursday and one Friday should cover it. What I need is to gauge interest. Who would be interested in a ride and who would be willing to drive.

If you would like a ride, comment with your preferred day and if your mobility requires extra space in the car.

If you would like to offer the services of your car, please comment with your preferred day and the number of people you can reasonably fit into a car (remember to account for groceries).

My goal is to have a small caravan meet at a designated time and a spot and head out (FOR BOOZE).

So. Who's interested?

There's a thread somewhere that goes into detail about the location of the grocery store, the layout of the area around the hotel, and the sidewalks or lack thereof--I went to find it but I can't find the right thread, so if someone sees it, link me and I'll add it here for context.

Via morgandawn - here and here give a description of the area around the hotel.

Tentatively, I'm going to add if time conflicts combine with any accessibility problems, post there as well to see what can be arranged or to indicate a thread/post should be created for it.

VVC!

Home from VVC!

It was the usual amazing, but even moreso, because we made taraljc cover her ears and jump up and down to avoid hearing us reading badfic (as one does), and svmadelyn organized a Chicago outing on Thursday for fangirls, which was amazing.

VVC is literally the most amazing con I can imagine; this year, I also picked up something which is icky and potentially causing a great deal of congestion and unhappiness, but totally, totally worth it. svmadelyn assures me it is not swine flu. My ears haven't unclogged from the flight, so I reserve judgment, as she can't even see my pathetical state.

I'll do some vid reviews later; unfortunately (well, for reviewing), the bar was extremely good at mixing drinks this year and there was much dancing but not a lot of concentration during Club Vivid, and I missed part of premieres, which I am watching tonight.

The Saturday night Reboot party went swimmingly (security was called! Fine, maybe not everyone thinks that's a sign of success, but I totally do), and the Merlin Sunday night had cheese dip and we drank for the words "destiny", "fate", "two sides of the same coin", and two drinks for every time Arthur did the wrist twist with his sword.

...we could walk afterward. Really.

Child

Child's hair is still--orange-copper-blond. It's really traumatizing. I'm trying to work out if it's really that wrong to forcibly dye his hair green already and destress, because holy God, pictures do not do it justice. It's just--insane.

For those who spoke to Child last night (Including taraljc)--the first thing Child asked who were all the girls that talked to him last night, and I didn't roll my eyes, but it's hard, since Child kind of considers himself betrothed to taraljc and I don't know exactly how to explain at family reunions how my son met my daughter in law who is my age. See, he's twelve and wants to go to Northwestern, and I get this horrible feeling in about seven years I'm going to get a call from Tara from Vegas who is frantically trying to explain how it came to be that Child got her to a chapel there and has no clear idea how this happened.

(Note to Tara: he's reconsidering the bronze. God, thank you . Thank you.)

Panels

The panels on crack vids and meta vids were kind of awesome, and I do not say that just because svmadelyn, talitha78 and nightchik moderated those, respectively; it was incredibly fascinating to see the range of what's considered a crack vid and the different types of meta that exist in fannish culture. I want to--hopefully--go into more about the crack vid panel, since the range that Mad and Talitha used for crack were fascinating, since not all of them were funny or all that obviously cracky on first watch. There's a lot of interesting things that can be said about fandom's view on crack, what it is, and why we developed the terminology and the (loose defintion of a) genre.

I kind of also want to hit on meta vidding, because in retrospect, I'm not sure I got across how I felt about the SGA vid about John Sheppard not being like, a roiling hatred of vidder and vid, but more my emotional connection to what the vid was about and how I interpreted it.

Vid Watching 101 was excellent and I liked the way everyone described their viewing method and experience--which reminds me of my general feeling that being able to enjoy a vid purely on aesthetics is great and I'm all for it, but being able to reach the level where you can interpret what the vidder was trying to do--and being able to work out what you yourself got out of it--is possibly the only thing that reconciles me to Lit critique. And everyone who reads here knows that I consider lit interpretation a tool of the devil, so it weirds me out to find myself using the same terminology about vids that people who do lit analysis use for lit and liking it. I'm not sure why; I have a feeling that the people in fandom that do this stuff make it much more palatable as an expression of enjoyment and criticism without the overtones of absolutism that made me hate The Yellow Wallpaper.

cesperanza ran the Vidding Town Hall, which turned into a fascinating discussion on what's going on in the world with vidders, youtube, imeem, and various sites for vidders to put their vids.

This Is An Incomplete List

Had a blast with svmadelyn, which is like, pretty much the reason I love Chicago and who showed Twilight to me, nightchik, talitha78, and frostfire_17 in her apartment Wednesday night. I hate myself for my unironic love. And it is unironic. I swear I avenged my sixteen year old self watching one scene and totally feeling Bella's smugness.

Met shinetheway finally and she was a lifesaver getting the Reboot and Merlin parties going, and also a really good dancer and lacer of corsets when one has decided halfway through VVC to change clothes (did I mention the drinks were amazing and after being requested to change into something more festive, I thought bracing myself against a wall and holding my breath for Shine and amireal was like, a fantastic idea?).

(It was a fantastic idea--I need to get more wear out of it, and really, where else would I wear it?)

norabombay was hysterically funny; I met hellpenguin who was deeply awesome and has an incredibly dry sense of humor; and three other people, one of whom we traumatized last night with badfic and glow sticks that became like, the Merlin party DIY project while drinking for the word "fate" (comes up a lot!), and okay, who are you with the fantastic hair that helped do Reboot cleanup? I meant to thank you and didn't get the chance. And all the fantastic fangirls who went on the Chicago tour, including par_avion, who I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to much before.

In other words, this is my platonic ideal of incredible fun, a lot of thinking, and so much vid watching. And the VVC concom were marvelous--elynross, you and absolutedestiny and the rest of the com outdid yourselves on making a fantastic com.

I am going to lie down now and visualize how it feels to breathe without congestion and for the love of God, how it feels to hear without ears still not popping from flight. Oww.

So, for those attending VVC, would anyone be interested in a Merlin party on Saturday night in me and svmadelyn's room, circa 10:30ish or so? I also wanted to say, and a competitive game of create a Merlin drinking game, but God knows where that might end up. And by God knows, I mean, the second floor lounge with a laptop reading bad Merlin fic and traumatizing anyone who walks by. That's where it usually ends up. Not that anyone here, I'm sure, participated in that last year? With the live action performance of certain key scenes while drinking gin straight from the bottle?

Comment here if interested so svmadelyn and I will get some idea if anyone wants to play.

Climbing Up the Walls by obsessive24 has finally been posted yay! This is the SPN/Firefly/Heroes incest vid I was talking about here and discussing with cathexys, musesfool, and kernezelda in comments.

I cannot recommend this vid highly enough. Share your thoughts if you get a chance.

Gloria by sweetestdrain, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, Sarah/Cameron. This one is just. Um. Wow. Also had comments in earlier entry linked to above. It's amazingly complex for me, with a lot of possibilities that deserve to be played with.

And more vids as they come! Using tags "vid recs" and "vividcon" for these.

Life, Work, Fire

I came into work today with no expectation that anything in my remaining tests would be fixed. I was pleasantly surprised to realize I hadn't overestimated the situation--in other words, while no, it's not better, wow, it hasn't gotten worse!

I was a fool.

Two hours into this morning, I stood over Thomas in his office telling him "KILL IT WITH FIRE", which only sounds like an overreaction if you haven't been testing the same program fix about ten times and no one appreciates when you explain that this job has become the definition of insanity--to wit, doing the exact same thing over and over with the idea that the results will change. I think kill it with fire gets the idea across nicely.

Later, my boss eyed me warily. I have attempted to tell him that should I need to light my hard drive on fire, a.) I need more than a lighter; I need to call my son and have him mix me up a good accelerant out of common household chemicals and b.) I will take it outside, as one does.

This will end well, one way or another.

Anthrax watch has ended; I am sure we can all breathe easier knowing whatever that mysterious powder was in the bathroom it was either a.) not anthrax or b.) was anthrax but badly manufactured.

When written out, my job sounds far more interesting than it actually is.

Thoughts from VVC

During the panel on the expansion of vids and whatnot, the idea was broached that up to now, at the intersection of vidding and writing, it tends to be writing --> inspires vid. I was curious--and still am curious--if anyone would be interested in doing the opposite, or rather, pick out a vid, any vid, and write a story based on it. Not merely the constructed reality ones (though wow, could that go some interesting places) but also thematic or mood specific or whatever floats your boat. I'm curious if the writing would end up as much commentary--ie "this is how I see this"--as fic. Would anyone want to participate in that? I mean, basically, you will watch a vid and then write a fic about it. I mean, it's a hard job, but I'm pretty sure most of us would bite the bullet and carefully examine Dean's ass frame by frame, you know?

?

Yeah, this part is just because I wanted a third section.

A. VVC was *amazing*, per usual. Vids were *awesome*. I'm abusing the privilege of astericks. Will hunt down the vids that premiered adn post links, because oh my GOD there was a sparkly Atlantis vid.

No, seriously. There were *sparkles*.

But for now, the one I saw while doggedly trynig to catch up on flist.

Moons of Jupiter by fan_eunice, which is a total love-fest of Doctor Ten-ness that makes me all fuzzy for Tennant.

B. ...someone really thought that it was a good idea to abuse-troll (I--can't think of another term that applies), the pro-ana communities? Seriously? I thought it was a bad joke.

( very short huh )

Right. Longer than I thought.

C. Fixed remaining bad HTML on And All the World Beneath. Finally. What I can't figure out is why some of it just didn't translate to *either* P or BRs in the HTML, it just ran them together. It was--twitchy.

D. I miss svmadelyn. I mean, despite the fact I'm fairly sure that she tried to smother me the other night. There's really no other reason I can think of why the pillow was over my face so many times, you know? I mean, she says I was doing that, but you know? I wonder.

E. Met some *amazing* people and had this like, ten hour conversation with lovelokest and onnakitty that felt like ten minutes and was perenially startled every time someone mentioned how late it was.

F. May I never hear the word 'manbreast' again. It looks bad in text? You wouldn't really realize that it actually sounds five hundred times more traumatizing when spoken.

G. Waffles bit me. I think he's kind of bitter I was gone. It wasn't a hard bite, and he totally played it off as an accident, but I could totally tell.