Fear my Impressive Wang, and the full list of loot

One thing I forgot in the Baycon report. By late Sunday I was becoming pretty good at using the chair, and spent much of Monday racing through the non-carpeted areas of the hotel shouting "Over caffinated man in wheelchair, make a hole!" Zooomm!! I managed to burn rubber.

Anyway, here is the final ribbon wang:

( Excuse me while I whip this out )

Now, the stuff. I looked around the art show a little but nothing really grabbed me (at least, nothing in my price range grabbed me) so no bidding there. In the dealer's room, I did a lot better.

Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds
Zima Blue - Alastair Reynolds (a collection of his short stories. I went back down to the dealers' room to buy this after reading two chapters of Pushing Ice.)
The Tough Guide To Fantasy Land - Diana Wynne Jones (I'd heard so many good things about this, I had to have it. It's great.)
Rainbow's End - Vernor Vinge

I also grabbed the t-shirt mentioned in yesterday's con report, and the incredible vest bought for me by hellloooonurse. aurictech gave me a fabulous gift, a silk map of the Balkans dating from the Operation Joint Endeavour days. The box the map comes in has a set of useful phrases in English, French, and Serbian like "Put your hands over your head" and "cease firing".

Finally, I was hanging out in the gaming room Monday chatting with the staff there, and they gave me a copy of Fantasy Imperium. Damn, this book is a time machine to RPGs in the early 1980s. I doubt I'll ever play it, but it should be good for mining ideas.

A Giants note

Bring me the head of Armando Benitez

We must hang together, or we shall surely hang separately

Seen in many places, started by filkertom

"The recent unpleasantness on LJ has spawned a new community, fandom_counts, intended to show Six Apart (LJ's owners) exactly how pervasive fandom is, how many fans (in the fannish sense of the word) there are here. It's not intended to be a posting community; just... if you read fanfic, or write it, or support the concept of it, then go here and join. And then post something about it yourself, to tell your FList."

I don't like fanfic. I find most of the overtly sexual stuff sets off my squick alarms at levels not seen in years. I find casual descriptions of non-consensual sex insulting, knowing too many survivors. However, I find mindless censorship even worse. Six Apart has caved in to a woman who is, at best, batshit insane. Six Apart needs to restore all the deleted journals and communities, issue a massive apology to all users, and then learn that any whackjob can claim to be an organization with LEO connections