Hey, Ho, Let's go!

Shower, clean clothes, feed Mom's cat, then off to the con!

Let us not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.

Back from Silicon. Already. Actually, I've been home for over an hour.

There's just no there there. Sparsely attended, the dealer's room is tiny and has one (1) book dealer (used books at that), the art show looked similarly sparse, and the entire thing felt vacant. I spent the majority of my day in the fanzine lounge with the every-amazing johnnyeponymous and a cast of several having one of those amazing, free range conversations one seems to find only in fandom. I'm still not feeling completely well, so I looked at the options for the rest of the day, and decided to head home.

To be fair, they have an excellent hard science track, and even a science alley. But the program book is a mess (and yes, I know the story behind that), and we appear to be sharing the hotel with at least three other groups. Women of Faith, I saw a lot of people wearing University of Arizona gear, and there was some group whose signs appeared to be in Chinese.

Then there's the hotel fiasco. The San Jose Doubletree was the con hotel for over two decades. Now they seem to be determined to drive SF fans out. The former Coffee Garden is now known as Twigs or somesuch, and closes at 1400. In years past, with extended hours, the place was filled from open to close. It was a great place to grab a quick bite to eat and catch up. Often times a table would be occupied for hours by a procession of people, coming, going, eating and adding to the bottom line. With the elimination of the cash carts, there is no affordable food option in the hotel. Good for the Denny's down the street, bad for them. From what I was able to glean from my sources, longer hours were in the contract; so I'm wondering what happened.

I'll head back over tomorrow, if only because I have a room key to turn in, but I think a couple of things are clear:

1. The San Jose Doubletree is no longer interested in honestly dealing with SF fandom. Amusingly, at the brink of a depression, they are trying to go for high-end business travelers that no longer exist. Silicon should look at a smaller facility closer to downtown.

2. Silicon needs to stop trying to be Baycon. There is a niche for a small, relaxed convention in the Bay Area. They need to look at worked this year and focus on that. The hard science stuff (especially for a con named Silicon) is good.

3. The leadership at the con needs to change radically. Most of the problems leading up to and at the convention were caused by politics. Part of the rebranding needs to be putting in a permanent committee to oversee a smaller, less intense convention.

Please tell me this person is faking it.

From a .

Sarah Palin made a deplorable showing in the debate. Not only did she get the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan wrong, at one point she pronounced the name of Kim Jong II (King Jong the Second, or even perhaps Kim Jong Two) as Kim Jong "ill") Merciful heavens, does the woman not know anything about names with Roman numerals, or thar "II" can simply mean "the second"? The woman's ignorance is boundless!

I have many issues with Gov. Palin and her inability to finish a sentence in less than 30 words, but the man's name is Kim Jong-il. She pronounced it correctly. the -il is a generational syllable; something you don't see that often anymore, but a tradition for centuries in many Asian cultures.

Really, I'm hoping this poster was trolling.