Flaming Chords

This is my front page. All comments here are screened; if you don't have my email address, you can drop me a line here. If I know your email address, I'll reply by email -- if not, I'll reply to your comment, and then rescreen both your comment and my reply.

It's also got every tag I have -- this is because my current LJ style doesn't include a tag index. (At least half of my participation on LJ is on my Treo. I chose this style because it loads quickly and it's still readable on a small screen.)

I'd tell you more about myself, but that's what my profile -- and the rest of my journal -- are for.

Dear [Martin],

The music in the background is Stravinsky: The Firebird, and The Rite of Spring. You're welcome.

Now, on to more important matters. You are the third person who's emailed me these particular clips, asking me what the music in the background was.

Look. I'm delighted to help you get into Classical music, really. I really wish, though, that your first taste of Shostakovich wasn't a creepy gay bondage porno trailer, and I really wish that your first taste of Stravinsky wasn't really bad P2P'ed creepy gay bondage porno. Couldn't your first exposure to Stravinsky have been Fantasia? That's how most people first discover The Rite of Spring -- why not you?

I'm also really annoyed that I've had to watch these clips to tell you all this. I feel like I now know more about your kinks than I have a right to. Further, you've tainted my enjoyment of a few of my favorite symphonies.

If you do this to me again, I swear I'll lock you to your bed with your own handcuffs without the slightest romantic intent, then copy all of my Russian Classical collection to your computer and force you to listen to it, all the way through without a break. At the moment, that's about nineteen hours of glorious, glorious music to torture you with bring some culture into your life. Doesn't that sound lovely?

(I swear, if someone out there has used Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead (part I, part II) as a porno soundtrack, THERE WILL BE WORDS. I doubt it's happened, as the piece is depressing as hell, but you never know...)

Sincerely,
flamingchords

Generally, I try to organize my Con-related posts, so that I'm not spamming you guys with shitloads of "OMFG I had so much fun" posts. Sadly, this year I really can't, so I'm wrapping it all up here. Yes, I'm leaving a lot out. It can't be helped.


I had a couple of chats with a couple of friends I know online, but I only end up seeing once a year. In addition to just having a lot of fun chatting, I got some interesting new insights into [Igor]'s habit of stealing small parts from my shop, before we caught him and told him never to come back. (Try to imagine a grown-up and homeless Linus, from the comic strip Peanuts, stealing from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Now picture him as a long-unemployed electronic engineer.) In addition to this, they discovered a terrific pizza joint, and took me there for lunch. Tony & Alba's. I recommend them highly, and these friends liked them enough that they ate there three times over the weekend. Damned good stuff!

For those of you unfamiliar, Regency Dancing is a lot like square dancing, except it looks a lot more elegant, and the music is much better. I'd never done it before because I have this fear of looking silly and/or incompetent, but I decided that this was a stupid thing to fear, so I did a running tackle on it. It turns out that the fear was needless: it's easy to learn, and a lot of fun. And yes, unless you've been at it for a while, you will look silly, but so will a bunch of people around you, so lighten the hell up.

There was a panel on coping with Drama Llamas, which I attended mostly to pick up pointers just in case I ran into [Brad] and [Janet] again. Of course, I never saw them. Please note that I'm not saying that they weren't in attendance -- only that I never saw them. For all I know, they weren't there. Or just as likely, they avoided me. Or just as likely, they were having so much fun they forgot about me completely, and fate just decided that we didn't need to run into each other. I find I'm hoping for that third option. We've had more than enough of each other already -- why reopen old wounds?

Saw some neat stuff in the Art Show. Todd Lockwood was the Artist Guest of Honor, and his work definitely lived up to the title. Still, I got to check out a bunch of other artists. Some of them were amazing. And of couse, some of them were so bad they made me wonder why I put down my color pencils, because I could do ten times better in my sleep. And then I remember that I put down my color pencils some time after I started getting good on guitar. Go many arts, so little time...

I'm not generally fond of pornography (all that web design work killed whatever appreciation for it I might have had), but I do enjoy watching artists put one toenail over the line between Art-with-a-capital-A and pornography. My favorite examples of this were Sarah Clemens' "Patron Saints of Pornography" (NSFW) series, combining well-done nudity with sly, gutter-level humor (though the quadruple-dragon-nipple-piercing was a little too hardcore for my tastes). Well, those, and a couple of Sandra Santara's centerfolds. Her vision of Odin (NSFW) also dances on that Art/Porn line -- he's certainly arty. He's also discreetly, but unmistakably erect. And hot. (What? I'm straight, I'm not blind!)

I also tried to donate blood. (Every year, there's a blood-van in front of the hotel.) To save both my time, and the time of the warm-hearted vampires with the needles, I asked for a list of disqualifications, and found that it hasn't changed -- I'm still, more or less, permanently on the "please don't donate... ever" list. (I've shot up once. I also have male partners. Either of these alone is a permanent disqualification, no matter how careful I am about it.)

Lest we forget... every Monday morning at BayCon, there's a panel celebrating the lives of the people who've died since the previous BayCon. This panel is hosted by an old friend of mine, and a nice guy to whom I used to sell comics on a regular basis. This year was a bad year: Arthur Clarke, Utah Phillips, Robert Asprin, Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck), and Rory Root, among many others. My con experience is as much wall-to-wall fun as I can cram into it, with the exception of this panel. I can't say I have fun at it, per se, but I feel better for having attended it.


Sadly, there are things I didn't get to do. There always are. I missed Rocky Horror because I was low on sleep, and I missed Eye of Argon because I was on the party floor and forgot about it entirely.

There are also people I didn't get to see. Again, sadly, there always are. This year, they include a couple of friends whom I'd apparently successfully cajoled into showing up, but I never get a chance to say hi. There's also a friend I kept an eye out for, and I didn't remember until after the con that she was in Con Ops. There are others, but if you're reading this, you know who you are.


After the Con, I always feel a hint of sadness as I have to return to the real world. This makes me especially grateful for the blast I'd been having the last few days, and I always swear that next year, I'll have at least as much fun. (And next year, I simply won't bother with the elevators. I was on the sixth floor, and half the time I went to and from my hotel room, it was faster to use the damned stairs.)

Anyway, this concludes my batch of posts for BayCon 2008. I now return you to our regular programming.

(Note: This entry is about all the sex I had at BayCon. Despite the fact that I successfully kept it in my pants this year¹, it may still be kinda long.)

With any kind of magic, there are dangers to casting a spell that is bigger than you are. I recently learned that costuming is a form of magic.

My costume this year was the Dread Pirate Roberts. A simple spell, as far as the components go: a scrap of leather with eyeholes cut in it; a black t-shirt cut up, and tied into a bandana; a poofy black shirt and tight black jeans I already own. I didn't even have proper boots, and was just wearing black sneakers. This costume was surprisingly little work; it took me all of fifteen minutes to get it together at home, and about five minutes to put it on before I left my hotel room.

As myself, I'm fairly well-assembled, but not devastatingly attractive or anything; I just have a few striking features, and enough confidence (on my good days) that I'm sometimes mistaken for it. As the Dread Pirate, I was apparently sex-god on toast. I got a lot of good offers. Several women, and a few men, all conspired to inform me that if I had the inclination (and the stamina), I could have probably spent all three evenings of this convention bouncing from one bed to the next.

There were other effects, too. I'm a redhead, and as such, I tend to be very easily identifiable... usually. Covering my hair meant that I could step outside myself, at least partly because a lot of people who know me didn't instantly recognize me; many didn't recognize me at all, until I spoke to them. An odd feeling, that. I wouldn't do it every day, but occasionally it can be fun.

So far, I've just been talking about my costume, when in fact a whole lot of magic was flying in all directions, most of it by costumers much more skilled than me². What of all these people? Do they gain some immunity from other people's spells, being more knowledgeable about how those spells work? If two people in costume pick each other up and decide to get to know each other a lot better, does the spell end the moment the costumes come off?

(The answer to this last question, as I learned from a friend well-versed in this sort of magic, is that it does, but not immediately.)


A few people were interested in the guy under the mask, though. In particular, I was propositioned by a woman I regard so highly, I'm really tempted to brag about it. "Holy shit, [Jane] fucking [Smith] wants me!" As it is, I declined, but only for reasons having to do with my own issues; if not for those, I'd totally have jumped at the chance. Still, I was well past flattered, and into honored. The best offer I got the whole con!

(And [Jane Smith] is the only name you guys are getting from me. I haven't dropped names from my LJ up to this point, and I'm not starting now.)


One other wrinkle: there was a panel I intended to go to on writing outside your social group. A sci-fi writer can write about alien beings without anyone raising an eyebrow, but if a straight white male author writes from the POV of a black character, a woman, or a gay character -- especially a gay character -- people will sometimes get upset. I went into what I thought was this panel, and after about five minutes, I realized that I confused that panel with the GLBTQ panel. Oops.

This sort of mix-up is the kind of lame plot device I'd be hissing about if I saw it in a bad sit-com, and here I am in real life, subject to that mix-up. And just as it would in a bad sit-com, this led to a few awkward moments later... but I've had practice in dealing with those.


(Comments are screened.)

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1. My reasons for doing this have to do with personal issues. I've already dropped hints about them in other LJ entries; if I decide to write about them more candidly, it will be in a locked post.
   
   
2. Of course, not all of the people in costume did it well. Some people are just plain bad at it, or choose costumes that suit them very poorly. I didn't see any 102-pound guys dressing up as Conan, or women with nasty skin conditions in skimpy chainmail... but I did see one guy who was paler than me (which should be impossible), in a kilt, with nothing on above the waist except for pasties with tassels. It was somewhere between amusing and horrifying.
   

My good friend [Sayeda] makes killer spiced coffee.

She is quite happy to make this killer coffee when I visit, but alas, she won't share the recipe. Truth be told, I can't blame her for this -- if I had a recipe this good, I'd guard it closely, too -- but it still frustrates me. I've been drinking it very slowly, not just to savor it, but to try to identify ingredients in the vain hope of reverse-engineering it. The thing is, she's Middle Eastern and I'm a white boy, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage in this particular game of name-that-flavor. So far, I've (very) tentatively pinned down cinnamon and chocolate, but there's at least one more ingredient I haven't a prayer of recognizing on my own. Possibly more than one -- if it wasn't so damned yummy, the complexity of flavor would border on ridiculous.

And this is (hopefully) where you all come in.

Do any of you know any spiced coffee recipes? Any spices that you don't have recipes for, but you still know they work well in coffee? Any books or websites you can recommend? Even if it gets me no closer to duplicating her results, I'd love to start trying -- I may discover a few killer recipes for myself along the way.

Edited to add: Thank you all. Cardamom and star anise seem to be popular. Odd, considering that in my preliminary google search, neither one of these ingredients showed up at all. But, it looks like these will be the ones I try first.

Two Days Before New Year's Eve...

I had a day off work, and it was terrific. I got laid for the first time in a little over a month¹, for a start. Later, a friend I'll call K picked me up, and we went to visit a couple of his friends, madashamlet and G. I'd never met them before, but I already like the hell out of them -- among other things, we all went through a Burger King drive-thru. (K was wearing an army helmet, G was wearing a Darth Vader helmet complete with pitch-shifter, I was wearing a knight's helmet borrowed from G, and madashamlet wore a chandelier on her head. Yes, we got funny looks.)

We also went to a convenience store, but I had to take the helmet off; this was in one of Oakland's rougher neighborhoods, and the shopkeeper was (understandably) a bit afraid that the helmet was intended to conceal my face so that I could attempt armed robbery. (At least one customer snickered when I asked the shopkeeper to sell me a can opener, but the shopkeeper was not amused.)

In other words, we did some stupid, pointless shit, for no better reason than "hey, it seems like a fun idea," and the whole visit had a kind of carnival atmosphere. I loved it.


New Year's Eve...

I reported to work at... ten, if I remember right. Inventory, dreaded inventory. Every moment that was not spent helping customers was spent hitting every piece of merchandise in the store with a barcode scanner. Once that was finished, the computer generated a list of discrepancies between our counts and what it thought our counts ought to have been: fifty or so pages of stock items we then had to count again.

Once we finished that, we had to make several major changes to our store displays. We got out at about ten that night, after which I was too wiped to do much to celebrate the New Year. (I also had to open the store the next day, so staying out all night was out of the question even if I did have the energy for it.)

In other words, I had a New Year's Eve-worthy night about two days early. A good thing, because my actual New Year's Eve sucked.

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1. It could be said that a month without is kinda unusual, especially for someone who refers to himself as a slut. Well, part of the reason for that is the fact that I was working retail during the holiday season. That took a lot of energy on my part, and while I sometimes had some energy left over, it must be said that lingering frustration, annoyance, and amazement at the latest examples of customer stupidity are not exactly turn-ons. Either for me, or for my... ahem, friends.
   
   There are other reasons I haven't been getting as much, but I won't get into those here.