man of a thousand names

07:00 am: Shameless
I write a blog about Golden Age Piracy called "Ye Pirate Blogge." This was a rather unfortunate name choice from an indexing perspective, as people looking for just such a thing will search for "pirate blog." The only reason I'm saying this here is that Google indexes LJ entries and I'm trying to improve my ranking by posting a link to my pirate blog.

01:06 am: Con Report: ConFusion 2010
On Friday my name was Kwame McCheese, the mayor of Ribbon Town. I arrived at the Marriott with my ribbon shirt and a box full of shiny new ribbons to deliver. I spent the greater part of the afternoon discharging my duties as ribbonmeister and hugging people. I went to the AASFA instant grant panel, and acted as a visual aid for Naked Comedy's pitch; they returned the favor by acting as random task doers during my pitch. Strangely, they were quite adept at improvising on the spot based on spontaneous verbal suggestions. I received a grant for a tarot deck and cash prizes for a new version of Random Acts of Random. Next, me pirate crew began to arrive; I changed into my regalia, and we set up for our concert. Stone Crazy Pirates performed a rocking set. Complaints ranged from "too loud" to "not enough room to dance." A certain famous pirate girl sat in the front row with her crew and sang along with all the sea chanteys and Irish tunes. I went to many room parties, and later that night I went to the pool room to get in the hot tub. Many people (including me) took off their suits to be free. It was beautiful. I scored a place to crash and totally flipped the flippy floppy.

On Saturday, by Bahb's suggestion, my name was Chest Rockwell. I had tea and a PBJ sandwich in the ConSuite for brunch (this weekend, I ate more PBJ's than I did in 2008 and 2009 combined). I went out to purchase the tarot deck for the game, and sat at a table in the lobby making modifications to it. I also made flyers for the game and distributed them. Then I mostly wandered around the hotel, inviting people to draw a tarot card. Most of the cards gave instructions for a brief, instant activity, such as "go around hugging people for 15 minutes" or "write a poem about cryptography." Some of the cards told players to draw from the seperate Major Arcana pack, which gave extended quests, such as "make a commitment to do strength training this year," or "spend the next few weeks nurturing plants, pets and other people." These Trump cards were kept by the player as a reminder to do their extended task. Ironically, the card for "nurture things" was later found floating in the pool, abandoned. A card saying "invent & promulgate a new catch phrase" was drawn by Bahb, inspiring him to coin "flipping the flippy floppy," which apparently ended up on ConTV as well as on the lips of hotel staff. This great success led me to declare him the winner of the game. In the midst of my little game (which lasted all afternoon and most of the night) I went to SJ Tucker's concert. I was enthralled by her sweet & sassy voice, her excellent fretwork, and especially her storytelling and wordplay. Throughout the evening, in addition to offering people tarot cards, I humped a Christmas tree in the hall, went to a filk circle and heard a song so beautiful I actually teared up-- sorry I failed to remember the songwriter's name-- Peter, was it? I got to see an absolutely amazing performance by Satori Circus, stopped in at Naked Comedy's "Brown Liquors" panel (where I tasted a very nice scotch, thanks to the AASFA grant). I got to Elven Toast just as it was breaking up. I went to many room parties, played Zombie Ninja Pirates (which is a very fun game), and again rounded out the evening in the hot tub-- though this time, hotel security came and ordered those of us without suits to "get decent." I attended a secret flippity flip flop party, and totally scored another place to crash.

On Sunday, by audience suggestion, I was Cute Heiney. I was also in busy mode. I had to wrap up my official con duties and round up my sound guy's equipment and get on the road to do outside gigs. I did manage to pop in to the Winter Harvest panel for a bit. I can't wait to see that movie when it's done.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I had a super awesome fucking amazing time. If Penguicon 6.0 was my religious conversion, I'd say that this, my first ConFusion, was my ConFirmation. Ha! See what I did there?

Tags: con

05:35 pm: I'm done with LJ
...because of the commercials. See you on the Facebook.

10:06 pm: Obligations
I have to post again tonight because I rolled for 4 posts today.  I had an idea for what to write about in the car, but it has since left me.  I went to a ConStruct meeting at the Castle; at least I thought it was going to be such.  I'm getting the idea that "ConStruct meeting" is yet another excuse for a social gathering.  So now I'm back home, watching my 10-week-old puppy play-fight with my roommate's dog, drinking whiskey with a friend.  Life is good.  If I were a Christian, I would take this opportunity to thank Jesus for my awesome life.  But me, I'll thank the dice!

Tags: castle, construct, dicing, jesus, sigrid, whiskey

11:19 am: Dicing.
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Tags: dicing, ferrett, lj, ml

11:13 am: To publicize, or not to write?
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

10:58 am: Today's Installment of "Would You Rather?"
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Tags: gross jokes, would you rather

04:07 am: I will perform a user-generated concert at ConStructACon!
I was inspired by <a href="http://filkertom.livejournal.com/">Tom Smith<a> to do a user-generated concert at ConstructACon in August.  Since most of you have probably never heard any of my albums (and probably don't even think of me as a musician, strangely enough) I'm going to open it up to any song ever recorded.

So, send song requests.  I don't care how obscure they are, if you send me an mp3 (for educational purposes, of course).

08:47 am: Penguicon Report
This weekend I attended my second Con.  My first was last year's Penguicon, which was akin to a religious conversion experience for me.  This time I expected a powerful revival, but it didn't hit the level of fervor I was expecting... perhaps a sort of Sophomore Jinx, or just the inherent danger of having expectations.  Nevertheless, I had a great time, once I stopped expecting magic to happen-- (which is just what magic needs you to do before it can happen).

Day 0 (Thursday): I spent most of the day doing recording and sound editing work for the Dr. Horrible soundtrack, then did a magician gig at a school before heading over to the hotel.  I was expecting more to be going on, but I didn't get there until almost 10, and there were just two sedate room-hangouts going on.  I went home to bed.

Day 1 (Friday): I let my agency talk me into taking a clown gig for Friday, despite the fact that I told them two months ago that I had absolutely no availability this weekend.  The upshot of this was that I arrived at Con in clown makeup, which got me lots of attention (I'm a whore) and people taking my photograph (I'm a ham).  I wore my ribbon shirt, and got lots of compliments on it.  Most of my day was spent distributing ribbon orders.  I attended the Beltaine maypole ritual, and I think the organizers were nervous about having a clown in their ceremony, but when I asked if Jesus knew about what they were doing, they demonstrated a sense of humor which dispelled my reservations.  I also rolled dice to determine how much I should play along or f*** sh** up.  The dice said to play nice.

I played Dr. Horrible at opening ceremonies, in which I claimed I had deliberately infected Wil Wheaton in order to prevent Penguicon from happening (mwahahahaha!).  I rounded out the night with some parties-- the ConFusion party had by far the best atmosphere and the best music-- wandered into the Polyamory panel post-discussion, went to some more parties, and then went home to bed around 2:30.

Day 2 (Saturday): In the morning, I went to the Prop Weapons & Nerf Mods panel.  Alex showed an amazing array of things he made, from mediaeval/fantasy swords to steampunk laser-guns with ornate filigree or whatever you call it.  I also went to see Jane McGonigal and Andrew Plotkin talk about creating a game world... I didn't take notes, but I took away McGonigal's one-word key: "affordances" on how to tell people what to do without telling them.

I spent some time distributing ribbon orders, and more time rehearsing for Dr. Horrible.  I didn't have time to wait 2 hours for Brazilian beef, so I ended up giving away my ticket. 

I was on a panel called "Fun Theory."  This panel was suggested by Eliazer Yudkowski of the Future Humanity Institute (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/fun-theory-laws.html)  who apparantly had an agenda, and some idea about what this panel was supposed to be about that he didn't really share with the other panelists, who took it upon themselves to be independent Fun Theorists.  For my part, I took dice and a chart with random disruptive activities, and I periodically rolled the dice and, for example, proposed a toast, or made a new friend, or sang a song.  About halfway through the panel we were going around the room asking every attendee what kind of Utopian world they would want to live in for a million years.  One of them said "I would live in a world where I could be a conference panelist disguised as an audience member," and joined us behind the table.  Well played, sir!

Between panels, ribbons and rehearsals, I didn't manage to get any food into my body.  By the time I was about to have a performance, I was literally weak with hunger.  Molly Zu Zu appeared as the food fairy, and gave me Brazilian beef right off her plate.  She saved my life.

Saturday night I starred as Dr. Horrible in Geralyn's live production of Joss Whedon's <a href="http://www.drhorrible.com/">"Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog"</a> along with Fringe, Krissy.  Ger's brother Andrew stepped up to do some important stage hand work, and the FuMP guys stood in as Bad Horse's messengers.  The show was a hit & many audience members actually sang along.

I attended the Elven Toast, which of course was full of humor and pathos; went to the Flirting for Geeks panel in order to flirt with the lady panelists (shout out to Jessi and Dawn), and then went party bouncing.  Oh, the crazy things that go on behind closed doors at Con...

Day 3 (Sunday): Sigh.  When I arrived at 11, many people were already leaving with packed suitcases.  My highlight was getting naked in a panel.  It's not my fault.  Someone said "How fast can you get naked?"  Some questions cannot be answered verbally.

So there's my threads for the tapestry.  I could complain about some things, but everyone else is already complaining about them.  In sum, I had an amazing time once I stopped expecting to be amazed.  That's how magic works.

Tags: penguicon

11:53 am: I thought posting my innermost thoughts would make me feel better, but it didn't.  So I won't do it anymore.  But more importantly, how do I get LJ Spotlight off my friends page?