Dalekboy

Way back in '91, (or was it '92?) I ran a convention and very deliberately insisted on a panel about being a parent and staying active in fandom. It had two two fan mums on it. Back at that point, I think I knew three people with kids that were still active fans. ( A little long, and a bit of swearing... )

The little I saw before the 'flu floored me, was good. Then I proceeded to keep myself away from the con to try and avoid becoming C5's official Patient Zero. ( Little bit of gross stuff below the cut, includes ranting and graphic torture threats - basically I'm feeling tired, sick, psychotically grumpy, and potentially violent - don't shit me... )

So, after my post on how Media and Lit Natcons were joined, and how media fandom as a whole got thoroughly screwed, general consensus was that the whole situation sucked.

( So what are we going to do about it? )

I have two cents and I want to spend it.

While I kind of like daylight saving, realistically, I'm not tired to it and don't see any point to it in the modern world, beyond being part of an outdated tradition. ( Read more... )

This post has been brewing for a couple of years. It's not about any one of the many causes worth fighting for, it's not about or aimed at any one person, it hasn't been spurred on by any one event.

Abuse and accusations are not how you win people over to your way of thinking. Keeping your allies on the back-foot because you think they should know better does not help teach them how to better understand or present your side of an argument. ( Read more... )

Something that's been bothering me for ages, and I want to see fixed... ( Another rant containing some swearing... )

The last week has ended up being all sorts of crazy and busy, but mostly good crazy and busy, with the only negative being a grizzly baby some of the time. And that's counter-acted by the fact we're getting some smiles scattered about here and there, which is nice. Hence no posts.

The last 24 hours, however, has been craptacular! Roadshow dicked me about with my order, changing the price of one of their reduced DVDs, but that's normal for them. The good side is at least I'll be getting them sometime soon-ish.

I lost my wallet on the way back from the Post Office yesterday. No sign of it yet. Losing the $50 in it is still less annoying than if I have to replace all the cards. Have just come back from putting up signs and asking at the Kaleen shops to see if it had been handed in. The good side was I got to ride my trike, and got to wear my skeleton socks, so not all bad. And as I said to Sharon, if I've lost this one I'll have to buy a new one with room in it for photos of my wife and son.

I'm behind on my preparation for the panels/items I'm doing at Conflux. Yes, I can talk about this stuff off the cuff better than some people who have prepared, but I think an over-reliance on just knowing your topic and not doing a bit of brushing up beforehand shows an essentially arrogant and lazy attitude. And if you're too lazy to do the work, why are you wasting people's time being on the panel? But the good side is, I'll get to talk Doctor Who, do trivia, do Magical Hat, and catch up with some people for the few hours I'm there on my panel passes. And I still have time to go over my notes before the con at this point.

Funtastic have chosen not to honour the remainder of my order for Classic Series Doctor Who figures. Basically, it doesn't matter that I have an order with them, they have pulled the remainder of my stock (and everyone else's) to put aside for Myer, Roger David, or one of the other big guys that didn't bother to order this stuff six fucking months ago, unlike the rest of us!

There is no good side, I'm fucking furious.

I do at least have enough figures put aside for those that ordered them, so no problem there, just been too flat chat to process them.

If anyone can tell me how I would go about sending an email to Funtastic's stockholders, I'd appreciated the information. Funtastic's stock have dived in recent times, and this sort of behaviour can't help. I would like their stockholders to know how they dick about the people giving them money.

The Voyage of the Damned Gift Sets got pulled in much the same way for one of the big companies. Six months later, they have obviously decided that they don't want them and the sets are now available again. In fact, virtually all the units that were pulled are back. So now there's a huge excess of old stock... still at the original price! Why would I want to buy them? Anything like this I really wanted to sell, I've sourced from overseas to fill my orders. I had to charge more, but at least I had the stock.

I don't expect it to do any good, but I'm ringing Character Options in the UK tonight to beg them to find another Australian distributor.

In one of my recent posts, I mentioned that circumcising a child for reasons that are not solidly medical or religious is something that should be thought about in terms of what the child may prefer, not what you want.

Someone pulled me up on this, saying that they consider mutilation because of religion a bad reason for doing it. ( Long rant against circumcision, with reasons why doing it for religious reasons is still preferable to many other excuses... )

Now, I've seen Van Helsing, ages ago when it first came out. I wasn't impressed. But recently I've had an urge to watch it again, mainly to pick apart what I think is wrong with it. This was spurred by seeing the Incredible Hulk, which I enjoyed, but felt that the ending had the same problem as Van Helsing - two CGI monsters fighting just doesn't usually engage me.

Then I thought that maybe, since I had the the Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolf Man Legacy sets, I'd watch those in chronological order, then rewatch Van Helsing. I finished House of Dracula last night, but now I'm finding that I want to rewatch the Hammer Horror films first. Maybe I'm just putting off rewatching Van Helsing, but I think it's more that I want to have a good, fresh overview of what has been done with the characters previously, before I watch it.

So I figure I'll just briefly touch on what I think are Van Helsing's main problems, based on my memories of it. ( Spoilers below cut for a few Stephen Sommers films... if you care... )

Anyway, we'll see how much of this I feel after I eventually get around to watching Van Helsing again. In the meantime I'll go through every Hammer Film I can get my hands on... may even try for chronological order. So, first on the list is Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

I've had a very bad headache since mid-afternoon yesterday. Not a migraine, but bad enough that it makes me wonder if it's about to turn into one. I've taken the usual precautions. Today it has faded somewhat, but not completely, and its constant presence has rendered my skin tender to the touch. I'm not worried about it turning into a migraine now, but I am aware that my next migraine may have consequences. It may not. But given the screaming match I had with someone six months ago left me with a small but noticeable and permanent loss of sensation down the right hand side of my body, and I never even had a headache, I know I need to be wary.

But wary doesn't mean not living life, being afraid to act, it means taking the risks that are worth taking, worth the potential cost. To do less is to live a half life. In the same situation, with the knowledge I have now, I would have the same screaming match again because it needed to happen.

Been ages since I've had a headache this bad, and it's one of the little reminders of why I did my birthday trip, of why it's so important to tell people they're important to me. Because you never know when things will go pear-shaped and doing these things may no longer be an option.( So, what's stopping *you*? )