mariness

Everyone else is doing a year end television summary, so why not me? Couple of caveats, though: this is heavily weighted to recent fall shows because, well, they are recent, two, I've undoubtedly left stuff out, especially pre-September stuff, and three, this list does not include anything from Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, or Reign are not on this list because I haven't seen any of them yet. I plan eventually to catch up on the first three. Reign SCARES ME. So don't ask. I've also left Orphan Black off the list since I've only seen the pilot and I'm not sure when I'll be able to watch the rest.

Anyway, the summary, behind a cut because it got incredibly long: ( 2013 Television shows. Not particularly spoilery except where I go off on a rant about Once Upon a Time. )

1. Starting with the tiniest of updates: a little and completely untitled twitter story of mine popped up at Nanoism. You will note that it focuses on two of my obsessions: Oz and Twitter.

2. On a considerably larger note, I note that Beast Within 3: Oceans Unleashed has popped up at Amazon and Barnes and Noble a few days before the official publication date, as these things do.

Beast Within 3 includes my short story, "Safe," very loosely based on a few dolphin legends; to say more would kinda ruin the story, so I'll leave it there. It also includes stories from Jennifer Pelland, Mae Empson, Amanda Davis, and Nisi Shawl, among many others. I think this is the first time Nisi Shawl and I have shared a table of contents, so that's pretty cool.

3. I was going to discuss Duotrope's decision to go paid (for those unaware, Duotrope is an online database of multiple publications that offers a submissions tracking system and various submission/rejection statistics for writers) and then realized that a) I didn't care that much, and b) Alex Shvartsman had already summed it up for me.

More blogging coming up in theory if this coffee ever works its way through my system.

So my brother and I came home from the Game of Thrones watching, and I figured I'd check email, Twitter, head to bed...

....to find that Twitter was telling me that the president was going to make a speech. At 10:30 pm, Sunday night.

Had to be important, although at first everyone (including me) made various jokes. But, you know, important. Shortly after that, Twitter started babbling about Osama. And then that Osama bin Laden was dead, and that members of the U.S. Congress were confirming this.

All before any of the news website had more than "The President is giving a national security speech at 10:30...."

Look, Twitter often gets it wrong. And I use it far more for casual conversations and chatter about roses and food and the Olympics and, well, most recently, making fun of people's hats at royal weddings. (And on a related note, telling me who the people wearing the hats are.)

But this isn't the first time where Twitter's been first.

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Really don't have much to say about the actual news event right now. Maybe later.

But first, just to clarify: I choose not to wear peach not for social reasons or to make any sort of fashion statement (my general fashion statement, these days, is "jeans"), but because when I wear the color peach everyone asks me if I'm ill. Blue tie dye is considerably more forgiving to my skin tones. This generally trivial information may well pay off by the end of the post. It just won't pay off well. Now, onwards, to the lessons learned from MegaCon:

1. If you absolutely, positively have no other way of meeting up with people save via cell phone, you will not discover until you are already zipping down the Turnpike that your cell phone absolutely, positively does not work even though you very very carefully charged it up and made sure it had four full little bars on it and everything.

2. Your desire to take along the netbook partly to show off and mostly to take notes will seem, in retrospect, to show an odd and almost unheard of level of preparedness, as well as giving you a chance to choke over the "tourist friendly" prices charged for internet service at the Orange County Convention Center.

3. You will agree to borrow another cell phone to allow you to meet up with people, only to realize that you do not have any of these numbers, since of course they are all on the old absolutely positively not working cell phone.

4. A Sony e-reader can, when needed, become a sudden emergency place to store emergency phone numbers.

5. None of this will stop you from Counting Pirates. (38 pirates!)

6. I've said it before. Other people have said it before. Putting MegaCon right next to a cheerleading event in the same building, however large the building, is just not good for anyone. (Some of the cheerleaders did go towards the MegaCon crowd to take pictures of some of the more spectacular costumes - and MegaCon has some very, very spectacular costumes - and I and other people trotted over to the food vendors at the cheerleaders since they were quieter (not on purpose; they just didn't have as many attendees. Incidentally, it's also perfectly possible - and at least a few people actually did this - to just stay in the lobby of the convention center and people watch without actually paying for anything except for event parking, and apparently a minor theme in these troubled economic times was parking elsewhere on I-Drive and taking the I-Drive shuttle to the convention center, this plan encouraged by the still terrible convention center parking which was supposed to be improved and still hasn't been.)

7. It will take you a few moments to realize that the cheerleading event is not the best place to unload yourself from the car.

8. Naturally, given the cell phone issue, you will completely fail to meet up with the two people that you absolutely, positively were planning on meeting up with, since all of you had agreed to "just call when you get there."

9. Finding random people in a crowd of several thousand people turns out to be slightly more difficult than it might sound. (Although it might well have been easier if I hadn't gotten distracted by the robots.)

10. You can spend longer than most of you would believe looking at Legos.

11. And robots.

12. And Lego robots! Also, Lego Yoda. Sort of ontopic: Legoland is coming to Orlando, and I think it should now be obvious to everyone that it is not coming soon enough.

13. It is, indeed, possible to shell out $3, plus tax, for a perfectly ordinary cup of coffee when this becomes a dire necessity. (And by dire necessity, we mean, a chance to see more robots.)

13. Two random cheerleaders can and will squeal over a group of stormtroopers in the lobby. These same two random cheerleaders will adamantly refuse to cheer for the stormtroopers because they don't want to "waste it."

14. No matter how wide and spacious you think your lands between booths are, they will never be quite large enough to accommodate two oversized hulking robots and a little scooter.

15. No matter how often you see him, you will not be able to recognize Brent Spiner in normal skin tones. Ever.

16. Overheard: "I'm the awesome. You're the boyfriend. I'd rather be the awesome."

17. Also overheard: Mother telling small son (probably four or five) that no, no, she is not going to buy him one of those elaborate spiked leather collars. Small son: "But I WANT to be a dog! JUST LIKE HER!" pointing to a woman who was, indeed, sporting one of those elaborate spiked leather collars. I think we can all guess this child's future.

18. No matter how good the costume is, the sight of the Queen of Hearts dancing to rap music is just wrong and hurts my little childhood heart. When the music switched to Lady Gaga I was not that soothed.

19. Having used the miracle of overpriced email to obtain necessary cell phone numbers, you will pull out your borrowed cell phone to call the next set of friends you are planning to meet, only to realize that the borrowed cell phone, too, has gone absolutely dead.

20. This, this, is not your day for cell phones.

21. At this time, the netbook will announce that it is no longer on friendly terms with the internet.

22. A Sony e-reader is good for many things, but phone calls are not among them. (Amusingly, I didn't even realize I'd brought this along until after the first cell broke – the reader just happened to be in my bag by mistake.)

23. You will decide to brave the odds and head out anyway to the Comedy of Geeks at Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show, even though you have absolutely no way of reaching anyone there (or anywhere!) and even though you had just told a couple of people that you would not be going.

24. Mapquest does not actually know where Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show is. Fortunately, this being Orlando, many others do, and after a rather exciting moment in Disabled Adventures, you will arrive at Sleuth's Mystery Dinner Show and successfully meet up with S and C despite the lack of cell phones, largely because the Mystery Dinner Show cannot accommodate 20,000 people.

25. A group of clearly Non Geeks can walk into a Geeks of Comedy show, solely because they are too inebriated from the previous Mystery Dinner show to go elsewhere, or because they are not inebriated enough from the previous Mystery Dinner show to leave yet. Their intentions will not be entirely clear.

26. In a room of Geeks, the Non Geeks will very much stick out, and lead to a conversation where C will explain that any person who wears peach, and not black, is, by definition, a Non Geek. You will point out that geekdom is not why you avoid the color peach (see, I told you at the outset that the payoff for that would not be particularly good) but that you wearing purple and denim.

27. Somewhat after this, Rorschach will emerge and address the table of Non Geeks directly as the group of people that are not sure what they are doing there. He will advise them that now would be an excellent time to visit the bathroom since he has about 42 pages of Alan Moore jokes. The Non Geeks will greet this information with completely blank expressions. Rorschach will then proceed to explain about the Wonder That is Alan Moore, getting more blank looks. "It was even a movie." This statement, finally, will cheer the Non Geeks up.

28. The Non Geeks will prove to be perfectly capable of leaving their cell phones on during the show.

29. But you will be too distracted to notice this, since...

30. ...you have just found that someone you met back in [year deleted] and who once slept on your sleeping bag (she adds, to be considerably more titillating than was the actual event in question), but who you have not seen in about ten years, is not only part of the show...but also lives just around the corner from you.

31. This will lead to accusations that yes, yes, you really should, perhaps, be spending a tad bit more time on Facebook, which would have provided you with this useful information somewhat sooner. As if to emphasize the point, Twitter will follow this by going down, down, down for hours, shaking the internet, and indeed society, to its knees. (Well. Maybe not.)

32. You will still hate Facebook. It will take a lot more time with robots to change that hate.

The Internet went down, possibly from massive numbers of users jamming the system. Facebook became unreliable; CNN failed. (Although they apparently scrambled to improve matters today.) But Twitter kept going.

A list of English language twitterers in Iran is here - the list includes some American and British reporters continuing to cover events, as well as university students and angry Iranian protestors and others. You can also follow using the #iranelection tag, but fair warning: actually using this tag drew in a larger than usual group of spammers eager to use this event to sell Britney Spears porn. Sigh.