yonmei

09:07 pm: Worldcon panels I for one will never propose, and not for their lack of interest, part 1
I am probably going to the Worldcon in Montreal this August. (I say "probably" because I am staring wanly at my finances, and at the state of the world, and wisting that I will miss most of 's visit to Edinburgh, but, you know. I bought a membership! I've said who I won't be on panels with! I've proposed panel topics! I've volunteered! I've emailed Shoshanna!

I haven't booked a catsitter or plane tickets. June for that.

But it occurred to me, while dipping into Fun Home, that a panel that would be fascinating (probably) but I don't think I could ever brave the personal embarrassment of proposing to either of the possible participants:

Alison Bechdel and Samuel R. Delany, discussing what it was like to be a nascent queer writer growing up in a funeral home, with fathers who died before either of them were 20.

(Admittedly, under different circumstances: Bechdel's father died in either accident/suicide, Delany's father died of cancer.)

Current Mood: amused

Tags: bechdel, books are what i read, delany, meta, worldcon

4 lolcat | Purr at me

09:09 am: Whee!
Hugo nominees are listed.

Most of them, as usual, are people I don't read/haven't read, but there under Fan Artists is Sue Mason, who I'll vote for any day of the year as Best Fan Artist. Yay.

(Also, I will tactically vote against Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Kathryn Cramer if anyone can give me a tactical voting target. If not, I'll just hope someone else wins and follow my usual practice of not voting in most sections of the Hugo list given that I rarely have any clear preference.)

Tags: racefail 09, worldcon

06:54 pm: August, Worldcon, room-share?
Is anyone else in British fandom (or, hell, North American or Australian fandom) (a) also definitely going (b) interested in sharing accommodation / splitting costs, over 6 nights, Wednesday to Tuesday?

( the gritty details )

Tags: montreal, worldcon

12:17 am: Definitely, not ever, not even once, passing through the US
Tonight, as I parted from my parents outside Chimei, I repeated my firm advice to my mother to book her flight via a travel agent and make sure she didn't even transit through a US airport on her way to Canada in September.

Got home and discovered via Sideshow that, yeah, if you can possibly avoid it non-USians should go nowhere near the US for the foreseeable future.

Emily Feder writes (18th August 2008):

We got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport. He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and said, "Over there," pointing in the direction of four overflowing holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder. When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars with his forefinger.

Why was she there? Well, the Department of Homeland Security wanted to ask her some questions about Hezbollah, because she was returning to the US from Syria. Of course so were many other people on the same flight, so why they picked on Ms Feder is anyone's guess.

No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

Many of the people held in this extra-judicial detention area were US citizens:

...Omar looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of people -- some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies -- had too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

One British citizen detained among the rest:

There was one British tourist in the group. Paul (also not his real name) was traveling with three friends who had passed through customs soon after their plane landed and were waiting for him on the other side of the metal barrier; he suspected he had been detained because of his dark skin. When he asked if he could go to the bathroom, one of the guards said, "I wouldn't." "What if someone has to?" I asked. "They will just have to hold it," the guard responded with a smile. Paul began to cry.

My mum is over seventy: white-haired, British-with-a-trace-of-Canadian accent (mostly English - Scots shows up only in her word-choice at times). She's overweight, and lame. She seldom goes anywhere she can't go by train or bus, and certainly has never been to Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East. I think: well, she wouldn't really likely be picked on/detained. But even an hour's detention like this would be physically painful for her - and Emily Feder's account says that four hours is just the start (she got "processed" after four because she was white and American-born and had the certainty she was not going to be sent back to Syria or on to Bagram Airbase, no matter what she said to the Homeland Security men):

After four hours, I finally demanded to speak to the guards' supervisor, and he was called down. I asked if the detainees could file a formal complaint. He said there were complaint forms (which, in English and Spanish, direct one to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site, where one must enter extensive personal information in order to file a "Trip Summary") but initially refused to hand them out or to give me his telephone number. "The Department of Homeland Security is understaffed, underfunded, and I have men here who are doing 14-hour days." He tried to intimidate me when I wrote down his name -- "So, you're writing down our names. Well, we have more on you" -- and asked me questions about my address and my profession in front of the rest of the people detained. I pointed out a few of the families who had missed their flights and had been waiting seven hours. His voice barely controlled, his lip curled into a smirk, he explained slowly, condescendingly, that they need only go to the ticket counter at Jet Blue and reschedule so they could fly out in an hour. One mother responded with what he must have already known: Jet Blue goes to most destinations only once or twice a day and her whole family would have to sleep in the airport.

A large crowd began to gather. Everyone wanted to voice complaints. I explained to the supervisor that his guards had been making people afraid. He flipped through the green files, tossing the American passports to the front of the pile. "You should have gone first, before these people. American citizens first -- that's how it should be." In the face of dozens of requests and questions, he turned and left.

The guards processed me then, ignoring the order of arrivals, if there ever had been one. They refused to distribute more complaint forms or call the supervisor back down at the request of Arab families. One officer threatened, "I'm talking politely to you now. If you don't sit down, I won't be talking politely to you anymore." One announced that because "the American girl" had gotten angry, the families would have to wait a few more hours. "The supervisor is not coming back."

"Between 2000 and 2007, overseas travel to the U.S. fell 8% - approximately 2 million travelers - even though overseas travel around the world grew by 28% - or 35 million travelers." - The Power of Travel - Key Issues - a website which does not mention the charming ways of Department of Homeland Security as one of those key issues.

Montreal for the Worldcon in 2009 is still something I hope to do. If I can afford the cheapest flight I can get that does not involve going through the US...

Tags: evil american politics, family stuff, montreal, travel, worldcon

11:15 am: Back from Worldcon
Home again. Still tired. This is only my third Worldcon, but already I feel qualified to make generic, sweeping judgements: Worldcons are too big and last too long to be an unqualifiedly good experience.

But, on the whole, very glad I went. Nice to meet you all. (Especially the Heretickal One, who is lovely. As well as heretickal.)

Am planning to do a con report. Yes.

Tags: glasgow, worldcon

01:33 pm: At the Worldcon, 3
It's Monday. I have been to two and a half panels. (I walked out on the sex panel halfway through in search of lunch. Advice on how-to-write-sex-scenes that starts with "First, light candles. And incense! And play repetitive songs!" is just not going to work for me. Lunch is better.)

Had too little sleep and have had not yet enough coffee. Am feeling on a bit of a Worldcon downer. (Am worried about Cally, who is very thin and not eating enough: Ajay has been catsitting this weekend.)

Two more hours volunteering to go. Have been remarkably good in resisting the dealer's room.

Tags: cally, worldcon

07:18 pm: At the Worldcon, 2
Most fun thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: too many to count, but getting to meet Ellen Kushner has to be close to the front. (I bought Thomas the Rhymer from her, and she signed it and said *bounce* *squee* it was nice to meet me, and you know, like she actually meant it.)

Most bizarre thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: being told I couldn't volunteer to be a gopher at the Hugos because I wasn't properly dressed. (I am wearing, today, my bid t-shirt for Glasgow 2005, the one with the rather nice art deco spaceship on it: blue jeans: and trainers.) Apparently "properly dressed" for the Hugos means no jeans, no t-shirts. Hum. I believe this may be why gophering at the Hugos is on the Gopher Hole emergency board.

Most annoying thing happened to me at the Worldcon so far: the consistent habit at the Gopher Hole of saying they need more volunteers, then signing several too many people up for the same time slot. I have stopped going back to complain, and just started taking the hour anyway.

I handed out all 30 copies of Bah! to various people. If you would like a copy posted to you next week, comment here or e-mail me (Update: Up to 10 copies, anyway). Am having a curry with hfnuala and the Heretickal One tonight, instead of volunteering at the Hugos, on account of being Improperly Dressed.

Tags: ellen kushner, glasgow, worldcon

12:20 pm: At the Worldcon, 1
I have: spoken on a panel about lesbians in genre TV, been to a panel about the "yuk factor", had a lovely evening drinking wine and talking about slash with flambeau, volunteered for a couple of hours distributing newsletters and stuff, been swimming (the hotel is fabulous: I am Eternally Grateful to hfnuala, though not to the extent of actually sharing my Alpen*.) I may even, thanks to davidcook, get to publish Bah!. Having a wonderful time. If you're here, I'm glad you are, and hope we get to meet.

Oh, and I have met so many people who haven't seen me in five-to-ten years who say "Jane, you've... shrunk!" or variants thereof.

*I tried to share it. But it turns out hfnuala does not do muesli. Actually, I'm feeling terribly guilty about being so well-stocked with food... we're not doing breakfast in the hotel because they want to charge £15 each for it.

Tags: breakfast is a good meal, glasgow, worldcon

08:45 pm: Good... heavens (or: Alison Rowat's a complete twit)
My feminist sensibilities prevent me from substituting *a* for *i* in the subject line above. You will have to guess where I would stick it.

The Herald has one of the worst websites in the newspaper world, so I expect that link to rot within a few days.

( Read more... )

Tags: fannish snark, worldcon