[conspire] WorldCon in Anaheim

[Rick Moen]

Deirdre and I will be attending the annual World Science Fiction
Convention (the "WorldCon"), which is held somewhere on the globe[1]
in late summer every year -- and this year is at the Anaheim Convention
Center and a couple of adjoining hotels, Wednesday through Sunday. 

The WorldCon is an n-ring circus for large values of "n".  ;->
It's vastly entertaining for nearly 24 hours a day, for quite a few days
in a row -- is 100% run by science-fiction fans themselves, and is where 
the annual Hugo Award ceremony is held.   Considering the magnitude of
this event, it's very inexpensive (being volunteer-run):  Even at this
late date, a full membership is just $200.  (They're always much
cheaper, earlier on.)

The top-level "container" Web site is of course http://www.worldcon.org/ .
Each year's WorldCon is run by a one-time collection of volunteers
who've been preparing for three years to run it.  This year's event is
called "L.A. Con IV".  (Yes, they did grab http://www.laconiv.org/ .)


Anyhow, partly to note the milestone, I've, er, committed "filk", i.e., 
rewritten one of T.S. Eliot's bits of light verse from _Old Possum's
Book of Practical Cats_:  "The Naming of Cats", with a bit of work,
became "The Naming of Cons", which I posted to the "SMOFS"[2] mailing
list -- and which has garnered some fans among those who write _good_
filk.  ;->

http://filkerdave.livejournal.com/541186.html


ObTopicalPortion:  There'll be an Internet lounge at L.A. Con IV,
running entirely on Linux, put together and staffed by Heather Stern and
Jim Dennis.  It's approximately the same set of machines many in the Bay
Area will have seen at our local "BayCon" conventions, except -- no huge 
surprise -- this is the year Jim and Heather have replaced all the tube
monitors with LCD ones.

[1] Or, if the fans had their way, off it.   There have been any number
of tongue-in-cheek "bids" (proposals) to hold WorldCons in offworld
locales, such as the long-running bid for "Z'ha'dum in 2259" -- mostly
an excuse for holding good parties.