FJ!!'s Neglected Personal Blog

I can't enter SciFi fandom. It would kill me intellectually because I would get totally lost in it. I lived off an on these last years with a Star Trek buff and could slowly feel myself sink into it. The fact that I don't read books to save my time and sanity doesn't help here, because I'd start reading books and watching shows and talking and debating -- and gawd can I sink my teeth into a point and never let go until I am sure everyone knows exactly what it is, whether they agree or not. Oh no. It would be such an inconsequential time-sink for me. I stay far away.

So of course I certainly do not enroll in the depths of SciFi fandom: 'cons' (short for 'conventions'). One of the biggest ones is held here in Boston, I know tons of people who attend, my boyfriend has performed at one, and yet it is only last year that I first went to it, Arisia, in tow of bitty who was delivering cookies. I (re)met people I have added and through whom I met new people and then... you get the idea. It is there where I learned that Arisia is actually two parties in one: one a SciFi party with costumes and balls and panels and creators talking to fans, and one this never ending kinky/sex orgy behind closed doors. Attendance between the two overlaps, but not completly.

Interlude: pinkfish is folding our laundry. On cam. At least geminigirl and bender772 are watching. Geezus. This so weird. He's folding laundry, fergawdssakes.

This year Arisia came by, and friends organized a dinner. I went. I decided to dress for it. The Devil's lawyer, the minor one who draws up the actual contracts. The front part of my hair is bleached, I parted it in two and used the strongest modelling clay I have -- kept it unused for four years exactly for a day like this -- to style the hair into two horns, put on the grey wool italian suit (D&G) over a black tanktop, and stuffed the pants into knee-high zip motorcycle boots. Slightly overdone, somewhat whimsical, somewhat sexy, nicely understated for Arisia. I looked so good I would have posed for a shot, which is unusual.

Earlier that day I called danger_chick to ask what time where, and she told me and said I had to show up since she was wearing heels and needed an escort. Cool, I even had a date. And that night, also and because of my date, a lot of memories coming back. Some time after I became the tallest of my family, often when we went out or were on holidays, I would bend my arm and extend it towards my mother, and she would grab my elbow, and we'd walk together to places, especially when my father was busy with other stuff. I learned to walk slowly so as to match the speed her small ladylike steps gave her. We'd talk some, I'd feel all adult and connected and I'll never forget the rhythm of the clicking of her heels. She always wore heels. Not very high heels, but never flats. She'd just grown used to walking in the when she was a stewardess.

So here I was with danger_chick and I felt all connected and protective and walked slowly and kept talking to my mom about this in my head. I helped her with her coat, I watched for the patches of ice, I found chairs, I was a gentleman, and didn't feel like I was just playing grown-up anymore. I can now actually sense some of the appeal of being with someone who is at a disadvantage, it can make a person feel gentle and strong.

I indulged in the European custom of standing and speaking at a dinner (an utter failure by old standards: way too short, not eloquent, but I detest those look-at-me speeches anyway when the purpose, as I had, was to focus on someone else, which in this case was thanking the organizers). We had dessert after dinner, we walked around the con-hotel in search of people to bump into, and did. I loved the Orange party, the organizers had really transformed the space.

The whole night I felt together and handsome and strong, at the big dinner, dessert, parties, gossping in private hotelrooms as it kept getting later and later. I kept feeling I really liked and admired the people I was around, each making their own spaces on their own creative, cultural, sexual, and emotional terms now that the circumstances were such that it was posible. It felt good to listen and to entertain people, no matter the size of the group. And every moment I was grateful I knew how to be what I wanted to be at that moment. Easy, centered, no akwardness. It's happening more and more such that at some point someone else might not find it remarkable.

But everone reading this who was with me saturday and let me into their space should know that inside that 33 year-old man you called funny or friendly or handsome or downright hot, there was the memory of a 14-year-old lonely, hiding boy looking around at all of you giving him your time, grinning from ear to ear, and going "Wow. Oh wow. Oh man. Oh wow. I can't believe this. Oh man. Wow."

Picture it. Amsterdam, 1993. A young student in Amsterdam, fascinated by Star Trek and the place it held in U.S. popular culture, but knowing nothing, is introduced to a connoisseur of all things Sci-Fi. In a tiny smoky cafe on Rembrandtsplein, the student is told the tale of the ultimate in denied works, the movie never again acknowledged by its makers, the child locked in the attic by its parents, the ultimate horror never spoken of as punishment for being so bad. Star Trek V.

The connoisseur, a veteran of working in second-hand fantasy & sci-fi bookstores and watching everything he could, spins a tale before the young student of cliches in every scene, unneding hubris of its writer and director, William Shatner, pulp both so bad and so expensive it had no fun, no soul, and seemingly to its hapless watchers, no end. When the connoisseur watched it a week after opening, there were four people in the theatre. Two walked out.

The connoisseur was Mikael Bard. The young student -- was me.

Tonight was the night that that circle closed. Tonight the TiVo had the fateful movie. Tonight I would climb the pinnacle of misfirings.



I stopped watching at 41 minutes. It was so badly full of itself it was just plain dull.

After a hiatus I resumed the user testing of the phone assigned to me The hiatus was because I blew up the chips inside the phone while installing a software release. Twice. The second time was with the replacement unit. I never even got to use that one: I tried to install the system software and the next thing I knew we had to ship it back to Finland because I had done it again.

I am now on unit III. Strangely enough, I wasn't kicked out of the program. The lab manager says that I helped uncover all kinds of errors in the updating procedure.

I installed the first real game: Doom by id software. First time I ever played a first-person shooter. The old classic. Turns out I am really bad at being a special ops, running around shooting things and staying out of harm's way. Who knew?

It is a straght-up port, no massaging for this small but very colorful and fast screen, which means that there are some problems. The most important one is that I cannot read any of the written text, like how I am being scored or what the things I pick up are or what I am supposed to be able to do with them. I just try, flailing, finishing levels and shooting things and staying healthy until I take too many hits.

It is quite compelling, especially when the stereo headset blocks out meatspace surroundings: I am enthralled by how fast I seem to run, the scenery changing like I am on superspeed. I can't run in real life, not fast, not long, and suddenly I glide over the terrian naturally as if I always could. I can see the attraction of this game: you get to kick ass, be fearless, wade through poison, need only grunt, solve very basic challenges, and take 0 shit. Be strong and in control over your own destiny and something and someone you can never be. Get engrossed enough and you can swear you can feel your new mighty pecs heaving, your now deep-set eyes squinting beneath your unibrow, chomping on your cigar while grinning as you shoot your elephant gun at another inconsequential opponent. No worries, no lies, no system, no memory. Ersatz life. Fits in your pocket.

After I played it the first time, every time I closed my eyes my brain would generate the same images. I'd see the first person view of hurtling through fuzzy red & gray tunnels, taking junctions, careening into this new maze, visible all the way into my peripheral vision. No effort, just my brain using this new context to interpret the random red & black patterns formed by light hitting the blood-vessles of my eyelids.

So bitty posted that Riverworld sucked. Thanks to the TiVo I loose valuable chances to let my guiding TV gods allow bad TV to pass me by, thanks to the new Series 2 TiVo box I now barely have the chance to let crapfests expire.

But I love Alex Projas so much. It is too bad his films made no big money, because they were so beautiful. And not even a bigger budget could have saved this -- the script was just a writer wanking about getting the chance to meet all these huge names in history. Kinda like everyone who regresses into past lives was Cleopatra, never accountant no. 7 who dies of aggravated heartburn and was barely remembered by his daughter.

Were the books this masturbatory? This flat?

All these people desperatly trying to survive after they have already died. What idiocy. Like all of them have so much vested in living, isolated, surrounded by maniacs, with no loved ones. I can sometimes barely keep suicidal ideation to normal levels when my mind is screeching with pressure, and I am surrounded by comfort and love. You think if I was resurrected from my death in some crummy stone-age palisades to slavery I'd be like all needy for another sucky day?

In other news, we now have an original TiVo box left over. I think I should post it at bitty and bubblebabble for a month with service to my name, and see if they like it. You guys interested?

BBC always said that watching "Communion" before "Close Encounters..." will make the latter very creepy, while the other way around will have you giggling on the floor. I don't see it, but I am sure the sequence has that effect on novices.

I was thinking "AI" would make a perfect double bill with "Screamers". "Screamers" should go first for people afraid they get too engrossed by the poor poor suffering of the wibble kjuut robot boy, and last for people who hate Spielberg anyway and may want a more satisfying ending for David and his ilk.

So I am watching AI: Artificial Intelligence, and it is supposed to be not too far in the future. I haven't wacthed that much of it yet, so far it seems to be the story of a golden retriever, a machine evolved for the niche of social parasitism, in the shape of Haley Joel Osment.

Two things so far:

Haley is a really good artificial being. I wonder how much of it is acting.

I keep getting distracted by the production design of the modern house in the not too far future. All the furniture, the floors, the doors, is all supposed to be modern and stuff, but all I keep thinking is "Yellow version of the pouf from the new designer at Ligne Roset. Yup, there's that meshy computer pedestal on castors from the web. Floor's laminate, probably 3000 bucks for that area, would be better lighter. Nice use of the cube shelving from DWR. I have those plastic boxes in my living room."

It's totally ripping me out of this cheesy Speilberg movie -- "The man is in turmoil, glide in for a close-up!" -- but so far it is ok. 21 minutes into the thing and I don't give a crap about anyone because they all are written as simulacra. Spielberg's giving me archetypes instead of people again.