Wiscon 32 Day 2

Look! I haven't yet gone to a panel and had my head exploded! Well, I was argumentative in the Id Vortex panel and rolled my eyes a lot in the Real Cities one, but overall things are good. Also, I have bought loads of books from Aqueduct Press, eaten a chili cheese dog, had food that included a deep-fried potato leek thing, other things that I cannot spell correctly while alcohol is in my blood stream, and lamb and spinach and okra stewy things, and babbled about manga and dramas to people, most of whom were probably very bemused! But that is okay because I got to babble to Alaya Dawn Johnson about food and manga and dramas and it was awesome!

OH! Also! I forgot! I woke up super early to go to the farmers' market with heresluck and Yoon, and h.l. was insanely bouncy as she had already made one round around the market at 6:30 before coming back for me and Yoon. I may have ended up leaving with two more jars of jam than I intended to get (3 total, including an apple-something one and a wild strawberry and wild something one and a peach-apricot one look! I can remember this even when I am slightly buzzed!). And! They had fresh made pasta and I got tomato-basil linguine and jonquil! They had lilacs! I sniffed some. And tulips and other flowers I cannot identify and goat cheese with chives (I bought the cheese but not the flowers). And then I got strawberry-rhubarb pie and thought I got a cherry pocket pie because I was very nice and didn't get the cherry pie as the bigger pie because Mely doesn't like cherry and I am very good and share my pie even though sometimes I contemplate not except the pocket pie was actually blackberry. AND THEN! There was a stall! With heirloom tomatoes! In MAY!

They were not as good as heirlooms are in late summer but I DO NOT CARE BECAUSE I HAD TOMATOES! IN MAY! HEIRLOOMS! It was very exciting. (this may be the only sentence in the entire post without an exclamation point.)

Now I cannot remember what else I did after the market. Oh wait. Then I went to Yoon and helen_keeble and daidoji_gisei's readings, which were excellent and people wanted to read more of Yoon's story.

OH! And after dinner with h.l. and Mely and littlebutfierce and mystickeeper and takumashii at the aforementioned place with deep-fried potato leek thingies, we had the Shojo Bodies panel and there were maybe about 7 of us there, but it was incredibly fun and got briefly sidetracked into Japanese history of female sexuality and Takarazuka and I think we ended up going for two hours and it was great!

Also, there is still head-explodey stuff, namely the Elves and Dwarves and Racism in Fantasy panel, which Liz Henry has very awesomely transcribed here. But the most awesome part (the head-explodey-ness is not awesome, obviously) was her post with clips of people's reactions coming out of the panel, and it was just so cool to see people talking about it there and having other people to commiserate with or rant with and to have it be out there! And just, seeing people actively trying to be allies (feminist, anti-racist, anti-ablist, etc.) and trying to talk about these things was very awesome. Possibly I am extrapolating from a few video clips and POC meetups, but it made me really happy. And now I should go to bed because I have a panel at 10 tomorrow...

Wiscon 32 Day 3

Alas, the trend of non-explodey panels did not continue...

My head didn't explode per se, but I went to several that left me feeling very unsettled, and I'm still not able to fully articulate why (one on class and one on race). On the plus side, the one I was on, Can Internet Drama Change the World?, seemed to go well and left me feeling happy. And there were a surprising amount of people for a 10 AM Sunday panel! Will start writing things up once I'm back home.

Loot so far has been remarkably restrained, largely because Mely never managed to go to the dealer's room with me. I got Nisi Shawl's short story collection, her and Cynthia Ward's Writing the Other, Andrea Hairston's Mindscape, and Maureen F. McHugh and Timmi DuChamp's short story collection.

Fooding has continued to be good, with a meal at a tapas place with Timmi and Mely, which included Spanish flatbread loaded with asparagus and artichokes, an egg and potato fritatta-like thing, really tender skewered chicken (meat on a stick!), baked goat cheese, and seared scallops wrapped in some cured meat. Then, as I could not convince ladyjax to go for deep-fried eggrolls stuffed with cookie dough, h.l. and I went off together to Bluefries, which is a fusion diner (I know, interesting). We had rice balls that were risotto with gouda cheese rolled in breadcrumbs and deep-fried, which were gooey and melty and very good; a chicken sandwich with caramelized onions and fig paste on foccacia; and aforementioned fried eggrolls stuffed with cookie dough. They are awesome, except for the unfortunate side effect of spewed gooey cookie dough everywhere when you bite into one.

I am also too tired to write up my reactions to Timmi's Guest of Honor speech, which was excellent and had parts that made me feel punched in the stomach (thank GOD I didn't grow up in the 50s and 60s) and parts that had me grinning like a lunatic. I was planning on going to parties after that, since I have managed to either not know about Carl Brandon Society events until two minutes before or have panels scheduled against them and have only gotten to hang out with Lady J and Coniraya for a little, but I was tired of crowds. Mostly, Yoon, Mely, h.l. and I hung around while h.l. explained things about vidding. Aaaand... clearly my plan to go to bed early for my 7 AM flight has already gone awry.

On the other hand, my poor travel luck has continued, and apparently my flight was cancelled and I was booked on another flight an hour later. The hour later is a plus, but not flying through vom_marlowe's city is a VERY LARGE MINUS. Boooo. Will attempt to wrangle with the airport tomorrow, as both airlines apparently cannot do anything about the schedule.