Dry Ice Factory

johncoxon at breakfast this morning: "It's a good thing that James Bacon is a force for Good, because if he were a force for Bad, Bad would be winning."

Meanwhile, I found strangedave at the airport yesterday, with his soul still drifting somewhere over the Pacific after the long journey from Perth to Seattle. We applied beer and food at Airways Brewery and The Dog and Pony, and he was sufficiently recovered this morning to observe that if an Earl was given an OBE, it would make him an earlobe.

TAFF-DUFF party at our house tonight. Wish you were here.

If you haven't met David Cake yet, you really should. He's a fan of many interests. In addition to his involvement in fandom (including working on Perth's regional convention, Swancon, and also on the Natcon, and publishing a small press magazine called Borderlands), he's the Vice Chair of the board of Electronic Frontiers Australia. He's just started a PhD studying internet governance issues, and he also teaches in the Curtin University department of Internet Studies, thus, as he puts it, "ensuring future generations understand how to caption pictures of cats." He's the regional contact for the Australian Burning Man, an aspiring electronic musician, and has an interest in esoteric knowledge and magic.

Still not enough? Well, there's more: "I've given presentations at cons on AI, roleplaying game theory, the history of the Necronomicon, voodoo, cyberpunk and steampunk. I once spoke at a panel about Grant Morrison's comic, The Invisibles, dressed in character as transvestite shaman Lord Fanny. I own a theremin, a fez, two smoking jackets, three different books that claim to be the Necronomicon, and almost everything ever published for the roleplaying game RuneQuest." His favorite writer is Tim Powers, who is a Guest of Honor at Worldcon. You really ought to give him a chance to meet his favorite writer!

Political activist, computer nerd, theremin player, goth, small press publisher, and beer drinker -- what's not to love? Send this man to the Worldcon and into the American heartland. You won't regret it. Vote now!

The Down Under Fan Fund is running a race this year to send an Australasian to the Montreal Worldcon, and it's a good slate of candidates. I've met Alison Barton, both in Melbourne and at the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005 -- where I sat between her and Zara Baxter and was told, "This is a NAFF sandwich." Chris Nelson recently joined the trufen discussion list and proved himself knowledgeable on the subject of Australian fan history. I don't know much about Emma Hawkes, but her platform lists some interesting accomplishments, including co-founding the first feminist SF zine in Australia.

However, I come here to exhort you to vote for David Cake and Grant Watson. I am one of their nominators, so you can see that I think highly of them. Actually, I'll confess that I haven't met Grant yet, but I know that amongst other things he is a cartoonist and am hoping to get something from him for Chunga. I've started to follow his LiveJournal, and he certainly knows how to stir up a lively discussion there. (Because of LJ protocols about linking real names to LJ handles, I'm not going to link to Grant or David's LJ's here. They can out themselves in the comments section if they wish, or you can contact me by e-mail if you're interested.) Grant is the winner of five Ditmars, so he's clearly doing something right!

As for David, I've seen him at work firsthand, and I was impressed. I first met him at the London pubmeet before the 2005 Worldcon. When I found out he was from Perth, I asked him how Perth had come to have such an active fandom with a reputation second only to Melbourne's. He gave me the goods on Perth, and we bonded over beer and fan history. Sharee and I kept bumping into him at the convention itself, too, and in fact he took a great picture of us dressed as pirates that's one of my favorite pictures of Sharee and me. After the convention we ran into him and his lovely wife, doctor_k, wandering the streets of Glasgow, and we joined them in an impromptu tour of the Necropolis and in some pub hopping afterward, which eventually led to dinner with small group of post-convention stragglers. What a great day! The next year I saw David again at the LA Worldcon, and he told me about seeing a glass harmonica in action and of nipping off with a friend at one point to see Gary Numan in concert. In the meantime, I had started following his LiveJournal, where he writes on an amazing variety of topics, from in-depth analyses and explorations of Australian politics and culture, to the history of gaming, the pursuit of obscure electronic musical instruments, disquisitions on occult esoterica, advocacy of online rights via the Electronic Frontiers Australia, and on and on. He's the kind of fan you know you can sit down with and have a fascinating conversation on any number of topics, and wide-ranging intelligent conversation is the thing I probably prize most about fandom.

So vote in the DUFF race. Vote for David and Grant, who will be terrific representatives of Australian fandom and entertaining guests in North America. I'd love to show them around Seattle if they can make it here. You can download a PDF of the ballot or check for instructions on how to vote by e-mail and PayPal. Deadline for voting is May 17.