Dry Ice Factory

By now, many of you should have received copies of two Tiny TAFFzines from Jim Mowatt. If you haven't received them and would like to (and if you know what TAFF is), please drop me a line. I'm handling the North American mailing, but if you are in the UK I can pass word along to Jim, who is handling the European mailing.

Meanwhile, as one of Jim's nominators, I want to elaborate on why I think you should vote for him. I first heard of Jim when he was going by the nom d'art Jim Trash and was associated with the Leeds Group of fanzine fans in the sunset years of their last heyday. I met him on my TAFF trip in 2003 when I went to the Cambridge pubmeet at the Cambridge Blue, where I also met his lovely girlfriend, Carrie, who was studying at Cambridge at the time. When it arose in conversation that my next stop was Keighley, where I would be visiting D. West and others in Leeds fandom, Jim offered to give me a ride. Brilliant! I happily accepted.

It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for a drive. As we beetled up the expressway Jim told me about his interest in archery, and we geeked out about Agincourt and the longbow. Was that when I learned where the two fingered salute came from? (Well, legendarily anyway.) We gossiped about the romantic follies of our friends and fellow fans, and he played tapes of a British comedy duo, which I'm pretty sure was Flanders and Swann. It was a highly fannish road trip, all in all.

I think the next time I conversed with Jim (and Carrie) was in the virtual fan lounge at E Corflu Vitus in 2011, where we reminisced about our adventure that day. Jim was becoming more active in fanzines again, and soon he had teamed up with Nic Farey to help him produce the excellent genzine, BEAM. Jim also had his own fanzine, Pips, which he used to promote the TAFF races in 2011 and 2012, publishing interviews with the candidates.

So Jim seems to me an ideal candidate for TAFF. He is active in producing fanzines, which is the traditional qualification, and he has enough connections through fanzines and the social networks to have established interest in him on both sides of the Pond. I can personally attest to his fine geekish qualities and fannish sense of hospitality as well. He has been around long enough to demonstrate a commitment to our subculture that will repay our investment in him. He is exactly the kind of curious and internationally-minded soul who will benefit most from the expansion of his network that winning a fan fund trip will bring. I strongly urge you to vote for Jim Mowatt for TAFF. We will all benefit from it.

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!

Congratulations to John Hertz, who will make a terrific delegate to Aussiecon and elsewhere in Oz. Condolences to profgeek, who nevertheless made such a good showing that he should clearly run again.

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.

Rich Coad has announced that Curt Phillips is the winner of the Corflu Fifty fan fund this year and will be attending Corflu Zed in Seattle. Curt is a longtime fan from Abingdon, Virginia. He has pubbed his ish, written for lots of fanzines, and OE'd the apas Myriad and PEAPS. He runs the PulpMags and Southern Fandom Classic Yahoo!Groups, and he's an active participant in other groups as well and an all around force for good in fandom. He doesn't make it to many conventions on the West Coast, so this will be a great chance for a lot of us to finally meet him.

The Corflu Fifty is a group of fans who have agreed to donate $25 each year to send a person chosen by consensus within the group to that year's Corflu. Last year the fund supported Steve and Elaine Stiles' trip to Corflu Silver in Las Vegas. There are currently 25 people in the group, but as the name implies, we'd like to get it up to 50. If you're interested in joining, please contact Rich Coad at richcoad at comcast dot net.

So do you want to Get Harry!? Plans are afoot to bring legendary fan artist (and painter) Harry Bell to Corflu Quire, but your help is needed. Straight out donations are not spurned (and I just put mine in the mail), but you can also buy Get Harry! merchandise at CafePress.com. Please contribute to this worthy cause, and then come to Corflu Quire and meet The Man Himself. This Corflu is already shaping up to be something special.

I will be vacating in Oregon for the next five days, returning on Monday.

Last night I had a pleasant dinner at Chutney's Grille on the Hill with taffbug, marykaykare, and holyoutlaw. We discussed the best ways to repurpose TAFF money when in Las Vegas. The European TAFF nest egg is about to explode!

Back at Mary Kay's house later, we hatched a counter Worldcon bid to Seattle in 2011. Ours is a bid for the Lesser Seattle World Science Fiction Convention. Our Patron Saint Guest of Honor will of course be Emmett Watson. The idea is to cap membership at the size of the first Seattle Worldcon, Seacon in 1961, which had an attendance of 300 people. Bid chair Mary Kay pointed out that this is about the size of the staff of a modern Worldcon, so this will be the first Worldcon where you have to work on the convention to be a member, thus making it the apotheosis of member-run conventions, not to mention a glorious return to the intimate Worldcons of the Golden Age. So here's to LesseaCon. Look for our flyer in Anaheim.

taffbug was spotted at Vanguard last night. I asked her how she was holding up so far, and she laughed hysterically, albeit in a stolid, reserved, British way. And she hasn't even hit Vegas yet! Ah well, it's only a dream. Today the dream shifts to the Blue Star in Wallingford for an extra special buggy pubmeet.

Before the party last night, I had dinner at the New Orleans, hoping to say hi to Hazel. Found out her mother died recently of cancer, and Hazel's been out for over two months, first taking care of her and then grieving. I'll try calling her today. The couple who gave me the news are apparently longtime regulars at the bar. There is a mural on the wall that has both of them in it, as they proudly pointed out, and they said it's been there fifteen years. Oh, and there was also an awesome confrontation at the bar that ended with a waiter quitting in a huff. Good times in old town!