The fringie wank

"Waaah, nobody ever comes out to our camps and takes pictures."

Does none of you own a camera and have a Flickr/Smugmug/Photobucket album?  You too can upload dozens and dozens of photos  documenting your weekend and share them with the kingdom simply by posting the link publicly. Oh, I see, you want moriven or shutt3rg33k  or Esmeralda - people who take good pictures - to do it. Why not  try crawling out of the Nylon Fortress of Solitude* on the Back 40, seek them out personally and ask? Nicely? 


"Waaah, I'm sick of hiking out to East Fringehold and being abused at for doing my job!" 

Whining is unseemly when you're the voice of the Crown. Finish your shout if you can, explain politely that you are just doing your job and trying to provide a service to the neighborhood and move along. If you encounter anything more than mild hecking, report it to the herald in charge and discuss whether to bring back-up to the next duty shout in that area, in the form of constabulary, Chivalry or even Royalty.

"You know, I thought about doing Japanese once, but it's so fringie!" (Someone actually said this to me once.)

Gee, thanks. Fringie is as fringie does. Do it reasonably decently and do it "downtown" and it's not fringie any more. (Same goes for pirates, Rom and the cultures of the near East.) Didn't think about that part, did you?

*I am not snarking modern tentage. It's what some folks have, it gets the job done. That's fine. Picking one's "ideal" event campsite is a highly personal choice, as is what once chooses to do at an event. That's fine too. However, if your choice is physically and socially remote to central event activities, it was your choice.

Whirlwind weekend update

Spent most of Investiture hemming and cartridge pleating my linen ECW petticote and chatting with friends in the feast hall. Handed off the Sooper Sekrit Gift to its intended recipient. Now that she has it, I can tell you: I took a silk habotai square, stitched a design into it, drew the threads tight and tied them off, put a small amount of powdered silk dye in a jewelry sized zip-lock, wrote up how much hot water and vinegar to add the dye to and packaged it all up for the recipient, a person who has been so kind and supportive a patron of my weird-niche arts that I thought it only fit she get a chance to participate in one of them. 

Finally met another Westerner who not only does Japanese, he is Japanese American. Miyake-dono seems like good people and I hope our paths continue to cross.

Party at bovil  and kproche 's place was hot but fun. Good eats and drinks, excellent company and the silliness that is Eurovision music videos.

Livermore sucked. SUCKED, I tell you. It wasn't even the oppressive heat so much as there was nothing to do. Evidently Saturday's firing demo never happened because they couldn't get the heavy athletics people off the field. Yesterday our guys ended up doing cannon and musket firing in an empty parking lot, which meant a lot of people didn't see it. No place to busk because things were packed so close together that every stage was in every other stage's sound shadow. Complete waste of time except for getting to see friends and cower under a sunshade drinking lots of water. Oh, and watching the Gordon Highlanders' field drill with rifles, cannon and Gatling gun. The precision was brilliant and beautiful to watch.

Dinner with James, Sylvia, Jeff, Lyman and Dave at the Pasta Pomodoro in Rockridge was a nice antidote, at least.