The Queek Files

I've always been an avid reader. This isn't a casual statement. From childhood on, I've devoured multiple books a week. I'm usually working on more than one book at a time. At least one rides around in my shoulder bag and more live on my bedside table. I love library books and highly recommend you visit your local library, but I have a hard time with the return process. If I enjoy a book, I grow attached to it and want to keep it. This results in me buying a lot of books. There are bookshelves in most of the rooms of my house. My book collection makes my friends fear me ever moving house again. I'm pretty sure they'll charge me more than a pot of chili and a few beers next time. Used bookstores and second hand websites have kept this habit from bankrupting me. When I was younger, it wasn't usual for me to be carrying a huge backpack full of gaming, fiction, and research books. It was even worse when I was in high school and university. Many of my friends...

I'm going to apologize up front that this isn't really related to any of my declared blog topics of geekiness or queerness. It does skirt the edge of my politics though. I may have a few issues with the commercialism of the season. Also, I call them the Winter holidays due to there being so many of them. In addition to the 800 pound gorilla that is Christmas; there is Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Krampusnacht, Kwanzaa, Newtonmas, New Year's, Pancha Ganapati, Solstice, Thanksgiving (U.S.), Yalda, Yule, and more. As a child, I loved this time of year. It was magical, full of awesome food and gifts. As I got older, I grew to like it less and less. It became less about joy and more about expectations. It was about what I was supposed to do instead of what I liked to do. As an adult; I know that I'm supposed to go to work, pay my bills, vote, clean house, not be a dick, and so on. That's all fine. It's the added expectations around this time of year that has sucked any joy...

T his is a post copied over and slightly modified from an older blog. I will recycle some of my older work if it still applies or I think you might get something out of it. In this case, it still applies. In the process of the crazy that’s been my reality; I’ve had the chance to reflect on a major change in a huge aspect of my life. It should come as no surprise, considering the themes of this blog, that this aspect is geek fandom. The change in question is in how the ‘fannish’ vs ‘mundane’ worlds interact with one another. It has been a pretty gradual change over the course of my decades of involvement in fandom, but the last few years of mega movies and even more mega conventions have brought it into stark (oooh... a pun) focus for me. To give a little background, I’m far from one of the grand-dames of fandom. I’m not one of the original pioneers of the convention scene or community organization out of the 1940s and 50s. We are starting to lose those folks, unfortunately. I have ...

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