A Bit More Detail

I may feel like a dishrag, but if so it's a dishrag who had a wonderful time returning to Arisia after six years, even if the ziggurat on the Charles is still a dreadful place to hold a convention. For the Dramatic Readings from the Ig Nobel Prizes, I performed selections from W. C. Meecham and H. G. Smith's "Effects of Jet Aircraft on Mental Hospital Admissions" (British Journal of Audiology, 1977) with what I hope was an appropriately haggard channeling of my sleepless night and Leonie Cornips' "The semiotic repertoire of dairy cows" (Language in Society, 2024) with what I hope was an appropriately technical rendition of cow noises. I heard papers on the proper techniques of nose-blowing, whether snakes dress to the left or the right, the sexual correlations of apples. It feels impossible, but it must have been my first time onstage since onset of pandemic. Readers who overstayed their allotted two minutes were surrounded by a chorus of bananas.

I had forgotten how much socializing my attendance of conventions used to entail. I turned the corner for registration and immediately spotted a nineweaving, followed in close succession by a choco_frosh, a_reasonable_man, and a sorcyress. I was talking to the latter in the coat check when Gillian Daniels came in and now I have a zine-printed copy of the second edition of her chapbook Eat the Children (2019/2026). I had not lengthy enough catch-up conversations with awhyzip and rinue and am now in possession of a signed copy of Nothing in the Basement (2025). I brought water with me and kept forgetting to duck outside to drink it. Dean gave me a ride home afterward and commented on my tired look, which was fair: six, seven years ago I could sprint through programming even after a night of anaphylaxis or a subluxed jaw and these days there's a lot less tolerance in the system. It seemed to be a common refrain. If I have fun and don't take home any viral infections from this weekend, it'll be a win.

Tomorrow, panels.

Today was the yahrzeit of the molasses flood. I was last at Langone Park for the centenary, since which time the field has been renovated and a new marker erected in memory of the disaster and its dead. Seven years ago feels nearly a century itself.

Speaking of man-made needless awfulness, I have been made aware of the locally vetted aggregate of Stand with Minnesota, a directory of mutual aid, fundraisers, and on-the-ground support against the onslaught of ICE. All could use donations, since internet hugs are of limited efficacy against tear gas, batons, bullets to the face and legs. Twenty-three years ago feels like several worldlines back, but the Department of Homeland Security sounded absurdly, arrogantly dystopian then.

The fourth and last of this week's doctors' appointments concluded with an inhaler and instructions to sleep as much as possible. My ability to watch movies remains on some kind of mental fritz which upsets me, but I liked running across these poems.