I believe there's someone out there making the great escape

[austin_dern]

Saturday opened with the discovery that bunny_hugger had accidentally tipped over a glass of water on the magazine she'd left on the nightstand. I didn't realize she'd had a glass of water there, but I'm not in the water-in-the-bedroom habit. It was an unfortunate way to start the day, but it didn't set the tone either.

After breakfast --- a buffet, at the same restaurant which was so vegetarian-hostile the night before, but much better in the morning given the variety of fruits, eggs, pancakes, and similar non-bacon-based entries --- the big first event was the Fursuit Parade. bunny_hugger had been anticipating this for months, and eagerly awaiting it for weeks, and the trouble with eyeglasses and fogging up would add worry to things but not to dampen the spirit of things. More threatening was the Rabbits SIG which bunny_hugger was to host: miraculously they didn't schedule it for the traditional Two Hours Before The First Panel Of The Day timeslot it usually gets. And they respected her request not to schedule it against the Parade. They scheduled it to start immediately after the scheduled end of the parade.

So, we worked up a plan. skylerbunny would get to the SIG room and watch over things until bunny_hugger could get there. If there was time at the Parade end, she would go up to the room and clean out the fursuit head; if there weren't, I'd take the head up and clean it out. (They collect sweat, which is best dealt with as soon as possible. Sooner, in fact.) In some way it would work out.

The parade route was to start from the main auditorium, go down a long hallway, then go up the elevators to march around the hotel lobby, go back downstairs, and wend its way past the conference rooms until reaching the great and cool outdoors. It may seem optimistic to you to have hundreds of people in heavy, motion-restricting outfits with limited visibility going up escalators. It may seem borderline insane. That's about how I saw it, too. But the optimistic Parade route planners added the twist that the way the path went, the trail would cross itself so that people in fursuits would be walking orthogonally to the ways other people in the same parade were. And if that isn't insane enough how about this: one of the escalators was broken.

Considering this start the Parade was not nearly so chaotic as might have been. The worst problem came at the non-broken escalator, the one going up, when something created a bottleneck (bunny_hugger found people stopping for photographs) at the top of the escalator. As there were not enough parade wranglers directing people to stop at the bottom of the escalator this produced a cartoon-style infinite pile of people arriving without space to go and I only appreciated bits of this because I had staked out a spot below the escalator. I was actually inside the roped-off area of a cash snacks stand which, like all the cash snacks stands, was closing up operations when I got there. BUt it left me with a vantage point that, thanks to the looping parade path, let me get several chances at photographing everyone.

The Parade ended out back, in the cold but surely appreciated air and a grand mass photograph. bunny_hugger was out somewhere far in back and it would take time to find her. However, we'd managed to meet up and get inside with a nice comfortable margin of time between the parade end and the start of the rabbits SIG. We had to unintentionally snub baar_bear, whom we briefly saw in the headless lounge for fursuiter recuperation and costume drying, but didn't have the time to talk to; but we dashed upstairs and she got her head dried out.

Dashing back downstairs and awestruck that we weren't having worse problems with the elevators --- we expected them to be impassable --- we got to the Rabbit SIG not two minutes after the scheduled start, when skylerbunny had just got through introducing himself and explaining why bunny_hugger was going to be a tiny bit late. I don't know if I was explained at all, if such a thing is possible.

The Rabbit SIG started with much the same initial point as the equivalent panel last year, although with more people and more awake since the panel wasn't at 3:15 the previous morning. We introduced ourselves --- including barberio mentioning his theory that rabbits can breathe fire, but just haven't quite worked out how yet; several people who were at their first con of any kind and a few at their first event of any kind at any con of any kind; and a mute woman who I got the impression was there because of the interest of her friend rather than any particular rabbit interests --- and got into real-world rabbit information and then fictional representation of rabbits and the panel never quite seems long enough. I think we found someone who hadn't read Watership Down somehow, and then came time for the lucky-draw giveaways. This would be a couple of rabbit plushes (as bunny_hugger picks up following Easter for just this sort of giveaway) and an old pair of rabbit ears. The old pair went, as I remember, to one of the people attending her first con ever.

A con experiences a curious blend of time: looking at the schedules it seems like there might be one or more hours between things, but on the floor, it seems like there's no end of rushing back and forth between things that started just before we got there. I remember, for example, that we rushed to the dealer's room and to the art show for examinations of the wares that seemed to be not nearly enough time. As I didn't go in wanting for anything specific I didn't feel like I missed shopping opportunities. My sole disappointment was that I couldn't find anyone selling LED-based flashing sticks, as mine from last year seemed to need new batteries I didn't have time to find. bunny_hugger found good old-fashioned chemical glowsticks for sale, and stocked up on them as they were going for something like two gross per shilling; she'd work up elaborate glowing cages for herself for the dance that night and next.

Further running-around brought us at its end to poinktferret's comedy show, a half-hour performance which I thought was based on the stand-up comedy act he's been working on for general audiences, although I'm actually very oblivious to little things like the important work of his life. I do apologize for that. I preferred last year's show --- describing an extended interaction with the police, always a reliable source of comedy after the fact --- but could hardly expect a repeat of something just to satisfy my tastes.

The centerpiece of the evening's performances was the Variety Show, which included something of special interest to us: the stage debut of bunny_hugger's other ears. These aren't the fursuit ears, just a pair clipped to some kind of head-girdling thing. She'd given away another set like this earlier in the day. One of the acts for the Variety Show needed rabbit ears and in accord with the rules of this sort of thing nobody could find a pair of rabbit ears at a furry convention. bunny_hugger was the natural person to go-to for an extra set and if the Rabbit SIG had been Sunday she'd have had the giveaway pair to lend. Instead she loaned her regular-duty ears with the promise of getting them back after the show; and, they made an appearance in two brief skits where they were indeed rabbit ears.

The Variety Show moved along at a pretty good pace, without serious mishap, and even this year's attempt to do the Who's On First performance worked. What didn't work was an attempt to do the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch, briefly rewritten and inspiring in me the thoughts: who is this for? Is there some rule they have to do this? Should I try writing and sending in some comic dialogue so they don't have to mine material the audience has got memorized? I think other people liked it, but I was waiting for that sketch to end and better things to come. And they did, with a good number of sketches that were original or at least were derived from things I wasn't familiar with.

We were hungry afterwards --- you might have expected as much, since I'm not sure when we had eaten or even snacked last --- and on deciding the restaurant wasn't going to work again and somehow passing on the sports/television bar, we figured to get pizza delivered. bunny_hugger, skylerbunny, GreenKai (who admitted he wasn't sure how he was swept up in our group but we were glad to see him), and I sorted through the restaurant guide some and found a place willing and able to deliver deep-dish pizza, who (a) recognized from skylerbunny's phone number that oh, yeah, this was a hotel delivery, and (b) were able to deliver after only three hours of waiting. It probably wasn't actually that long but it did feel like it took strangely long to get the pizza ready, possibly because it takes time for a three-foot thick pie to thoroughly boil.

While eating we somehow got onto the subject of the strains of having to discipline people --- bunny_hugger from the perspective of having students with a stunningly bad attitude about what they are theoretically paying for; me and skylerbunny as administrators of spindizzy_muck, and GreenKai as administrator of Wikifur. In fact, one notorious example of misbehaving user came together between me, skylerbunny , and GreenKai as we'd all had multiple incidents with him (I don't wish to name who, although if you think you know who I might be talking about, you're correct). And this explained a recent incident in which a (different) person, angered by discipline on Spindizzy, vandalized the Wikifur description of skylerbunny and findra, and possibly also skylerbunny. We were thrilled by this, and disappointed to find that my entry had been un-vandalized.

We did have speculation on why that should be. See, when disciplinary actions have to be done on Spindizzy they're the collective decisions of the wizards; I admit to being primus inter pares but not to being excessively hands-on or hands-off. I couldn't begin to describe just how we come to decisions, but I'm not just part of them but I approve, accept, and endorse them all. We generally tend to then let whatever wizard sees the involved party first deal with actually delivering the blow, and given the amounts of time we spend online that's most often findra or skylerbunny . Thus, I think, they get the reputation for being my shtarkers while I look like the genial and unthreatening head of state, unaware of the sordid actions of his ministers.

Possibly aiding this is that when we have to investigate someone's misbehavior, I tend to try asking open-ended questions and let people say as much as they want even if it doesn't have anything to do with what anyone wants to know. This probably makes me look not just open-minded but sympathetic, particularly as the other wizards like to ask more focused questions. Well, I like giving folks the chance to feel they've had the fullest possible say (it's something I picked up from Harry S Truman and his World War II investigations of government contractor spending). I regret that it makes my fellow wizards --- in whom, I'd to emphasize, I place full and enduring trust in every matter --- seem like the hard ones. I'm as hard.

Also, I regret that it means when someone who feels wronged despite it all goes on a petty vandalism spree I get left out. My entry was untouched, and showed no signs of ever being touched by anyone malicious. That's hardly fair, is it?

The second round of dancing, this time augmented with chemical glow sticks forming necklace, bracelet, and anklets for bunny_hugger, was no less fun and showed me with no greater ability to actually move in any partern on purpose. It also saw me slightly improved as a handler, thanks to skylerbunny showing me better how it's done: keeping an eye on the vicinity of the person in costume, warning about the things about to run into her or liable to be knocked into, and not hovering so frightfully tight. Also in watching better for signs of imminent fatigue in addition to signals that someone might to communicate. Her costume is a ``mute'' type, preferring not to speak since her costume mouth won't move.

This had as side effect several discoveries about pantomime, including that skylerbunny has an almost telepathic ability to communicate with those who mime (which he manages online just as well as he does in person), but that while I could understand her excitement at seeing Andy Fox --- a carousel enthusiast among other things --- and understand that this was what excited her, I couldn't put that into expressing what she really wanted to say, that she was thrilled to see him. You know, the immediately obvious thing she might say in that context.

During the dance I was able to notice signs of imminent fatigue before bunny_hugger collapsed and we took a detour to the Headless Lounge, taking in water, air conditioning, and a brief chat with terminotaur, whom I thought bunny_hugger recognized, incorrectly. He and I hadn't met in person before somehow but we fell into that strange pattern where long Internet association counted for enough background that we weren't awkwardly shy around one another.

I somehow failed to mention that skylerbunny had brought a pair of footy-style bunny pajamas, in yellow, which he wore shyly at first and with more confidence as time went on. He refused to wear it into the fursuit Parade, but could be talked into wearing it for the dances, and gradually turned to wearing it much of the time. He was expecting more resistance to the pajamas-as-costume concept, really, and didn't seem to appreciate that people like yellow bunnies and want to see more of them. By the end of the con it would be his default costume and would look a little funny when he wasn't in it. And he also could, if he wanted, sleep in it.

Trivia: United States imports in 1806, largely from Britain, came to about $15 million; exports were a record $101 million. Source: Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought The Second War Of Independence, A J Langguth.

Currently Reading: England In The Later Middle Ages, M H Keen.

[ PS Confidential to chefmongoose and to K: I have obtained a copy of Ratatoing and for the proper sum can be induced to have it not fall into your possession. The funds should be deposited behind the water pipe connecting to the second urinal in the men's room at the Wawa just off exit 16 on I-195, by the Great Adventure exit, between the hours of 2 and 3 pm on the 30th December. Further instructions to follow. ]