You Must Not Read From The Blog!

If you're reading this, then you might want to consider a hobby and/or career that doesn't involve adventuring, mummies, Egyptology, museums, treasure hunting, obscure books/languages or anything related to H.P. Lovecraft/Cthulu. Librarians, gunfighters and members of secret societies are also suspect. If your career and/or hobby already involves one or more of these, then you may have doomed us all. Good job.

But since you're here and we probably don't have much time before the end of the world thanks to your insatiable curiosity and blatant disregard for clear warnings, you might as well finish what you started.

[Necronom]I-Con SF is a "book" that outlines the ritual gathering of human flesh and blood. The name itself roughly translates to, "A gathering of sci-fi and fantasy geeks."

The most notable of the many arcane rituals requires a high priest (roughly translating to 'celebrity' or 'special guest' - scholars can't decide which) to channel the flock's Geekery by recalling anecdotes and answering questions.

Strangely, it's also common for those participating in any rituals to wear - as tribute - intricate costumes, practically guaranteeing that they will never be forgotten by the Geek Gods That Must Not Be Named.

. . .

But enough tangents and tomfoolery. I could keep that analogy going for a long time (not that I needed to cut out a few paragraphs or anything *cough* *cough*). Nevertheless, it's a pretty accurate description of what happens at any con (in case you've never been to one).

Specific activities or themes might vary from con to con (specific to genre, theme, TV series/film, etc.). Panel discussions, Q&As, trivia contests and even Live Action Role Playing (LARPing) are common. Often, it's a smorgasbord (can you believe that's a real word?) of, well, pretty much anything you can imagine, from Final Fantasy to the Oregon Trail.

As our neighbor observed,

"Where else can you see eight different Links in the same room as elves and [Imperial] Stormtroopers?"

And he's right. Cons are like mega gigantic no holds barred sort of crazy weekend-long Halloween parties (except the 'free candy' happens to be eye candy instead of free swag for your taste buds). So if you've never gone to one, you should change that.

Now, I-Con isn't the biggest or most prestigious of all the cons on the tour chart, but I'd say it has one of the best personalities. Everyone - guests, celebrity/special guests, vendors and volunteers - were really totally wicked cool (sorry, I was channeling some Bill & Ted there).

Examples:
Dennis and Kelly Sullivan helped us get celebrity signatures for our charity shirt, our fellow vendors (neighbors and otherwise) were willing to help us out more than once (namely, Kimono Girls lent us their spare PVC piping to hang our banner from), guests and special guests hung out with us at the booth, and even Nicki Clyne seemed to enjoy our company.

And, adding a nice scientific balance to wild creativity, there were physics (and other) professors leading panel discussions on science in science fiction, and so on.

The only thing I regret is not having enough space to set up Mr. Grammar. After all, he does have the power to save us from certain doom!

*hrm*

So before I get carried away again, I guess the moral of the story is that if the world (or at least humanity's place in it) isn't completely and utterly destroyed, we hope to see you at (Necronom)I-Con SF in 2010!

Maybe by then we'll finally have hover cars.

[Okay, seriously, I did a really quick Google Image search for 'Cthulu Fan Art' and found this great image. Not only does Michael Dashow's art rock, apparently we share a similar sense of humor.... Now go check out the rest of this guy's awesome work!]