{"id":189986,"date":"2010-01-18T11:49:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T16:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/18\/holy-crap-im-not-in-boston-today\/"},"modified":"2010-01-18T11:49:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-18T16:49:00","slug":"holy-crap-im-not-in-boston-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/18\/holy-crap-im-not-in-boston-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Crap! I’m Not in Boston Today!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: I’m post dating this to keep it on the top of the post for the weekend. Scroll down for new posts.<\/span><\/p>\n

In February 1985, I went to my first science fiction convention. In October, I ran a fiction convention, NotJustAnother1 Con (NJAC). I did it again in 1986, and then started Arisia, Inc. and ran the first two conventions 1990 and 1991.<\/p>\n

About 4 years ago, I realized something important: I don\u2019t like science fiction conventions.<\/p>\n

When I go to a con, I don’t go to program items, I either work the con, or I self medicate.*<\/sup><\/p>\n

What’s more, my involvement with running a con completely subsumes my life, and I have a family now, and, quite honestly, it’s a destructive addiction thing to me, and no one wants to work with a self-destructive addict<\/span>, and I don’t want to be one<\/span>.<\/p>\n

It only took me 20 years to realize that I hated my hobby\/obsession, and, honestly, I\u2019ve always found the community rather unremarkable.\u2020<\/sup><\/p>\n

So I cut my losses, and following a remarkably unpleasant exchange with Arisia, Incorporated and the for-profit database vendor to whom they have outsourced their attendance and mailing list management, I had my information, and that of my wife and children, expunged from the Arisia database.\u2021<\/sup><\/p>\n

Maybe, the next time I think about calling someone \u201c#@&ing stupid\u201d, perhaps this experience will make me a bit kinder.\u00a7<\/sup><\/p>\n

In any case, I was driving to pick up my Son, and his drum kit, from school today, and there was an announcement for a Martin Luther King day symposium, and I realised, “MLK’s Birthday? Is it Arisia again?”<\/p>\n

So I called up their web page<\/a>, and yes, it is this weekend \u2026\u2026 Though it’s technically in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston.<\/p>\n

The first few years after I severed ties with the con, and the 501(c)3 corporation, I worried about it sucking me back in, but I hadn’t thought about the con in months, and only made the connection because the MLK birthday announcement triggered a connection.<\/p>\n

I find this amazing, because just a year ago, I was contacted regarding a potential dispute with an artist, whose graphic art work is the official artist, and I found that it left me pissed off for a week.<\/p>\n

If anyone from Arisia is reading this, I will paraphrase what I said about the time: <\/p>\n

Please note that this is NOT intended to prohibit or discourage any individual to contact me personally in a purely social context, I just don’t want to discuss, or be involved with Arisia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would sooner give Dick Cheney a sponge bath than get sucked back in.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Mammoth, some would say legendary, drunken binges.<\/span>
\u2020<\/sup>Which anyone who has ever discussed SF Fans with me knows.<\/span>
\u2021<\/sup>What part of \u201cremove me from the list\u201d is so hard to understand? Needless to say, this Further justified my sense of ambivalence toward science fiction fans.<\/span>
\u00a7<\/sup>NoT!!!<\/span>. I\u2019ll still judge them harshly. Let\u2019s be honest here. I\u2019m going to be calling people who do stupid things while I still have two brain cells left to rub together.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: I’m post dating this to keep it on the top of the post for the weekend. Scroll down for new posts. In February 1985, I went to my first science fiction convention. In October, I ran a fiction convention, NotJustAnother1 Con (NJAC). I did it again in 1986, and then started Arisia, Inc. and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,1104,1171,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-psychology","category-science-fiction","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189986"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}