Patrick Calder

Don’t be a dick

Don’t be a dick, when you get drunk.

I can live with drunk people getting loud. And they can even get reasonably obnoxious when they’re drunk. (I have one friend who gets very adamant about everything when drunk). But don’t be a dick.

Don’t be the guys who dragged me from my group of friends so they could take a picture with me in my (non-existant) costume, this weekend. Don’t be the guy who ripped the pole out of the fence at 2 in the morning, (Because I promise you, I will pre-emptively kick your ass as fast as possible if you take even a step towards me after that). Don’t be the townie who crashed the con to “find a party dude” and write graffiti on every wall you passed.

Get drunk. Say stupid things. Trip and fall. Have sex with inappropriate people. But don’t be a dick.

Continuing Adventures of Dragon*Con

But those are some of the points that floated to the surface, when I consider the whirlwind stew of crowds, panels, badges, Diet Cokes, swishy skirts, feathery hairpieces, earplugs, DragonCon TV, people-watching, masquerades, escalators, fountains, cheers, novelty tee shirts, kilts, stompy boots, steampunks, goths, fairies, mostly naked people, Krispy Kreme donuts, squinting at small print, shouting to nab the attention of friends, hanging off balconies, photobombing by accident, photobombing on purpose, nachos at Moe’s, the Hyatt bar, the smokers’ pavilion, the tracks, the joys, the trials, the confusions, the rewards, the unfortunate costumes, the brilliant costumes, the friends and the foes and the people who become your new best friends in the elevators, the mundanes who had NO IDEA wtf was going on they were just here for a football game OH GOD, air mattresses, corsets, hairspray, rum, devil babies, angel babies, running out of time, shopping for goodies, trolling for schwag, handing out handbills, trying to stash all the business cards and CDs and postcards that people handed me while I wasn’t carrying a bag, and trying to sound intelligent for hours at a time against all odds.

– Cherie Priest, DragonCon: The Recap

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

D*Con Day 1

assurance and inexpressible delight

Let the philosophers rave on about the summum bonum and mystics about embracing God. They are still vertical humans and therefore even their adorations still have something aggressive about them. Humans in the horizontal position have always struck me as less likely to be violent and destructive. So I take my place beside the poets, and less arrogant than the philosopher or mystic, am prepared to find the greatest good and embrace God whenever I hold a woman in the act of love. It is then I know with assurance and inexpressible delight that whatever it is life promises us, this must be it; and that a universe containing this experience must have something grandly important going for it.

— Irving Layton (via Katie West)

Rachel

I’ve posted a collection from my most recent photoshoot:

http://strangeday.net/shoots/rachel/

Sample:

Corn Starch

Last weekend, in recovery mode after a party of which no photos will be posted here, some friends revealed ignorance of the joys of wet corn starch. This needed to be resolved, and the next hour or so was spent playing at the dining table, and making a thoroughly satisfying mess.