ALT.SF4M

  ICON 20 part 1

   • j********o@***.com
     05/04/2001 11:56:056 UTC

     I went to I-con. The past four days of the con and its aftermath have
     been

     among the most emotionally intense of my life. Seeing so many old
     friends,

     exhausting myself for the con, all dredged up so many buried feelings
     that

     wrenched my soul. Having been away eleven years, in stasis as it were,
     my

     memories of the old days are very fresh, and there was a very weird

     consequence: I felt like a Betazoid empath, able to see straight into
     people's

     hearts. You know how we all drop hints about our secrets - well, one
     person

     after another would say some little thing that they assumed no one could

     decipher, and, remembering things so clearly, I'd see right through it.
     It was

     the damnedest thing: one person after another walking around with their
     hearts

     on their sleeves; the lost loves, the missed chances, the broken hearts,
     the

     slanderous gossip. What fools these mortals be (myself included!!)

     The alluded-to details are, of course, unpublishable. Even aside from
     all

     that, the con was, for want of a better word, mind-roasting. I was
     dangerously

     sleep deprived even before I got there. In a misguided effort to look my
     best,

     I tried certain experimental grooming techniques, in effect destroying
     my face

     and neck in order to save them, so I looked like three shades of shit,
     rather

     than the usual two. I was pretty much wearing a Hall Costume with the
     theme,

     "Radiation Poisoning: Wave of the Future!" I would have been far better
     off

     if I had just done the regular things I do to pass for human instead of
     Yeti

     (not that it really matters). On the good side, I lost ten pounds over
     the

     weekend, albeit through dangerous self-abnegation.

     to be continued...

     Gorno