1 Artemis, 80 p.s.U. - 11:51 a.m.

Time, binding

You've probably wondered, for the past month, why I started dating these entries with all sorts of weird things that probably make as much sense, to you, as some of the date-time stamps H.P. Lovecraft used to put on his correspondence. ("Black Marsh of Gthath, Hour that the Ooze Stirs" came to my attention once, as did "Black Cylinder Floating between Two Universes, Hour of the Burning Galaxy.") I got the idea from Robert Anton Wilson, who does it chiefly to keep from falling into the assumption that the Julio-Gregorian calendar "is" the real date. Wilson, in fact, wrote an essay, "How to Live 11 Days in 24 Hours," in which he explained the dating systems he uses, several of which I've borrowed (Ezra Pound's dating system, the "Ulyssean" as I call it, which I used today; the French Revolutionary calendar I've used in some entries of the past fortnight; and Alfred Jarry's 'Pataphysical calendar, which celebrates its new year in a week). His webmaster, the redoubtable Pat Farley, first brought my attention to the Tranquility calendar suggested in an issue of Omni, and I already knew about the Discordian calendar.

Wilson noted that, when we learn to think of all these systems as convenient points of reference rather than reflections of some inherent cosmic truth, we will have achieved "a large portion of the goals of General Semantics, Discordianism, Deconstructionism and Buddhism." (Memo to me: Get exact quote when I find a copy of the essay.) The paragraph containing that sentence marked the only appearances of any form of the verb "to be" in the essay, and at that, the words only appeared in quotation marks.

I've had a reminder of why this comes in handy. For at least the last 24 hours, the Millennium Philcon has found itself sharing the Pennsylvania Convention Center (and the Marriott Hotel where I type these words) with a large gathering of Christians, come to congratulate themselves on their piety and their many charitable acts. (What ever happened to not letting your right hand know what the left was doing?) As long as I find myself surrounded on all sides by people who believe that there "is" only One True (usually White Male) God, that He only ever sent one Son to state the basic moral truths of the universe, and that nobody who doesn't share these basic postulates can "be" a good person or perform a positive moral act, I'll need to do things like this.

Another piece of time-related news involves a decision taken at this morning's business meeting of the World Science Fiction Society (the unincorporated literary society that hosts these little shindigs, and of which "Hugo Awards," "Hugos," "World Science Fiction Convention" and "Worldcon" are [1] wholly owned trademarks or service marks or something like that). They've ratified an amendment that had lain in the pipeline for a while. As passed, it would split the Dramatic Presentation category of the Hugos into "Long Form" and "Short Form" awards (the dividing line to lie at the 90-minute mark, plus or minus 18 minutes). It will not go into effect until and unless next year's WSFS business meeting, in San Jose, ratifies it, but I thought it deserved a mention. (I voted in favor of it.)

I've also cast my vote on where I'd like to see the 2004 Worldcon held (next year it'll take place in San Jose, as I said, and the following year in Toronto; with any luck, CB will be able to attend). Boston, MA, and Charlotte, NC, had the only official bid committees. I won't tell you which of them I favor, but the ballot does allow write-ins, and I made mine my first choice as a way of getting it mentioned when they report the final vote tally (this usually serves as a form of performance art-cum-publicity stunt for joke bids like "Minneapolis in '73," still going strong 28 years after the fact, or "I-5 in '05"). To any Philcon attendee who sees these words: when you will see Hogsmeade on the said list, you now know whom to blame.

-30-

[1] No quotes. I don't want WSFS to have any cause to accuse me of not taking their trademarks seriously.

�

last time, on The Slack Shack - our next inciting exstallment