With all of the madness in Ferguson, Missouri, I just need to cleanse my palate for a moment...
If one does not ask he or she most certainly will not receive.
Two years ago, the good friends of We Are Respectable Negroes threw monies into the donation bucket so that I could attend the World Science Fiction Convention here in Chicago. I greatly appreciated the gesture. It was good fun. I showed the flag for WARN, networked, attended some panels, and offered up some disruptive and challenging interventions against those who thought that "sci-fi" was/is synonymous with white and male.
Chicago Comic Con 2014 is taking place next week from August 21st to the 24th. I would very much like to attend the event. I had actually put the money aside to go. Alas, the universe had other plans.
Many of you can likely relate to the following experience.
As the only child of a parent who is getting older, I have learned that calls in the middle of the night are rarely good; a series of voice mails left minutes apart from the same number labeled "mom" in the cell phone are assuredly never good; and when the timbre of my mother's voice begins to change over the course of several days (especially at the end of the month) I know that money will be leaving my wallet and going somewhere else.
So between having to pay for her car to get fixed and the other related expenses from that accident, as well as her most recent crisis (of which there seem to be more of as time goes on), the money I had allotted for a nice and fun few days at Chicago Comic Con 2014 has gone to take care of my "adult responsibilities".
I will always help her out of love, and would thus never deny my mother anything--even if I could not reasonably provide it. But, said responsibilities are still demanding, stressful, and require that resources be reallocated from one ledger column to another from time to time.
We have many kind donors who support my work here and elsewhere. I do not want them to feel a sense of obligation. The other friends and supporters of WARN should also not feel any pressure to contribute to my informal "send Chauncey DeVega to Chicago Comic Con 2014" effort.
There are enough folks who read, enjoy, and find my work useful on a daily and/or weekly basis, that hopefully, their contributions will likely be sufficient for my trip.
1. As I did with Worldcon, I will post some photos of Chicago Comic Con 2014, Tweet if I can, and share my experiences there with all of you as is my habit.
2. If I can conduct some interviews with interesting folks while at Chicago Comic Con 2014, I will do that too.
3. There are some great guests and panels scheduled for Chicago Comic Con 2014. I will be checking out the Star Trek: TNG reunion (fingers crossed I will still be able to get tickets), the various TNG panels, and the discussions on race and gender in comics, graphic novels, and other genre entertainment. I will also try to get a ticket for the Guardians of the Galaxy panel discussion.
4. Plus, Chicago Comic Con 2014 is my several weeks early birthday gift to myself, and also a moment to recharge my batteries before the school year begins. Who wouldn't want to give Chauncey DeVega a birthday gift? I am so cuddly and sweet! Plus, Virgos are the nicest and coolest Zodiac signs. We give nice hugs...or so I have been told.
5. Let's be real. Chicago Comic Con 2014 will be lots of fun. How can I not make my best effort to attend it?
6. Any monies above what I need to go to Chicago Comic Con 2014 will be donated to some of the homeless brothers and sisters who I try to say "hello" to during my daily walks around Chicago. I will be especially generous to those folks who have pets.
If you can, and are able, do please throw some centavos into the donation bucket via the Paypal link on the right hand sidebar. Alternatively, you should be able to click here and access it as well--Paypal can be fickle, but it should ultimately work.
Again, and as always, thanks for the kindness and support.
13 comments:
I told myself I would send you some money once I started getting paid for the new job (I also have to get confirmation from the wife).
I also recently fell (almost?) for a telephone/computer scan. "Microsoft security team" called my house and informed me of a csrss.exe virus that had infected my computer. They convinced me to sync my computer up with theirs to get rid of it. After they performed a scan on my computer they told me I would need to buy a new Microsoft Security Key for $150 to get rid of the trojan.
I did not give them this money. I disconnected from their computer and called a friend, then looked up this scam. I don't know if they still have access to my computer activity so I am very hesitant about giving my financial information online.
I don't know why I fell for it. I was extremely careful and they gave me my computer's security key before I synced with them and it was correct...
I reset my computer's data to a few days prior to contact from them. I still don't know if my computer has a serious virus. It seems to run well, but my system care system needs to run every few days to stay in good condition.
Anyone have any advice, I would appreciate it.
Chauncey, I'll talk to the wife about throwing you some cash, we can use a different computer to send it.
Get the Premium edition of malwarbytes and run it. It will destroy any kind of malware, spying or virus. I run it on my computer every hour. It gives real-time protection. Not very expensive but worth the peace of mind.
I hope twenty bucks helps.
thanks, man. I'll check it out.
Also, I greatly appreciate your insightful commentary on contemporary American politics. I'm looking forward to your conversation with Chauncey on the podcast.
How kind of you! Need to recharge the batteries. Am I the only one feeling exhausted as of late w. all of the recent happenings?
No problem. No obligation. Take care of family and home first. I actually had to buy a new OS today--finally--and a new hard drive because this one was failing. 1TB of storage is damn cheap. Remember when 10bg hard drives were "big?"
Protecting computers from nasties is like putting on a condom after you have sex. Prevention is the key.
Do the new patches turn off the remote control support feature that allowed "authorized users" to access a windows pc online?
No, you are not the only one. I feel exhausted and sick at the world
quite a bit of the time, even knowing that is not helpful to anybody. I have not been a very good commenter lately here, but I do try to keep up at least reading your always excellent blog and the mostly good quality comments.
Are you familiar with Derrick Jensen and his work? Apologies if there are issues with him I am not aware of; some people
don't like him much. But he had an interesting podcast interview last
month with Charles Derber, whom I had not heard of before. Derber has written quite a few books; the recent one they were talking about is . (the subtitle is a deliberate homage to Howard Zinn, who was his friend and mentor, and his People's History of the United States). That is a depressing title and it was kind of a depressing podcast, but it sort of explains what it is we have here in the USA.
I hope you can go to the Comic Con. You deserve to get to. I have had several coworkers and friends who have gone to these. My former Dr. went to the Chicago one with her teenage daughter once; they had costumes and everything and also a current coworker goes with her daughter. They sound like fun but I'm not sure it would be exactly my sort of thing -- I just don't seem to get into that kind of dress-up frame of mind.
I will need to read that book. No frets on not being busy on your end. Your presence is with us. How are you doing?
Please advise how to send money other than Paypal, I don't work well with those things.
How kind. I was able to go because of the kindness of folks like yourself. If you would like to support the site my generally Paypal is really the only way to do that right now. There are other services that I have investigated at the suggestion of readers and friends of WARN. Unfortunately, they did not seem like a good fit. If you have any suggestions by all means pass them along.
Post a Comment