Norwescon 33 : Friday

"There be treasure in there."

You find some surprises at Sci Fi cons.  ...Things yo don't expect.  Sure, I did the traditional things.  I bought books in the dealers room.  I picked up the t-shirt, I cruised the art show and bought a piece of art.  

But the panel on "word fossils",  not something you would expect to find at a sci fi convention, belongs here as much as anything does.  We discussed the drift of the English language, and further, the drift that caused it to branch out from Latin roots, and further still, from the Proto-Indo- European.  Then we went the other direction... where it is going from here.

On thing I found interesting, we call our long vowels "long" because they used to be pronounced long.  A long "A" was pronounced "aahhhhh".  A long "E" was pronounced "Aaay".  A long "I" was pronounced "Eeeee". And so on.   For it becoming what it is today...  It's apparently called "the Great Vowel Shift", and it is the transition from Old and Middle English to English of today.

...and we're shifting again.  It seems that New England is thought to be invading the rest of the country.  Soon we may all be Pahking our Cahs ins the Cah Pahk.   .. that is if we still have Cahs.

Sadly, like many of these cool panels, it's only a brush of a taste of what could be a real cool 10 week collage course.  I mentioned it to miko2 just now.  He said he already knew that.  "How so?" ask I.  He was an English major.   D'oh!

Norwescon 33: The Saturday Difference -or- Beyond This Thought There Be Zombies.

This is the part of the con where we where we usually had our Tai Pan party.  This year we decided not to.   While we did manage to go to a few very interesting panels, right now there appear to be not so interesting panels.  I refer to the 5 and 6 clock hours.

I just got back from getting a latte though, and costumes are starting to come out in force.  I rode down the elevator with a band of dark elves.  black make up.  blond hair.  lots of attitude.

I rode up with a singing space cowboy.

Today's panels were fun.  The slide show by the guest of honor, John Jude Palencar, was very good.  Books that I have that he was the cover illustrator for, were many De Lint books.  He also did the Aragon covers.

Next was getting signatures from Yasmin Galanorn for her Otherworld series.  She's fun.  We had a bit of a talk about books and series that she is coming up with next.

Typographer texted me that they were gathering for lunch, so Juli and I met up with he and miko2 in the restaurant cafe.  Both bar and cafe have the same.... will call it a menu.   The food is tremendously bad, but the company is great.  

We went to the Verner Vinge interview afterward.   It was fun.  He talked about ...stuff.  {brain is dieing, can you tell?  There are a lot of zombies here this year.  Maybe I've been a meal.}  I remember talk of the Kendle and other eBook devices.  It's hard to say what impact they will have on books.  One thought is that it will remove the boundaries between books. 

I started to sit in the Science Guest of Honor's panel, but ...  Saturday afternoon, brain dead, zombie fed....

Tonight is the masquerade which we will either see on TV or in person.

==
We missed the masquerade.  We ended up in the bar for 2 and a half hours.  While dinner was V-E-R-Y slow getting to us [they were extremely busy], the wait staff was friendly and, of course, the company of friends is always very good.