Today's Topic: Tipping at-con

We're grown-ups now. Instead of bouncing around at the whim of our parents, we can and do take ourselves to cool places to do fun things.

Yes, I'm talking about sf conventions.

There are two big ones this month, WorldCon in Reno, and Dragon*Con in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend.

You're ready to go.

You've preregistered for the con.

You have a hotel room.

You have your travel plans.

You have books or other items that you want autographed.

You've looked at the convention website and are getting an idea of panels you want to attend.

You have comfortable shoes.

You know the 6-2-1 rule: 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals, 1 shower/bath for every 24 hours at the con.

Now here's the thing you may not have planned for but you need to do anyway: TIP THE HOTEL STAFF.

The person who unloads your car and takes your bags to your room should get $1-2 per bag.

The person who cleans your room should get $2-5/night.

This website is a good guide.

Yes, if you have a lot of bags and are staying several nights, this is not an insignificant amount of cash.

Budget for it just as you budget for how much you're going to spend in the art show or dealers' room.

Because really, not tipping is a jerky thing to do. And please, no excuses of "I don't have cash on me, I'll make it up to the person later." You know you need to tip the bellman and the maid; show up at con with small bills in the appropriate amounts.

Don't even start with "I can't afford it." Grown-ups leave tips. Remember that bit about how we're not children anymore? Yes, you have more Star Trek figurines than your 12-year-old nephew, but you know what? That still makes you the grown-up. And odds are that the cost of one or two of those figurines is about what the total hotel maid tip is going to be for your next con.

So maybe skip getting the Khan figure so you can go to the con, and do it the way it should be done.

As a grown-up.

Yet another one for the DON'T DO THIS files

If I'm selling a spare convention membership and offer it first-come, first-serve and you're the first person to respond, don't spend several days jerking me around. Either you're going to buy it or you're not.

Don't try to scam me with "Oh, it's for my son's girlfriend and I don't have her info right now" then a few hours later, "I can't get it to you today, will two days from now be OK?" Then... silence. No money in my PayPal account when promised, no transfer request fax waiting for me.

Membership is now being re-listed for sale and will only be marked as "sold" once the funds hit my PayPal.

Don't be a dick, y'all.

Another for the "Don't be that person" file

So much of this comes down to a simple rule, as expressed by Wil Wheaton: Don't be a dick.

Really.

In "Don't Be a Dick" news, O'Reilly has just released a strong anti-harassment statement for their technical conferences, including putting the big freeze on "stalking, offensive comments, and unwanted sexual advances," and expressing the idea that if you ARE "that person" and the conference gets enough complaints about you, you may not be invited back.

Given the strong overlap between tech types and people who also like science fiction/fantasy/horror/gaming/comics/anime/etc., I would love to see sf conventions and conferences take a similar strong stand, up to and including the option to not invite certain guests back to their events year after year after year, despite repeated complaints.

It would be great to see fandom come together as a whole and say "No More. Enough. You--out of the con circuit."

Instead, we seem to have a group case of the Five Geek Social Fallacies, in which bad behavior is perpetually written off as "Oh that's just so-and-so being so-and-so."

Yeah, I'm a starry-eyed idealist sometimes. But in my dream sf con circuit, "just being so-and-so" isn't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Corollary: having the following ALSO are not "Get Out of Jail Free" cards, IMAO: Asperger's or other diagnosis on the autism spectrum/mental illness/depression/social anxiety/GAD/[other illness here]/previous history of being abused.

But, but but... But NOTHING. Even if you can't understand the reason why a particular behavior of yours is skeevy and wrong, you CAN learn to not do it anymore. And if you don't, then the price is that we as a society can decide to not associate with you.

Jim Hines has a great post on Reporting Sexual Assault in SF/F that's an excellent compilation of resources, including a list of who to contact at various SF publishers, plus links to the Con Anti-Harassment Project, and the Back-Up Project.

Call me crazy, but I have this idea that we should be able to get together for one weekend and NOT be jerks, NOT foist unwanted attention on people, and NOT belittle each other.

We're all at convention X, Y, or Z because we want to have fun, right?

We're there to see and interact with the guests and other fans, right?

We're not there to be creepers, right?

We--the collective convention-running and convention-attending "we"--need to stop giving the creepers a free pass on their behavior, and if you're a creeper, you need to stop being one, lest you find yourself uninvited to fannish gatherings.

Who's with me?

Just doing my @#^% job

Every club and convention on the planet needs to read and memorize this:

HARASSMENT IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

To wit:

When you get a valid harassment complaint--and while investigation is always a good idea, so is starting with the assumption that said complaint is valid--you go to the person responsible, who I will hereafter call Gray Icky Thing...

You say: "Icky Thing, we've received reports that you're harassing people," or whatever. You say "We want you to stay away from Bob/Jane/freshman girls in the future."

Some of you, I hear, consider the following alternative: "Hey, Gray, what will make you stop harassing people?"

To you I say: NO. DO NOT SAY THIS. NEVER SAY THIS. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CAPSLOCK IN THE WORLD FOR ME TO TELL YOU HOW WRONG YOU ARE. SWEET GOD ON BUTTERED TOAST, THIS IS NOT OKAY.

Just go, read the whole thing. I'll wait.

Done? OK.

I've been in the position of having to be the club's bad guy and kick out someone who was holding the club (and club's mailing list) hostage with her Borderline Personality Disorder antics--she was gaslighting, and making a couple of people into her personal villains--her very own "black hats."

But some people thought that I was being "mean" for excluding this horrid person, who'd been sabotaging the club for several years. Finally, I'd had enough, and as one of the club's officers, I put my foot down. I wanted to get a printout of the Five Geek Social Fallacies and smack these people with it.

Because in actuality, the people we were being unfair to were the ones who'd felt too uncomfortable to participate in any of the group's activities as long as this one person was still in the group. So one person had been ruining it for a lot of others, and I'd eventually had enough.

So yeah. I'm an Evil Ostracizer. Whatever. Shut up.

Lose yourself in another world, do some good in this one

I think I mentioned this awhile back, but now that the book is just about to hit the store shelves, figured it would be a good time to bring it up again.

Author Mark L. Van Name has a new novel coming out next week called CHILDREN NO MORE. It deals with the theme of child soldiers, and what happens to them when the wars they're fighting are done.

Mark is donating 100% of the proceeds of the sale of the hardcover to an organization called Falling Whistles, that works to rehabilitate child soldiers. You can find out more at the Children No More website, here:

http://www.childrennomore.com/

The story kept me up until 2am on a work night, because I couldn't put it down. I had to finish it. It's like earlier Jon and Lobo novels in the series, a fast-moving action story. The difference here is that if you buy the hardcover, you'll get a good tale to read for yourself, and you'll be doing something good for a kid who could really use the help.

Jim C. Hines raffling ARC of Red Hood's Revenge

Support rape crisis centers and enter to win an Advance Copy of Red Hood’s Revenge, by Jim C. Hines.

Two things make a post

From that oh-so-dangerous time-sink known as TVTropes.com we have Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitletgbpyix5?from=Main.DungeonmastersGirlfriend

Even Gary Gygax had DM's Girlfriend (Wife) moments; who knew?

And now for something completely different, and serious. Patrick Stewart speaks out against domestic violence, from first-hand experience:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/27/patrick-stewart-domestic-violence

I always liked him, now I like him even more.