FYI: Adrian Paul in the Netherlands!

If you are a Highlander fan or know someone who might be interested, please pass it on:

Newstarcon is hosting an actorcon in Rijswijk, The Netherlands, and Adrian Paul (Duncan MacLeod) is among the guests. The con dates are 3 and 4 september 2005. (The main page is in Dutch, but al the info sections have a little Ned/Eng/Deu link in the right upper corner, so click on 'Eng' for the English version.)

Disclaimer: I don't know the organizers and have never been to one of their cons. I'm not going to this one either, BUT - if you are going and want to meet up, watch vids, whatever, do let me know.

And I will show you fear.

Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.

The assertion came in oral arguments over a federal lawsuit by Maher Arar, a naturalized Canadian citizen who charges that United States officials plucked him from Kennedy International Airport when he was on the way home on Sept. 26, 2002, held him in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and then shipped him to his native Syria to be interrogated under torture because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda. -- New York Times, 10 August 2005

I was just at the point where I thought, OK, maybe I've been a little alarmist about the whole going into the US thing. Maybe I could survive being fingerprinted and photographed at the airport, like a criminal. After all, it would be such fun to go to Vividcon one year, and maybe, if Chicago wins the 2008 Worldcon bid, I could go to Worldcon and Vividcon and wouldn't that be fantastic. Maybe I should just suck it up and stop being afraid, so I could meet my friends.

Well. I still want to meet my friends, but the fear is definitely back. I'm not going to the US any time soon.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden: "Don't kid yourselves that this is an extreme situation which will somehow self-correct. Quite the contrary, America can go on for a long time like this. There's so much more to lose, and we've made such an excellent start."

Charlie Stross: "This isn't just about terrorists. It applies to tourists, too. In fact, it applies to anyone that any member of the immigration department doesn't like the look of. If I sneeze at the wrong time or catch the wrong eye in the INS queue as I wait to hand in my I-94 and have my passport stamped, my number just might come up. And the War on Tourism claims another victim."

Doom, gloom, and dastardy.

You know it's not going to be a happy vid when your clips folder is full of things like 'grieving_Herc_closeup.avi' and 'Herc_bloody_and_determined.avi'. Not to mention 'dead_Iolaus_wakes.avi'.

Yes, I'm working on the Dahak vid, while the answers to the poll I posted show the overwhelming support for an Ares God of War & Ares God of Love dance vid or failing that, Widow Twanky.

What can I say? I'm unreliable. *eg*

OK, no, that's not the only reason. Twanky is coming (cough), just wait until I get the song done.

But I threw down the Ares vidsong in Premiere yesterday - just to have it there, you know, to see it in the timeline! I'm sure other vidders will understand - then copied my Xena source to the vidding drive. Then I realized: I don't have Xena source. Oh, I have all six seasons of Xena in a nicely TV-watchable divx format, but

a) that's not high enough quality to vid from, especially when all the Herc source is ripped directly from DVD and I would be combining the two, and
b) it involves a painful Avisynth workaround to even get those divx files to play in Premiere. Normally Premiere crashes when you so much as mention divx.

But dammit, I really do want to make this vid. It's catchy, it's dancy, it has people in leather...

So, the question: if anyone sees a really good deal on all six seasons of Xena on DVD, will you let me know? I know there's a giant boxed set out there that the Evil Xenastore is selling for $200 a pop. That's way more than I want to spend, but if you see a good deal on Ebay or DeepDiscount or somewhere, I'd appreciate it if you would drop me an email.

Good wishes

Today's the birthday of flummery, or to be precise, Thing 1 of flummery. (There are two. They like to mess with people's minds that way.)

Happy birthday!

I hope you get cake, champagne and oddly-wrapped presents, and that you have a fabulous time. You deserve it.