Scatmania

Scatman Dan's stuff

Posts Tagged polyamory

Busy Weekends Part II

Jul 21

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 1 Comment

Following up on my post about the weekend before the weekend before last – here’s what I got up to the weekend before last (i.e. the weekend after that). You can see why I’m confused:

Ruth’s Family Picnic

The weekend before last, JTA and I joined Ruth and her family at their “annual family picnic”. This family reunion really shows quite how numerous Ruth’s relatives are, and I’m pretty sure that even she had to stretch her memory to recall everybody’s names as she introduced me (and, sometimes, JTA) to them all.

This year, they’d held the picnic in a wonderful National Trust-managed country estate called Cliveden. If it weren’t for the roasting temperatures, it could have been better still, but the sheer heat made it exhausting just to be sitting down, never mind walking around and climbing trees. Nonetheless, we got the chance for a good explore of the grounds, found the Secret Garden (their mistake was putting signs to it), and clambered around on the remains on the Canning Oak, a tree that lived hundreds of years and was a favourite spot for former Prime Minister George Canning… but which had been felled in 2004 after its roots threatened the structure of the slope on which it stood.


Apart from the ludicrous temperatures – suffered mostly during the journey in the sauna that is the car – it was a fun little trip. There was only one moment of awkwardness at the revelation that both of the men Ruth had brought with her were her partners. It’s often a difficult thing to bring up with more-distant relations, especially when you’re not sure who knows what already, and you don’t want to hide anything from anyone but there are few social norms about how you’re supposed to say, “So, you know what the deal is with us three, right?”

One response, though, was particularly fantastic, and so I thought I’d publish it here: upon being introduced to JTA and I as “her fiancé, and her other partner,” a particular relation of Ruth’s replied “Lucky you!” That’s a nice, positive response that I can get behind.

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The 17 Blog Posts That Weren’t

Apr 3

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 2 Comments

It may come as a surprise to you that the stuff I write about on my blog – whether about technology, dreams, food, film, games, relationships, or my life in general – isn’t actually always written off-the-cuff. To the contrary, sometimes a post is edited and re-edited over the course of weeks or months before it finally makes it onto the web. When I wrote late last year about some of my controversial ideas about the ethics (or lack thereof) associated with telling children about Santa Claus, I’m sure that it looked like it had been inspired by the run-up to Christmas. In actual fact, I’d begun writing it six months earlier, as summer began, and had routinely visited and revisited it from time to time until I was happy with it, which luckily coincided with the Christmas season.

As an inevitable result of this process, it’s sometimes the case that a blog post is written or partially-written and then waits forever to be finished. These forever-unready, never-published articles are destined to sit forever in my drafts folder, gathering virtual dust. These aren’t the posts which were completed but left unpublished – the ones where it’s only upon finishing writing that it became self-evident that this was not for general consumption – no, the posts I’m talking about are those which honestly had a chance but just didn’t quite make it to completion.

Well, today is their day! I’ve decided to call an amnesty on my incomplete blog posts, at long last giving them a chance to see the light of day. If you’ve heard mention of declaring inbox bankruptcy, this is a similar concept: I’m sick of seeing some of these blog articles which will never be ready cluttering up my drafts folder: it’s time to make some space! Let the spring cleaning begin:

Title: Typically Busy
Unpublished since: March 2004
Unpublished because: Better-expressed by another post, abandoned

In this post, I talk about how busy my life is feeling, and how this is pretty much par for the course. It’s understandable that I was feeling so pressured: at the time we were having one of our particularly frenetic periods at SmartData, I was fighting to finish my dissertation, and I was trying to find time to train for my upcoming cycle tour of Malawi. The ideas I was trying to express later appeared in a post entitled I’m Still In Aber. Yay, in a much more-optimistic form.

Title: Idloes, Where Art Thou?
Unpublished since: June 2004
Unpublished because: Got distracted by rebuilding the web server on which my blog is hosted, after a technical fault

In anticipation of my trip to Malawi, I was prescribed an anti-malarial drug, Lariam, which – in accordance with the directions – I began taking daily doses of several weeks before travelling. It seemed silly in the long run; I never even saw a single mosquito while I was over there, but better safe than sorry I suppose. In any case, common side-effects of Lariam include delusions, paranoia, strange dreams, hallucinations, and other psychological
effects. I had them in spades, and especially the weird trippy dreams.

This blog post described what could have been one of those dreams… or, I suppose, could have just been the regular variety of somewhat-strange dream that isn’t uncommon for me. In the dream I was living back in Idloes, a tall Aberystwyth townhouse where I’d rented a room during 2002/2003. In the dream, the house caught fire one night, and my landlady, Anne, was killed. Apparently the fire was started by her electric blanket.

Title: Are We Alone In The Universe?
Unpublished since: March 2006
Unpublished because: Never finished, beaten to the punchline

Here’s an example of an article that I went back to, refining and improving time and time again over a period of years, but still never finished. I was quite pleased with the direction it was going, but I just wasn’t able to give it as much time as it needed to reach completion.

The Drake Equation

In the article, I examine the infamous Drake Equation, which estimates the likelihood of there being intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy (more specifically, it attempts to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations “out there”). Which is all well and good, but the only way to put the formula into practice is to effectively pull unknowable numbers out of the air and stuff them into the equation to get, in the end, whatever answer you like. The only objective factors in the entire equation are those relating to the number of stars in the galaxy, and everything else is pure conjecture: who honestly thinks that they can estimate the probability of any given species reaching sentience?

The post never got finished, and I’ve since seen other articles, journals, and even stand-up comedians take apart the Drake Equation in a similar way to that which I intended, so I guess I’ve missed the boat, now. If you want to see the kind of thing I was working on, here it is but better-written. I wonder what the probability is that a blog post will never end up being published to the world?

Title: Why Old People Should Be Grumpy
Unpublished since: October 2006
Unpublished because: Never finished, possibly bullshit

In this post, I put forward a theory that grumpy old people are a positive sign that a nation is making just enough change to not be stagnant: something about the value of keeping older people around crossed with the importance of taking what they say with a pinch of salt, because it’s not them that has to live in the world of tomorrow. I can’t even remember what the point was that I was trying to make, and my notes are scanty, but I’m sure it was a little bit of a one-sided argument for social change with an underdeveloped counter-argument for social stability.

In any case, I left it for years and eventually gave up on it.

Title: The Games That Didn’t Make The List
Unpublished since: July 2007
Unpublished because: I could have kept refining it forever and still never finish it

After my immensely popular list of 10 Computer Games That Stole My Life, I received a great deal of feedback – either as direct feedback in the form of comments or indirectly in other people’s blogs. Reading through this feedback got me thinking about computer games that had stolen my life which I hadn’t mentioned. Not wanting to leave them out, I put together a list of “games that didn’t make the list”: i.e. games which could also have been said to steal my life, but which I didn’t think of when I wrote my original top ten. They included:

  • Castles and Castles 2
    The original Castles was one of the first non-free PC computer games I ever owned (after Alley Cat, that golf game, and the space command/exploration game whose name I’ve been perpetually unable to recall). It was a lot of fun; a well-designed game of strategy and conquest. Later, I got a copy of Castles 2 – an early CD-ROM title, back before developers knew quite what to do with all that space – which was even better: the same castle-building awesomeness but with great new diplomacy and resource-management exercises, as well as siege engines and the ability to launch your own offensives. In the end, getting Civilization later in the same year meant that it stole more of my time, but I still sometimes dig out Castles 2 and have a quick game, from time to time.
  • Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates!
    Early during the development of Three Rings, I came across an existing company with the name Three Rings Design, based in the US. Their major product is a game called Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, an MMOG in which players – as pirates – play puzzle games in order to compete at various tasks (you know, piratey tasks: like sailing, drinking, and swordfighting). Claire and I both got quite deeply involved during the beta, and played extensively, even forming our own crew, The Dastardly Dragons, at one point, and met some fascinating folks from around the world. When the beta came to an end we both took advantage of a “tester’s bonus” chance to buy lifetime subscriptions, which we both barely used. Despite the fact that I’ve almost never played the game since then, it still “stole my life” in a quite remarkable way for some time, and my experience with this (as well as with the Ultima Online beta, which I participated in many years earlier) has shown me that I should never get too deeply involved with MMORPGs again, lest they take over my life.
  • Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
    As a Civilization fan, I leapt on the chance to get myself a copy of Alpha Centauri, and it was awesome. I actually pirated my first copy of the game, copying it from a friend who I studied with, and loved it so much that I wrapped up the cash value of the game in an envelope and sent it directly to the development team, asking them to use it as a “beer fund” and have a round on me. Later, when I lost my pirated copy, I bought a legitimate copy, and, later still, when I damaged the disk, bought another copy, including the (spectacular) add-on pack. Alpha Centauri is the only game I’ve ever loved so much that I’ve paid for it three times over, despite having stolen it, and it was worth every penny. Despite its age, I still sometimes dig it out and have a game.
  • Wii Sports Tennis – Target Training
    Perhaps the most recent game in the list, this particular part of the Wii Sports package stole my life for weeks on end while I worked up to achieving a coveted platinum medal at it, over the course of several weeks. I still play it once in a while: it’s good to put on some dance music and leap around the living room swinging a Wiimote to the beat.
  • Rollercoaster Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
    In the comments to my original post, Rory reminded me of these games which stole my life during my first couple of years at University (and his, too!). RCT2, in particular, ate my time for years and still gets an occassional play out of me – but was pipped to the post by OpenTTD, of course.
  • X-COM series
    Another series of games which hooked me while I was young and stayed with me as I grew, the X-COM series (by which – of course – I mean Enemy Unknown, Terror From The Deep, and Apocolypse; not Interceptor and certainly not that modern travesty, Aftermath). Extremely difficult, each of them took me months or years before I completed them, and I’ve still never finished Apocalypse on anything higher that the lowest-two difficulty settings.

I wanted to write more and include more games, but by the time I’d made as much progress as I had, above, the moment felt like it had passed, so I quietly dropped the post. I suppose I’ve now shared what I was thinking, anyway.

Title: Rational Human Interaction
Unpublished since: September 2007
Unpublished because: Too pretentious, even for me; never completed

I had some ideas about how humans behave and how their rationality and their emotions can conflict, and what this can mean. And then I tried to write it down and I couldn’t find a happy medium between being profound and insightful and being obvious and condescending. Later, I realised that I was tending towards the latter and, besides, much of what I was writing was too self-evident to justify a blog post, so I dropped it.

Title: Long Weekend
Unpublished since: April 2008
Unpublished because: Too long, too wordy, and by the time it was nearing completion it was completely out of date

This post was supposed to be just an update about what was going on in my life and in and around Aber at the time. But as anybody who’s neglected their blog for more than a little while before may know, it can be far too easy to write about everything that’s happened in the interim, and as a result end up writing a blog post that’s so long that it’ll never be finished. Or maybe that’s just me.

In any case, the highlights of the post – which is all that it should have consisted of, ultimately – were as follows:

  • It was the Easter weekend on 2008, and town had gone (predictably) quiet, as many of my friends took the opportunity to visit family elsewhere, and there was a particular absence of tourists this year. Between Matt being in Cornwall, Sarah being out-of-town, and Ruth, JTA, Gareth and Penny off skiing (none of them wrote anything about it, so no post links there), it felt a little empty at our Easter Troma Night, which was rebranded a Troma Ultralite as it had only two of the requisite four people present: not even the three needed for a Troma Lite! Similarly, our Geek Night only had four attendees (but that did include Paul, unusually).
  • Claire and I took a dig through her wardrobe about found that of the skirts and dresses that she famously never wears, she owns over two dozen of them. Seriously.
  • I played and reviewed Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty, which turned out to be a second-rate first-person shooter with a reasonably clever alternate history slant. I’m a fan of alternate histories in video games, so this did a good job of keeping me amused over the long bank holiday weekend.
  • Paul and I were arranging for a beach-fire-barbeque with Ruth and JTA when they got back, to which we even anticipated attendence from the often-absent not-gay-Gareth.
  • And finally, I had something to say about Jimmy‘s recent experiences in Thailand, but that’s as far as my draft went and I don’t remember what I had planned to say…
Title: Confused And Disoriented
Unpublished since: April 2008
Unpublished because: Never finished; abandoned

Having received mixed feedback about my more-unusual dreams over the years, I’ve taken to blogging about a great number of them in order to spread the insanity and let others comment on quite how strange my subconscious really is. This was to be one of those posts, and it catalogued two such unusual dreams.

In the first, I was at my grandma’s funeral (my grandma had died about two years earlier). A eulogy was given by both my mum and – confusingly – by Andy R. Afterwards, the crowd present booed them.

In the second, I revisited a place that I’ve dreamed of many times before, and which I think is a reference to some place that I found as a young child, but have never been able to determine the location of since. In this recurring theme I crawl through a tunnel (possibly of rock, as in a ruined castle) to reach a plateau (again, ruined castle-like), from which I am able to shuffle around to a hidden ledge. I have such vivid and strong memories of this place, but my faith in my own memory is shaken by the very “dreamlike” aspects of the event: the tunnel, the “secret place”, as well as the fact that it has appeared in my dreams time and time again for over 15 years. Perhaps it never existed at all: memory is a fragile and malleable thing, and it’s possible that I made it up entirely.

Some parts of it are less dream-like. For example, I’m aware that I’ve visited this place a number of times at different ages, and that I found it harder to fit through the tunnel to re-visit my secret childhood hiding place when I was older and larger.

A few years ago, I spoke to my mum about this dream, and described the location in great detail and asked where it might be, and she couldn’t think of anywhere. It’s strange to have such a strong and profound memory that I can’t justify through the experience of anybody else, and which consistently acts as if it were always just a dream. Maybe it’s real, and maybe it isn’t… but it’s beginning to sound like I’ll never know for sure.

Title: The Code In The School
Unpublished since:May 2008
Unpublished because: Never finished; abandoned

Another dream, right after Troma Night 219, where it seems that the combination of the beer and the trippy nature of the films we watched inspired my brain to run off on a tangent of it’s own:

In the dream, I was visiting a school as an industrialist (similarly to how I had previously visited Gregynog on behalf of the Computer Science department at Aberystwyth University in 2005, 2006 and 2007). While there, I was given a challenge by one of the other industrialists to decipher a code represented by a number of coloured squares. A basic frequency analysis proved of no value because the data set was too small, but I was given a hint that the squares might represent words (sort of like early maritime signal flags). During mock interviews with the students, I used the challenge as a test, to see if I could get one of them to do it for me, without success. Later in the dream I cracked the message, but I’m afraid I didn’t make a record of how I did so or what the result was.

A particularly famous message represented in maritime signal flags (click for bigger version)

Title: Absence

Unpublished since: May 2008
Unpublished because: Forgotten about; abandoned

At the beginning of the long, hot summer of 2008, I wrote about the immenent exodus of former students (and other hangers-on) from Aberystwyth, paying particular attention to Matt P and to Ele, who left for good at about this time. And then I forgot that I was writing about it. But Matt wrote about leaving and Ele wrote about being away, anyway, so I guess my post rapidly became redundant, anyway.

Title: =o(
Unpublished since: June 2008
Unpublished because: Too negative; unfinished

I don’t even know what I was complaining about, but essentially this post was making an excuse to mope for a little while before I pull myself together and get things fixed. And that’s all that remains. It’s possible that it had something to do with this blog post, but without context I’ve no idea what that one was about, too. Sounds like it was about an argument, and so I’m happier just letting it go, whatever it was, anyway.

Title: Spicy Yellow Split Pea Soup
Unpublished since: November 2008
Unpublished because: Got lazy; unfinished

I came up with a recipe for a delicious spicy yellow split pea soup, and wanted to share it with you, so I made myself the stub of a blog entry to remind myself to do so. And then I didn’t do so. Now I don’t even remember the recipe. Whoops!

In any case, the moral is that pulses make great soup, as well as being cheap and really good for you, and are especially tasty as the days get shorter and winter tightens it’s icy grip. Also that you shouldn’t leave just a title for a blog post for yourself and expect to fill it in afterwards, because you won’t.

Title: (untitled)
Unpublished since: December 2008
Unpublished because: Too busy building, configuring, and working on my new PC, ironically

December is, according to Rory, the season for hardware failures, and given that alongside his troubles, Ruth’s laptop died and Paul’s computer started overheating, all at the same time, perhaps he’s right. So that’s when my long-serving desktop computer, Dualitoo, decided to kick the bucket as well. This was a particularly awkward time, as I was due to spend a weekend working my arse off towards a Three Rings deadline. Thankfully, with the help of friends and family, I was able to pull forward my plans to upgrade anyway and build myself a new box, Nena (which I continue to use to this day).

I began to write a blog post about my experience of building a computer using only local shops (I was too busy to be able to spare the time to do mail order, as I usually would), but I was unfortunately too busy building and then using – in an attempt, ultimately successful, to meet my deadline – my new computer to be able to spare time to blogging.

But I did learn some valuable things about buying components and building a mid-to-high spec computer, in Aberystwyth, all in one afternoon:

  1. Daton Computers are pretty much useless. Actual exchange:
    “Hi, I need to buy [name of component], or another [type of component] with [specification of component].”
    “Well, you’ll need to bring your computer in for us to have a look at.”
    “Umm; no – I’m building a computer right now: I have [other components], but I really need a [name of component] or something compatible – can you help?”
    “Well, not without looking at the PC first.”
    “WTF??? Why do you need to look at my PC before you can sell me a [type of component]?”
    “So we can tell what’s wrong.”
    “But I know what’s wrong! I only took the shrink-wrap off the [other components] this morning: all I need is a [type of component], because I don’t have one! Now can you sell one to me or not?”
    “Well, not without -”
    /Dan exits/
  2. Crosswood Computers are pretty much awesome. Actual exchange:
    “Hi, remember me? I was in here this morning.”
    “Yeah: how’s the rebuild going?”
    “Not bad, but I’ve realised that I’m short by a [type of cable]: do you sell them?”
    “We’re out of stock right now, but I’ve got some left-over ones in the back; you can have one for free.”
    /Dan wins/
  3. It’s possible to do this, but not recommended. The local stores, and in particular Crosswood, are great, but when time allows it’s still preferable to do your component-shopping online.

I later went on to write more about Nena, when I had the time.

Title: Child Porn
Unpublished since: April 2009
Unpublished because: Never finished; too much work in writing this article

I had planned to write an article about the history of child pornography, starting well before Operation Ore and leading up to the present day, and to talk about the vilification of paedophiles (they’re the new terrorists!) – to the point where evidence is no longer as important as the severity of the alleged crime (for particularly awful examples of this kind of thinking, I recommend this article). I’m all in favour of the criminalisation of child abuse, of course, but I think it’s important that people understand the difference between the producers and the consumers of child porn, as far as a demonstrable intent to cause harm is concerned.

Anyway, the more I read around the subject, the more I realised that nothing I could write would do justice to the topic, and that others were already saying better what I was thinking, so I abandoned the post.

Title: 50 Days On An EeePC 1000
Unpublished since: May 2009
Unpublished because: By the time I was making progress, it had been more like 150 days

Earlier in the year, I’d promised that I’d write a review of my new notebook, an Asus EeePC 1000. I thought that a fun and engaging way to do that would be to write about the experience of my first 50 days using it (starting, of course, with reformatting it and installing a better operating system than the one provided with it).

Of course, by the time I’d made any real progress on the article, it was already well-past 50 days (in fact, I’d already changed the title of the post twice, from “30 Days…” to “40 Days…” and then again to “50 Days…”). It’s still a great laptop, although I’ve used it less than I expected over the last nine months or so (part of my original thinking was to allow me to allow Claire to feel like she’d reclaimed the living room, which was being taken over by Three Rings) and in some ways it’s been very-recently superceded by my awesome mobile phone.

Title: El De-arr
Unpublished since: September 2009
Unpublished because: Too waffley; couldn’t be bothered to finish it; somewhat thrown by breaking up with Claire

Over the years I’ve tried a handful of long-distance romantic relationships, and a reasonable number of short-distance ones, and, in general, I’ve been awful at the former and far better at the latter. In this blog post I wrote about my experience so far of having a long-distance relationship with Ruth and what was making it work (and what was challenging).

I’m not sure where I was going with it in the first place, but by the time Claire and I broke up I didn’t have the heart to go back into it and correct all of the references to her and I, so I dropped it.

Title: Knowing What I’m Talking About
Unpublished since: October 2009
Unpublished because: Never finished; got distracted by breaking up with Claire

On the tenth anniversary since I started doing volunteer work for emotional support helplines (starting with a Nightline, and most recently for Samaritans), I wrote about a talk I gave at BiCon 2009 on the subject of “Listening Skills for Supporting Others”. It was a little under-attended but it went well, and there was some great feedback at the end of it. I’d helped out with a workshop entitled “Different Approaches to Polyamory” alongside fire_kitten, but strangely it was this, the workshop whose topic should be that which I have the greater amount of experience in, that made me nervous.

This blog post was supposed to be an exploration of my personal development over the previous decade and an examination of what was different about giving this talk to giving countless presentations at helpline training sessions for years that made me apprehensive. I think it could have been pretty good, actually. Unfortunately a lot of blog posts started around this time never ended up finished as I had other concerns on my plate, but I might come back to this topic if I give a similar presentation at a future conference.

So there we have it: a big cleanse on my perpetually unfinished blog posts. I’ve still got about eight drafts open, so there’s a reasonable chance that I might finish some of them, some day: but failing that, I’ll wait until another decade or so of blogging is up and I’ll “purge” them all again, then.

And if you had the patience to read all of these – these “17 blog posts in one” – well, thanks! This was more about me than about you, so I don’t mind that plenty of you will have just scrolled down to the bottom and read this one sentence, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMAC

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BiCon 2009

Aug 24

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

This weekend, I was at BiCon 2009 (my third BiCon – I guess that makes it a tradition), and it was awesome. Here’s a short summary of the highs and lows:

Travel

Worcester’s closer than I remembered, and – once Claire‘d gotten used to the Vauxhall Astra we’d rented – we made good time there and back. It’s a really simple journey, really – you just drive along the A44 until you get there, and then you stop (well, okay, there’s a brief stretch on the A470 near Rhayader, but that doesn’t really count, does it?). The biggest difficulty we had was on the University of Worcester campus itself, which is a maze of twisty little passageways, all alike.

Accommodation

The usual student halls affair, although with rooms far larger and kitchens far better-equipped than those in, say, Penbryn. Also, the organisers must have run out of regular rooms, because the flat Claire and I were in had en-suite rooms, which was an unexpected luxury.

An interesting quirk in the halls of residence at Worcester is that they’re very, very keen on motion-sensor-activated lighting with very short timers. The lights in the hallway outside my room would come on for barely seconds, and when I first checked in, I’d only just worked out which was my door and dug my key out of my pocket before I was plunged into darkness and had to leap around to get the attention of the sensor and get the lights back on. The one in the kitchen was even worse – while playing board games on the first night, we eventually grabbed an anglepoise lamp from one of the study bedrooms to use, as it was simply too frustrating to begin your turn right as the lights turn off, and have to wait for a few seconds until your movement is enough to turn them back on again.

On the other extreme, the light (and the – noisy – linked extractor fan) in my bathroom was so sensitive that it would turn on if I so little as walked outside the door to my bathroom, while it was closed, and often wouldn’t turn off for several hours.

Registration

Registration was the usual fun and games, with less time than usual setting up our badges in accordance with the “sticker code” (sort of a handkerchief code, but with a key and an atmosphere of being a little more playful). As usual the sticker code started small (and, unusually, with a distinct and separate “official” code) and expanded over the course of the weekend, such that by the end of the conference it looked like this:

I didn’t spend very long on my badge and stickers this year: just enough to get a core message across… plus a not-on-the-key “Q scrabble tile”, as a reference both to being a board gamer and to Claire and I’s unusual surname. There’s probably at least half a dozen others I could have legitimately added to my pass.

To save you squinting at the pictures (or clicking on them to see bigger ones: that’s allowed, too), I’ll decode my badge for you: polyamorous, likes hugs, possibly available (as in: I’m theoretically open to new relationships, but seriously – where would I find the time?), and the aforementioned “Q scrabble tile” and another “Q” that I found in the sticker stash.

Claire volunteered for a shift of reception desk duties, which is cool, because they’re always in need of more folks there.

Other People’s Workshops

I didn’t go to as many workshops as I have in previous years: many of the things I was interested in clashed with one another, and other slots were simply full of topics that didn’t catch my attention. Also, I’ve found that going to a workshop in “every other” timeslot is a perfectly good way to get by, and spending the alternating periods hanging out, meeting people, and playing board games is a great way to keep energy levels up in the otherwise quite draining busy-ness of BiCon.

  • Right at the start of the conference, I narrowly missed going to Genital Show & Tell, which I later heard was awesome – I’d gotten carried away talking to people and got there after they’d locked the door, putting a sign up on it that read “This workshop is closed. Sorry.” and underneath which somebody had added “Yes, it is possible to have too many genitals in one place!”
  • I enjoyed Fun & Games, at which Ele joined me and we shouted lots of rude words, although never in as articulate a fashion as Nomad.
  • Went to the Smutty Bisexual Storytelling workshop for the first time this year, and it was amazing: huge thanks to the amazing Jacqui (is that spelled right?) for that fabulous (hot!) session.
  • Loved the talk and the discussion at the Quaker Marriage workshop (much thanks to the facilitator, whose low-key online presence suggests might prefer to remain unidentified), and the fabulous religion/marriage/sexuality conversation I had afterward with another participant in that workshop.
  • Hung out at two of the three scheduled Naked Lunches, at which I enjoyed bonding with several other (naked) geeks over a shared love of Interactive Fiction. Who’d have thought?

My Workshops

This year was the first year that I ran a workshop (last year’s impromptu purity test party doesn’t count), and, because I like a challenge, I ran two:

  • Alongside “fire_kitten“, I got bullied into (well, okay, I sorta promised) running a workshop entitled Different Approaches To Polyamory. As the only official poly-workshop on the programme (that’s why I offered!), it was somewhat over-subscribed, and we actually ended up with almost a quarter of the conference attendees present, and for part of the workshop we had to split them between two rooms. A lot of people grabbed me later during the conference and thanked me for the workshop, which was pleasing, especially as I did very, very little: mostly I gave the participants some conversation topics and split them up into groups, and chaired a bit of a chat about it all at the beginning and at the end. But if it worked, it worked, and it sounds like it worked.
  • When I’d first heard that there was a minor shortage of workshops, I felt compelled to provide one, but I couldn’t think of anything that I knew enough about to stand up and talk about, that people might actually be interested in hearing about. And then I thought of something. I did my other workshop on Listening Skills for Supporting Others, and it also went really well. It was a little under-subscribed, probably because it was timetabled against the time that many people will have been preparing their BiCon Ball costumes (hell, if I’d have been doing so at that time, it’d have made things a lot faster and easier for me!). However, it got some fantastic feedback, even from folks who seemed skeptical at the beginning that any good could be done by listening and supporting feelings, rather than by providing practical help.

BiCon Ball

The theme of the BiCon Ball was Crime and Punishment, and so there were – predictably – plenty of burglars with swag-bags, police officers, superheroes and villains, and the like. The standard of body-painting was even better than normal (a number of people opted to wear virtually nothing, instead being painted as, for example, Wonderwoman, who didn’t wear much to begin with).

Just to be that little bit different – and to take a metaphor to it’s illogical extreme in our characteristic manner – Claire and I decided to actually dress as a crime itself. She dressed as a salt shaker and I dressed as a Duracell D-Cell, and together we were… a salt and battery. Get it? Everybody else we spoke to that evening did, too, eventually, although many of them needed some prompting.

And There’s More…

Other highlights and notable moments include:

  • The “settling in” period seemed a little worse than usual this year than last year. Somehow it took me a little while longer than normal to “get into the BiCon groove” and to start appreciating BiCon for the heap of awesome that it really is. It’s always challenging jumping into that environment, and that’s to be expected, but something made it a little slower this year. Perhaps the lack of a beer in my hand!
  • Thoroughly enjoyed the last-minute late-night picnic party we helped kick-off after the BiCon Ball. Some of the coolest people at BiCon found their way to the quad not far from the students union, carrying their leftover food supplies, and we broke bread and exchanged hugs and chatted and it was fabulous. After all that and one thing and another, I finally got to bed at almost 4am, knackered but happy.
  • Discovered some cool new board games that might be finding their way to a Geek Night near you (assuming you live in Aberystwyth) soon, including Frank’s Zoo, Snatch, and Type Trumps (Top Trumps, but with typefaces; yes really).
  • Feeling like I’d helped make BiCon a success by volunteering to do a variety of bits and pieces (like the workshops, above) and generally being useful. It feels great to contribute back to the event and the community.
  • Katie managing to accidentally break a pool cue between her breasts. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible (apparently, it’s left quite a bruise, and I’m not surprised).
  • Catching up (albeit only in passing) with Henri and Pascale, with whom we shared accommodation at our very first BiCon.
  • Spending an hour and a bit chatting to somebody who seemed to coincidentally know their way intimately around pretty much every interest I’ve thrown myself at over the last twelve months. But better. The killer was when it turned out that she spoke Esperanto better than me (if it’s any consolation, she made up for knowing everything by being gorgeous).
  • Watching another somebody dancing. Honestly, I could have watched him all night.
  • Everyone seemed to like the campus, which is cool (presumably they didn’t have rooms with extractor fans that whirred until three in the morning, which is quite irritating if you happen to have gone to bed before then, which happens sometimes).
  • Didn’t see as much of my flatmates as usual, which is a pity, because it included some fabulous people.
  • Having common sense. Knowing what to say yes to, and what to say no to, and why both are okay.
  • Not too bad a “coming down” post-BiCon period, this time.

Right; that’ll have to do for a BiCon 2009 Roundup, because Ruth‘s cooking me dinner so I need to go eat.

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Claire Goes To Pisa

Jun 18

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

So, last weekend Claire moved out of The Cottage and into her new flat, the top floor of a somewhat-slanted building on Queen’s Road which I’ve tken to calling Pisa. I gather she’s planning a flatwarming party in the afternoon – if you’re on the Abnib Events SMS list, you’ll already have heard about this, and I’ll let you know more as soon as I have it.

For those of you for whom this comes as a surprise, I apologise. I’m aware that in some ways it’s become my duty to keep those of you who’ve left Aber for brighter pastures up-to-date about every little bit of gossip about what’s going on back here in the West, but between all of the things that have been keeping me busy of late – not limited to helping Claire gather all 700 pairs of her shoes, or however many there are (it certainly feels like somewhere in the region of 700), into boxes for her to transport to her new home – I’ve simply not had time to put regular effort into keeping you all up-to-date.

Claire stars in a video tour of her new place, if you want to look around.

To provide answers the questions I anticipate, before they’re asked:

No, nothing else changes. We’re still together, and, in fact, our relationships (already too complicated for some of you, I know) are all still just the same as they already were. I’m still right where I was in the middle of a wiggly W-shaped chain of people in a series of more-open-than-not relationships, with all the same people you’re used to. If you’ve been on another planet for the last couple of years, that is:

Sting (no, not really) – Claire – Dan – Ruth – JTA

Yes, everything still happens at The Cottage. Well, everything that already happened at The Cottage: that is – Troma Night, Whedon Night, and the ocassional Geek Night at those times when both (a) Rory is elsewhere and (b) I am not. And, as usual, my door is open for guests just about any time.

So, why the change? That’s a question sufficiently-complex to not be answerable with anything as short and catchy as this blog post is planned to be. The short answer is that Claire wanted some space that was “hers”, as in – hers alone, not something shared with me and, for half the week, with somebody else!

And how do I feel about all this: well, a little poorer, for one – it’s obviously more expensive for the pair of us to have a house and a flat than just a house, especially as this change coincides with a (long-overdue, to be fair) rent increase at The Cottage: we’re both going to have to budget significantly more carefully than we did previously. It’s also a significant change – after six and a half years of living together – that’ll take some getting used to, and it’s sometimes hard to remember that this isn’t a step backwards. But that apprehension aside, I’m still supportive of Claire’s wish to have a place to call her own.

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Satisfied

May 15

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I saw XKCD #584 – “Unsatisfied” – this morning. In the comic (in a slightly Sliding Doors way), a man chooses between one of two lovers, and spends the rest of his life thinking about the other one in a “what if” kind-of way, leaving him ultimately unsatisfied with his life, regardless of which he chooses.

Go read the comic if you haven’t yet.

I had a slightly smug moment, and ‘shopped this together:

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Kissing At Midnight

Dec 18

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 7 Comments

In a fleeting thought, as I passed the greengrocer hanging our mistletoe outside his shop this morning, I found myself thinking about the unusual situation I’m in, in that I’ll this year be spending New Year’s Eve with both of mygirlfriends.

Who do I kiss at midnight?

Thankfully, the solution is clear – this year at least – thanks to the fact that midnight will happen twice this year (there’s a leap second). With some careful orochestration of who kisses whom when, they can have a midnight each, and use each of their other midnight’s to kiss their respective other partners.

Like I said: a fleeting thought – I don’t lie awake worrying about this kind of thing. That would just be weird.

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How to be Mono-Friendly

Oct 13

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 10 Comments

Freaksexual just wrote a fantastic blog post (as usual) instructing monogamous people “How to be Poly-Friendly“. It’s an excellent little post about the kinds of faux pas it’s easy to make without even thinking about it, and while it’s very obviously targetted at monogamous folk who have polyamourous friends or lovers, I couldn’t help but feel that I’ve made a few mistakes on that list myself at one time or another.

However hard it tries not to be, though, it still comes across as a little militant (I know that’s not the intention!) in it’s defensiveness, and I thought it probably deserved an “opposite number”; a counter-post.  So here’s my attempt – and I’m certainly not the most-qualified person to write it – to explain how poly-people can be mono-friendly.

How to be Mono-Friendly

Don’t preach polyamoury. It’s okay – sometimes even helpful – to let the monogamous know that the potential exists for negotiated nonmonogamy (and that for those for whom it works, it can be far better than being in a single relationship could have been). It may well be something that they’d never even considered or that they didn’t think could actually work, and letting them know that it does and how it can is an eye-opener for many. But it’s not appropriate to try to “sell” your lifestyle choice by dropping it in at every opportunity: for many – most – people it doesn’t work, and these people have a right not to be harassed. Especially do not make the sweeping claim that your lifestyle is universally better than theirs. That it is better for you is not in dispute, but shouting about how universal adoption of polyamoury will stop infidelity/prevent world hunger/cure cancer is wrong on every single count, and patronising to boot.

It’s easy to overstate the significance of “mono privilege”: that the world discriminates in favour of couples (and, specifically, one-man-one-woman couples). It’s true, of course, and it’d certainly be nice if monogamous people were aware of quite how complicated things even some simple things can be for some poly families, but there’s no excuse for spending the whole time moaning about how easy the mono people have it… and while it’s worth saying once, nobody wants to hear for the hundredth time how unfair it is that you have to organise your life or your finances in a particular way because that’s the way the system works.

Sometimes, monogamous friends can find it awkward or uncomfortable to know how best to refer to your partners, and the polite thing to do is to help them find a word. If you have a variety of different relationships of different types, folks new to poly ideas in general will sometimes trip over their own tongues while trying to decide whether to use the word “partner,” or “girlfriend,” or “friend,” or “fuck-buddy,” or whatever. When you introduce somebody, pick a word (“friend” is okay, but be ready for questions if you’re later seen to be doing what many mono-people would call “more than friends”). And if a friend is struggling to find words to refer to one of your relationships, help them out by dropping in a suitable word for them to use.

Similarly, be ready for questions about your relationships. There’s no point in denying that your lifestyle is unusual, and it will attract a lot of interest. Don’t be afraid to say, “This is how it is… …but if you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask – I know it’s a little unusual!” From time to time, you’ll get the same initial questions – is it all about the sex? are you kinky? are there orgies? are you bisexual? – but if you can help your friend get past that, you’ll find that, in general, poly relationships aren’t really any different from mono relationships, and you’ll help them to see that, too. By showing that you’re happy to answer questions, you’re also helping poly activism in a tiny way, by demonstrating that it’s nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, just a different way that some people choose to live their lives.

If you consider yourself polyamourous and you’re dating somebody who considers themselves monogamous, it’s as important for you as it is for them to be honest about where things are going. Don’t let them believe that it’s possible for them to “convert” you to monogamy if it’s not true, and it’ll be easier for them to admit any discomfort with you having other partners. In some ways, the kinds of negotiation that poly-people have to do on a day-to-day basis gives you an advantage when it comes to laying your cards on the table, and it’s important that you respect that it might be a lot less easy for your partner to talk about their wants and fears. And if you’re in a long-term relationship with a mono without seeing any other partners, don’t let them trick themselves into thinking they’ve “cured” you of your nonmonogamous tendencies.

Remember that for many monogamous people, just like for many polyamourous people, their lifestyle is not something that they consider to be a “choice”. In a group of mostly polyamourous people, it’s perhaps even more difficult for a monogamous person to feel like they fit in than it can be for a lone poly-person in a group of monogamous people, because the lone poly, by omission at least, can at least come off as “one of them.” Some people will experiment with both monogamy and nonmonogany and will settle on one or the other because it just feels right; others are so sure of their identity that they will achieve the same without even needing to experiment. That’s okay, and it’s belittling to play the “how do you know if you don’t try it” card, just as it is with sexuality – so don’t!

Be polite in your objections to the terms people use, and assume good faith first. You’ll receive party invitations to you “and your partner”, you’ll be asked “how your boyfriend is doing”, and the sheer number of terms that refer to things that superficially appear similar means you’ll invariably hear your relationship structure described in ways with which you might not be comfortable (polyamoury, open relationship, open marriage, swinging, playing the field, friends-with-benefits, nonmonogomy, ethical sluttery, free love…). Try not to take offence – would you want a monogamous person to take offence if you accidentally referred to their wife as their girlfriend? – but politely explain what the term means to you and what you’d prefer they said. “If it’s not too much trouble, is it okay if I bring both my partners?” is an acceptable reply, but “How dare you only invite one of my partners!” is not.

I’ve no doubt that I’ve been guilty of any number of these over the last few years, and I apologise to anybody I’ve offended as a result: but if all the poly-people read this, and all the mono-people read that, I think that we’ll all be a lot better off.

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BiCon Fun And Games

Aug 30

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 1 Comment

It’s been hard to find time to post a blog entry here, with everything that’s been going on. Here’s the quick rundown so far:

Thursday. Arrived. Checked in. Accommodation is a lot like Penbryn, for those who know what I mean, although with bigger (but more sterile-feeling) bedrooms. Caught up with loads of folks from last year. Drinks at the bar. Board game (Apples To Apples) with friends. Fab.

Friday. Quick trip to Sainsbury’s (we were looking for Asda but got lost) for food supplies. Bacon sandwiches for breakfast. Opening plenary. Bigging Up The B In LGBT (which turned out to be about how trade unions can better represent their bisexual members). Being Bisexual In The Workplace. Then clothes off for the Naked Lunch. Chilled out for a bit. Solving Conflict In Poly Families (met some people with fascinating poly-backrounds). Dinner of pasta. Self-Harm: How We Cope With Stress (some fascinating perspectives expressed there). Missed out on Naked Twister. Drinks on the grass. Ran a Purity Test Party. Fell into bed at about 2am, but some folks were partying all night (none of this “bed at dawn” nonsense: ACTUALLY partying all night).

Saturday morning. Flapjack for breakfast. Juggling workshop (fun ball-tossing fun and perving at hot poi-people). Non-Traditional Families (lots of interesting child-raising ideas). And now I’m making a packed lunch to take to today’s Naked Lunch, then time for a few more workshops before driving up North to Penny and Gareth’s party, picking up passengers on the way.

All in all, having a fab time. Wish you all were here.

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Year One – A Happy Post That Everybody Will Misunderstand To Be An Unhappy One

Aug 26

Posted by Scatman Dan in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Ruth and I celebrated the first anniversary of our being a couple, this weekend. She came down to Aber and we took the steam train up to Devil’s Bridge, wandered around the waterfalls, and spent a good few hours sitting in a pub (pretty much the pub in Devil’s Bridge, tiny place that it is) playing darts.

I’ve never really been one for celebrating anniversaries. A birthday is an ocassion to go out for a pint, and new year is when you… well, that’s when you go out for a pint, too. But it was really quite good to spend some time with Ruth (something I’ve not had a lot of while she’s been living in Oxford, this summer) doing the coupley things we don’t often get to do.

Fuck knows where we’re going to be in another year’s time. If her plans play out the way she’d like, she’ll be leaving Aberystwyth again this time next year, and I’m still going to be here. Neither of us are particularly confident about the prospect of pulling off a long-distance relationship that will work in the same kinds of ways that the relationship we have now does, and I’ve suffered a smidgen of anticipatory grief about the possibility us coming to an end.

On the other hand, we’re both keen to see what we can do to make sure it doesn’t have to end unless it absolutely has to, and that’s reassuring. And I am, as always, optimistic. We’ve got today. We’ve always got today.

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Reasons To Tick The “It’s Complicated” Box

May 29

Posted by Scatman Dan in Personal | 7 Comments

Assuming you’re reading Abnib in chronological order, you’re already aware that Claire and JTA split up a little while ago. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so mutual, so on-equal-terms, so amicable a breakup, ever. While Ruth and I sat on the beach and discussed how we’d need to be ready to provide support to them, they’d already got the talking parts out of the way and were having a game of Mario Party 8.

That’s not to say that it hasn’t been emotionally draining for them: I’m sure it has. But from all accounts, it sounds like they made the right choice for them. And after they’d done whatever they needed to, they each got to go home with their other partner (me, in Claire’s case; Ruth in JTA’s) and a tub of ice-cream. Is there anything more equitable?

I suppose, of course, that this makes the four of us less like a “quad”, and more of a “U-shape” (remember the diagrams I drew way back when? – here they are again).

Although I suppose by that point, one might as well draw a line:

Ruth and I are still doing fine, although this new structure gives us some fresh challenges. These challenges are all logistical in nature (over the last eight months or so, we’ve all gotten pretty good at dealing with the communication and emotional challenges we’ve come accross), and perhaps the biggest one has come from the fact that between the four of us, we only actually own two beds: when Ruth and I spend the night together, where do we put the “extra” person.

So far, Claire and JTA have been very accomodating (and then some). Typically of late, one or both of them have been spending a night or two “away” per week, which has made planning easier, but in the long run, we’re probably going to need another bed somewhere. Space-constraints as they are, perhaps a folding one is a good idea. Or maybe we just need to put some effort into setting Claire or JTA with somebody else… can’t help but feel that’ll only add complexity in the long run, though, so I shan’t start playing “Haaaave you met JTA?” [YouTube] quite yet. Not quite yet.

For the imminent future, there are bigger things to think about in the land of Dan’s Complicated Relationships. Ruth’s got a summer job in Oxford and since her driving test got cancelled she’s probably not going to be able to visit Aberystwyth as often as she’d planned to, so those of you who are still around will find both JTA and I missing her quite a lot for the next few months, I’m sure.

So there’s the update. Claire said pretty much everything I could have about relationship structures and whatnot, so I just wanted to say a few words about logistics and about overcoming complications. I suppose that just leaves me with one question:

When you look at the diagrams above, do you see JTA and I as the squares and Ruth and Claire as the circles, or the other way around, or neither? And why do you think that is? I’ve got a theory I’d like to test.

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