Today is Voting Day in the United States of America. It is the one day that politicians are guaranteed to be listening and accountable. If you are an American citizen and not legally prevented from voting, please take some time to go to your polling place and make sure that you are counted. The choices we make today will help decide our future. We have only one, and all of us have to share in it.

Please give that responsibility all the consideration that it deserves.

This message was brought to you by the Lost Catboy Foundation for a Better Tomorrow.
Thank you,
~Catboy! =^.^=

In this case, it seems important to remind them that there is no Enemy. Nobody wishes them harm. There are only real people, real lives, real concerns, and real relationships, seeking legal recognition. That’s all.

On a tangentially related note (you’ll see how in a moment), I’ve been meaning to check out Comstock Films for a while now. When they created the “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex” series, they named their company after the historical Anthony Comstock, which has to be one of the smarter up-yours gestures I’ve seen out of the industry. From their trailers and the reviews, it looks like they go out of their way to show off the emotional chemistry and relationships behind the couples in their films. Naturally I approve of this.

Today, though, I especially approve of them, because they’re running a pre-election home-stretch special:

It’s going to be from Tuesday, Oct. 28, 12AM Eastern to Oct. 29 3AM Eastern. For 27 hours, 100% of the purchase price on our erotic documentary DVDs (excluding S&H) is going to the No On Proposition 8 Campaign to preserve marriage equality in California.

So get your blog on. Get your Twitter and your Facebook and your MySpace on. Text a friend, e-mail a loved one. Tell them that if they buy any Comstock Films DVD on October 28, 100% of the purchase price will go helping stop Ballot Measure 8 in California.

That’s not “100% of the profits“; that’s 100% of the sales. It’s a totally selfless gesture. If you’re interested in checking out the Comstock films, or just want to pitch a few dollars into the campaign against Proposition 8, now’s your chance to do both.

Rather than try to force them, I thought it would be best to just share them with you all at once. I hope I’ve captured some feeling of the con’s friendly exuberance for you.

The con really begins in the registration line, so I’m happy to say that the volunteers are some of the friendliest people you’ll find anywhere. That even includes D’Ann, despite her disconcerting fascination with scissors. I promised her a pair of bootlaces if she should get in touch with me, but I haven’t heard back yet.

During a lull in registrations, Elysium, one of the “official” boys, did a little dance for us.

Major kudos to YaoiCon staff for arranging Nase Yamato’s appearance as Guest of Honor, especially on such short notice. Originally, Youka Nitta was scheduled to attend, but a plagiarism scandal ended with her leaving the manga industry, at least for the forseeable future. A lot of people turned up to meet her, enough that the staff had to arrange a second autograph session, which also overflowed. She seemed to appreciate all the fans who came out to see her, and she made sure to add a little drawing to her autographs. I can only imagine how much her hand hurt afterwards.

One thing I like particularly about YaoiCon is seeing the creative projects that spring up spontaneously, and the longer-term ones that fans bring to share. For example, the Cup Contest seems to be a new tradition of quick, communal art. On the other extreme, one artist is doing Gundam Wing fanart in needlepoint. She has a LiveJournal account to share her progress, but I neglected to get the address from her. If anyone out there knows, please let me know so I can post a link.

I only have a few other YaoiCon thoughts left floating around in my head, and I’m not entirely sure if I’ll write them up yet. We’ll see.

To visit, I had to leave the frantic, hurried energy of the con; it takes up an inconspicuous, well-furnished suite tucked away on the third floor of the hotel. There was a small line waiting by the door when I arrived, but Café Verführen seats only twenty-two at capacity, which kept the group small and patient. Everyone was seated in short order, more or less on time. I can’t imagine that the two cafés attract substantially different clientele, so I’m left crediting the room’s accoustics for keeping the background noise to a low murmur. The quiet was a very nice touch; even when the evening ran a little behind schedule, the atmosphere stayed relaxed and graciously unhurried.

Having experienced (and enjoyed) the (non-professional) host-café as both server and guest now, I have a hard time expressing how much I admire what Café Verführen has created. Details like that make the difference between a great event and a mediocre one, and the details are where they sweep the field. They’ve created something full of little refinements, tiny considerations of the nuances of their guest experience. Some of them are as simple as sheets of paper; the menus weren’t printed on plain white bond, and they weren’t stack-cut to quarter-sheet. The drinks are served in glass, not Styrofoam. Those sound small, almost inconsequential, and on one level they are, but on another they’re tactile, hardwired directly to the brain, and I felt the difference even through gloves. Those choices have weight, in a very literal way, and even if they weren’t made consciously, weight has meaning; it feels like a natural manifestation of a commitment to do things right.

I felt a sense of pride coming from the staff - not arrogance, just confident, fannish pride, a friendly sort of Look at this wonderful thing we’ve made to share with you - and I think it’s well-justified. Our food came arranged on small, comfortable plates, simple and well-executed. One of my tablemates ordered a cocktail, some beautifully colorful concoction decorated with lemon and cherry, and mentioned that, even half-consumed, it looked like it had come out of some food-porn magazine studio.

N.B.: not all of the cocktails are fancy or proper; one I noticed consisted of a can of soda topped in whipped cream. I’m sure there’s a story behind that. This is almost expected when the sealed packets on the tables are not, in fact, moist towelettes.

As food-centric a person as I can be, though, I have to say that host cafés should not be slightly-pricey at-con restaurants; the hosts should be their star attractions. Again, Café Verführen shines through in the details. Almost by necessity the YaoiCon Café’s boys exist in vacuums, apart from one another, if they step in-character at all; it’s hard to construct a milieu where so many different characters (from so many different worlds and genres) can wait tables side by side. On the other hand, Café Verführen has a unified sense of identity, and it gives the staff room to create not only distinct, in-context personas, but also chemistry.

For example, the chef is temperamental about his kitchen, and he commonly shouts at waiters and underlings who get in his way, even threatening them with bodily harm. Sometimes he even locks horns with his half-brother, the owner; in perfect YaoiCon fashion they manage to kiss and make up once their tempers cool. Even in lower-key moments it’s hard to escape the feeling that these characters have lives that their guests never see; Jacob, one of the servers, is an artist in his off-time, and he can’t resist signing the desserts he serves, or decorating them with flourishes and hearts. In one-off comments, in-jokes, and body-language, the staff suggest that we’re only seeing a few scattered pages out of some longer, cohesive narrative. As much as Jacob likes to sulk and mutter about the drama surrounding him, I think that even he would admit that it’s a pleasure to be drawn in, at least for a little while.

All this said, Café Verführen isn’t perfect; for all its polished details, it misses one or two, slipping out of character here and there to remind us of its charming, fannish roots. It might be better that way; I think I might feel exploited afterwards, almost offended, if it were too professional.

I’m gushing a little bit, I know, because it struck a chord with me, something more important than a light dinner and an evening’s entertainment. Last year, after serving, I said that our guests deserved better than what we offered. For this visit, at least, Café Verführen was the better that I hoped we could have given.

Unfortunately, the old links do not work anymore. Some of the most popular posts are linked below, but there are quite a lot of them and people link to them in strange ways sometimes. If you have been directed to this post because your link did not work, please excuse the inconvenience and find a working link below. Also, the person who sent you the broken link may not know it is broken. Please be kind and forward the information along, so that the Internet may get by without so many broken links.

Thank you!
~Catboy! =^.^=

Graveyard
Fake It
Sometimes, When You’re Sleeping
YaoiCon 2007: One Server’s Thoughts
If You Think Education Is Expensive…
Putting Money Where My Mouth Is
Lovers Die Together
The Tears of Anael
DreamFever
Intoxication
Wanting More
You Can’t Go Back to Eden
It Begins With A Kiss
Shut Up
Civilized Behavior: You’ve Heard of It, Yes?

If you are looking for a post not listed here, the search bar off to the left should be happy to help you.

Every year I start looking forward to the next convention almost before I finish recovering from the one just past. Every year I’ve made new friends and caught up with old ones; every year I’ve found a few special thoughts and memories to digest and make part of myself. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration that falling in with this particular crowd has actually helped me become a better person for all the experiences I’ve found with them. Obviously I have a tendency to overthink just a little bit, but it’s a tremendously inclusive event: some people go just to shop; some go to meet other fans; others still just enjoy the sheer exuberant energy that cons always seem to breed. I’m convinced that some people go because they are incredibly bad at masturbating, but this is another essay entirely.

I’ve attended five YaoiCons now, but this was the first time I didn’t have any specific, official involvement. Originally I was slated (tentatively) to work the Sunday Brunch, but when I called to check in that morning, Gothkitti told me not to worry about it. At first I was a bit worried about letting him down (he’s a good friend of mine and I do enjoy helping out with his events where I can), but after a good night’s sleep and some time to unwind I think he was being merciful. By that time I’d already worked ten hours as a regular volunteer, and I’m sure would have knocked myself out completely trying to bring my best game to the tables. If any of you out there attended, I would love to hear your impressions.

On the other hand, I did attend Café Veführen, the other café held at YaoiCon. I heard it mentioned several times after I posted about my serving experiences last year, and it felt important to see what others were doing with the concept. Later, after I’ve organized my pictures a little bit, I’ll post my thoughts about it in a separate review; right now, up front, I will say that I was thoroughly impressed and I would love to visit again.

Being such a long-time attendee does have one drawback, though; the con has grown enormously and I’m sometimes a bit unsure what people want to know or hear about. For the month of October, then, if you have any questions or you’d like to hear my thoughts on something in particular, please do feel free to speak up. I’ll try to cover as much as possible.

Edit: That was YaoiCon 2008, not 2009. Thanks, senshixdoukeshi.

This five percent is, by definition, LiveJournal’s most profitable five percent of users. Out of these five percent, permanent accounts are, I suspect, the best deal… for LiveJournal’s coffers. $150 buys five years of upgraded service, not counting the interest earned by not paying up-front. I suspect that a Permanent account actually stays profitable more or less forever - on a commercial scale, a gigabyte of bandwidth costs about fifteen cents, a gigabyte of storage about the same - but they get less so if they’re active for more than five years. For comparison, LiveJournal has only existed at all for nine years this March, and as a paid service for eight this September.

Unfortunately, once a user buys a permanent upgrade, that user immediately and forever-after becomes deadweight to the company, an expense that has no hope of bringing in future revenue. Let me repeat that - permanent account holders are not LiveJournal’s customers. LiveJournal has precious little incentive to care what they think. Customers write checks. Once LiveJournal cashes the user’s check, a permament account is a liability, pure and simple.

In 2006, though, they found a way around this problem, which recently became the default for new users: the ad-supported upgrade. I think this was a brilliant decision, in this twirling-moustache, corporate-Machiavelli kind of way. The advertising program means that permament and basic accounts, which ordinarily generate no revenue, are still financially valuable - LiveJournalers (LiveJournalists?) maintain extensive lists of interests and associations in their profiles. This giant database can be mined, and the interests and demographic information mined to target advertising to their friends.

I suspect that people willing to pay $20/year or more for LiveJournal are probably pretty good at keeping their profiles up-to-date, people willing to pay $150 up-front even more so. That’s good, and very important in this business model. Targetting is money in advertising-land.

I have a point in this long and rather unwieldy setup, a reason for this little Gedankenexercise. I don’t have anything against LiveJournal, per se; it provides a useful service and there’s nothing wrong with paying for it, or with it turning a tidy profit.

It just entertains me. Late last year, SUP bought LiveJournal for about thirty million dollars (this before our currency really tanked, when thirty million dollars meant more in international business than it does today). They certainly didn’t do it without looking at the balance sheets. So, when a Permanent Account member says

I am not anyone’s marketing project or marketing research group or cash cow. Either you enter into a recorded, serious contract with me to pay me for my efforts or you can just fuck off.

I just have to laugh.

Moo Harder.

I’m sleeping. I know it. She is the girl in my dreams, for a long time the only one and even now the only one who stayed. Not a muse, she is my friend and I suppose my sometime lover, a private blessing born somewhere deep in my subconscious mind. It’s been eight years since I last heard her voice aloud. Really it belongs to Evette, to the girl I loved in high-school, to the girl who taught me to love myself, but my girl-dream kept it for me and made it her own.

I turn my head a little in her lap, kissing at the palm of her hand before I open my eyes again. The summer has tanned her since I saw her last, but only just a shade, and the light brings out the dark, ruby fire in her auburn hair. “Tybalt doesn’t want to play today,” I murmur.

“I think you’re just happy right here,” she laughs, slipping her hands away, and her warm, black jeans press against my cheek. I don’t deny it, don’t even try, just make happy meowling noises up at her. Writing something means waking up, at least, leaving her behind again. She comes and goes as it pleases her; it might be months before I see her again. Part of me always worries that, one day, she might not come back.

She knows what I’m thinking, though, and she lifts my head, bending over me to press a kiss against my lips. “How long’ve you known me?”

“Seven years.”

“And I’m always here for you.”

“Not always.”

She looks hurt by the thought, and I regret it right away. “When you need me, I’m here.”

Sitting up, I turn and hold her back. ” . . . yes.” My fingers trace the soft channel of her spine, over and over, in silent apology, until she melts and forgives me, squeezing me tight.

“Kiss me, stupid. It’s been a long time.” she whispers, giggling, and I do, first her cheek, then her lips, then lower, letting her guide me down the long, fine tendons in her neck, to the ridge of her collar and the smeared, ink-black memories of something I wrote on her before. “Write something, okay?” She eases away, two fingers pressed at the edges of my teeth. “For me. I’ll wait right here.”

I nip at her fingertips and make her glare. “Promise?”

The crack of her smile tells me all I need to know.

Somewhere near Milpitas and not so long ago (either 2003 or 2004), there was a boy, I think, in love with the Mustang SVT Cobra. I imagine he was a boy, at least, but she may have been a girl; nobody needs a Y-chromosome to appreciate the Cobra’s beautiful, all-American brand of power and handling. Still, it suits my sense of aesthetics to believe that this was a boy, and so this is a story about a boy and a car.

The dealer, sadly, put too high a price on love, and the sticker on the Cobra weighed in at over $33,000, almost exactly an entire year’s wages for the average American man. This is a very old story, actually, at least as old as money and really as old as trade. Too frequently our wallets are too small to contain our hopes and dreams. I imagine him breathing deep in disappointment, but really this boy was still far from a pauper, modestly successful in his own right, and he let the dealer guide him around the lot, showing him less exotic breeds of pony. He might have seen the Mach 1, loud and brash as its name, and every dealer would have a few proud GTs, Gran Turismo cars built to run great long stretches of open American road.

Even these are expensive cars, though, and in time the dealer would have shown our boy the basic-model Mustangs. At $18,000 they were still badges of modest success, sports cars for those who refused to settle into the comfortable domesticity of Camrys and Accords. These, he could afford.

Still, he loved the Cobra, not the Mustang. Two hundred horsepower divided the two, to say nothing of the refinements in handling and trim. The Mustang is an American classic for its tunability, but the Special Vehicles Team had raised it to the level of art, and with the extra 800ccs of engine he could not hope to compete. Besides, the Cobra name brings a special, exclusive sort of cachet, and I am sure he dreamt of its effects on his circle of lady friends.

What would he do? He could tune the Mustang, of course, and even if it could not race the Cobra, he might well be able to match the Gran Turismo. That was a lot of work, though, a commitment to bury himself to the elbows in grease for months on end and pore over the tachometer’s wobbling like a scientist over his graphs, and he probably did not know how. The muscle-car gearhead is a dying breed. Perhaps he could drive a lesser car, something practical and boring, something economical that might let him save for a Cobra in five years’ time, but that was a desperate move. Like so many American boys, ours wanted his gratification now, when he was still young and full of flash.

No, none of these would be good enough. If this boy could not have his Cobra, he would make it.

Or fake it.

One night at Pilades, he slid up beside me and took a seat on the edge of my table, smiling just a little too much. I tried to ignore it, but he tugged insistently at the top of my newspaper, like a kitten who’s done something endearingly naughty and very much wants you to know. “Hello again,” he said, practically singing with happiness. “The Times? That’s a very good paper. I approve. And I have something to show you.”

“Rio, you are a strange, strange human being.” I folded my paper back together, shaking my head. “What do you want?”

Still smiling, he stuck out his tongue at me, then nodded over to the pinball machine. “I think she likes me.” The Billionaire’s Club listings began to scroll, glowing orange in the dim corner of the room.

I ran over to look. The first score wasn’t mine anymore. Three letters laughed back at me. R. I. O.

He’d beaten me by exactly a hundred points.

“You beautiful fucking bastard.” I glared at him as he padded over, his hands clasped innocently behind his back. “I gotta fix this.”

Rio dug through his pockets and handed me a fistful of quarters. “I thought you would,” he said, smiling a little wider. “I wanted to watch you play.”

The machine loves me. Most machines do, but there’s something particularly about this one that scratches me in just the right places, something about its ramps and lights and all its moving parts that mixes with the synthesizer and pulls me into its frantic, exhilarating logic. I tried to ignore Rio as he leaned against the wall behind me, watching, waiting for me to sink into that magic place between thinking too much and not thinking enough, between playing the game and letting the game play you.

It took me a few dollars to get there. Most of the time it’s not so hard, but before Rio walked into my life, I held a hundred thousand points over anyone else on the board. Having competition makes it harder, but when it’s just right, that’s only part of the thrill. I felt the machine coming to life beneath me, brighter, louder, and more seductive with every snap of the paddles. He wasn’t going to beat me; I would make sure of that.

Over the noise of the game I heard Rio thinking aloud, half amused. “Jacqueline says you want to fuck me. Or maybe she said you want me to fuck you. I forget exactly.”

I choked, missed a beat, and hit the paddles a quarter-second late. My last ball drained, five thousand points low. “Cheater.” I glared at him.

He ran his fingers through his hair, leaning close to offer me an innocent little smile. “I was just saying, you know. It doesn’t mean anything, unless you say it does.” Those beautiful blue eyes caught the lights from the machine, gleaming in the darkness, daring me to answer.

I pushed him away without the satisfaction. “Gimme another quarter, asshole.”