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Program Book Stress
Jan. 17th, 2010 03:59 amThis happens to me about twice a year. You don't see it, because I keep most of it buttoned up, but convention program book contributors (or the program book designer, depending on which role I am not) drive me to my knees in an inchoate rage. Some are better, some are worse. This is one of the worse ones. I am patching together the latest (the latest what? "Documents" with scare quotes? Depositions at gunpoint?) mere tissue of contradictions, as best I can, knowing that there is no time to untangle this web a day before it goes to print.
Do not expect anything in this book to be true.
In order to control that, I would have to be Conchair. Oh, wait! I tried that! It was the culmination of a multi-year quest to make one program book that was simultaneously attractive and factual. Just one, ever.
There I was, Conchair... at a point in my multi-year quest, as if at the lip of Mount Doom. So cheerful and polite, and yet firm in my vision for the program book! So helpful and attentive, yet keeping a non-micromanaging distance! Like an over-eager parent. I will trouble you no further with details of that tightrope walk, but to say the program book designer turned the finely-honed masterpiece of accuracy into an illegible mess because he is enamored of Open Source Software.
Doubtless you heard the sound, from afar, as of a thousand starving crows. That was the sound of my spirit finally breaking. Pardon me while I dress in sackcloth and ashes and season my Wacom tablet with salt tears.
Do not expect anything in this book to be true.
In order to control that, I would have to be Conchair. Oh, wait! I tried that! It was the culmination of a multi-year quest to make one program book that was simultaneously attractive and factual. Just one, ever.
There I was, Conchair... at a point in my multi-year quest, as if at the lip of Mount Doom. So cheerful and polite, and yet firm in my vision for the program book! So helpful and attentive, yet keeping a non-micromanaging distance! Like an over-eager parent. I will trouble you no further with details of that tightrope walk, but to say the program book designer turned the finely-honed masterpiece of accuracy into an illegible mess because he is enamored of Open Source Software.
Doubtless you heard the sound, from afar, as of a thousand starving crows. That was the sound of my spirit finally breaking. Pardon me while I dress in sackcloth and ashes and season my Wacom tablet with salt tears.
