Leiderdorp: Report

From: Kimberley Verburg <kim@lspace.org>
Subject: [F] Third Annual VideoMeet Report (NL)
Date: 15 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <sehv7s42oqbe6123vbk3c2j6he8krgrha9@4ax.com>
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett

Last Saturday morning, I woke up with fragments of a dream still vivid
before me. In my dream, I was standing with Arwen in a well-lit hall in an
English hotel, discussing how the room allocations had been screwed up
while the hall slowly filled up with afpers. All of a sudden, Leo's hand
holding a birthday cake appeared and he quickly moshed it into my face.

It doesn't take a shrink with a penis fixation to work out that
embarrassment of the innocent was the theme of the night's images.
However, as my birthday had been almost a week ago, I figured I would be
safe, thus proving that more years does not necessarily mean more wisdom.
But I'm sure most of the meet attendees could have told me that.


Later on that same Saturday, the following people gathered in the North
End Pub in Leiden for the Third Annual VideoMeet: Arwen Lune', Eelco
Giele, Jeroen Metselaar, Jos Dingjan, Leo Breebaart, Michel Lanting,
Patrick Dersjant, Rolf Milde and Uwe Milde. We were quickly driven out of
the pub by the lack of seating and the eye-watering stink of New Year's
Resolutions going up in chain-smoke. Fortunately, the cafe where we were
to have our dinner was able to take us in early.

The ideal placing of one's nymphs while defending a thesis was
energetically debated and alt.talk.mended-drum's aliveness was discussed
in Monty Python quotes. The Pun Fund continued to do good business during
the meet.

Patrick and I meaningfully waved our fingers at each other to insure
healthy levels of paranoia while the others talked about the flu epidemic
and imitated mobile phones.

Significant parcels were placed one by one on the table and when enough
significant looks had been exchanged, an international birthday conspiracy
was revealed. Eelco had me wear an engineer's idea of a tutu at
Karen/hypatia's instigation and to complete this ravishing pink outfit,
Arwen gave me a plastic Viking helmet. After my obligatory pirouette, Leo
handed over a Backstreet Boys magazine which he had apparently memorised.
Thank you all and I know when your birthdays are, with the exception of
Rolf and Uwe's. For reasons having to do with my advancing age and not at
all with the cute little Tux they bought me, I will forget the date.

During the evening, the waiting staff of Cafe Bacchus proved patient in
the face of loudness, even while our table was establishing the reasons
why restaurants shouldn't provide their customers with overly large menus.
*thwack* *rebound* *ouch*

At around eight, we went to Patrick's flat and settled down quickly to
watch Wyrd Sisters, interrupted only by Michel turning into a packet of
Wokkels. Disney and Dreamworks won't be losing any sleep over the quality
of the animation. The dissolve used to denote a scene change was
particularly annoying and when the same dissolve was used for the spell,
the effect had very little impact. On the other hand, I was very pleased
with the firm drawing of Granny Weatherwax. The cartoon managed to stick
closely to the original story and gave a good number of laughs. Not an
easy thing to do when you consider that all of us knew most of the jokes.

Close to midnight, some people went onto #afp and immediately goshwowed at
the /topic bearing the happy news of Colm Buckley's engagement. Patrick,
being an excellent host, set up five machines for IRC. A few people who
tired of IRC applied themselves to a video game involving much grunting
and arghing.


The next morning after breakfast, we went for a healthy walk and skip in a
nearby park, in search of a suitable place to juggle in. Eelco terrorised
birds and low-flying aircraft with his juggling technique. Arwen and
Patrick practised being each other's arms while Rolf, Uwe and Jeroen
maintained a safe distance. Patrick was going to throw his sister's
present from Australia but was afraid that his boomerang wouldn't come
back. Some of us secretly hoped that it would come back bearing bits of
Small Annoying Dog which was infesting the park.

Once back at the flat, bookshelves were raided and things quieted down
until Patrick produced the Discworld Quizbook. The quizmaster awarded
points to various people and, by general acclaim, awarded Jeroen A Life
for answering too many questions correctly.


QUOTES

"I think I'm the only person I've talked to so far." - Leo

"Very important, keep your penguins toes clean." - Jos.

Arwen kindly took the heat off me by noting down the rest of them, see her
article, [F] VideoMeet quotefile (or: "getting my side of the story in
first").


Uwe and Rolf's meet photos - http://rumil.de/afp/leidenvm3.html

-- 
Kimberley Verburg        kim@lspace.org
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